Module 6 : Teaching and Assessment in Macroskills

Methods for teaching reading

Introduction
In this section you will:

 explore methods for teaching early reading

 talk about and create tasks for children using different reading methods
 find that the methods can be combined and that one method may work
better for some children than for others.
In this section you are going to look in detail at three methods for teaching reading
and writing. The assumption is that this teaching will take place in the home language
and in a print-rich environment, and will involve active learning approaches in order
to help children become successful and confident readers.

No single method discussed below is the ‘right’ one. People learn to read in different
ways, so one method may work with one child but not with another. If the method you
are using is not working with a particular child, try another. In most of your teaching
you will need to draw on all the methods in order to give your children the best
possible chance to become independent readers.

The most effective teachers of reading, read themselves and talk about what they are
reading with enthusiasm. Children get to see for themselves the enjoyment that
reading can bring.

Three different methods

Method 1: Sounds, letters and syllables
The phonics method is based on the relationship between individual letters and
sounds. Children learn to match letters and sounds, such as ‘c–a–t, cat’ (English) or
‘u–b–a–b–a, ubaba’ (‘father’ in isiZulu). This method is sometimes called ‘the
bottom-up-approach’ because it starts with small units and builds towards a bigger
picture of reading. It involves children becoming aware of the sounds that letters or
pairs of letters make (phonics) and appreciating how these fit together to make sounds
within words (phonemic awareness).
This method is important because it enables young children to ‘sound out’ written
words that they don’t recognise – even if they don’t understand the meaning of the
word. As a teacher you need to know which sounds are represented by the letters in
the language you are teaching. These combinations are not the same in all languages.
The phonics method requires a child to learn what sounds are represented by
individual letters (such as ‘a’ and ‘b’) and combinations of letters (such as ‘th’ or
‘ngq’) in order to read words. Teachers usually begin by teaching single sounds and
simple words.

This approach can be useful – and fun – when it is embedded in rhyming. Hearing and
predicting rhyming words and syllables is a strong predictor of reading ability.

For instance, if a child sees that certain words sound similar and have similar
spellings, she or he does not have to sound each one out:

sad, mad, bad, glad dad, had

end, lend, send, spend, friend
bona, lona, zona, wona (isiZulu)

Groups of words like this are called ‘word families’. Once the children have
discovered a word family, you can write it on chart paper and put it on the wall. As
time goes on, you can add to the word families on your wall.

Many African languages have long words that are made up from syllables, such as
‘Siyahamba’ – some can be almost like sentences. Children can learn to clap out the
syllables of any language to help them distinguish the individual sounds and hear how
the word is put together. Words of many syllables often occur in African languages.
Children can learn to recognise and read syllables, and then put them together to make
words.

Word families and words with repeated sounds and syllables are often found in songs,
chants, rhymes and riddles familiar to children. The rhythms and up-and-down tones
in songs and chants can help children to remember words, and to read them more
easily when they are written down.

Now read Case Study 4.1 and answer the questions that follow in Activity 4.1.

Case Study 4.1: Mrs Mogale’s English class

Mrs Mogale is teaching Grade 1 in a school in the urban township of Soweto. English
has been chosen as the medium instruction because the class is made up of children
from many different home language groups. Most of the children have some
familiarity with English from advertising boards, packaging and television. However,
it is still an additional language to most of them.

Mrs Mogale teaches them a rhyme. She read the poem aloud once and then asked two
children to come to the front and act the parts. Once the children were familiar with
the rhythm of the rhyme, she writes it on the board:

A fat cat sat on the mat.

The fat cat saw a rat.
The fat cat jumped for the rat.
The rat ran away.

She uses the letters, sounds and syllables approach to help them read the first few
words.

Pointing to the ‘c’, she asks what sound it makes. Working with one child who raises
their hand, she asks them to sound out the rest of the word: ‘C–a–t, cat’. Then she
moves on to the next word, asking one child to sound it out and say it: ‘F–a–t, fat’.
She then asks if anyone can tell her what the next word says. A child volunteers: ‘Sat’.
She then points to ‘mat’ and ‘rat’, and different children read the words. She asks the
class what is the same about these words, writing them in a column on the board, one
under the other. Children respond that they all end with ‘–at’.

