Last updated 08:20 05/02/2012
Article from The Southland Times
NICOLE GOURLEY/Fairfax NZ
GETTING STARTED: Helen Campbell-O’Brien and grandson Mark Campbell, 5, practise writing with some of the literacy pack components.
Literacy starter packs were introduced at more than 70 Southland primary schools three years ago with the intention of lifting reading and writing skills. KIMBERLEY CRAYTON-BROWN examines whether they have achieved that goal.
For most of us, forming letters and reading words has become second nature. We can grip a pencil without thinking about it, write our names, and know what a word is after a glance. The painstaking task of learning these skills is a distant memory.
Yet for young children, it's obviously not that easy. Reading and writing are important skills that have to be developed as early as possible.
As a resource literacy teacher in Southland schools, Helen Campbell-O'Brien has seen children struggling to write letters in their proper form, who cannot read from simple books. She hates to see children failing.
Her efforts to improve literacy were recognised when she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2012 New Year Honours list.
Three years ago, with the support of the Invercargill East Rotary Club and the community, she developed a literacy starter pack which is given to every new entrant pupil in Southland.
Containing storybooks, mini whiteboard and marker pen, magnetic letters, and a booklet and DVD with tips for parents, the packs come in a brightly coloured book-bag and are presented to children when they start school.
The project, which costs about $50,000 a year for 1600 packs, is entering its fourth year and has so far benefited 4800 of Southland's five-year-olds.
One of the most effective ways she had seen the packs given to children was as part of a series of meetings before children started school, run by teacher Helen Lines at St Theresa's School.
"There are four sessions before the wee ones start school. Parents and children come along to these sessions and she takes children through how school will look – what sort of things they might learn to do, the routines, the format of a day, how lunchtimes and playtimes will work."
The sessions mean when it comes time for children to have their first official day at school they can settle in easily, Mrs Campbell-O'Brien says.
Mrs Lines also talks the families through the literacy packs, explaining how each component could be used, how to read to children, how children learn the alphabet.
The magnetic letters can be used to help children identify letters and form simple words. From there, they can learn to write the letters and words themselves.
It was vital that children started to learn to write early on, and learn correctly – using the proper pencil grip, writing the letters in the right direction, and using capital letters in the right places was important.
Steering children into the correct way from the start was much easier than trying to undo incorrect practices two or three years down the track, she said.
Children who were not writing the correct way would be much slower, their minds focusing on which way they were supposed to do things.
"If you haven't got the tools at your fingertips the whole thing snails."
One of the keys to the project succeeding is the support at home. Though some parents carried a real hangup about school from their own years in education, it was important that when a child was enrolled at school it was a partnership between the teachers and the families, she says.
Parents were encouraged to listen to their children, talk about their day, and read to them.
Children picked up new words through listening and talking, and as they began to recognise words and letters when they were reading, their writing would progress too.
Mrs Campbell-O'Brien says it was important to pause, prompt and praise when children were reading or writing and reached a point where they were unsure.
"If anybody intervenes, you take away all of their thinking, you take away their processing. It is one of the hardest things to sit in silence – they look at you, they appeal `help me'," she says.
Initially funded for three years by the Invercargill East Rotary Club, money has been found to continue the project for a fourth year, and literacy committee chairman Neil Lewis hopes the project would continue further.
There has been a common thread of literacy issues in trade and industry, particularly among teenagers entering those sectors, he says.
While discussing this problem with Mrs Campbell-O'Brien, they became aware of a way to promote an interest in literacy to families, the community and businesses – literacy starter packs for five-year-olds.
The five-year age group was chosen to get to the "crux of the matter".
"I think it is where education begins after all."
The feedback from schools and parents had been so positive, and research carried out by a team at the University of Otago had been so encouraging, it would be hard not to continue with something so successful and rewarding, he said.
While they could say there was definitely a need to continue the project for another three years, it all depended on funding.
Other Rotary clubs had got involved and helped fund this year's packs, but financial support was needed from others if the scheme was to continue beyond this year.
The project, believed to be the only one of its kind in the country, has attracted considerable interest from around New Zealand, Mr Lewis says.
A presentation at the International Reading Association World Congress in Auckland last year led to even more interest in the literacy packs – both national and international – with the Otago University research team presenting some findings.
University of Otago Southland campus academic programmes co-ordinator Jill Paris has a background in resource literacy teaching and together with senior lecturer Adair Polson-Genge, a former primary teacher, has spent two years researching the literacy project.
So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
The first research report was released last February and was based on data collected in 2010, the second year the literacy packs were handed out at schools.
It found teachers, parents and children all valued the pack, which created extra literacy learning experiences for children and was a free resource parents appreciated.
The final stage of the two-year project is under way, with findings to be released this year.
Mrs Polson-Genge says the research focused on the impact the pack was having on five-year-old children and their families, and would be a resource Rotary could use to support the project's success.
Children, parents and teachers were surveyed and interviewed from various towns and rural schools, and a range of deciles.
