Students in some 2,000 schools in Mozambique enrolled in a new, national bilingual-education curriculum saw substantial achievements in early grade reading and comprehension skills, thanks to the program’s emphasis on the teaching of reading skills in mother-tongue languages as the first step toward literacy. 

Of the students in Grade 3 attending participating schools in two regions of the country, 43.2 percent achieved the minimum reading proficiency level after two years of instruction in 2021. Five years earlier in 2016, the Mozambique National Evaluation found that only 4.9 percent of students could reach a similar proficiency level.  

 The successful outcomes in reading and comprehension of early grade learners may be attributed to Vamos Ler!, a comprehensive, bilingual-education program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The program, which translates as Let’s Read!, began working with the Government of Mozambique in 2017 to improve early grade literacy rates by investing in the expansion of the country’s national bilingual-education program.  

Mozambique’s official language is Portuguese, but only about 50% of the east African nation’s population speaks it as their first language. Even fewer Mozambicans can read Portuguese.  

The program’s core concept of bilingual education teaches early grade students the fundamentals of reading in their mother tongues in their first three years of school. In the fourth year, when students can already read in their native tongues, they are introduced to reading in Portuguese, the official state language.  

“Research shows that children, who can read in their mother tongues first, transfer the skills to a second language better than forcing them to read and write in a language they don’t speak,” says Dr. Leesa Kaplan-Nunes, who served as Chief of Party for Vamos Ler!

Mozambique’s political and business spheres still revolve around the use of the Portuguese, the language still used since its independence from Portugal. Students entering grade school are instructed in Portuguese, even if they are raised speaking one of Mozambique’s more than 40 local languages.  

As a result, many students drop out of school at an early age after becoming frustrated with the challenge of learning to read in an unfamiliar language. Fewer than half of Mozambican children complete primary school, and rates of teacher absenteeism are some of the highest in the world.  

Mozambique’s literacy rates shrink further with each generation. The declining literacy rates are compounded by the fact that many families and communities in the past have seen little reason for sending children to school since they themselves dropped out after only a few years of instruction. 

To combat the country’s illiteracy problems, Mozambique’s Ministry of Education and Human Development rolled out a national strategy for bilingual education that recognized the importance of local languages by allowing students to learn in their first language from first to third grades.  

In 2016, with funding from USAID, Creative Associates International launched Vamos Ler! with the overall goal of improving reading skills of students in 21 selected districts in Nampula and Zambezia.  

During the five-and-a-half-year program, Vamos Ler! trained more than 14,000 teachers and school directors, teaching and to distribute some 12 million teaching and learning materials across the two provinces, reaching nearly 2,000 schools. The program reached 700,000 students directly, with 1 million more indirect student beneficiaries.  

12 million books for early grade readers 

Working directly with the ministry and carefully selected language and reading experts, Creative conceptualized, developed, and printed the teaching and learning materials for grades one to four. The distribution of the materials was a massive contribution to the project’s success.  

To start the process, Vamos Ler! identified three local languages– Emakhuwa, Elomwe and Echuwabo–which are spoken in targeted districts in the Nampula and Zambezia regions of the country.  

Developing the materials wasn’t as simple as just translating already available textbooks from Portuguese into the local language, Kaplan said. The project consulted with local linguists and education professionals to develop standards, scope and sequence for each level, from grade one to four.  

“The process was very long and intense, deciding everything from exercises for the books to the teachers’ material,” said Kaplan.

Oral Portuguese learning is included in the beginning levels of the bilingual-education curriculum but reading and writing instruction is done in mother-tongue languages in grades one to three. 

There is a gradual transition into Portuguese through grade levels until year four, when the transition is made. In grade five, Portuguese becomes the language of instruction, and the mother tongue becomes a subject in school.  

Altogether 500 independent titles of teaching and learning materials were developed. Each grade level included student textbooks and exercise books, as well as teacher manuals for both. There are also alphabet charts, posters to encourage reading and small-readers storybooks leveled for each grade. There are also materials for parents and communities to get involved with the student’s learning, such as large, read-aloud books for parents and community leaders to use.  

