In 2013–14, in response to the success of a reading and mathematics intervention, the Ministry of Education in Jordan developed and piloted a remedial program to provide differentiated (focused) support to the lowest performing children.
In Jordan, the remedial pilot activity included two teacher administered tools: (a) a “coarse-grain” screening tool used to identify children in need of remedial support and (b) a “fine-grain” diagnostic tool administered to each child identified by the coarse-grain tool as needing remedial support. To ensure efficacy—in particular, of the coarse grain tool’s ability to correctly identify students—the tools were piloted. In the pilot, the coarse-grain screening tool was administered to all students in the pilot classrooms. The students in the class were then ranked based on their performance on the coarse-grain tool. The fine-grain tool was then administered to every fourth or fifth student (depending on class size) on the list arranged in order of performance. Students who performed better on the coarse-grain tool were consistently identified as performing at a higher level by the fine-grain tool, and students who performed more poorly on the coarse-grain tool were determined to be performing at a lower level by the fine-grain tool.
The attached resource is the mathematics teachers' guide in Arabic used as part of the remedial pilot program.