This presentation outlines models of instruction in primary schools from reading to literacy within the context of Concern Worldwide's education programmes. It was presented at the Global Education Conference in Oxford in September 2013.
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Concern Worldwide: the simple view of reading
1. Models of instruction in Primary Schools –
from reading to literacy
Oxford UKFIET Conference, September 2013
Marcia Davidson, Cambridge Education
Jenny Hobbs, Concern Worldwide
2. Key Questions
What is the simplest yet most powerful approach to teaching
children how to read?
Are quality materials as important (or nearly as important) as
quality teaching?
How does a child interact with the simple view of reading?
3. Q 1: The Simple View of Reading: What it
means and why it is so important
DEFINITION: The Simple View of Reading consists of 2
components: decoding and linguistic comprehension. Both have
equal value in learning to read and can be represented using a
multiplicative representation:
Reading Comprehension = decoding X linguistic
comprehension
perfect decoding skill and poor linguistic comprehension = poor
reading comprehension
perfect linguistic comprehension and no decoding skill = NO reading
comprehension
Poor linguistic comprehension and poor decoding skill = poor
reading comprehension
4. Why the Simple View?
When resources are limited and teachers have minimal to no
background in how to teach reading, the Simple View
provides a useful and powerful framework.
The Simple View addresses the fundamental issues in early
reading acquisition in a clear and useful way. It teaches
individuals
1. How to read (decode) words, and
2. How to understand the meaning of the words read
7. Room to Read and the Simple View:
Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal
8. 8
TABLE1.SnapshotAssessmentResults*
RWIProjectSchools Non-RWISchools
Students Mean
Standard
Deviation Students Mean
Standard
Deviation
ReadingFluency
(wordsperminute)
Grade1 299 36.68 23.18 300 10.18 15.16
Grade2 301 55.81 22.93 300 23.70 22.60
ReadingComprehension
(questionsansweredcorrectly)
Grade1 299 2.80 1.50 298 0.67 1.01
Grade2 301 3.49 1.46 300 1.41 1.57
*Differencesbetweenprojectandcontrolschoolstudentsarestatisticallysignificant (p<.001).
Bangladesh Grades 1-2
9. 9
TABLE 1. Snapshot Assessment Results for Grade 1*
RWI Schools Non-RWI Schools
Assessment Students Mean
Standard
Deviation Students Mean
Standard
Deviation
Effect
Size**
Letter sound knowledge
(letters per minute) 668 29.64 19.82 513 10.67 14.34 1.32
Unfamiliar word reading
(words per minute) 669 9.00 8.60 513 2.19 4.94 1.38
Passage reading fluency
(words per minute) 667 10.37 11.36 514 2.82 6.85 1.10
Reading comprehension #1
(questions answered correctly) 669 0.22 0.62 514 0.05 0.29 0.58
Passage reading accuracy -
untimed
(words read correctly) 669 24.11 19.99 514 7.63 14.66 1.12
Reading comprehension #2
(questions answered correctly) 669 1.05 1.24 514 0.47 0.93 0.62
Listening comprehension
(questions answered correctly) 669 1.59 1.04 514 1.41 1.04 0.17
Sentence dictation
(words written correctly) 669 1.87 1.77 514 0.74 1.28 0.88
Sri Lanka Tamil Program Grade 1
10. 40%
33%
27%
Grade 2 Remedial Pretest
(069BS)
Simple word
word
sentence
3%
35%
62%
Grade 3 Remedial Post test
(069)
Letter level
Word level
Sentence
level
20%
32%
48%
Grade 3 Remedial Pretest
(069BS)
Simple word
word
sentence
6%
46%
48%
Grade 2 Remedial Post test
069
Letter level
Word level
Sentence
level
12. Q 2: A recent report from the director of the Brown
Center on Education
Policy at the Brookings
Institution
There is strong evidence that the choice of
instructional materials has large effects on
student learning—effects that rival in size
those that are associated with differences in
teacher effectiveness. (Chingos & Whitehurst, 2012)
Implications?
13. How can we ensure that there are high
quality materials for teachers to use to
support literacy development in all
education levels?
14. Next Steps
1. Develop a universal systematic approach that can be used
in many contexts and countries:
a) by working with Ministries of Education to determine ACTUAL
reading levels of students across grades and create an
incremental set of standards that can increase over time
(international readability method may be possible);
b) to level textbooks so that they are both considerate and accessible
to students in all grades in multiple languages;
c) to create decodable storybooks that link to the scope and
sequence of phonics instruction (recommend local languages) to
get kids reading quickly;
d) to build an international digital library of texts and stories in multiple
languages and contexts so that adequate high quality learning
materials are available to all.
e) and work with international print/publishing experts to improve
quality and reduce costs for publishing and printing materials
locally whenever possible.
15. From simplicity to complexity: how does a
child interact with the simple view of reading?