She points to the word ‘saw’ and helps them to sound it out (‘s–aw’), and asks
someone to mime its meaning. She points to the word ‘jumped’ and claps its sounds
(‘j–u–m–p–ed’), and asks someone to mime its meaning.

Mrs Mogale then reads the rhyme with the whole class, in chorus. They do this a few
times. Now she asks two children to dramatise the rhyme while a volunteer recites it.
One plays the part of the cat, the other the rat. In this way the able readers get the
chance to read it on their own. She allows several pairs of children to do this.

Mrs Mogale has placed letter cards in packets. Some of the letters are single letters
(‘b’, ‘c’, ‘f’, ‘h’, ‘m’, ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘s’), and one card has ‘at’ on it. She asks the children to
work in pairs. They take it in turns to draw out a letter and put it in front of ‘at’. The
person drawing out the letter reads the word and then puts the letter back. The other
partner has a turn. When they have been playing this game for 5 minutes, she lets one
pair show the class how they do it.

After the lesson, she makes a wall chart for the word family of ‘at’.

This case study is also available to download.

Activity 4.1: Thinking about using the letters and sounds approach
Timing:(We recommend that you spend 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.1, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. Write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. Why did Mrs Mogale use the letters, sounds and syllables approach to help
her class to read the rhyme?
2. How did she use the similarities between some of the word-sounds to help
the children sound out the word more quickly?
3. Are there similar word families in your language?
4. Could you use this idea in your class?
5. Did the children in Mrs Mogale’s class learn with bodies as well as minds?
How do you think this helped them?
6. How did Mrs Mogale make her classroom more print-rich during this
lesson?
Plan a lesson like Mrs Mogale’s and try it out in your class, or with a group of
neighbours’ children, colleagues or friends.
Phonemic awareness
In Case Study 4.1 Mrs Mogale helped the children in her class to decode the words in
the rhyme by sounding out the letters – ‘c–a–t’, ‘f–a–t’, and so on. She also helped
them to understand the meaning behind the rhyme by asking them to dramatize it. The
activity that she gave them helped the children to hear the rhyming sound ‘at’ in all
the words in that family.

In all of these activities she is helping the children to understand that words are made
up of basic speech sounds, and to play with these sounds. This is called ‘phonemic
awareness’. When children can hear and understand these sounds they know when
spoken words rhyme, and they know when words begin or end with the same sound.
For example, they may learn ‘away’, ‘play’, ‘stay’ and ‘stray’ – and be able to
recognize ‘–ay’. Once they are familiar with initial strings such as ‘st’, ‘str’ or ‘pl’,
they can begin to put them together and decode new words.

The following video, which was created by World Vision International (2017b), looks
at phonemic awareness:

Phonemic awareness is very important for learning to read, but it is not enough.
Children also have to recognize the letters of the alphabet (alphabetic knowledge), and
the sounds that those letters represent (phonics). Mrs Mogale gave the children
opportunities to recognize the letters and sounds by giving them letters to make new
words ending with ‘–at’. By doing this, the children understood the relationship
between spoken sounds and the letters of written language. This helps children to read
and write words.

So phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge and phonetic knowledge (knowledge of

individual sounds) are all necessary for children to become literate – but they are not
sufficient. The main goal is reading with understanding. Other methods such as ‘look
and say’ and ‘learning experience’ are ways of helping children to make meaning of
words.

Something to think about: Think of any chanting rhymes in your language that

could help develop awareness of rhymes and letter strings. How could you use these
in your class?
Method 2: Look-and-say
The look-and-say method of teaching reading links whole words with their meanings
without breaking them down into sounds first.

The meaning of the word and how it can be used in different contexts is very
important. Children need to remember the shape and look of the word so that they
recognise it when they see it again – in other words, it relies on a child’s visual
memory.

