The Decodable Levelled Reading Books Study Report- Jordan/RAMP Discover the Power of Decodable Books: Bridging the Reading Gap in Jordan's Education System Introducing the groundbreaking Reading and Mathematics Program (RAMP), a USAID-funded initiative with a mission to transform early-grade education in Jordan's government primary schools. It addresses the need for enhanced foundational abilities in reading and math among early-grade students, particularly those facing challenges. The program emerged from a 2019 survey indicating that while national scores improved, struggling students, especially those in refugee camps, did not progress as desired. The survey underscored the need for tailored reading materials to master phonics, crucial for fluency and comprehension. Consequently, RAMP analyzed Arabic reading textbooks and identified gaps, primarily in grade 2, prompting the introduction of decodable leveled reading books. The study's central objective is to gauge the effectiveness of these books in classrooms. Designed to bolster phonics skills, they aim to bridge proficiency gaps among different-performing students. The literature review discusses decodable and leveled reading books, highlighting their benefits. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, using pre-tests, post-tests, and questionnaires to measure changes in reading fluency, comprehension, and perceptions. The results showed a significant improvement in first-grade emergent readers using decodable books, while struggling third-grade readers exhibited enhanced oral reading proficiency. Second-grade results were less clear. Students reported increased interest and faced challenges, underscoring the need for tailored resources. Teachers largely endorsed the books and recommended wider implementation. In conclusion, the study seeks to advance the "all children reading" goal by enhancing foundational skills for struggling students.

The USAID-FCDO Jordan Early Grades Reading & Mathematics Initiative (RAMP) started in 2015 with the goal to improve Kg-Gr.3 students reading and mathematics skills through improving curriculum system coherency, teacher professional development and coaching, increasing parental involvement, and improving standards, evaluation, monitoring, and accountability systems. The presentation is about how RAMP built a resilient MOE early grades system that could mitigate the learning loss caused after the school closure as a measure of the spread of COVID-19. It was notable the early grades school system was more resilient than the upper levels, administrators and teachers were more ready to cope with a new context where children reading and mathematics skills were varying widely: the MOE was able to rapidly implement a national survey (EGRA/EGMA) to measure learning losses and design a remedial program; teachers were able to use diagnostic assessment tools and identified individual students actual learning needs; teachers were familiar with differentiated instruction and remedial strategies for vulnerable children; and a system was already in place to regularly coach teachers in under-served schools/areas.

The purpose of this panel presentation is to present the results of two uptake studies to understand how mathematics, Uzbek language arts, ICT, and EFL teachers in Uzbekistan are using and applying newly developed teaching and learning materials in the classroom.

