Claudia Stanfield
Workshop
Creating a Culture of Reading
Reading for meaning plays a key role in a child’s learning development, if you cannot read and understand what you are reading it means that you will fall short in all your other subjects. My workshop will discuss what it means to read for meaning, ways of creating a culture of reading in your schools and supply you with online resources that can be used in a multimedia approach to increase your students exposure to literacy texts and thereby increase their literacy skills.

South Africa’s literacy rates remain stubbornly low. Many children face multiple deprivations from birth, which directly impact their ability to learn. These include poor nutrition, disease, violence, abuse, and impoverished living conditions. In South Africa, 78% of Grade Four children cannot read for meaning (PIRLS, 2016). International studies show that our results are worse even than those of other low-income African countries. Grade repetition is high during the Foundation Stage, with associated costs for children’s self-esteem and motivation to learn, and for the education system as a whole.

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Bio
Claudia Stanfield, is the Social Franchise Manager of a literacy organisation called Shine Literacy. Shine Literacy’s programmes are helping to transform the prospects of some of South Africa’s most vulnerable children by breaking the destructive cycle of poor literacy, low educational attainment, wasted potential and poverty. They do this by providing structured English literacy support to children. Claudia was the former Lead MRP Foundation TechEd Facilitator in KZN, which had similar aspirations as Shine in empowering children through the involvement of the TechEd Project implementing tablet technology into rural school classrooms. Claudia facilitated this implementation through teacher training and guiding educators on daily classroom use of this technology. Concurrently, Claudia managed a multimedia math classroom that uses Khan Academy videos and exercises. Prior to MRP Foundation, she has five years of English as a Second Language instruction within the Public School system as an ESL Instructor and as an English Professor at Jungwon University, in Goesan, South Korea.  During her tenure in South Korea, she obtained a joint Master’s degree in Public Health Education and Natural Remedies, at Sahmyook University in Seoul, South Korea, in addition to holding a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Psychology from the University of the Western Cape, her hometown. Claudia is passionate about education and teaching, and she believes in empowering those around her with the skills and knowledge to do more with their lives than their circumstances dictate they should or could.