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If you are a teacher from South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya or Uganda  reading this we would like to tell you about a writing opportunity and a free online writing course that is coming up with SchoolNetSA and Saide as part of this amazing African Storybook project and website that has been developed for Africa. Find out how to join the course here. (The course can be done using any device platform – PC, Apple Device, iPad, Android, Windows phone etc.)

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Submitted by Fiona Beal

I was looking forward to introducing a Grade 1 ICT technology class to the newly launched African Storybook website and it turned out to be a very exciting lesson. I thought I would share it with you.

Step 1: A discussion about the African Storybook website

First we had a discussion about the amazing African Storybook website and all its stories especially created for Grade 1 – 3 students. I showed them a little bit of the website on the big screen, and read them a couple of the stories. They got very excited at the thought that they were going to explore the website on their own.

Step 2. How to locate the African Storybook website

We haven’t done all that much Internet work in Grade 1 as yet, but what I have taught them is how to retrieve a file out of the Grade 1 section of Student Share on our network, and how to open a URL link that is written in a Microsoft Word document.  I had written http://africanstorybook.org/ on the document and so they opened this link quite easily.

Step 3. A rhyme with a catchy rhythm to help them remember the process
We  explored the website together for a while and then I taught them a little rhyme with a great rhythm as we clicked on the relevant parts of the website relevant to young readers:

“Find African stories
English
First words
Read
Clap clap clap”

Step 4. Choosing a story to read

The class was instructed to look through the stories on the page that came up.  I was interested to see how they looked down the first page of stories and generally made for the one that was in colour.

Step 5: Reading the stories

I was amazed as I walked around listening to the Grade 1s reading their stories with great enjoyment. For example, I found two of the students reading the same story together out loud. After the lesson I commended the Grade 1 teacher for enabling them to make such excellent reading progress in just four and a half months!

Step 6: Reporting back on a favourite story

We finished off with a report back session on the favourite story read during the lesson. The class loved the website and said they were going to continue reading the stories at home. I wondered if they would manage to locate the website again!

The favourite story for this class was ‘The Adventures of a Supercow‘

This is a great website! Visit it and you’ll see what I mean!