Children were asked what they did with the kit, who did this with them, which components of the kit they used at home and which ones they used the most.
"With parents we were looking to see how useful they found the kit, whether the school was helpful with explaining how the kit could be used, and then how useful they found the information that came with the kit."
One of the more interesting things to come from the second lot of data was that parents seemed to be aware of how the pack could be used to support what children were learning at school, she said.
Another thing that had become quite clear during the research was that new-entrant teachers were deliberately telling the children during classroom exercises that they could do the same things at home with their packs.
Many of the pack's components were used in class, so it was easier for pupils to see the connections between the work they did at school, and the work they could do at home.
The packs were a special thing for children, Ms Paris says, and every child seemed to be really excited about getting something of their own.
One parent had made the comment that it put every child at the same level and was not just for one group of children.
The whiteboards had also been popular with siblings, and it was good that younger children were getting the chance to use the packs as well, Mrs Polson-Genge says. Some families also used the magnets on the fridge so words and letters were clearly visible.
It was hard to say whether a child's excitement about the kit encouraged parents to get more involved, or whether it was the parents encouraging their children to use the packs. It was probably a bit of both, they believe.
Harder still was measuring the effect the packs had had on individual learning results at school, as there were so many factors involved in how children learn to read, Ms Paris said.
While a child's progress was measured by teachers, it was impossible to say if the progress was based on the introduction of the literacy packs alone.
"Certainly the responses from parents, children and teachers show they all highly value the kit. It gets kids interested in literacy right from the start."
Education Ministry acting southern regional manager Kathryn Palmer says letters from parents and schools have been highly supportive of the literacy pack project, and the ministry commended the Invercargill East Rotary Club initiative and its success.
A ministry spokeswoman says while the ministry had no information on new-entrant students' literacy levels, pupils would be assessed by teachers and the records held by schools.
"There is no one way of assessing new-entrant children. It can vary from teacher to teacher and school to school."
She says the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) was a consistent measure, and looked at year-five level students in 40 countries around the world.
The study recognised the home had an important role in fostering literacy, and there were various activities parents could do with their children that were found to be related to higher reading achievement when children were older.
The most recent results available, from the 2005/2006 assessment, show New Zealand pupils, on average, performed well in reading literacy when compared with their peers in a range of other countries.
Compared with many other countries, New Zealand has a relatively large group of students who demonstrate advanced reading comprehension, but there is also a group of students who are relatively weak in reading comprehension.
The challenge for education is to support all children to realise their potential, the study says.
And that's the goal of the packs, for as long as they can be funded. Because next week, another group of excited five-year-olds will be starting school, and starting their reading and writing adventure.
No one wants any child to be left behind, and the innovative scheme goes some way to ensuring this doesn't happen.
NZ pupils rate well globally
The most recent assessment of New Zealand children's literacy skills in comparison with other countries was completed in 2005/2006.
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessed year-five pupils in 40 countries, most in the northern hemisphere.
The study looked at the main reasons children of this age group read, and assessed their processing and reading comprehension skills.
Pupils' attitudes toward reading and their views of themselves as readers, and what they do to develop their literacy, are important factors that are linked to achievement, the study says.
The study also provides information on how the home environment affects reading literacy achievement and how parents can foster reading literacy.
The first study was undertaken in 2001, and again in 2010/2011 – those results are due this year.
Participants were on average 10 years old, the age where most children would have learned to read and would now be reading to learn, the study says.
HOW DID NZ PUPILS COMPARE?
- In statistical terms, New Zealand scores were significantly higher than the PIRLS scale average of 500.
- Also significantly higher than the average score for pupils in 19 countries, but significantly lower than the average score for pupils in 17 countries.
- New Zealand pupils were stronger on questions where they had to use reasoning skills (interpreting and integrating ideas) than they were on questions requiring text-based skills (focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information).
- While New Zealand had a large group of pupils who demonstrated very advanced reading comprehension skills compared to many other countries, there was also a slightly bigger group of weaker readers than some of the higher-performing countries.
- New Zealand boys and girls typically achieved above the international averages, but the average difference between our sexes of 24 points was one of the biggest internationally.
- The reading literacy achievement of New Zealand year-five pupils was about the same, whether they went to urban or rural schools.
- While there were low and high-achieving pupils at all school decile categories, mid-range and higher decile schools were greater than the reading literacy average score for students in lower-decile schools.
WHAT THEIR PARENTS SAID
- Seventy-four per cent of New Zealand year-five pupils had a high level of engagement in literacy-related activities before starting school, compared to 54 per cent internationally.
- Ninety per cent of year-five pupils had attended an early childhood education facility for more than a year before starting school.
- On average, year-five pupils who had not attended an early childhood education facility, or had attended for one year or less, had lower reading literacy achievement than other year-five pupils.
Source: Ministry of Education PIRLS in New Zealand publications.PIRLS is co-ordinated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The ministry's Comparitive Education Research Unit is responsible for PIRLS in New Zealand.
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Article from The Southland Times