Paula Lu­cie-Smith

We are al­ready four weeks in­to the new aca­d­e­m­ic year and as hap­pens every year, some stu­dents are al­ready un­able to cope in their new class be­cause of their poor read­ing and writ­ing skills.

When I at­tend­ed the World Lit­er­a­cy Sum­mit in April at Ox­ford, UK, Michael Craw­ford, World Bank Lead Ed­u­ca­tion Spe­cial­ist, ex­plained that al­though en­rol­ment in pri­ma­ry school is prac­ti­cal­ly uni­ver­sal, more than half of the stu­dents in low and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries can­not read and un­der­stand an age-ap­pro­pri­ate sto­ry by the age of 10.

World Bank sta­tis­tics for the first three years of pri­ma­ry school show that few­er than one in 10 stu­dents can read aloud com­fort­ably and with mean­ing. These stu­dents fall fur­ther be­hind each year.

Craw­ford then posed the ques­tion, “What can be done?” and here’s what he said.

A. Recog­nise the ex­tent of the cur­rent cri­sis

It is im­por­tant that we em­pha­sise to all ed­u­ca­tion au­thor­i­ties that the sit­u­a­tion is very bad and we have clear ev­i­dence of this. The World Bank has spo­ken to many ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials and un­der­stand­ably, there was a bit of re­luc­tance to recog­nise how much of a fail­ure the ef­fort is. So, it is im­por­tant to be­gin with recog­ni­tion.

B. Make learn­ing to read the cen­tral task for pri­ma­ry school­ing

If chil­dren are leav­ing pri­ma­ry school and they’re not read­ers, that’s fail­ure. If they leave as read­ers, that’s suc­cess.

C. Re­or­gan­ise pri­ma­ry school­ing around form­ing read­ers

1. Cre­ate high-qual­i­ty cur­ric­u­la aligned with the sci­ence of read­ing

2. Strive for at least two hours per day of lan­guage and lit­er­a­cy in­struc­tion

3. Pro­vide ac­cess to books

4. Cre­ate a cul­ture of read­ing among the world’s school­teach­ers. Teach­ing is prob­a­bly one of the hard­est jobs and we need to make teach­ers’ jobs eas­i­er so they can have some en­er­gy left over to trans­mit the joy that should be part of the read­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

The sci­ence of read­ing was the buzz at the sum­mit, and I at­tend­ed as many ses­sions on this as I could. Here are my key take­aways.

The aim of the sci­ence of read­ing is to un­der­stand how we read and how best to sup­port stu­dents’ lit­er­a­cy de­vel­op­ment. It is a vast, in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary body of re­search about read­ing and is­sues re­lat­ed to read­ing and writ­ing from the fields of cog­ni­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy, lin­guis­tics, neu­ro­science and ed­u­ca­tion.

This re­search has been con­duct­ed over the last five decades across the world, and it is de­rived from thou­sands of stud­ies con­duct­ed in mul­ti­ple lan­guages. The term sci­ence of read­ing has gained trac­tion in the last few years.

The sci­ence of read­ing has five pil­lars and be­low, I com­pare these to AL­TA ped­a­gogy and prac­tice.

1. Hear the sounds with­in spo­ken words and be able to blend, seg­ment and ma­nip­u­late those sounds. (Phone­mic aware­ness)

AL­TA starts all stu­dents with ac­tiv­i­ties rang­ing from rhyming to adding/delet­ing sounds in words. For spelling, our stu­dents learn to seg­ment reg­u­lar words in­to sounds and to say mul­ti­syl­la­ble words syl­la­ble by syl­la­ble.

2. Map sounds to let­ters (Phon­ics)

The next step is to move from the in­di­vid­ual sounds in spo­ken lan­guage to match these to writ­ten let­ters.

Cru­cial to the sci­ence of read­ing is a struc­tured se­quen­tial cur­ricu­lum heavy on phon­ics, which ex­plic­it­ly teach­es let­ter-sound cor­re­spon­dence (de­cod­ing) and what the tongue and lips do to make the sounds. This is at the core of AL­TA, as we built our cur­ricu­lum around the meth­ods used for teach­ing dyslex­i­cs, which have now be­come main­stream in the sci­ence of read­ing.

3. Recog­nise words and mean­ing­ful word parts and roots au­to­mat­i­cal­ly (Flu­en­cy)

To get mean­ing when read­ing, we must de­code quick­ly and ac­cu­rate­ly. The sci­ence of read­ing stress­es the im­por­tance of read­ing “con­nect­ed text,” not just in­di­vid­ual words.

Every AL­TA les­son has a pas­sage to read, as well as ex­er­cis­es with sen­tences and pas­sages re­lat­ed to the pas­sage’s theme. This is ‘con­nect­ed text’. Our Read­ing Cir­cles of­fer fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to ap­ply phon­ics learned and build speed.

4. Know­ing lots of words and how to use them (Vo­cab­u­lary)

This is need­ed to make sense of print. While we se­lect con­tent that is fa­mil­iar to our stu­dents, be­fore we read the pas­sage in a les­son, we dis­cuss what we will be read­ing about and talk about the vo­cab­u­lary that’s com­ing up that might be new.

5. Com­pre­hend the mean­ing of what’s read

This is the cul­mi­na­tion and syncs with the AL­TA ap­proach to read­ing a pas­sage: ask ques­tions and dis­cuss, read, ask ques­tions and dis­cuss.

So, AL­TA aligns nice­ly with the sci­ence of read­ing. Our in­struc­tion is avail­able in com­mu­ni­ty-based and Zoom class­es for adults aged 16 and over, or to any­one from age nine up via AL­TA On­line.

Are you in­ter­est­ed in join­ing a class, be­com­ing a tu­tor or spon­sor?

Call 624-2582 or email al­ta­pos.tt@gmail.com

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