Teacher Feedback on Using the Sebezaphone to Improve Teaching and Learning

Is the Sebezaphone an effective tool to enhance teaching and learning? Do teachers use it, do learners use it at own initiative, and does it improve learning? 

Following are answers to these questions made by teachers who have used the Sebezaphone during 2012. Their comments were recorded on written feedback reflection forms and in interviews conducted by Alyce Miller. The teachers are from the following schools:

  • Marine Primary School, Western Cape: Four grade 2 teachers who participated in pilot research study where children showed marked improvements in Annual National Assessment Results in Reading and Language development after 6 months of using the Sebezaphone in daily classroom practice.
  • Knights Preparatory and College, Randburg: all 200 Foundation Phase learners have their own Sebezaphone and teachers have fully integrated the Sebezaphone into the teaching of all aspects of the Balanced Language Approach to Literacy, stated by Deputy Principal.
  • Pretoria Boys High School, Pretoria: Remedial Class and Regular English class. Personal correspondence with Head of English Department.
  • Timour Hall Primary School, Plumstead, Cape Town: grade 1 and grade 2 teacher

 Comments reflecting general reactions to the Sebezaphone:

  • “A wonderful learning tool and every child must have one! Invaluable,” – Deputy Principal of Knights Preparatory School, Randburg.
  • “The children now enjoy reading because they enjoy hearing themselves read, and it engages them far more than before. The whole foundation phase should have Sebezaphones – Marine Primary Grade 2 teachers
  • “I believe in the Sebezaphone. It has changed the way I teach. I will be getting more Sebezaphones for my next class. I’ve already started raising the money so each child has their own.”
  • “Our remedial teachers use the Sebezaphone in their classes and the teachers are mad about it,” Deputy Principal of Knights Preparatory School, Randburg
  • I had a lot of good feelings this year about teaching reading. There are many ways to teach reading. Instead of ‘barking at the words” and drilling isolated sounds, with the Sebezaphone the children are reading for meaning and are interested in reading.
  • The Sebezaphone ensures that learners are fully engaged with doing the learning task, in a quiet room, and I am more able to attend to individuals and do small group teaching.
  • I now incorporate the Sebezaphone in all subjects and reading other subject text books, i.e. life skills, maths, their readers, independent reading, even songs. They sing the song into their Sebezaphone, in a whisper. During the Communication Theme, we even considered how the Sebezaphone is a tool for communicating with themselves.
  • Having the whole class use the Sebezaphone brought down the noise level in the classroom a lot, which made me happy, because sometimes the noise level gets to be too much.
  • Initially the learners thought the Sebezaphone was a joke; but after the first two weeks they started to ask for it. They see the benefit. It increases their ability to focus, cuts out distractions and enables them to concentrate better – Pretoria Boys High

Specific comments

Below are some of the comments made by teachers on the following topics:

  1. Impact on learners
    1. Independence and confidence
    2. Increased focus of attention, ability to concentrate and comprehension
    3. Improved listening, comprehension and language development
    4. Increased motivation and excitement about reading, resulting in significant progress
  2. Impact on teaching
  3. Ineffective teaching methods transformed into more effective teaching strategies

  1. Impact on learners

(a)  Independence & confidence:

  • It fosters independence.  The individual has to do it on their own: counting, reading. They enjoyed it so much as it provided them with a feeling of independence and their confidence grew.
  • The children like the idea of being independent, that they can sit in their own space reading, without hearing other children.
  • Children’s confidence in themselves as readers and thinkers grew significantly. The joy in working out the word on their own was wonderful to see. This confidence was shown by children being more eager to read, wanting to work out the word for themselves, asking for dictionaries and the meaning of words when they are read, much more than before.