If the teacher only uses this method, the child may become lost if they do not
recognise the words. Because of this, effective teachers combine the phonics method
and the look-and say method when teaching reading.

The look-and-say method is very useful for the many words whose spellings do not
match their sounds, such as ‘the’, ‘said’ or ‘when’ in English. When you are teaching
a language that has a more regular sound-symbol correspondence, it is easier to match
letters to sounds. Sounds and letters in most African languages are linked in a more
regular way, which makes it easier for children to learn to read using phonics.

Read Case Study 4.2 and answer the questions that follow in Activity 4.2.

Case Study 4.2: Mrs Mapuru uses the look-and-say method

Mrs Mapuru is teaching Grade 2 in a school situated in a rural area. Her children have
had more than a year learning to read in their mother tongue and are now learning
English and building reading skills in English.

She has collected pictures of fruits and pasted them on to cards. Each card has the
English name of the fruit under the picture. She has also made about 15 sets of four
cards, each of which has only the name of a fruit with no picture.

Figure 4.1: Some picture cards

Long description
She holds the picture cards up one by one and makes sure that the children know the
names of the different fruits: banana, apple, pear, peach, mango, etc. She then
shuffles the cards and holds them up in a different order, letting the children chorus
the names of the fruits. She repeats the name and spells out the words: ‘Mango, m–a–
n–g–o, mango.’ She does this a few times, encouraging the class to say it with her.

Mrs Mapuru then uses a set of cards without pictures and lets children put up their
hands and try to read the words. She does not break down the names of the fruits into
sounds; children have to read words as a whole. She goes back to the picture words
once or twice and then tries the cards without pictures again. Then she sticks the cards
with pictures and words on her English word wall.

She divides the class into pairs. Each pair has a set of four cards. They try to read
them, turning them over one by one and reading them to each other. They try to read
them without looking at the word wall first, but if they are stuck they can get help by
looking at the wall. Pairs can exchange their sets of cards with another pair once they
can read them well without looking at the word wall.

After this, Mrs Mapuru can ask the children about different kinds of fruits: ‘What
other kinds of fruits do you know?’, ‘What colour is a banana?’, ‘How do you eat a
banana, do you eat it with the cover on or do you need to peel it?’, and so on. She can
let them talk in pairs about the fruits that they know and the ones they like the best.
Then they can report back to the class about their favourite fruits, using a sentence she
gives them: ‘I like to eat (bananas).’ As they say their sentence, they hold up the
word.

Later, she reads a story about fruit to the children and builds a lesson around it. You
can read about that in Section 5.

This case study is also available to download.

Activity 4.2: Thinking about ‘look-and-say’

Timing:(We recommend that you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.2, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. If you have no partner, write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. How is the teacher using the look-and-say method?

2. How does Mrs Mapuru use this method to help the children to read words
describing fruit?
3. How does she make sure that each child is actively involved in the lesson?
 4. How does she make sure that the children understand the meaning of the
words they read?
5. How do you think Mrs Mapuru made her picture cards? Where could she
have found pictures to cut out? Could she or her children have drawn the
pictures of fruit? Can you think of other ways she could have collected the
pictures?
6. Where could Mrs Mapuru have found cardboard to stick the pictures onto?
Are there boxes in your area that you can collect and cut up for flash cards
and charts?
7. What other kinds of objects could you use to teach a lesson similar to Mrs
Mapuru’s?
In English, there are many small but very common and important words, such as ‘the’,
‘of’, ‘for’, ‘to’, ‘said’, ‘when’, ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’ and ‘were’.

Which of these words can easily be sounded out? You will see that only a few of them
can. It is also impossible to draw pictures of these words. Most of these are therefore
best learned in the context of a poem or a story as part of a look-and-say approach.
You need to teach them to your children using the look-and-say method and have
them written in a special place on your word wall. This will help the children to
‘write’ them in their visual memories, where they won’t be forgotten.

