Jordan Remedial Study: Reading Teachers' Guide

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. Because the pedagogical approaches of the reading and mathematics activities were very similar, teachers were able to apply remedial activities in both subjects, and thus, children benefited in both reading and mathematics 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 resources are the Reading Teachers' Guide in Arabic used as part of the remedial pilot program.