With the success of the Vamos Ler! early grade reading program, Mozambique now has a proven method of developing teaching and learning materials for creating similar books and materials in Mozambique’s other local languages in the future. 

Building the foundations around the books 

The volume of teaching and learning materials delivered by the project is the most tangible of Vamos Ler! end-of-project achievements. But the success of the project was possible because of the project’s work to build and strengthen the foundations and systems needed to create the environment in which the books could be used, Kaplan said. 

Vamos Ler! worked from the beginning of the five-year project with teachers and school directors to ensure that they had adequate support and training to make the transition from monolingual schools to bilingual schools and to successfully deliver the new curriculum to the classrooms.  

Strengthening school and classroom management and instruction to leave a lasting and sustainable systemic improvement in the country’s bilingual education program were vital components of Vamos Ler! 

Mozambique had seen historical trends in low school attendance stretch across generations. Vamos Ler! combined programming that promoted community engagement to build confidence in the national government’s bilingual education rollout. Part of that included engaging parents, teachers, and students together to see the benefits of the new bilingual education system to bolster support coming from the child’s home to stay in school.  

In many instances, parents at first resisted the idea of bilingual education, fearing that if their child were not taught Portuguese in the beginning, they would not perform well on national tests or even succeed in finding good employment in the future. Through community engagement campaigns such as radio theater, Vamos Ler! worked to convince the parents that by starting early grade readers in their local language, they were building the foundations for the students to stay in school until graduation, Kaplan said.  

Vamos Ler! managed to keep momentum, even though the interruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

 For bilingual education to work in Mozambique, “the school environment needed to change, the parent and community perceptions needed to change,” Kaplan said. “There’s a lot of things surrounding the books that were needed to make it a success.”

Mango and cashew trees planted by community members in rural Mozambique are offering more than just fruit. Sheltered under the trees’ shade, children are learning to read and speak fluently in their local language.

“My son was very ashamed to talk much here at home or with his friends,” said Carlitos Momade, a father in Zambezia, Mozambique. “But when he started participating in Conversemos sessions at the mango trees, I see that his shame is already overcome because when he is asked about something, he is not afraid to answer.”

In this way, one boy’s transformation under a mango tree is indicative of a larger change taking place across two of Mozambique’s poorest provinces, Nampula and Zambezia.

Conversation sessions like the one that helped Momade’s son express himself, as well as radio lessons, reading clubs, theater groups, and parental engagement initiatives led by local organizations, are addressing some of the core issues keeping child literacy rates low.

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Vamos Ler! (Let’s Read!) program is supporting this positive momentum by providing grants, technical assistance and capacity building to several local non-governmental organizations. As grantees, these organizations have come alongside Vamos Ler!, joining its mission to increase parental and community engagement in early grade literacy and promote the importance of bilingual education.

The Development Support Association (NANA) and Facilidade: Citizenship and Sustainable Development Institute are two of Vamos Ler!’s grantee organizations mobilizing community engagement in education. Both have a long history in the regions where they work but have struggled to find funding and upgrade their technical capacity.

“We were working with many schools in remote areas that not even the Ministry of Education could reach to supervise,” says Jorge Cardozo, Executive Director of NANA. “Our mobilization campaigns, reading clubs, and support for the school councils were a lifeline for these schools, and not surprisingly many of these schools were the ones with the greatest level of improvement in overall performance among schools where we are working.”

Building community support for bilingual education

Though Mozambique’s official language is Portuguese, it’s a second or third language for 85 percent of the population. Portuguese remains the language of instruction at most Mozambican schools, even though very few rural children start school speaking and understanding the language. This contributes to low reading outcomes for primary school children. Armando Ali, the Program Director for Facilidade, which works in Nampula, says the region also has high rates of teen pregnancy and early marriage, as well as teacher absenteeism.

 “So, for us there is no doubt that we must work hard to keep our children in school, improve their learning outcomes, and help to break out of the cycle of poverty that many of them are trapped in,” says Ali.

