Direct Instruction is Helping Students in Africa to Learn English

An update from one of the field sites in Africa, where direct instruction reading intervention programs including Reading Mastery are being used to provide spoken and written English skills to native students...

Particpating African pre K-12 schools just started teaching direct instruction in early 2009, but a letter received from one of the nursury (pre K) section teachers in a Ugandan school indicates that progress is already being made. This despite the fact that most of the classrooms are not equipped with basic technology such as computers, and instructors received minimal training on the programs.

"I have found it good and interesting to teach English phonogram [sounds]. This has made children read words of three letters very quickly, [who] have never before. Children of 3 ½ to 5 years can sound out [words] very well, like rat, cat, mat, bat, see, and they can recognize different letter sounds like a, m, s, t, r, d, g, o, c, i, etc…
In addition to that when they do tests individually they can score good marks 5/10 to 8/10 [on assessments].

This method has simplified my work. I appreciate the good work you did in our school Butayunja P15 [Uganda].

Matching the same sound letters and naming pictures in Take Home Book A are excellent. They do this in groups because books are not enough for everybody. We have 110 pupils in nursery section. Finally, children are good at following instructions and signals."

- Class teacher - Nursery Section

Faculty at some of the schools are also using research-based reading intervention programs such as Corrective Reading to reinforce writing skills and expand their English vocabulary.

See the Teaching Direct Instruction in Africa series to learn more about this exciting initiative!