Browsing by Author "Nathanson, Renee"
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- ItemFast-tracking the literacy development in street children : a reading and writing project for street children(Stellenbosch university, 2009) Nathanson, ReneeThe Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2007 revealed that seventy-seven million children of primary school age are not enrolled in schools. Furthermore, despite continued reforms at the primary level, too many school-going children drop out early or do not reach minimal learning standards. This paper describes a collaborative project between researchers at Stellenbosch University and Georgia State University to raise the literacy levels of street children in a unique school in the Western Cape. Given that traditional scientific models have not been successful in raising literacy levels in South African schools, the project implemented a flexible teaching framework in which instructional decisions were based on careful observation of individual children’s reading and writing behaviours (Clay, 2005; McEneaney, Lose & Schwartz, 2006). It was assumed that the insights gained from working with children who had no prior literacy experiences would benefit other low-performing schools. The literacy levels of grade one children in the street-school were assessed at intervals over a one-year period. The results showed that the children were making good progress and that the rate of literacy learning accelerated. Finding ways to integrate scholarship, practice and community development could build capacity for continuous improvements in literacy standards.
- ItemAn individualised literacy intervention for low progress readers and writers in the foundation phase(Stellenbosch University, 2011) Swart, Marika; Nathanson, ReneeCurrent literacy interventions (i.e. programmes of instruction for low-progress readers and writers that are supplementary to the literacy programmes used in mainstream classrooms) implemented in most Western Cape schools reflect the use of isolated item-based literacy teaching methods. The low literacy levels in the Western Cape primary grades, however, do not indicate successful literacy learning. This article describes an individualised literacy intervention for emergent literacy learners that explored alternative, research-based methods of instruction. The intervention took shape as a comparison between low-progress learners who participated in the literacy intervention and average-progress learners who did not participate in this intervention. The aim was to accelerate the low-progress learners’ literacy learning so that they could reach the average-band performance of their classmates after 12 weeks in the intervention. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered by means of observations of learners and assessment results obtained in a pre-test-post-test design, with the addition of a mid-test to observe learners’ literacy progress. Based on qualitative data, the intervention proved to be successful, because observations indicated positive change in the low-progress learners’ reading and writing behaviours. Given the small sample size, the overall trend in the quantitative data supported the value of the intervention and indicated a need for extending the research beyond a pilot study. Further research using larger sample sizes is thus recommended.