Vamos Ler! is rooted in evidence showing that kids learn best when they start in their local language. But because parents view Portuguese language fluency as a key to escaping poverty, when the program began many were highly skeptical about bilingual education. That’s why partnering with NANA and Facilidade to lead awareness campaigns was necessary to teach parents the value of bilingual education and to engage communities in building a foundation for better learning outcomes.

Both NANA and Facilidade hosted a series of theater performances and debates about bilingual education. As a result of the theater groups’ performances, parents and community members were more likely to keep their kids in school and help them to learn in their mother tongues. They also learned that bilingual education would contribute to preserving local culture while making the transition to reading in Portuguese easier for kids.  

“[I was] convinced that the best thing was to keep my daughters in the same school and that bilingual teaching was the best for them and for the whole family as well as our community,” said Barnabé Joaquim Manuel, a father of four daughters in Namarroi, Zambezia, who attended the plays in his community.

Before measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 were put in place, NANA brought its campaign to 124 communities. The staff recorded the plays as well as the audience’s responses to them to be disseminated in radio programs, amplifying the message in other districts. They also used a variety of methods to reach community leaders, school councils, parents, and teachers about the importance of keeping students in schools through their “Vamos a escola” campaign.

Reading groups and conversation classes

Theater groups and campaigns spread the word on bilingual education for early grade learning, and conversation sessions and reading clubs put the philosophy into practice.

With support from Vamos Ler!, Facilidade trained volunteers and community representatives to lead conversation sessions called “Conversemos,” helping students practice their oral skills and listening comprehension.

Volunteers gathered 30 preschool and school-aged children per session to practice telling stories, as well as parents to engage in “nutritious conversations.” These sessions also had the dual purpose of showing parents gaps in their children’s reading abilities, thus encouraging them take a more active role in their kids’ education.

“Initially, only three to four parents participated [in each session], but this number rose to 15 to 20 parents, especially mothers,” said Juanito Joma, a community volunteer trained by Facilidade.

Nearly 50,000 children and more than 12,000 parents and caregivers benefitted from Conversemos sessions. As a result, these students showed greater participation in class and less absenteeism.

Similarly, NANA launched reading clubs in the Namarroi district of Zambezia. Vamos Ler! trained NANA to identify qualified volunteer reading club facilitators in the communities. The volunteers then worked with schools to set up reading clubs where young children could practice their emerging reading skills and get extra help and support.

“When implementing the reading clubs, the school councils were a vital part of it, helping us to choose the members of the community with the right profile to be reading club volunteer facilitators and giving more support to the clubs,” says Cardoso.

With 1,188 students attending the clubs in different communities, the promoters were able to identify students who had fallen behind in their learning. As a result of the reading clubs, 812 of the students diagnosed with low learning abilities greatly increased their competency in reading and writing, as well as their participation in the classroom.

Before the reading clubs, Anastacia Casimiro said her son Gerson couldn’t read or write, and still had trouble counting in the third grade.

“Gerson was a closed boy… but when he began to participate in the reading club sessions, he was able to let loose and this change in behavior surprised the promoters of the clubs, his teacher and me,” she said.

On the path to self-reliance

The partnerships facilitated through the grants fostered reciprocal relationships among Vamos Ler!, the local NGOs, and the education sector. Vamos Ler! gained access to remote communities and their school systems and the grantee organizations are now more equipped to continue reaching schools and families with sustainable education programs.

For instance, the Conversemos sessions will continue after the grant period ended, now that there is a critical mass of staff and facilitators trained in the approach and who believe in its value.

“It was a good example to show the community engagement with education of their children,” says Ali. “Something as simple as stories and conversations between parents and children helped not only to develop children’s oral capabilities but to have the whole community’s support of this activity.”

Cardoso of NANA says that working with Vamos Ler! is shaping his organization’s future.

“We are now drafting a new strategic plan for 2020-2023, and many of the lessons learned and approaches used during this program will be part of our plan,” says Cardoso.

But at the end of the day, it all comes back to a deep commitment to students’ wellbeing.

