I was excited to be invited by one of our beneficiary groups SAEP (South African Education and Environment Project) to attend one of their after-school reading sessions at Sophumelela High School in Samora Machel.

Sophumelela High School has just gone through a major uplift, and as you can imagine the school was neat and beautiful. I arrived just as school was closing and saw the learners sweeping their classrooms in preparation for the next day. This is a great initiative by the teachers and school principal to get the learners involved in caring for their school and environment.

The teachers and the SAEP facilitator, Veronica, were hugely welcoming. One could feel that SAEP’s work is really appreciated by the school. This was picked up in the interaction of the SAEP facilitator and the staff. Some of the teachers were also interested in FunDza books as they asked for their own books from me, but luckily for the school SAEP uses FunDza books in all their sessions so learners did have access to our books.

The after-school programme took a while to kick off as preparations for the next day had to be done first. Soon after that the order of business commenced. There were a total of twenty grade 8 learners, who were in their first year on the SAEP project. The learners were divided into five groups of four learners each. Each person would have a turn to read part of the story out loud to the rest but – as a way to keep everyone engaged – every member of the group had a specific role to play. These were:

Summariser: This person summarises the text, picking out the main ideas (and leaving out small details).
Clarifier: This person makes the meaning of the text clearer. Clarifying helps you to see when you don’t understand parts of the text.
Questioner: This person asks questions about the text to help all the readers have a purpose for reading and to deepen their understanding.
Predictor: This person tries to make good guesses about what you think you will find out about or what will happen next.

After reading short extracts of the story the group would break and take turns to summarise, clarify, question and predict. That way every learner is participating, paying attention, discussing and engaging throughout the 45-minute session.

These learners were not only learning about reading but they were picking up important life skills too. The story they were reading was ‘The skin I live in’ – about a teenage albino girl who was teased for being different. The learners expressed sadness as they discovered what the girl had had to go through. Many felt it was unfair of the others to call her names. This is exactly what FunDza books are all about: encouraging the reading of stories with themes that readers can relate to.

I was so pleased with what I saw during the session. There was never a dull moment and the learners were actively involved with the text. Veronica, the SAEP facilitator, noted that learners in their programme have improved in the performance in their other subjects too – not just in English. This was confirmed by conversations with some of the teachers in the school.

Well done to SAEP for helping to close the literacy gap. We were so impressed by what we witnessed that we’re now sharing this information with our other beneficiary groups so that they too can benefit.