Culturally Congruent Literacy Practices: Calca, Peru

1. Culturally Congruent Literacy Practices: Calca, Peru Sabina Rak Neugebauer Sabina_Neugebauer@mail.harvard.edu I would like to acknowledge Elaine Mo and Rachel Currie Rubin who made this work possible and provided invaluable insights regarding administration and design for this project

2. Low Literacy Rates in Peru

3. Peruvian First and Second GradersBelow Grade Level

4. Calca

5. Context in Calca Community Level • Bilingual • Rural • Indigenous School Level • Public Primary • Teacher/student ration 1/32 approximately • Grades 1-6

6. Research Based Practices with Local Practices Phase 1 -School/Community Observations 2006-2007 Phase 2 -Collaboration and Implementation of Read Aloud Program 2007-2009

7. Research Based Practices: Read Alouds Linguistic Characteristics • Focus on Vocabulary Improves reading comprehension abilities (Adams, 1990,Coyne, Simmons, Kame’enui, & Stoolmiller, 2004; McKeown & Beck, 2004) • Vocabulary depth for ELLs (Silverman, 2007; August, Carlo, Dressler, and Snow, 2005) Local Cultural Characteristics • Oral nature of read alouds (Mello, 2001) • Active Participation (Cornell, 1993; Elley, 1989) • Communal Nature (Villegas, Rak Neugebauer & Venegas, 2007) • Narratives integrating background knowledge (Stahl & Nagy, 2006) Rural Characteristics • Semi circle format (Beck & McKeown, 2001; De Temple & Snow, 2003) • Redefining literacies (Laserna)

8. Methods • Field Notes 2006-2007 • Observation protocol 2006-2007 • Standardized comprehension and vocabulary measures • Researcher designed measure on content vocabulary • Teacher Interviews

9. Phase 1: Inside the Classroom: Pre-Intervention • Memorization • Dictation • Independent Seating

10. Class room set up

11. Outside the Classroom

12. Phase One Traditional Ceremonies and Daily Routines • Communal • Apprenticeship model (cooking, working)(Lave & Wenger, 1991) • Circles (around the grave, around the coach, sing alongs) • Oral narratives (Incan Stories, Gossip, Messengers) (Mello,2001; Zavale, 2001)

13. Program Design Experimental Group Control Group 2 teachers 29 students 2 teachers 26 students Three books in Spanish Read Aloud Pedagogy Three books in Spanish Drop out N=7 N=2 N= 22 N=24

14. Student Baseline Characteristics

15. Program Features • Repeating interactive readings, focusing on a small number of words (Lane & Wright, 2007). 2. Monitoring the depth of students’ word knowl­edge for the purposes of adaptable and respon­sive instruction (Hickman, Pollard-Durodola, & Vaughn, 2004). 3. Repeating exposure to vocabulary for retention (Hickman et al., 2004). 4. Decontextualizing vocabulary for extension in multiple contexts (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). 5. Conversing about vocabulary through text-to-­self connections to improve comprehension, motivation, and learning (Sipe, 2000). 6. Practicing expression, tone, and gesture with vocabulary in context (Pemberton & Watkins, 1987). 7. Using the comprehension strategy of self-mon­itoring when reading to improve vocabulary learning (Jongsma, 1999).

16. Read Aloud Text

17. Preliminary Findings Completers Analysis Effect Size=2.91

18. Future Directions for the community Before -Teacher training across grades -Children’s library with Read aloud books for all ages -Parent-teacher collaboration with library -Tutoring partnership with local university After

19. Future Research Directions • Rural/Urban Comparisons • Longitudinal Progress • Read Alouds and Bilingualism

20. Questions for Discussion • Based on the Miller and Cardenal reading what will be some of the challenges for sustaining this intervention? • Should the intervention be in Quechua? • What is the role of parents in all of this? How does this intervention influence effect change parent-child relationships? • What ecological factors played into the cardenal and miller article?

22. Book two of the Intervention Maria turns the pages and asks aloud about the fate of David, a friendly llama. “¿Por qué David está buscando a su madre?” (Why is David looking for his mom?) “Porque él no sabe dónde vive, quizás su madre esté en la casa” (Because he doesn’t know where he lives, maybe his mother is in the house), responds Yeferson.“ ¿Él está buscando su casa o su hogar?” (He is looking for his house or his home?) “¿Qué es hogar?” Martha asks, furrowing her brow. “Es una casa con una familia”, “es un lugar donde una familia vive” (“It is a house with a family” “it is a place where a family lives”) They all shout. “Claro, es un lugar donde vive una familia o con familia, un domicilio” (Sure, it is a place where a family lives or with a family, or a domicile.”) ¿Y qué harían en la situación de David? (“What would you do if you were in David’s situation?”)