“I remember getting very emotional in Mossuril when I saw a second-grade girl reading a long text so fluently in Emakhuwa, it gave me a sense of pride and conviction that this was the right approach,” says Ali.

With reporting from Fernanda Matsinhe and Christine Beasley. All photos were provided by NANA and Facilidade.

MAPUTO, Mozambique — Otília Alves Manai, age 9, faces the same challenges as many young learners in Mozambique. High rates of food insecurity and chronic malnutrition, large class sizes, high levels of poverty and poor school infrastructure are just a few of these.

But unlike the majority of children in Mozambique who begin their formal education in Portuguese — a language fewer than 10 percent of children speak when they start school — Otília is learning to read in her mother tongue.

The USAID-funded bilingual early grade reading project Vamos Ler!/Let’s Read! is providing technical and material assistance to improve early grade literacy instruction in three local languages, Emakhuwa, Elomwe and Echuwabo. The project is also working on second language acquisition and literacy support to prepare children for a gradual transition to Portuguese.

Learning to read in a language they already speak and understand not only makes school more interesting and less intimidating for young students but also helps to lay a foundation for lifelong learning.

Otília is one of the 800,000 children benefiting from the program and was one of more than 13,000 students tested across over 500 schools in the project’s midterm early grade reading assessment.

She was by far the best of all young readers tested, reading nearly 40 words in less than a minute. This is remarkable given that the average number of words read by children tested was only 11, and in general boys tended to outperform girls in reading.

Her academic achievements are in stark contrast to those of her family. Neither of her parents finished primary school and none of her four older sisters can read, though two did complete primary school.

Turning the tide on illiteracy with mother tongue instruction

Poverty and illiteracy remain persistently high in Mozambique, particularly in rural areas and among women. The overall literacy rate for Mozambicans age 15 or older is 47 percent, but for women it is just 33 percent nationally and only 23 percent in rural area.

When Otília’s mother struggles to spell her own name to the Vamos Ler! team, Otília quickly comes to her rescue.

“She is the youngest of all my children, but she can read much more than her brothers,” says Otília’s mother. “She likes to read everything she can get her hands on to learn new things.”

Both her parents are illiterate and cannot help Otília with her schoolwork, but they encourage her love of learning and enjoy listening to her read out loud to them. They try to ensure she has time to study at home during the day, as there is no electricity for her to work at night.

The Vamos Ler! program has been developing student learning materials in Otília’s mother tongue, Echuawabo.

The student textbooks, exercise books, supplementary reading books and posters have child-friendly illustrations and stories that are relevant to daily life in rural Mozambique. They also spark children’s curiosity and introduce new concepts that let them discover a world full of possibilities.

When she started school in her remote village, Otília didn’t have many dreams for the future and never imagined having a life different from her parents. But when her teacher introduced the supplementary books developed by Vamos Ler! she was able to learn about different professions and what they do.

Otília decided that when she grows up, she wants to be a nurse, to take care of the people in her community that she has seen struggle with many different illnesses.

She is proud of her accomplishments as the program’s top reader and wants to keep on learning.

“I like to learn all the stories that are in our books. I also like to read at home, because our teacher told us that if we read a lot at home, we will be able to read even better in the classroom.  I would like to be the best every year!”

A new 10-year national Bilingual Education Strategy has reached Mozambique’s Council of Ministers for approval. The strategy sets out a plan for all teachers across the country to be proficient in teaching bilingual education classes by the end of 2029. 

With only 10 percent of Mozambican children able to speak Portuguese when they begin school, this new bilingual strategy has the potential to extend education opportunities and increase student comprehension and performance for thousands of students. Failing to understand instruction, many learners leave primary school before graduating, and many of those who do complete primary school are unable to read and write well. 

In a country where over 40 languages are used, and most people are not native speakers of the national language, Portuguese, bilingual education is critical to student success, education experts say. Portuguese has been the language of instruction in most Mozambican schools, but efforts from the local government and education partners are transforming this practice.  

