The Best Books Gegradeerde Leesreeks for Grades 1–3 Home Language has been written and compiled by the authors of the New All-In-One and Nuwe Alles-In-Een series’.

Each reader contains specially graded reading text, revises familiar sounds and teaches new sounds. These sounds correspond to the lesson planning in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement for Afrikaans Home Language, thus following the ordered progression of phonics acquisition. This way, the graded reading texts cultivate the child’s phonemic awareness, written and verbal language skills, vocabulary and word comprehension. The text also considers the child’s development of short-term memory and reading span. These readers aim to expand the child’s reading span to increase their reading speed gradually. Hence, the content of each level becomes more and more difficult in terms of vocabulary, sentence construction, punctuation, and so forth to read fluently at the end of the Foundation Phase.

The child may only get the next reader if they have mastered the vocabulary, sight words, letter recognition and language activities (included from Level 5) and can read the content fluently. Some more affluent children in Grade 1 may also read books in other levels such as Level 6–12, depending on their reading ability or the other way round.

The Best Books Gegradeerde Leesreeks will easily boost the average child’s Afrikaans reading ability. We hope that this series will encourage and cultivate a love of reading for first young readers in the Foundation Phase.

Watch the author and compiler, Mart Meij talking about the graded reading series’ approach here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it5nOYscZAI.