3. Reading Class 1

3.1. Introduction

The tests were given after the children had been in class 1 for approximately 10 months. There were two tests, a word recognition test, and, for children able to complete that test easily, there was a simple comprehension test. Both tests were administered orally. The first test was progressive, consisting of 16 words of increasing length and difficulty followed by 4 short sentences. Words and sentences were selected from the class 1 reading textbooks. The same letter style found in these books was used; this was particularly important for the reproduction of the letter "g" as there is some variance in the way that this particular letter is written (g - g). A word was accepted as correctly read regardless of whether a child sounded out the syllables first and then, recognizing the word, spoke it as one word, or whether they were able to read whole words immediately. Only two attempts at reading each word were allowed.

Table 3: General Data on the Class 1 Reading Tests

3.2. The Results

91% of children had attended TK, which is a very high proportion compared to a national average of less than 15%. There were significant differences between children who had attended TK and those who had not. As can be seen in table 4, the scores on test 1 of those children who had attended TK were over 4 points higher (34.5%) than those who had not. Not all of this difference should be ascribed to TK. It is probable that many of those children who had not attended TK came from less favoured families. However, it is clear from observation that many children enrolled in TK as a precursor to primary school have developed good pre-reading skills, such as the ability to recognise symbols and letters and their sounds, and many have even achieved basic reading skills.

It is also clear that the teaching methodologies utilized in a TK setting, generally those involving children in a variety of enjoyable, stimulating and participative activities, are more effective than the 'chalk and talk', rote learning methods employed by many class 1 teachers. Our consultants also observed that where children had been taught using exclusively phonetic methods they were often too busy sounding words to get the meaning of what they were reading. Scores in 'inti' (core cluster) schools were slightly higher than in 'imbas' (satellite) schools and conventional primary schools (SD) scored slightly higher than religious primary schools (MI).

Table 4: Average Scores in Class 1 Reading Test

While previous use of the tests in other programs had shown that the majority of children had difficulty in completing test 1, chart 1 shows than children in the majority of children most schools tested in the MBE areas had little difficulty in completing the test. In 39 of the 60 schools (65%) the average score was over 18 out of 20, which means that most of the children in these schools were able to decode words without difficulty. Only five schools had an average score of less than 10. In these schools many children had not mastered basic decoding of words.

Chart 1: Average Class 1 Reading Test Scores per School.

433 children (61%) completed the first test without a mistake, which is a high proportion, compared to previous use of the test.

The children were classified into four groups based on their reading ability: children unable to read (score zero), poor readers (able to read less than 10 words correctly), average readers (read 10 - 15 words correctly), and good readers (scored above 15). Children in this last group were able to read some of the short sentences at the end of the test. The results are shown in table 5.

Table 5: Summary of Scores in Class 1 Reading Test 1

Those children completing test 1 without difficulty were asked to continue to test 2, the reading comprehension test. Table 6 shows that 66% of children managed to score three questions or more correct on this test. This contrasts with the same test done in CLCC areas in 2003, where only 26% of children were able to attempt test 2 and only 23% scored 3 or more on the test.

Table 6: Scores on Test 2 (Reading comprehension)

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