(b)  Increased focus of attention, ability to concentrate and comprehension

  • Using the Sebezaphone improved learners’ ability to focus. Usually the children become easily distracted, but when they used the Sebezaphone they remained focused on listening to themselves read. I It helps them better understand the text as well. 
  • It has a calming effect. It worked a bit like a pacifier; they were less restless and they focused on what they were saying or reading. It created a sense of well-being when they used it.
  • Reduces the distractions that arise from other learners reading out loud. All learners can read out loud and yet the room is quiet; they no longer disturb the person next to them or the rest of the class.
  • Overcomes learners’ tendency to glance at the words without looking at the precise words in the text. They tend to guess what the words might be and often lose meaning. The learners in the remedial class are not yet at the stage where they can read silently. The Sebezaphone helps them to look closely at the words and listen to what they read.  It gets them to think about what they are reading which improves comprehension. We noted a 10% improvement with learners’ comprehension in the remedial class. 

(c)   Improved listening, comprehension and language development

  • The Sebezaphone really develops listening skills. It helped them to listen more carefully and focus on the instructions and the questions posed. We used it when doing word problems in Maths. I would read the instructions to them and then they would re-read it to themselves. In fact, when they realised we were going to be reading, they would go and fetch their Sebezaphones on their own. They would read it aloud to themselves, and then tell their friend what they understood. Their ANA results showed an improvement in their ability to understand and answer the questions.
  • The Sebezaphone helps a lot with hearing the sounds and provides auditory training. It raised learners’ phonetic awareness: sounds have suddenly become more important and children are listening to the sounds more carefully. They are more able to find rhyming words with similar spellings, and those words that sound the same but are spelled differently. It has made Phonics much more meaningful to them.  
  • It amplifies the correct pronunciation of sounds and words. They can better hear the language and work out the correct pronunciation. This is especially useful for children who are learning English as a second language.
  • Provides numerous opportunities for oral language development and repetition of saying, hearing and writing the language.
  • Assists in editing writing. Learners tend to leave out words when writing the compositions or they use words that don’t make sense. With the Sebezaphone, they re-read their work to themselves, pick up their mistakes and self-correct. This improved their writing. 

(d)  Increased motivation and excitement about reading, resulting in significant progress

  • The class made more progress this year than in previous years. These children are far ahead. All children have leaped, in fact, sprinted ahead in their reading. Now that we are stressing the meaning behind the words, it is a lot more interesting to the child. They are taking out books from the library without pictures; thick books!
  • They are now much more willing to come and read, rather than resist and hold back. Even the shy ones: they know they are struggling with their reading, but they are more willing to read and try for themselves. I don’t have to encourage them as much as I used to. It increased their interest and joy in reading. They become excited about reading.
  • They love reading more this year. In previous years the only time they read was when they had to, in the reading group. This year, the learners go to the reading corner or the library to get books, on their own.  The children enjoy reading more because they enjoy hearing themselves read, and it engages them far more than before.
  • A little Miracle is happening in the class. Stronger readers act as Reading Coaches who listen to weaker readers read. The coaches are instructed not to tell the reader what an unknown word is. They listen and ask the three critical questions: Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right? The Coach reports back to the teacher what words the reader didn’t know.

  1. Impact on teaching 

  • The Sebezaphone helped us slow down the pace with which we worked, ensuring quality teaching and learning was taking place.
  • It raised my own awareness of the sounds within words because the Sebezaphone amplifies the sounds. This awareness changed my teaching. I’m stressing the rhyme and spelling patterns now, and children accept that English words are often not spelled the way individual letters typically sound. It is not a phonetic language the way Afrikaans and Xhosa are.
  • Because the Sebezaphone focuses learners’ attention to the words being read, I am now focusing on the words in the instructions and questions asked in a word problem or an assignment. This has helped them to better understand written instructions and questions posed. (Noted in ‘listening’ section.)
  • I use the Sebezaphone all the time. I can let the whole class read out loud at once, and I can listen to them individually. They use the Sebezaphone for maths. When they count backwards, for example, they listen to themselves. The biggest change is that now they make “meaningful noise.” Everyone is counting and they work at their own pace.
  • Enables me as the teacher to listen in on their reading and monitor their progress and make appropriate interventions.  I can listen to more learners read during the course of day than before.