The lack of information about children’s oral language skills limits our understanding of why some children do not respond to literacy instruction. Even though native language oral language skills are not strong predictors of native language decoding (Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Lesaux et al., 2006), oral language skills have been shown to have a small role in non-native word reading for non-native speakers (Geva, 2006; Quiroga et al., 2002). Yet, understanding that threshold of language skills is not understood. Cross-linguistic studies show that some literacy skills transfer between languages (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Bialystok, McBride-Chang, & Luk, 2005; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Denton et al., 2000; Durgunoglu, 2002; Durgunoglu et al., 1993; Genesee & Geva, 2006; Gottardo, Yan, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001; Koda, 2007; Wang et al., 2006). This includes letter knowledge, print concepts, and language skills (phonological awareness and vocabulary). The transfer of these skills is considered a resource (Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006) that assists reading in the additional languages. Children learning to read in a non-native language bring their first language (i.e., mother tongue) to the instructional setting. Yet, its use will depend on the teacher’s use translanguaging between the language of instruction and children’s home language (s). The presence of two or more languages contributes to children having domains of knowledge in specific languages. For example, domains of knowledge children learn at school such as shapes, might only be known in the language of instruction. Relatedly, domains of knowledge they learn at home from family interactions, such as cooking, might only be known in the mother-tongue. And domains of knowledge that children learn on the playground, are likely to be learned in a lingua franca, or a common language to the area. Even though mixing languages is common, most language assessments do not capture this knowledge. Even in samples with multi-lingual students, for reasons of reliability and consistency, most language assessments assess children in just one language and describe results for that language. The results are used to help to explain results on reading assessments. But measuring language skills in just one language overlooks the concepts that a multilingual child may have in other languages and describe them from a deficit approach opposed to the asset of being multi-lingual. To address this problem, we developed a tool, the Multi-Language Assessment (MLA), to measure children’s expressive language across multiple languages to understand the skills they have to support their learning. The tool is intended to be reliable, valid, and child friendly. It is our hypothesis that children’s expressive language scores across multiple languages can help to explain their success or struggles in the early years of formal schooling. We conceptualized and developed the Multi-Language Assessment (MLA) to capture children’s language skills across multiple languages in a 7-minute interaction with a trained assessor. The MLA measures expressive language of 36 concepts shown in 36 images that children would be exposed to through family and community interactions, conversations, media, books, or school. The items included in the assessment yield variable distribution; they are not intended to be items that would yield ceiling effects. A child’s utterance is coded to one of nine categories of varying weights. Furthermore, the items are intended to have levels of a familiarity. For example, for an image of a coconut tree, some children might call it that, while other children describe it by its domain, a tree, not identifying the specific type. Both utterances would earn a child points but of varying weight. Research Problem 1. Many children in low- and middle-income contexts do not learn to read in lower primary efficiently. 2. Some people hypothesize that the reason for children’s poor performance is language related. 3. When children’s language skills are assessed it is usually in one language and describes their abilities as deficits as opposed to considering their assets of being multi-lingual. 4. Assessing language requires time and young children’s attention spans are short, reducing data quality if the assessment is too long. 5. The MLA was created to understand expressive language use across multiple languages and to be brief Study: The paper presents results from a recent longitudinal study that collected child level results at two time points in government school in rural Kenya. It includes the aforementioned multi-language assessment and measures of reading achievement (e.g., letter knowledge and spelling) at Time 1 when all children were in kindergarten and again at Time 2 when they had advanced to either a higher Kindergarten or to Grade 1. An existing measure of expressive language was used to explore concurrent validity of the MLA. The Time 1 sample (n=215) was large enough to examine the technical properties of the tool and the Time 2 sample (n=200) had only 7% attrition so there was sufficient power to describe individual changes. The features of the language assessment suggest that it is reliable and sensitive. The following analysis been conducted: 1) Sample demographics; 2) Distributions by subtasks; 3) Measures of association between subtasks; 4) Item analysis The following research questions are addressed: 1. How does expressive language use evolve for children who use three languages as they progress from kindergarten into first grade? For example, do they shift from using the home language for some items at Time 1 to a language of instruction at Time 2? 2. How does children’s overall expressive language knowledge (as measured in three languages) contribute to their reading achievement (letter sound knowledge and spelling) as measured in two languages over time?

This report summarizes the findings of an effort to develop and validate tablet-based, self-administered assessments of English-language foundational literacy and numeracy in the early grades. The tools described in the report were developed at the request of Imagine Worldwide with the support of the Jacobs Foundation. RTI carried out field testing and a pilot study to assess the tools' internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity with respect to "traditional" EGRA and EGMA. RTI International developed the two assessments, known respectively as the Self-Administered Early Grade Reading Assessment (SA-EGRA) and the Self-Administered Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (SA-EGMA), with the support and at the direction of Imagine Worldwide. The assessments are deemed “self-administered,” because children complete the assessments independently in response to instructions and stimuli imbedded in the tablet-based software. However, adults typically supervise the organization and conduct of the assessment as well as the collection of individual data from the tablets for analysis. The tools have been developed under an open-source license. The code can be viewed and downloaded for reuse or modification at https://github.com/ICTatRTI/SE-tools/blob/main/README.md. Users of RTI's Tangerine software may request that the SA-EGRA and SA-EGMA tools be added to their Tangerine groups via https://www.tangerinecentral.org/contact

