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CAN YOU BELIEVE!

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CAN YOU BELIEVE! http://ow.ly/3Z9GS Here is a video from a family whose little boy, Jack, started souns when he was just about 20 months. We had just begun the program with our Early Intervention team in Georgia and he was one of our 1st. He is now 6 years old.
He is in the County School system now and does get exposed to different sight word reading programs currently, but you can see on this video how he knows how to sound out phonetically. You can look at two other links on the Youtube to see where he started with Souns. He is amazing!

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SounsAfrica from the field

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…..the simple demos today were awesome.  One head of department said to me “don’t be surprised if the children don’t respond because we speak zulu” – so I took out the souns and said is this “Oh” in zulu?…”yes”  Is this “mm” in zulu?  “yes”  Is this “ss” in zulu?  “yes”  Then I said “don’t be surprised if the children respond right away (with a little joke) and of course they did.  We had a good laugh and she was very enthusiastic after that. (written today by Kellie in Pretoria)

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SounsAfrica

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16 February 2011

Dear Robin and the Rotary Club of Pretoria East,

I can hardly believe how quickly the time has passed in 2011. As an NGO, the year commenced with a tremendous ‘bang’ along with exciting new projects that come with their own workload attached.  I must confess that I have been intending to contact you sooner, please forgive me.

Congratulations with the Global Grant that has allowed you to introduce the Souns Literacy Programme to the schools in and around Pretoria.  Since Brenda let me know that the Grant was approved, I have been overjoyed at the prospects of what Souns could possibly achieve in the Créches and ECD Centres who will be gifted this programme, because of what this means for the teachers and the children in your communities.

Witnessing the power of the programme in action since late 2009 and since meeting Brenda and listening to, and observing her share Souns and her passion for this simplistic, yet highly effective literacy programme has often rendered me speechless. Through proper training and a mentoring process, this programme allows children from 6 months of age to literally take hold of the symbols of their language and gain knowledge in bite-size chunks, thereby accrue permanent understanding of the letter sound and shape through interacting with them in a

non-threatening environment. Through solid sound knowledge, the possibilities are endless, and to this I bear witness.

The programme also allows teachers a tool that is easy to introduce and is user-friendly and it affords them an opportunity to spend one-on-one time with the children, allowing positive reinforcement and praise, this is something I hold very dear.

Through the Knysna Education Trust, we have introduced Souns to 23 ECD Centres incorporating just over 1100 children. Our communities’ languages include Afrikaans, Xhosa and English. Our first learners have now entered Grade 1 classrooms at Government schools and I am set to have appointments to meet with these teachers toward the end of March in order to dicuss the outcomes of the programme through observing those children who had access to the programme prior to 2011, and getting their feedback.

I have so much to share regarding Souns introduction, implementation and the process and progress. Please know that I am sold-out on this programme and support and endorse Souns for our children and the communities at large.

I do hope to share in the literacy and life-changing adventure that you are embarking on and I only wish that from the outset, all those involved will fully grasp the worth of the gift in their hands.  I wish you everything of the best for the launch on Saturday and wish that I could have been with you. I look forward to meeting you sometime in the future.

Yours sincerely

Annette Nelson

Educational Mentor

 

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SounsAfrica

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Dear Robin,

We had interest from the Western Cape Education Department regarding the Souns programme and when I met with them they were interested to know the outcomes already achieved with the programme. Being so new, we have had to build that up.

The schools that KET work with are all ECD facilities (6 months to 6 years) and therefore we also introduced Souns to the Grade R classes of our Government schools in the Townships with tremendous response. The teachers find the programme easy to use themselves once they have had proper training, and due to the nature of working in small groups (individual attention and fun), the implementation with the children is 7-10 minutes with up to eight learners, is attainable, assessable, progressional, and is a win win for the everyone. With this ‘recipe’, the groups are quickly established and the teacher keeps the pace of each group, so that all children are accomplishing knowledge gain and therefore are receiving praise that encourages them, and their hunger for knowledge is sustained. It is incredible to witness and with the footage collected of which I am sure Brenda has shown you some, the evidence is overwhelming. The biggest consideration is the realization that not all teachers will use Souns as prescribed, and therefore the progress with the programme is affected, however in saying this, they are still making tremendous progress, (thus the idea of Souns workshops with groups of teachers from the same area on a quarterly basis or so has proved to be very worthwhile). These learners are now in Grade 1 and I am set to meet with the staff in March and have permission to carry out continuous assessment with a group of learners. The Grade 1 teachers at two of these schools have also received Souns sets to continue in the Grade 1 year with the programme.

We also received interest from individuals and advantaged schools around Knysna and we held an information workshop to demonstrate the programme. The most excited teacher in the group was an Afrikaans Grade 2 teacher at a Government school, who shared that with poor foundations, she had several children who could not spell. She was desperate to get hold of the programme in order to teach letter sounds and then allow the children to build the words manipulating Souns and then copy these built words into their books. Here, the teacher has to put the programme into her budget and then wait for approval.

I have no doubt that the Grade classes in the foundation phases of the schools that you are involved with will benefit highly with the use of the programme, especially in light of the what / if any stimulation was given at ECD level.

On the other hand, there are a some foundation phase teachers who have issues with the letter shapes for early literacy – these are counteracted by evidence that proves otherwise, however, it does cement the idea that this programme was indeed intended for the littlest of hands, from 6 months onwards. Please know this, that Souns will impact the literacy skills of children of any age and provides an opportunity for learning through play and using their senses  –  the best way to learn by far!

 

I hope that this has given you more of an idea, or shed a little more light. Please feel free to contact me at any time.

 

Regards,   Annette Nelson  Education Co-Ordinator / Mentor    Knysna Education Trust   wwwknysnaedutrust.co.za