16. The child as…..a participant
Attendance Rates (School Records) Attendance Rates (Head Count)
Male Female Total Male Female Total
Class 1 78.6% 80.2% 79.4% Class 1 72.2% 58.8% 65.5%
Class 2 88.6% 89.8% 89.2% Class 2 57.1% 54.5% 55.8%
Class 3 95.1% 89.5% 92.3% Class 3 61.4% 66.1% 63.8%
Class 4 88.8% 77.6% 83.2% Class 4 40.0% 49.9% 45.0%
Class 5 105.2% 81.1% 93.1% Class 5 58.2% 44.9% 51.6%
Class 6 84.0% 83.6% 83.8% Class 6 87.1% 96.0% 91.5%
Total 91.2% 85.9% 88.6% Total 61.7% 61.3% 61.5%
17. The child…with language skills
questioning
Negotiation
Imagination
Decision-
making
Inference
Assertive
communication
Hannah Mavuto, Bwangu Primary School, Malawi (2012)
19. The child…in a context of violence
29% of students, and 36% of teachers say it is sometimes a girl’s fault if a student of teacher
touches her private parts (36% of females; 23% of males)
40% of students (42% of females; 36% of males) and 34% of teachers believe it is not ok for a
girl to refuse to have sex with a boyfriend
67% of students report some form of severe punishment by a teacher in the past 12
months (59% of females; 74% of males)
66% of teachers report having administered a severe form of punishment in the past 12 months
46% of students have experienced an incident of sexual violence in the past 12 months,
whether verbal or physical (44% of females; 48% of males)
33% of teachers, and 28% of students (33% of females; 23% of males) believe that boys
and girls are of equal intelligence
20. Thank you. Any questions?
Naomi Davis, Jereh O.J. Kpui, Joe P. Kpui, Robertlyn N. Davis, Abraham Joe –
students at St. John River Elementary School, Grand Bassa, Liberia (2010)
Jenny.Hobbs@concern.netMarcia.Davidson@camb-ed-us.com
Editor's Notes
We will present a simple approach to teaching children how to read that has important implications for building literacy skills beyond simple learning to read and reading to learn.
There are 2 key issues on how to teach children to read that I will briefly present: First, the theory of change that is based upon the simple view of reading and then, some recent evidence for its efficacy in several countries in local languages.
There is a 0 option when the relation between comprehension and decoding is multiplicative. Both language and decoding remain central to reading proficiency with the importance of the roles shifting over time to a point at which it is an individual’s vocabulary knowledge that predicts academic achievement.
That means that each and every language/reading period must include both oral language/vocabulary/ development as well as decoding skills to the point at which a child is proficient in decoding. In transparent languages, this will be fairly quick. But language skill development must continue relentlessly throughout school and move into higher level cognitive skills, reasoning, persuasive arguments, etc.
Evidence from Liberia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal
EGRA Plus Liberia from 2008 – 2010, an RCT
Bangladesh, a snapshot assessment at the end of the academic year comparing matched control schools with intervention schools. Average class size: 65Grade 1 : 37 cwpm mean fluency rate/accuracy for intervention schools and 10 CWPM for control schoolsGrade 2: 56 cwpm for intervention and 24 for controlComprehension: similar strong comparisons, but not as strong in comprehension as we would like
Sri Lanka 10cwpm grade 1 only intervention schools24 untimed for same passageControl: 3 for timed, and 8 for untimed.Again, large effects for the intervention
Nepal: a 6 week remedial reading program in grades 2-3 at the beginning of the academic year:Note from 33% reading sentences grade 2 to 48%. Early fall program to help narrow the gap in lost skills during the academic breakGrade 3: from 48% to 62% after 6 weeks
To maximize the development of reading proficiency, we must develop learning materials that can mitigate effects of poor teaching and we have preliminary evidence that this actually can occur. So how?
Sierra Leone 2013 –Tonkolili 17 government schools [Attendance is recorded in two ways – a monthly rate calculated using the UNESCO definition of “the percentage of days that students actually attend school over a given period (usually one month”; and a head-count of students physically present on the day that data is collected. Monitoring the data changes the data. . For example, in Liberia in 2009 enrolment in 30 schools was reported by head-teachers as 6,241 (3,699 boys, 2,542 girls) and attendance rates were found to be grossly inaccurate when verified by physical head-counts. In 2010 enrolment in the same 30 schools was reported at a lower figure of 4,065 (2,419 boys and 1,646 girls) and schools reported more accurate (albeit very low) levels of attendance. Children in Rustaq, Afghanistan who do not attend school for two years (but are included on the register as “permanently absent”) must be identified so that their needs can be addressed. Children in Sautd’Eau, Haiti who attend school sporadically throughout the academic year, with one week in school and then two weeks at home, will not benefit from a well-designed scope-and-sequence based literacy interventionSimple mechanisms for parents to monitor student and teacher attendance (using community chalk boards) or for a parent representative to supervise school start/end/break times with bell-ringing have proven effective in Concern’s programmes in Liberia and Malawi. Empowering Parent-Teacher Associations to track attendance of the most vulnerable children and follow up with their parents to address barriers to attendance has proven effective in Burundi and Niger.
From Basic Interpersonal Communication System to Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. If we think of Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills – BICS as the language skills needed in social situations. (Playground fluency), then we need to consider the child’s ability to access these social situations. Need supportive opportunities to build self-esteem, empathy, sense of curiosity about the world Opportunities for peer interaction…
Opportunities for social and emotional development, including communication skills – Child Friendly Spaces (Haiti), Community Conversations adapted for peer interactions (Kenya)
Concern Worldwide (2013) Baseline Study: Ending School Related Gender-Based Violence in Nsanje District, Malawi. Noelle Rancourt, April 2013. 17 schools in rural Nsanje District.Reading materials are analysed to ensure that positive gender messages are communicated;Modules on child protection and positive discipline are embedded in teacher training curricula, challenging the use of corporal punishment in the classroom; Teacher trainers provide in-classroom coaching and mentoring to ensure that teachers engage both girls and boys in the learning process; Community engagement sessions will encourage parents to consider gendered workloads, so that both girls and boys have time to attend school and study;
