Following the release of the 2023 Reading Dashboard report, we were once again reminded of the shocking state of reading literacy in our schools.
A Twitter headline “screamed” that first graders don’t know the letters of the alphabet. One must wonder how knowing the names of the letters helps a novice reader become familiar with the “scribbles” on the page, which is how neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene refers to the words on a page to a preliterate child. How do these little “scribbles” link to the sounds of the language a child knows? How do they learn to associate the sounds in words with the letters on the page?
I don’t think knowing the alphabetic names of letters is very helpful at the beginning of a child’s reading journey, although they are helpful when children are learning to write and when teachers are discussing spelling. At a school in Johannesburg, teachers don’t use letter names until the fourth grade. In the Soweto schools where we did most of our research, letter names are mostly mentioned in English and not in the home language. Does this mean that one can learn to read Setswana using English letter names? I don’t think that is the best option.
“Letter names” may even become obstructive when children begin to associate sounds with letters. In several studies at our university, we have found that learning to read first requires a child to see/observe individual letters (or pairs and triplets) and learn what sound they represent, not their “names”.
Although the sound is just one sound, it can be represented by multiple letters together. The unique sounds are known as “phonemes” in the teaching community. And the letter (or a group of letters together), which represent a sound, are known as “graphemes”.
So when children learn to associate a single sound with its written partner, they take an important step in their reading journey: They begin to decode written language. And gradually, through much practice and repetition, novice readers learn to recognize strings of letters (graphemes) and say them aloud as “phonemes.”
They begin to “see” written language differently and associate it with the sounds of their language and eventually with the words of their language. Understanding the meaning of the words they can decode puts them on the path to reading sentences, learning the meaning of more words, and eventually writing their language and reading it with comprehension.
So what goes wrong when young children don’t learn to read (always with meaning, otherwise it can’t be considered “adequate reading”)? What happens in early childhood classrooms that makes it so difficult for young children to learn to read in their native language?
The curriculum is fine-tuned and if implemented consistently it could work well. It is true that it is very difficult for teachers to teach beginning reading in large classes, where individual interaction between students and their teacher is minimal and “choral” – the responses are typical. In addition to that, teachers attend several professional development workshops each year. As well-meaning as they are, shop training often confuses them.
Also, the “scripted lessons” provided to teach reading to beginners can be helpful or useless. For inexperienced teachers, these lesson plans can be useful tools. However, experienced teachers often find that it restricts their teaching.
Another phenomenon that is common in the basic phase classrooms is the bulletin board that displays alphabetical tables in upper and lower case letters, along with a picture of an object. It seems to be a good idea. I’m not sure if it’s for a six year old; such “busy” walls detract from the learning action of the moment. In the first few weeks of learning to read, children need to listen to how teachers pronounce a phoneme and keep their eyes focused on the specific grapheme that represents the sound, not the entire alphabet.
We know that the daily work of an early grade teacher includes much more than teaching beginning reading. In addition to teaching all the other subjects, they have a heavy administrative workload. Although teaching assistants have been helpful, they have not been trained and have little experience working in a busy classroom where so much happens in a single day.
An example of the complexities of teaching children to read is written in the doctoral research of Fikile Simelane, who studied reading literacy and reading instruction in a school where isiZulu is the medium of instruction. The children come from homes where isiZulu is spoken. In a random sample of 287 of 1,198 elementary school students, she assessed her reading, using an instrument also referred to by The Reading Panel 23: the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA). It was evident that very few of the 287 students in the sample were reading on par with Nguni language benchmarks. Their comprehension of the text they had read was limited.
Simelane also observed lessons over a two-month period and conducted interviews with 24 early-stage teachers. Teachers indicated that they know very little about the “science of reading”. Their education and training have focused on methods and techniques, but they had little knowledge of what goes on in children’s vision, hearing, and mental processing of information conveyed by teachers.
When teachers weren’t sure which technique they were using, they simply switched to another. In one class, the “phoneme of the week” got mixed up with several other phonemes and the teacher admitted that she and the others felt “overwhelmed” not so much by teaching a large class, but by the mixed messages they received about how teach. . They wanted to know more about the science of reading and they wanted to know because they were using a specific method or materials.
As he was completing his study, he suggested a model for teaching first graders to read in isiZulu in the first few weeks of the year. He proposed a rather radical teaching model, focused on the sounds of the language, which is referred to in educational circles as “phonological awareness” training.
He suggested using audio recordings optimally to improve listening and clear enunciation. Sometime around the third week, she suggested beginning to link individual sounds (phonemes) with their graphemic counterparts. From there he could continue the typical teaching of phonetics. He also suggested using letter names only once students could decode successfully.
Perhaps many other teachers have had the same experience as those in the Simelane study. In a recently published book, we contributed a chapter on the science of reading to a toolkit for early-stage teachers. Her doctoral study opened a window not only for more research, but also for teacher development programs that may be helpful in helping teachers understand the psychology of learning to read.
Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or the position of the mail and guardian.
