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| Pupils from Zenzeleni engrossed during their Book Buddy session |
A great report on Book Buddies landed in my in-box from Themba, who is heading up the community work for Shine. I thought I should share an extract....'After a few attempts, thwarted by service
delivery disruptions, Maurita and I finally managed to visit the Zenzeleni
Waldorf School in Khayelitsha to see the Book Buddies programme that we
launched at the school in June of this year. Book Buddies is a programme that
is designed to pair students of different grades to read together using the method of Paired and Shared Reading. The older children read to the younger
children, with the idea of improving the literacy of the children at the
school, and instilling the love of books throughout the school!
When we arrived, the Grade 6 class welcomed us
with an energy that said ‘this is
part of our weekly activity and we own this'.We walked around the class and
listened to the reading: some of the children had found interesting ways to
share comprehension skills. Maurita did a little impromptu training, sharing
some other ways to learn and teach comprehension with the children.
In comparison to most schools on Khayelitsha,
Zenzeleni is a relatively small school that provides a very different approach
to teaching and learning. We are very excited to be able to share this journey
with the school, and we would like to see the Book Buddies programme grow and
expand into other schools. We noticed that the children ‘flew’ through the
material, and we realized that we needed to increase the level of difficulty of
books because we want to challenge them with their reading. We plan to learn from this pilot project and improve it if needed.
The Zenzeleni children are our first Book
Buddies ever! We are very proud of their dedication and commitment to their own
learning. We will be monitoring the school very closely and we plan to keep you
up to date about the progress of Book Buddies.'
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| Grade 6's and 4's reading together |
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| Book Buddies! |
