Alison Bowis volunteered as a Reading and Literacy Promoter with the Institute for Training and Education for Capacity Building in the province of East London, South Africa.
Almost 6000 primary schools in the Eastern Cape now have copies of a new literacy booklet for beginner readers written by VSA’s last volunteer in South Africa, Alison Bowis.
The New Zealand High Commission in Pretoria provided a $50,000 grant to print 18,000 English-language copies of the booklet, Developing Independent Writers and Readers in Foundation Phase Classes.
Children gather outside a pre-primary school in South Africa. Photo by Jill Bennett.
Alison, who was on assignment with her husband John, says the aim of the booklet is to help teachers in rural schools use children’s writing to produce reading material for foundation phase classes – the equivalent of years 1 to 3.
“Basically the children turn their own work into books to use in their class libraries.”
Alison wrote the 28-page booklet because of the shortage of reading resources in many schools in the Eastern Cape.
“I could see I wasn’t going to have much influence on reading because of the lack of resources – around 90 per cent of schools don’t even have a library. So I decided to focus on writing instead.”
The booklet had the enthusiastic backing of the Eastern Cape Education Department,
which helped to distribute it to almost 6000 primary schools. Each school got three copies.
Alison and her colleagues ran workshops with district coordinators on how to use the booklets. The district coordinators then passed their knowledge on to classroom teachers.
It is hoped that a IsiXhosa-language version of the booklet will be printed and distributed later in 2012.