FunDza together with Nal’ibali and False Bay College is running an incentivized reading campaign called ‘Reading for Enjoyment’ with the English classes at False Bay College at the Fish Hoek Campus in the Western Cape.
The intended outcome of the campaign is to highlight the importance of reading and to encourage and assist the students to reach certain reading goals. A point system has been set up whereby students accumulate points after having completed certain reading tasks over a 10 month period. Tasks include reading 10 books and writing a book review for each title read. We are also encouraging the students to join local libraries and to participate in events like World Read Aloud Day and World Book Day. The campaign runs for three terms and there will be a winner every month as well as two overall winners.
Zimkhitha Mlanzeli and myself, Sonja Kruse, facilitate workshops with the students on Fridays. In the first sessions we introduced the campaign and FunDza to the students, encouraging them to join FunDza on Mxit and to download the FunDzApp and join us on social media. We also explained the benefits of reading and shared literacy and reading statistics.
Every session we do fun activities, like reading Chapter 1 of ‘The Playa’ and then asking the students to write a paragraph about what they liked about the story and what they disliked. This helps prepare them for writing book reviews, which forms a major part of this campaign.
In other sessions we have split the classes into smaller groups and played games, like 30 seconds. Each group had the opportunity to describe a word. When they each had a chance, they had to put their four words (typically a profession, an action and two objects) together and write a story around the words. There were some very creative stories. The idea around this exercise was to give them an insight into how a writer comes up with ideas for a story and it helps them to read more critically and access their imagination whilst reading. It was wonderful when students asked help with the spelling of words. One student was laughing, saying “Now the English is coming out!” when they had to ask us how to spell ‘world-renowned’! We’ve even had one of the groups come up with a rap song. See the video below.
The Open Learning Centre (OLC) at the college have purchased a number of books from Fundza. Marianne from the OLC says that ‘students have never been as enthusiastic about reading! The popular FunDza books are never on the shelves – as soon as one is returned, it goes out straight away. Circulation statistics have doubled as well.’
In a recent questionnaire about the campaign, student feedback confirmed their enjoyment of the sessions and pointed to an increased interest in reading:
“I like reading now. I don’t sleep without reading book or magazine. I even borrowing some story from my sister and I enjoy doing that.”
“I enjoyed it and it made me wanna read more stories on their Mxit pages and to read more books”
“They have succeeded in making me want to read more and now I can’t stop reading.”
“They have succeeded beyond my believe. I now love reading. I have read two massive books in one month, which I never have done before.”
“I’m very excited in reading especially FunDza stories, because they are short and fun and they relate to real life.”
“…passion back for reading”
“ …improved my love for reading and writing”
We are looking forward to the start of Term 2 to find out whether the students have been reading over the holidays!