Going farther with bilingual education

The national strategy was created with support from the USAID Vamos Ler!/Let’s Read! program in response to the Ministry of Education and Human Development’s mandate to improve education quality and reduce the illiteracy rate in Mozambique. The strategy is a significant achievement that responds to the major needs of the country. 

“USAID Vamos Ler!/Let’s Read! continues to support Mozambique’s Ministry of Education and Human Development in its expansion of the new bilingual education strategy, which respects and promotes local languages and cultures,” says project Chief of Party Leesa Kaplan. “Students learn better and faster in a language they can understand and parents and communities can be more involved in school and their children’s education.”

Training teachers in bilingual education and producing teaching and learning materials in so many languages requires resources that have not been available until now. Some of the main challenges have included the training and continuous professional development of teachers, provision of school supplies — especially books — and the regulation, pace and sustainability of expansion. 

Let’s Read! is the largest bilingual education expansion in the country to date, operating in 13 Emakhuwa-speaking districts in Nampula and eight Elomwe– and Echuwabo-speaking districts in Zambézia province where it has reached over 1,950 schools, 7,000 teachers and 400,000 students. The project designed intensive teacher training programs and developed teaching and learning materials through an integrated and inclusive process by the Ministry. 

The project’s efforts to expand bilingual education include the standardization of national languages’ orthography, an instrument to guide all actors when developing learning materials and the teacher training program. By creating common ground, Let’s Read! and its partners constructed the building blocks to scale up their efforts nationwide. 

Bringing experts together to support expansion

In November 2018, Let’s Read! brought in Sylvia Linan-Thompson, a U.S.-based consultant to help the national program team for Educational System’s Strengthening to review current studies, policies and practices in bilingual education, and interview Ministry stakeholders to identify priorities to support the first national bilingual education strategy in Mozambique. 

Linan–Thompson worked with Remane Selimane, the Teacher Training National Director, who believed a coherent strategy was needed to guide all stakeholders on how to focus and direct their efforts and resource allocation for bilingual education expansion. He also notes that there is a high demand among educators for a framework of standards and qualifications for their profession.  

“This is a welcome development, as many teachers who have participated in Let’s Read! trainings are eager to receive a formal qualification or certification in bilingual education that can help their career and professional development,” says Selimane. 

The national strategy is the result of a successful pilot phase of bilingual education from 1993-2003, which demonstrated improvements both in the relations between teachers and students and in school performance of children in experimental bilingual education programs. Although it was limited in scope, the pilot demonstrated that bilingual education is successful in delivering literacy and numeracy skills to early grade children in the Mozambican context. 

Four main areas have been defined to reach the strategy’s goal by 2029: provision of school material, initial and in-service teacher training, mastering the transition model from native language to secondary language for instruction and community mobilization. These areas are the essence of the Let’s Read! program’s approach, which is inspiring the Ministry to adopt its best practices. 

With editing by Ashley Williams

Excitement and relief overcame Edna Jaime, a mother from the Matxayane community in Zambézia, Mozambique, when she learned the Vamos Ler!/Let’s Read! program would expand bilingual education to her daughter’s school in 2019.

School council and community members from Matxayane discussed the government’s approach to mother-tongue-based bilingual education and implications for their communities at a meeting led by the Let’s Read! program. Many were eager to learn more about teacher recruitment and school materials, but Jaime was curious if this meant her 7-year-old daughter Natércia would be able to return to school.

Natércia’s school had previously only taught in Portuguese, forcing her to drop out after the first semester because she wasn’t able to learn in a language she didn’t understand. Her struggle is common in Mozambique as many people are more proficient in local languages than the national language, Portuguese.

“I saw sadness and fear in my daughter’s eyes when she was telling me how uncomfortable she felt at school because she could not understand [her] teacher’s language last year. As a mother, it was even more painful to not know how to help her because I also couldn’t understand anything of school lessons [in Portuguese],” said Jaime. “But I knew my child was intelligent.”