In June 2020 the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) adopted the Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP), a framework to guide the 2020–2021 school year in light of school closures that started in March 2020, during the final weeks of the 2019–2020 school year. The plan introduced an adjusted and condensed curriculum, the Most Essential Learning Competencies, to support schools and teachers in delivering learning through alternative modalities in lieu of face to face classes. DepEd also modified the 2020–2021 school calendar to start October 5, 2020, and end in June 2021. The school year typically runs from June through March in the Philippines, but regions, divisions, and schools needed additional time to prepare and operationalize the BE-LCP. For example, regions were tasked with determining appropriate remote learning1 delivery modalities based on local context. Approaches were further adapted and defined at the individual school level as schools contextualized the learning continuity plan. Given DepEd’s decentralized approach to contextualizing and ensuring learning continuity for learners, it became clear that remote learning would look vastly different across regions, divisions, and within schools. Subsequently, this mixed-methods study was designed to take an in-depth look at schools and families across the country to understand their experiences with teaching and learning during school closures—and particularly to understand how early language and literacy learning can best be supported in the distance learning context.

Children with a strong foundation in oral language and emergent literacy skills have a much greater chance of becoming successful readers, and success in reading in early primary grades can predict success in later years of schooling. Read this brief to learn about how Read Liberia partnered with the MOE to improve KG students' emergent literacy skills!

Due to increasing rates of COVID19 infection in Cambodia, primary schools were closed from March 2021 through the end of the school year. In Kampong Thom, Kampot, and Kep, the USAID-funded and RTI-implemented All Children Reading-Cambodia project rolled out comprehensive activities to support learning at home. While these interventions were implemented successfully, students had still missed nearly an entire year of explicit reading instruction. When schools reopened, they, and their teachers, would need intensive and targeted support to help make up for lost learning and to sustain gains under the National Early Grades Reading Program, Komar Rien Komar Cheh. To help inform this support, All Children Reading conducted a “temperature check” study with the aim of understanding teachers’ current status, well-being, concerns, capacity gaps, and plans for reading instruction when schools reopen; as well as measurement of students’ levels of reading proficiency, vis a vis where they are expected to be reading according to the curriculum. This study sought to better understand teacher’s perceptions around returning to school after prolonged closures, and how they plan to support students, in order to strategically target support that is both in line with best practice and responsive to where teachers are. A purposeful sample of 100 schools was drawn from two provinces, Kampong Thom (50 schools) and Kampot (50 schools). Schools were randomly sampled, proportional to each district. Data will be presented from 200 phone-based interviews conducted with grade 1 and 2 teachers, 100 in-person school director interviews, and 1,600 levelled student assessments conducted with grade 1 (800) and grade 2 (800) students. Findings are presented on the following: •Teachers’ levels of confidence returning to school and implementing the national Komar Rien Komar Cheh reading package, and specific areas where they still struggle •Teachers’ concerns and priorities for students’ learning in the coming year •Teachers’ plans to help students catch-up on missed content and skills, vis a vis their approach to curriculum coverage •Students’ reading levels in grade 1 and grade 2 at the end of a protracted school closure for most of the year, relative to where they should be per the curriculum

This presentation was delivered as part of the 2022 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference as part of a panel describing the Education Futures research activity undertaken by the Philippines Department of Education, with support from USAID/Philippines through the All Children Reading-Philippines program managed by RTI International. Under this activity, leaders in DepEd are engaging in a range of courses and workshops to learn and apply futures thinking methodologies for reimagining how education can be delivered differently to address recurring shortcomings. The authors are Maricel Fernandez (Research Officer, RTI International) and Mark Sy (Manager of EdTech Unit, Department of Education).

Prior Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA) have been used to set reading fluency benchmarks in Tanzania for USAID report and for the Government of Tanzania (GoT). Since the EGRA requires one-on-one administration with trained enumerators, tablets, it is currently too expensive to be sustainable within the government system. The Group Administered Literacy Assessment (GALA) is an inexpensive and sustainable way to collect information about students’ reading abilities; is it group administered, does not require intensive training to administer, and is collected on paper, which is then entered into a database. Unfortunately, the GALA does not contain a fluency measure, which is still used as the basis of USAID reporting. The Jifunze Uelewe team created a study in order to identify the reading fluency equivalent benchmarks for the GALA on a subsample of the total GALA respondents. The study is administering the both the EGRA’s reading passage and the GALA to a sample of grade 2 and grade 4 pupils attending public schools in Tanzania. Data collection occurred in October 2021. Data collection was happening during the submission of this abstract, so no results are available for the abstract. But we will report the results and will discuss how well the linking process worked.