Shaping Reading Pedagogy and Assessment for Sustainable Learning

UKFIET ConferenceSeptember 15-17 2015

University of Oxford, UK

The conditions of reading acquisition in contexts of low literacy

Prue AndersonMary Fearnley-Sander

Comprehension crisis

Developed Developing

letters

words

sentence

paragraph

nothing

extended text

Grade 2

All children should be reading by Grade 2

Pre-school3 year-old

Kindergarten4 year-old

Foundation5 year-old

Grade 16 year-old

Grade 27 year-old

Developing education system: few resources

Developed education system: many resources

Grade 16 year-old

Grade 27 year-oldKindergarten

“Pedagogies for the poor”— two codes to crack for reading comprehension

• Cracking the alphabetic code: accurate and rapid recognition of sound and letter relationships

• Cracking the cognitive style of written text

Home literacy and comprehension

Reading success at 15 years

“What school-oriented homes have” (Shirley Brice Heath)

familiar vocabularycontextualisedshort utterancessimple structurerepeated ideasadjusted to listener

unfamiliar vocabularydecontextualisedlongcomplex structuresubtle ideasno adjustment to listener

What are the odds?

Students in developing education systems:• little or no access to books/print• few literate adults• limited understanding of value or need to read

to children or talk about the meaning of books at home or school

• rote teaching practices

What makes a difference?

• reading aloud authentic texts• targeted conversations• making inferences• contextualised vocabulary• contingent responsiveness• explicit teaching of comprehension skills

Learning how to interpret meaning through listening to and talking about books

Learning how texts work

Learning how to decode and become fluent

Learning how to interpret meaning reading independently

Model of reading development

benefit of e-book

Beating the odds

Replicate in the primary schools of poor communities what quality pre-schools have: success stories from the US, UK, and Asia.