The five-year Let’s Read! bilingual early grade literacy program is working in partnership with the Mozambique Ministry of Education and Human Development to improve early grade literacy instruction in Grades 1-3. The program promotes instruction in three local languages – Emakhuwa, Elomwe and Echuwabo – in Nampula and Zambézia provinces to prepare children for transition to Portuguese in later grades. The Let’s Read! program is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International in close partnership with World Education, Inc., Overseas Strategic Consulting, American Institutes for Research and Bluetree Group.

In 2018 Let’s Read! reached over 110,000 Grade 1 students in 907 schools, in Nampula and Zambézia.  The Bilingual Education Campaign in Nampula and Zambézia reached approximately 7,410 participants.

In 2019, the program will reach over 400,000 Grade 1 and 2 students, in nearly 2,000 schools.

Mother-tongue bilingual education creates confidence and motivation

During the community meeting, Jaime learned that Let’s Read! would provide teachers and students with local language and Portuguese books to use during the school day, as well as writing exercises and supplementary texts for the students to practice at home with their families. Jaime lacks strong literacy and numeracy skills and became worried about the level of support she could provide her daughter at home.

Susana Carlos, a technician at the Provincial Directorate of Education in Zambézia and the Bilingual Education Campaign facilitator, explained to her that being literate is not required for parents to support their child’s learning at home.

“Parents and guardians are expected to firstly give time to their children to explore their exercise books or readers, but when they go from page to page they could encourage their children’s interest to unpacking the story, talking through the illustrations, and imagine what might be on the next page. And by doing so, and showing an interest in their child’s school materials, the parents will have already played their important role, even though they happen to be illiterate,” said Carlos in the community meeting. The child who does homework with parents’ or guardians’ support is emotionally more prepared and more ready to learn and engage in the classroom than a child who does not get the attention from his parents or does not do his or her homework.” 

Carlos also explained that when children learn in their own language they become more confident to ask questions and share what they learned in school – one of the many benefits of bilingual education.

The bilingual education community meetings offer a platform to encourage parents and guardians, like Jaime, to support their children’s education. The guidance from ministry officials like Carlos motivate parents to support their children’s attendance and participation at school.

With local language as a subject and language of instruction, parents and guardians like Jaime can engage in deeper conversation with their children, continue to support their child’s education and may also learn more about how to read and write in their own language.

Natércia used to cry when she did not understand the lessons in Portuguese and became uninterested in attending school.  

Today she can learn in Elomwe and is excited to attend school daily.

In 2018, more than 1,250 teachers have traveled to district centers by motorbikes and minibuses to attend the Vamos Ler! (Let’s Read!) teacher trainings. Jorgina Amisse João Massaula, a Grade 1 teacher at Neôce Primary School in Lalaua District, Nampula, was one of the many teachers eager to make the journey.

“One thing that keeps me going is that every time I attend the face-to-face trainings and school cluster workshops of Vamos Ler! I learn through other colleagues how to improve my reading and writing instruction in Emakhuwa. And I get the chance to share my experiences in the group discussions,” says Massaula.

The five-year Vamos Ler! bilingual early grade literacy program is working closely with Mozambique’s Ministry of Education and Human Development to improve reading and writing skills for more than 800,000 students in over 2,800 schools in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia. The Vamos Ler! program is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and implemented by Creative Associates International, in close partnership with World Education, Inc., Overseas Strategic Consulting, American Institutes for Research and blueTreeGroup.

With trainings held in January, May and August during the Mozambican school year, Vamos Ler! offers teachers the opportunity to connect with fellow colleagues throughout Nampula and Zambézia. At the trainings, teachers share successes, challenges and ways forward.

Educators of all experience levels gather to learn about innovative approaches that take their instruction to a deeper level, such as adopting a phonics-based teaching approach. It’s the rich content and methodology of the trainings that keeps teachers like Massaula coming back for more.

In the trainings, the teachers have gleaned skills to effectively teach children how to read and write in Emakhuwa, Elomwe and Echuwabo using dynamic techniques that can be easily practiced even in remote and poorly resourced remote schools.

Learning to read starts with the building blocks of phonics

One of the most frequently discussed instructional challenges throughout Mozambique is understanding how to apply the phonics-based approach to teach Bantu language letter-sound correspondence.

