Ithuba in the News

The IHUBA Writing Project: Promoting Readership in South African Schools with Home Language Texts
Synopsis from the Literacy Professional, Summer 2008, Volume XVIII, No. 3, written by Misty Sailors and James Hoffman

“Over the past 10 years Misty Sailors and James Hoffman have been working with educators in South Africa. The challenges have included: limited quantity and questionable quality of resources, huge class sizes, limited teacher preparation, and multiple languages to address 13 languages. However, the qualities of successful schools, serving learners in the most challenging conditions, has been documented and have the potential to become models for other schools in the country.

The ITHUBA project, which stands for Innovative Texts in Homeland languages Uniquely Based in Africa, is federally funded (five million dollars over three years) and is one part of the USAID Africa Education Initiative.  Using a modified writer’s workshop model, classroom teachers are authoring books in home languages.   The stories are truly lived experiences that South African children can relate to.  These stories are then tied to the National Curriculum in areas of science, mathematics, “life orientation” through lessons that extend the story into one of these content areas.  Over the three year period, over 2.3 million books and teachers guides for classroom teachers will be provided in 11 of the official languages of South Africa.

While the short-term goals have focused on the production of books, 140 stories developed by 140 South African teachers and the resourcing of 2000 schools with these books, the long term goal relates to the transformation of writing instruction in schools.  The final phase of this project will work to ensure the authoring teachers are able to turn what they have learned about writing through ITHUBA back into their own classroom teaching.”

Click here to view the full article: Literacy Professional, Summer 2008