Albanian Early Grades Reading Assessment (A-EGRA)

Albanian Early Grades Reading Assessment (A-EGRA) ArlindaGashiBajgora Deputy Chief of Party USAID’s Basic Education Program

If we are aiming for successful readers and for a satisfied PISA performance, the place to start is grade 1.

Part 1 – What is A-EGRA? • Individual reading test for grades 1-3 • Short sub-tests of different skills • About 10-15 minutes per test taker • Designed for use by USAID partner countries • EGRA has so far been used in more than 40 countries and 80 languages • Adapted into Albanian by the USAID’s BEP

Key Competences of Successful Readers

Defining Levels of Competence

A-EGRA Subtests • 1. Phonemic awareness • 2. Letter name/sound knowledge • 3. Familiar word reading • 4. Unfamiliar word reading • 5a. Oral reading fluency • 5b. Reading comprehension • 6. Listening comprehension • 7. Dictation

Sub-Tests 1 and 2 • Assess basic understanding of letters and sounds • Test the ability to: • separate words into their component sounds • map each sound to its corresponding letter • Should be established by the end of grade 1

Sub-Tests 3 and 4 • Assess speed of: • sounding out unknown words (“decoding”) • recognizing known words (“sight” vocabulary) • Successful readers use both • Should be established by early in grade 2

Sub-Tests 5 and 6 • Assess ability to: • read accurately, with appropriate phrasing, and at a sufficient rate • respond correctly to literal and inferential questions about a text (read or heard) • Compare reading and listening comprehension scores

The Study First goal of USAID Education Strategy 2011-15: “Improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades by 2015”. • A baseline is needed to measure improvement in reading after 2 years’ schooling • Results can also: • Inform BEP reading strategy • Help create wider awareness of needs and priorities for action

The results • There are almost no non-readers in the sample • Phonemic awareness and letter recognition are good • Word recognition and decoding skills are generally acceptable • Dictation results are very good

Comprehension – What can students do?

What does this mean? • About 40% of the test takers had only a very minimal level of comprehension:

Listening Comprehension • Only about 20% of test takers were in the bottom category on listening comprehension

Recommendations after the study • Set national reading strategy – emphasis on fluency and comprehension • Promote awareness amongst parents of the importance of encouraging children to read with fluency and comprehension • Train teachers to use A-EGRA and encourage them to assess individual students’ reading skills • Provide better guidance materials for teachers on how to teach fluency and comprehension

The Basic Education Program has … • developed an Early Grades Reading Assessment (EGRA) in Albanian language; • developed an accredited course in reading instruction, for Grade 1 – 5 teachers • developed supplementary reading materials, for Grades 1 – 2 • developed an accredited course for teachers in the use of EGRA • developed a guidebook on reading, for parents, and a training workshop for parent councils. • developed reading comprehension texts for grades 2-5 and 8-9 based on the PISA descriptors • organized a round table on Albanian EGRA with MEST officials and came out with recommendations. • An impact study using the EGRA will be conducted in June 2014

Albanian Early Grades Reading Assessment (A-EGRA)