Activity 4.3: Look-and-say words

Timing:(We recommend you spend about 15 minutes on this activity)
Think of ‘look-and-say’ words in English that would be suitable for your word wall.
Make a chart for your word wall if your children are learning English.

Think about the children’s home language. Does it have common words that are
difficult to sound out, which children need to know by sight? Make a list of them on a
chart for your word wall.
Optional activity: You could help the children you teach by becoming familiar with
the letters that make up words, asking them to look for words within a word. How
many words can you make from ‘mango’, for example? Can you think of some word
in English or in your home language that you could use?
Method 3: Language experience approach
The language experience approach focuses on children’s experience and enables them
to read about their own lives, in their own words. Skills for reading are based on their
knowledge of the language they are using and on their home and community
backgrounds, the people they know and the experiences they have. Children work
with whole words and sentences rather than letters and parts of words. It allows
children to speak before they read and write.

The approach consists of the following four steps:

1. Experience: Children do many things at home and at school, usually with

other people.
2. Description: Children talk about what has happened to them, to each other
and/or to the teacher or the class.
3. Transcription: Children write about the experiences they have described.
Before their writing skills have developed, they can draw or try out writing,
or the teacher can write down what they want to say.
4. Reading: The children read what they have written to the whole class or to
a part of the class.
Read Case Study 4.3 and answer the questions which follow.

Case Study 4.3: Mrs Tekiso uses the language experience approach
Mrs Tekiso is teaching Grade 1 in a school situated in a rural area. The language
spoken by her children is Setswana. It is the second half of the school year.

One morning, in the ‘News’ slot of the timetable, Mrs Tekiso asks her children to talk
about what they did the day before. Each child is given a chance to talk. She then asks
them to draw a picture of what they have told the class and to write a sentence under
the picture.

When they have finished, each child shows their picture to their partner and reads the
sentence they have written. Then two pairs exchange pictures. Each pair ‘reads’ the
two pictures in front of them and the words written on the two pages.

Mrs Tekiso then asks the children to return the pictures to their owners. Each child
comes to the front, shows their picture and ‘reads’ their pictures and sentences to the
class. The class applauds each child’s work. Without criticising any child’s picture or
writing, Mrs Tekiso writes correctly, on the board, the key words that the children
have written. She and the class read the words on the board together.
After the lesson, Mrs Tekiso pins the drawings up on the classroom wall. She also
puts some of the new words they have used on the word wall.

This case study is also available to download.

Activity 4.4: Thinking about the language experience approach

Timing:(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.3, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. If you have no partner, write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. What has this case study shown you about the language experience
approach? How does Mrs Tekiso use this method to help the children to
read?
2. How does the approach ensure that each child is actively involved in the
lesson?
3. How does the approach ensure that they understand and are interested in
what they read?
4. How else could Mrs Tekiso enable her children to write down their story?
5. Can you think of how else a storybook could be used as a starting point for
a lesson using the language experience approach to reading?
Reveal discussion

How would you use the language experience approach? You will have a chance to
think about this in Activity 4.5.

Activity 4.5: Using the language experience approach

Timing:(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Plan a lesson like Mrs Tekiso’s in your study notebook. If you have the chance, try it
out in your class, or with a group of neighbours’ children, colleagues or friends. You
might want to use one of the approaches in the discussion section of Activity 4.4
instead of following Mrs Tekiso’s plan exactly.

Bringing it all together

An effective teacher will draw on all three of these methods to help children learn to
read. They usually do these by finding a story that:

 will appeal to the children

  has some repeated words and rhyming words
 has words where they can use pictures (the look-and-say approach)
 has a picture of what is happening in the story (the language experience
approach).
Activity 4.6: Reflecting on your learning
Timing:(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Spend some time browsing the ASb website and find some stories that are suitable
for supporting young readers. As you read the stories, think about which approach to
reading you could use: letters and sounds, look-and-say, or the language experience
approach. Do some stories lend themselves more to a particular approach? Share your
ideas with a colleague.
This section of Teaching early reading in Africa has introduced you to three methods
of teaching reading and given you a chance to try them out. You are encouraged not to
restrict yourself to any one of these methods, but rather to combine them as required
to support young readers. (In Section 5 you will see an example of how to use the
methods together.)