  1. Ineffective Teaching methods transformed into more effective teaching strategies 

  • Choral responses changed to thoughtful, meaningful and individual responses
    • I no longer do choral responses.  The Sebezaphone changes mindless repetition into thoughtful responses that are more meaningful to the learner.  Learners discovered that they had to depend on themselves to think and answer.
    • Co-operative Learning enabled me to stop doing so much ‘teacher talk’ and Choral Responses. Every child now has to think about the question and express their thoughts to a partner or into their Sebezaphones, allowing them to practice speaking before speaking to the whole class.
    • Every child is reading out loud in their private space in their own time; and the classroom is virtually silent. Children are focused and rely on their own strength now, and take more responsibility.
  • One child at a time reads while the others ‘follow’ and ‘listen’ transformed into all learners reading out loud and practicing reading strategies at once
  • Before, teaching reading was boring, for me and for them. We just did drill work; we focused on the sounds in isolation; they ‘barked” the words, they didn’t read for meaning. It became tedious.
  • Everyone had to listen to one child read while the others listened. And no one really listened. Now it is different. Everyone is reading at once. They are more articulate, more excited. Instead of ‘barking’ the words, they are going behind the words for the meaning. This stems from the Sebezaphone because the child is reading, individually. They are not doing it together in chorus or listening to another child read. Each child is responsible for reading on their own.
  • When working with the reading groups, everyone is reading out loud, to themselves. I get to hear many more children than I did before. I listen in on their reading and can see what they are doing and how they work out the words. This has sharpened my teaching. I am challenged by the children: I have to think of how best to prompt them without telling them the word. Each child is different.  They have their own problems and need to use different strategies.
  • Gives children the time they need to work out the words on their own, without feeling self-conscious and pressured to say the correct word because the teacher and other learners are listening.  When that happens the child often stops reading, stops thinking, and waits to be told the right word. With the Sebezaphone they have a private space and sufficient time to try out the different reading strategies to help themselves
  • Children now have many more opportunities to practice reading out loud, thinking for themselves and applying reading strategies than they did before with traditional reading lessons. Improvements in the ability to read out loud positively correlates with improved reading overall, and I have seen this happen this year.
  • Telling children the right word has changed to challenging each child to think about what they are reading to make sure it (a) makes sense, (b) the sounds read match the letters in the word, and (c) that the sentence sounds the way the language is spoken.
  • Before I tended to tell the children the correct word. I thought that by telling them they would learn. I now teach for the reading strategies and each child has to practice applying the reading strategies for themselves. They need lots of practice and the Sebezaphone makes that possible
  • I think this new enthusiasm for reading comes from a different way of teaching. I am using higher order thinking questions. I lead them and then leave them alone; later they come back to me, after the break or even the next day, having worked it out on their own. And they remember the word. That is why they feel success. They believe that they can learn, and that they can read.
  • I now encourage children to take the time to work out an unknown word on their own. One particular child was having difficulty, and after we reviewed some strategies to try, I told her to try working out the word on her own. After a while she ran back to me with tears and laughter, saying she worked it out, she worked it out. The child was elated. Such experiences have ignited the passion to read and the desire to learn to read better in the class. All children are enjoying their reading more.
  • Children no longer think that reading is saying the right word. They are now reading to understand the meaning behind the words. This has led to a love of reading.

Other Comments

  • It’s fantastic. Every learner is engaged, focused and reading the full period!
  • I can’t believe how quiet the classroom is, yet everyone is reading aloud! This allows me to work with individual learners knowing everyone else is reading. It’s great.
  • They enjoy hearing themselves. They are reading more fluently and work harder at reading for meaning.
  • My first graders became very motivated to try their best, particularly when I suggest they ‘phone’ their mommies who want to hear how well they are reading. They became very keen to read their very best and enjoyed the role play.
  • I use the Sebezaphone for guided reading with small groups of 6 learners. Instead of having 5 learners listen passively to one child read the same text, all of them are reading out loud. I can listen in on the reading of each child, one at a time and provide feedback as needed. I think the Sebezaphone provides many more practice opportunities than traditional ways of teaching.