1 UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA FACULTY OF EDUCATION EARLY

1

UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA FACULTY OF EDUCATION EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION UJ Soweto Campus Joyce West 7 November 2019 Making the necessary paradigm shift 2

INTRODUCTION Paradigm - a way of looking at something, a widely accepted belief or thought patterns 3

INTRODUCTION Shift - considered to be a dramatic change, fuelled by a powerful determination to break free from old ways of doing 4

INTRODUCTION Paradigm + Shift = Paradigm shift A paradigm shift requires a fundamental change in underlying assumptions or beliefs 5

THE PROBLEM • • • PIRLS SACMEQ ANA’s Systemic assessments Dropout rates/Retention rates Language of Learning and Teaching (Lo. LT) 6

LITERACY DEFINED • • • Listening, speaking, reading and writing Communication Gathering information Critical thinking in a language Making informed decisions 7

DIFFERENT LITERACY SKILLS Comprehension Vocabulary Fluency Phonics Phonemic awareness 8

DIGITAL LITERACY 9

EXPECTATIONS 10

EXPECTATIONS 11

RESEARCH ON DEVELOPING LITERACY Phonemic awareness + explicit phonics instruction Automatic word decoding Fluency + vocabulary Comprehension 12

READING FLUENCY & COMPREHENSION 13

AGE/ABILITY APPROPRIATE READING TEXT http: //www. wordcalc. com/runningrecord/ • http: //www. wordcalc. com/runningrecord/

+140 words 50 words

+-300 words

17

Conclusion: How to make your paradigm shift • • • Determine where your learners are at – Plan your intervention from there – Ignore ideas of standardisation Include more explicit phonics instruction within a balanced literacy programme Carefully considering the difficulty level of the reading text (i. e. low/high frequency words) Consider reading levels of learners (amount of errors and type of errors) Allow for Translanguaging – Keep multilingual nature of the class in mind 18