It is important to remember that different children may respond better to one method
than another:

 Some may have a better visual memory than others.

 Some may like analysing words into separate sounds and others may not.
 Some may like to be given more specific instructions than others; they
may not like the freedom that the language experience approach offers.
If certain children are struggling to learn to read, you might find that concentrating on
one particular method might help them overcome their difficulties.

Figure 4.2 shows that to be a good reader, you need to have good word
reading and good reading for meaning. Some children may understand more easily
than others what they read, but may have difficulty sounding out words and working
out what they are. Others may be able to work out and recognise words, but have
difficulty in understanding what they have read.
View larger image
Figure 4.2: Word recognition and good comprehension
Long description
You will spend more time on Figure 4.2 in Activities 4.7 and 4.8.

Activity 4.7: How to use the figure

Timing:(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Talk about Figure 4.2 with a colleague or a friend. What does it tell you about how to
help children with different strengths and weaknesses?

Reveal discussion

Activity 4.8: Which method of word recognition and good

comprehension should you use?
Timing:(We recommend you spend about 10 minutes on this activity)
Now answer the questions in this quiz.

Moving forward
In this section, you have learned about the different methods for teaching reading and
you have learned that different methods suit different children. You have learned the
importance of matching reading activities to the children’s experiences, so that
literacy learning is meaningful and purposeful. You have read case studies to reflect
on the approaches that different teachers take when teaching reading and you have
considered which best match your own approach. You have learned that a child who
is a good reader needs skills in word recognition and comprehension. You have
considered that some children are stronger in one of these skills than the other and you
have learned more about how you can support different readers in your class.

TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITES

TLA 1. Answer the following:

A. (30 pts)

Activity 4.1: Thinking about using the letters and sounds approach
Timing:(We recommend that you spend 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.1, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. Write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. Why did Mrs Mogale use the letters, sounds and syllables approach to
help her class to read the rhyme?
2. How did she use the similarities between some of the word-sounds to
help the children sound out the word more quickly?
3. Are there similar word families in your language?
4. Could you use this idea in your class?
5. Did the children in Mrs Mogale’s class learn with bodies as well as
minds? How do you think this helped them?
6. How did Mrs Mogale make her classroom more print-rich during this
lesson?
 B. (35 points)

Activity 4.2: Thinking about ‘look-and-say’

Timing:(We recommend that you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.2, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. If you have no partner, write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. How is the teacher using the look-and-say method?

2. How does Mrs Mapuru use this method to help the children to read words
describing fruit?
3. How does she make sure that each child is actively involved in the lesson?
4. How does she make sure that the children understand the meaning of the
words they read?
5. How do you think Mrs Mapuru made her picture cards? Where could she
have found pictures to cut out? Could she or her children have drawn the
pictures of fruit? Can you think of other ways she could have collected the
pictures?
6. Where could Mrs Mapuru have found cardboard to stick the pictures onto?
Are there boxes in your area that you can collect and cut up for flash cards
and charts?
7. What other kinds of objects could you use to teach a lesson similar to Mrs
Mapuru’s?
C. ( 25 points)

Activity 4.4: Thinking about the language experience approach

Timing:(We recommend you spend about 30 minutes on this activity)
Having read Case Study 4.3, talk to a colleague or a friend about the following
questions. If you have no partner, write your ideas in your study notebook.

1. What has this case study shown you about the language experience approach?
How does Mrs Tekiso use this method to help the children to read?
2. How does the approach ensure that each child is actively involved in the
lesson?
3. How does the approach ensure that they understand and are interested in
what they read?
4. How else could Mrs Tekiso enable her children to write down their story?
5. Can you think of how else a storybook could be used as a starting point for
a lesson using the language experience approach to reading?