SoundStart: Audio Learning for ECD in South Africa

We’re delighted that the SoundStart pre-school teacher training will take place in April during the Easter school holidays.  As we noted in our last report, this project is not fully funded, so we’re launching SoundStart on a pilot or limited basis. This will enable us also to ‘course correct’, enhance and improve any aspect of the initiative prior to rolling it out more widely across Cape Town’s sprawling townships.

Our partner GROW Educare Centres have identified the most in-need preschools which are over-crowded, under-resourced and have poorly trained, but very willing teachers.  Teachers will receive comprehensive training on how to use our Lifeplayer MP3s as a teaching tool.  In addition, they will learn to work with the Wriggle and Rhyme early learning content.  This forms parts of the general up-skilling of teachers – dedicated and deeply committed local women who are not trained teachers, but are eager to help and to learn themselves.

A further challenge in many pre-schools is the mix of mother tongue languages.  In addition to English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, the children speak Shona or Ndebele from if they’re from Zimbabwe, French or Lingala from DR Congo, and Kinyarwanda from Rwanda.  Wriggle and Rhyme’s pedagogically sound content combines a mixture of singing, movement and rhythm using percussion instruments to make learning fun. The children love it.

After the training, the teachers will return to their pre-schools and begin using the Lifeplayers. They will be trained not only to keep records, but also in observation skills. They will need to observe children’s reactions to the songs, lessons and stories and note any improvement in skills and the interactions between the children. This will also provide useful data as we roll out SoundStart.

We appreciate your donations to SoundStart and sincerely hope you will continue to support this high-impact initiative.