CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
5.3 H OW R EADING IS T AUGHT IN THIS C ASE
5.3.1 Three vignettes of reading lessons
all of these recitations, most children are sitting down at the front of the room on the mat, though some boys are playing with coins in the back row. Ms A. puts a text headed ―Healty Me‖ (sic) on the board. There are seven sentences in six lines, written alternately in yellow and white chalk (Photograph 1) Ms A. later explains that she wrote this ―story‖ on the basis of a class discussion in isiZulu a few days earlier. Without pointing at the text, Ms A. reads the text aloud, while some children follow along quietly and others are distracted.
Photograph 1: Extended Text: Healthy Me (Ms A.)
Ms A. then asks the whole class questions about the text, ―When do we eat our eggs?‖ She answers her own question immediately, saying, ―We eat it in the morning.‖ Her next question is, ―What is a pear, a veg or a fruit?‖ Many children call out answers in isiZulu and English. All children appear to be answering in single words, though in the cacophony it is hard to be totally sure of this. Now the teacher redirects attention to the text, asking ―Do you remember, these are the sentences you gave me in Zulu, and I translated?‖ She points to the first sentence, reading it loudly in a somewhat singsong way. The class choruses the sentence after her. Then she reads the sentence again. The next sentence is tackled word by word, with the teacher reading each word first while pointing at the word, followed by the whole class chorusing the same word. When the second sentence has been read in this way, she calls on a child to read it. The child hesitates. ―I eat my fruit so I can /g/-/r/-/o/-w/,‖ prompts the teacher. ―Listen to the words. /g/-/r/-/o/-w/.‖ The whole class choruses ―grow‖ three times after her. Having read all the sentences again, Ms A. sits down and takes out flash cards of words in the text. She shows the card ―makes‖ (written in lower case letters) and says the
word five times, moving the card forward and back slightly for emphasis each time. Children increasingly join in with her. Then she moves on to ―strong‖, sounds the word out and repeats it five times, to the growing accompaniment of the children. Other words dealt with like this are ―me‖, ―mielie meal‖, ―milk‖, ―drink‖ and ―eggs‖. Now the teacher stands up and reads the text loudly and in a sing-song way, sentence by sentence and pointing all the while, followed by the children. ―Very good, I see some of you are remembering,‖ she says. A lot of children are reciting without even looking at the board. Ms A. notices a child saying, ―I eat my...‖ Before he can complete the sentence, she pulls him up, saying ―There‘s no my. I eat fruit.‖ When they reach the end of the text, the children are sent back to their desks. This has taken about 15 minutes. The lesson changes gear as the teacher leads a 45 minute session focusing on vowel substitution in consonant-vowel-consonant words such as ―pet,‖ ―pat,‖ and
―put.‖
Vignette 2: A reading lesson in English involving discrete word work
It is the first lesson after break. There are about 50 children in the classroom due to the absence of one of the other Grade 1 teachers. Things are a bit unruly and it takes a while for Ms N. to get everyone settled down. The sound of chair legs scraping on the floor seems to go on forever. There are some interruptions from older children coming to buy pencils from Ms N.‘s ―shop‖. Ms N. points at the A on an alphabet frieze and begins to recite the alphabet. She stops pointing after letter D. Slowly the children join in. By the time they have finished reciting, most have settled down at their tables. The lesson begins with Ms N. asking the class what the date is today. A chorus of enthusiastic voices is heard, but it is difficult to discern any particular answer. Ms N. points to the 27 on the month calendar on the wall, saying, ―This was yesterday, so today is the 28th.‖ Next she says, ―Now I want to hear some news.‖ A few children answer in isiZulu. There is no discussion or comment on what they say.
―Today we are going to do two Os,‖ announces Ms N., writing OO on the board. She asks for examples of words with ―two Os‖ and a number of hands shoot up. This is not the first lesson on the topic. The children call ―Tisha! Tisha!‖ in an attempt to attract her attention. A child gives the word ―food‖ as an example and is called up to write food on the chalkboard, which she does in tiny, compact letters. ―Food, foooood. Does that say food? Good, let‘s give her a clap,‖ says Ms N.
The second example that is given is ―moon‖. The child who is called up to write moon stands staring at the board. Ms N. asks him for the isiZulu translation of moon, which he gives. ―We find the moon in the...?‖ says Ms N., eliciting a chorus of ―sky.‖ The child looks up at the alphabet friezes on the classroom wall for help. He has remembered that the words associated with letters can be found there, but in fact the word moon does not appear on the friezes. ―Are you copying?‖ asks Ms N. with a disapproving look. The teacher says the word again, emphasising the /m/ and the /n/. This sets off a cacophony from the rest of the class, who variously say the names of the letters M and N and their sounds loudly for about three minutes, while the teacher also says ―moon‖ repeatedly, exaggerating and lengthening all the sounds. The child manages to write moo. He is stymied now. The teacher says, /n/, and instructs the class to chorus /n/. The child writes moot. Ms N. says, ―That is a /t/, make a /n/, /n/, /nnnnnnn/.‖ With the rest of the class chorusing the sound /n/, the child gets it right and is released to his seating place.