The approach builds a child’s ability to identify and manipulate sounds to make linkages between these sounds and the patterns used to form written words. Through this process of breaking down and rebuilding, students begin to learn letter-sound correspondence in their home languages.

Teachers must understand this foundational building block to effectively guide students’ literacy development. Mozambican teachers are new to the phonics-based approach to early grade reading, which creates a steep learning curve to build their students’ phonological awareness and phonics knowledge base.

Although Bantu letter sounds can be challenging for young learners to grasp, Bantu languages have a fairly straightforward letter-sound correspondence.

 “We rely on sounds to convey a meaning and to remember things we learn. Therefore, it has become easy to teach our children using the phonics-based approach since it is connecting the sounds that the children can identify and replicate when learning new letter or words,” Massaula emphasizes.

Educators learn how to apply this approach through simulated role play at the Vamos Ler! trainings. Zarera Marcelino, a Grade 1 teacher at Naiculo Primary School in Monapo District, Nampula uses singing to teach local language.  

“Singing saves the day and maximizes my efforts to teach letters and sounds. I start reading class each day singing with my students and in the song we use the names and sounds of the letters we have learned,” says Marcelino.

Opportunities like these encourage hands-on practice for teachers prior to integrating the methodologies into daily teaching practice. 

As a foundational building block to literacy, understanding how to teach a phonics-based approach is crucial to a student’s developmental growth.

The Vamos Ler! trainings support teachers’ understanding of how to integrate the phonics-based approach into the classroom, equipping educators like Massaula and Marcelino to shape students into lifelong learners who not only learn to read, but read to learn.

After a long day at Naiculo Primary School in Mozambique, 7-year-old Angelca’s excitement grew as she walked to the shadow tree. There she joined six village elders, local musicians, a theater group and her fellow first graders to prepare for one of the most important days of her young life.

Angelca and others met at the shadow tree nearly every day for several weeks to practice singing, dancing, reading and theater for a special visit.

U.S. Agency for International Development Mission Director to Mozambique Jennifer Adams and Minister of Education and Human Development Conceita Sortane were visiting Naiculo Primary School, one of the 906 Vamos Ler! (Let’s Read!) schools, to celebrate the program’s achievements.

Designed to improve early grade reading in Grades 1 – 3 in three local languages, Emakhawa, Elomwe, and Echuwabo Let’s Read! provides children with the opportunity to learn to read and write in their home language, before transitioning to full Portuguese instruction in Grade 4.

Let’s Read! is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and is implemented by Creative Associates International in close partnership with World Education, Inc., Overseas Strategic Consulting, American Institutes for Research and blueTreeGroup.

Angelca is one of more than 122,000 first grade students learning in her local language, Emakhuwa, in the Let’s Read! program.

Angelca is a star student. She rarely misses a day of school, turns in her homework on time and actively participates in class. Dressed in her white and blue uniform, Angelca was ready and waiting near the familiar tree. She held her Emakhuwa reading book in her hands, making sure that her page was marked for easy access for her reading demonstration.

Though she had never held a microphone before climbing onto the stage, Angelca proudly read the passage in the Emakhuwa language—and the crowd cheered.

Following the story, Mission Director Adams told the audience that the local community plays a key role in the success of the program. She called upon the support of school managers, teachers, students and the community at large to continue to send their children to school and work together so that the children learn and can later contribute to development of the district and country.

Building an educational foundation

When observing the students in the classroom, Minister Sortane was delighted to see learners happily interacting with the instructor and reading with confidence.

“It was very interesting and impressive to see how the teacher promotes a continuous dialogue with her students, even while teaching sounds and decoding words. I could see that her students were very eager to participate… This demonstrates how important it is that a child learns through [their] own and local language,” said Sortane.

Adams had one last word of advice and encouragement for Angelca and her classmates before leaving the community.

“If you want your dreams to turn into success, you must not give up school and use this opportunity to learn. School is the key to success in life and to enjoy life at the full extent,” she said.

 

With editing by Ashley Williams