Abstract:

South Africa continues to face a severe reading crisis, with the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reporting that 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning. While large-scale assessments highlight the extent of the problem, there remains a need to closely examine what happens within classrooms during reading instruction. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) advocates the use of the reading cycle in the Intermediate Phase (Grades4-6) to develop learner’ reading skills. The process begins with the pre-reading stage. The purpose of this crucial stage is to create interest, activate leaners’ schema and assess prior knowledge. For reading lessons, the introduction or pre-reading stage of the reading cycle is especially important in countries such as South Africa where reading instruction has been limited, resulting in learners’ underdeveloped reading skills as it prepares and supports learners with comprehending the text.

Building on a previous case study that explored a Grade 4 teacher’s overall approach to developing learners’ reading skills, this follow-up paper focuses specifically on how the teacher introduced a reading lesson and prepared learners to engage with the text. Using an exploratory qualitative case study design, data were collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the teacher. The data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterns in the teacher’s instructional strategies and pedagogical reasoning during the introductory phase of the Grade 4 reading lesson.

The findings reveal that the teacher attempted to implement elements associated with the pre-reading stage outlined in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), such as discussing the title, author, illustrations, and encouraging learners to describe what they observed in the text. However, these strategies were often implemented procedurally rather than pedagogically, with limited activation of learners’ prior knowledge, minimal contextualisation of the text, and little scaffolding to support comprehension. As a result, the introduction functioned more as a checklist of activities than as a meaningful preparation for reading. The study highlights the importance of teacher understanding of the purpose of pre-reading strategies and suggests that professional development should focus not only on the stages of the reading process but also on the pedagogical reasoning underpinning these stages.

Keywords:

Reading instruction, pre-reading strategies, reading crisis, Grade 4, classroom practice, lesson introduction, CAPS.