The same routine is followed with the words soon and food. The next example is door. The teacher says, ―Door. Please open the... ?‖ (without pointing or looking at the door in the room). ―Door‖ choruses the class. In chorus, the class says the onset and then the rime of the word, ―/d/- /or/‖ but there is no comment that the double vowel is pronounced differently from the previous examples. The child chosen to write the word writes an F instead of an R on the board. ―Lindelani doesn‘t know how to write /r/‖, comments the teacher. ―What is that?‖ she says, rubbing out the child‘s attempt, and asking for another volunteer. This child starts by writing a B instead of a D. ―Why do you write B?‖ asks the teacher. The child looks around at the alphabet frieze, but is still confused. The teacher calls up a third child to write the word. While all this is going on, some other children are looking around the room at the texts on the walls, and others are reading aloud the words on the board. The words look, wool and foot are added to the list on the board in the same way, still with no comment on the various pronunciations of the double-O spelling.
Ms N. rubs out the whole list of words on the board and asks the class to give her the list again, while she writes it on the board. Each word on the list is then read three times in chorus, led by the teacher, who is pointing with a long wooden ruler. Thereafter she points randomly at the words on the list, for the class to read in chorus. Then the boys read the words she points to, without her assistance, followed by the girls. Finally the teacher leads the class in reading the whole list again. Now she calls a child up to lead the class. The girl points
at each word twice in a rhythmical manner, while the class choruses after her. Three other children get the opportunity to lead the chant, competing fiercely through voice and gesture to be chosen for the task. ―Hurry up, hurry up. Aloud!‖ chides Ms N. Then Ms N. instructs the class to take out their notebooks and copy down the words. ―This is your spelling for Friday‖ she says, as the children copy the date and the list of words from the boards. A squabble breaks out between some children, and Ms N. deals with it in isiZulu.
Photograph 2: Leading the reading of words (Ms N.)
Vignette 3: A reading lesson in isiZulu involving discrete word work
It is about half an hour before break. There are 45 children present in this class today, as one of the other teachers is absent and her pupils have been split up amongst the other classes.
Despite the overcrowding, the children are generally well behaved and settled where they are sitting doubled up at desks, and relatively quiet. Ms G. is an old-fashioned teacher who does not tolerate noise and disturbances, and who carries a stick to emphasise this point. The previous lesson was Numeracy, and the children have just been instructed to put their Numeracy books in a pile on a table and to sit down for an isiZulu lesson. Although the school‘s language policy is that the medium of instruction is English, reading is also being taught in isiZulu lessons. Ms G. has already written the following words on the board (translations are given in brackets):
X xoxa (to tell a story) O omisa (to make dry) Y yeka (to stop)
W wela (to cross a river)
Photograph 3: Text for isiZulu reading lesson (Ms G.)
The lesson begins with Ms G. instructing the children (in isiZulu) to read the list of words on the board, as she points to the words with a stick. ―Xoxa, omisa, yeka, wela,‖ chants the class, the teacher‘s voice leading them. Next Ms G. shows a picture of a woman drying dishes. The picture comes from a set of A4 posters illustrating verbs in isiZulu. There is space for translations of the verbs to be written, but this has not been done on this poster. ―Who is this?‖ she asks in isiZulu, to which the children chorus ―Umama (mother).‖ They are clearly familiar with the picture from a previous lesson. ―What is she doing?‖ asks Ms G. in isiZulu.
―Umama uyomisa (mother is drying [dishes])‖ the group chants together, saying the syllables rhythmically. ―What letter is this?‖ asks Ms G. in isiZulu, pointing at the O, at which the whole class choruses the letter name ―O‖4. They do not deal with the sound of the letter. All of this has been at a fairly rapid pace, leaving no opportunity for discussion, questions, or individual engagement.
Now Ms G. says, ―Omisa‖ slowly, exaggerating the shape of the O with her mouth and making a round shape in the air around her mouth with her finger. Then she writes the word
4 In IsiZulu, the names of the letters the alphabet are pronounced the same as they are in English.
on the board, saying the name of each letter as she writes it. ―Let us write on air,‖ says the teacher in English, and, facing the children, she proceeds to write ―omisa‖ with her hand in the air, naming the letters as she writes them. The children do the same. Some are copying her directly, although because she is facing them, they are writing the letters in reverse. This is repeated a few times.
Ms G. then puts up a picture of children crossing a river. ―What are the children doing?‖ she asks in isiZulu, receiving the chorused reply, ―Bayawela (they are crossing).‖ No-one replies in more than this one word. Thereafter follows a set piece: the teacher says ―wela‖ and children spell ―W, E, L, A, wela‖, repeating the routine three times. The names of the letters are the same as in English. It sounds almost like drum beats. The children are (mostly) still sitting still at their desks. A similar process is followed for the remaining words on the list on the board. As the word ―yeka‖ is spelled aloud, Ms G. notices that some children are saying,
―E‖ instead of, ―A‖ at the end of the word. She corrects, and asks for repeat spelling. Finally, the boys in the class are instructed to read the whole list of words together as Ms G. points to the words with her stick. Then, in English, she calls on the boys to, ―Look who is not reading‖ while the girls read the list. Homework is then given: the task is to ―find‖ words by replacing the vowels in the list words with other vowels. The children are not told whether these words should be written down or not.