Putting reading in Northern Sotho on track in the early years: Changing resources, expectations and practices in a high poverty school

Abstract

Large scale literacy assessments that have taken place during the past decade in South Africa indicate that our learners are struggling to read. Low reading competence occurs in all the home languages as well as in the medium of instruction, English. To date there has been very little research on reading in the African languages that can help to inform this situation. This article focuses on Grade 1 reading skills in Northern Sotho at a high poverty school where a reading intervention project was implemented over a four-year period. The aim of the project was to build a culture of reading at the school by creating conditions that are conducive for reading instruction and development. The purpose of this article is to examine the development of Grade 1 reading skills in Northern Sotho during this period and to reflect on possible changes that took place in the Grade 1 classrooms as a result of the intervention project. Although at the start of the project the reading levels at the school were extremely low, there has been a steady increase in various aspects of reading competence during the four years. It is argued that improvements in reading in the African languages are dependent on changes in instructional practices in classrooms. Such changes, in turn, will only take place if attention is paid to both resource building and capacity building in formal schooling contexts.