Training teachers in the science of reading instruction

 Last month witnessed the launch of Liberia’s first national reading campaign. Jointly spearheaded by the Ministry of Education (MOE) and USAID’s Liberia Teacher Training Program (LTTP), the effort aims to increase awareness of the central role that reading plays in the lifelong process of education. In the first post in this series, I highlighted how the campaign’s motto—Reading Brightens Your Life—is playing out for Newton G. Teeweh, who helps train teachers, principals, and reading coaches in the science of reading instruction. For this second post, three veteran teachers shared their insights into the importance of reading and how its instruction has changed in recent years.

Is it really better to be lucky than good?

While visiting some LTTP schools near Gbarnga, Liberia’s second most populous city, I had the opportunity to interview Ms. Nyamah C.D. Nanoe, Mr. Matthew Kollie, and Mr. James P. Kolleh. Veteran teachers all, they know that reading is the cornerstone of education. And while all of them agreed that it’s painful to see a child who reads poorly struggle with her coursework, they each noted that the real tragedy is the way weak reading skills can keep that child from pursuing her life’s goals. Mr. Kollie, a reading teacher and registrar at G. Dungbo Elementary school, was blunt:

“The dream is that reading would create the opportunity for [students] to read and understand the directions on the public tests.”

The “public tests” he was referring to are informally known as “the WAEC” because they are developed and administered by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC). The tests for grade 9 and grade 12 students are high-stakes endeavors because they are sometimes used as screening or entrance exams for secondary and tertiary education. “When the child fails the WAEC, they cannot get a WAEC certificate,” said Ms. Nanoe, a 19-year veteran of Liberian schools. “Without the WAEC certificate, it will be difficult to enter college.” Sometimes the material children have studied in class appears on the examination nearly verbatim. “The kids were saying ‘Auntie, thank you!!’ because a story I had taught them was on the test,” recalled Ms. Nanoe, laughing ruefully as she thought about the 2007 grade 6 exam.[1] Even with that lucky break, though, many of Ms. Nanoe’s children were unable to perform well enough to continue their studies at the junior high level. As Mr. Kollie explained, even if the children knew the story by heart, it would have been critical to be able to follow the test booklet’s instructions as well. Improperly formatted responses, corrections, or erasures can result in penalties. “If you know the content but fail to follow the directions, [scorers] will fail you.”

Relying on hard work instead of good fortune

Had Ms. Nanoe’s students been stronger readers in the first place, their ability to continue their studies might not have come down to luck. Maybe they could have read and understood both the test’s content and its directions.  That’s why she welcomed the reading intervention that the Ministry of Education and LTTP first introduced at her school in 2011. Modeled after a highly successful method piloted under the EGRA Plus: Liberia project, the intervention provides teachers with training on reading-specific teaching methods, highly structured lesson plans, and regular coaching visits by reading specialists. The curriculum for “the ‘new’ reading,” as she called it, differed radically in frequency, content, and instructional approach from the prior curriculum. Formerly taught only twice a week, reading was now given its own lesson every single day. Because the new curriculum included phonics-based instruction, Ms. Nanoe says, “Now the students learn the sounds of letters.” This may seem like a minor advancement, but it has important implications for students’ ability to learn on their own. Mr. Kolleh, who teaches reading in grades 2 and 3 at Tomato Camp Public School, pointed out that it has completely changed the teacher-student dynamic in his classroom. Whereas in the old days a lesson frequently consisted of children silently hand-copying notes from the board, now

“students learn to decode the words. Children are more likely to try to spell words on their own. In a sense, [the students] do the work and we facilitate.”

A new approach that yields clear results

According to teachers this new approach is producing clear results. “Before, children were in third grade and couldn’t read a paragraph,” Mr. Kolleh said. “Now the ‘I do, We do, You do’ approach has changed that. One little girl in my grade 3 class was able to read 72 words within 25 seconds! And her pronunciation was excellent! She was extremely proud.” The fact that Mr. Kolleh was able to cite the rate at which his student could read is a reflection of two features of the intervention that deserve a little more explanation: an emphasis on fluency (the rate at which children read, measured in words per minute) and the use of community “reading fairs.” Fluency is emphasized because children’s comprehension improves significantly when their reading rate exceeds certain thresholds.[2] Teachers in LTTP intervention schools learn about the relationship between reading rate and comprehension as part of their training, and many of them seize on it as an easy—and highly relevant—way to measure their students’ progress. Reading fairs are public reading competitions held regularly in many areas where LTTP is active. Students are judged by a panel of teachers and members of the parent-teacher association on the fluency with which they read. However, after the competitions it is common for the audiences to also be abuzz over the accuracy of the students’ pronunciation and the quality of their intonation and rhythm (prosody). Top-performing students and their teachers earn both bragging rights and small prizes. Mr. Kolleh noted that his little third-grader, Mary, drew so much motivation from the competitions that she would challenge her peers to impromptu “read-offs” during breaks between classes.

Looking ahead

In the last few months of 2013, more than 300 additional schools are expected to join LTTP and receive the reading intervention for the first time. This is in addition to the nearly 800 schools that have been part of the LTTP program over the past two years.  Predominantly located in Bong, Lofa, Montserrado and Nimba – counties commonly known as Liberia’s “economic development corridor” – these 1,100 schools represent roughly 40% of the public schools in the country. Most of the schools that have been in the LTTP program over the past two years will begin to be supported primarily by personnel from the Ministry of Education who have participated in LTTP training events. While LTTP will continue to provide some support to that first cohort of schools, its role will be much smaller. The hope is to move one step closer to realizing a goal that Ms. Nanoe shared. “My dream,” she said, “is that from now on students from grades 1 to 3 and upward will be able to read three or four paragraphs in one minute—whether [donors] are here or not.”