Update

Hi there tout la gang,

We don't have much to say about research in practice at the Café right now

but we are talking policy and practice over here now: Literacy Enquirers.

Monday, December 3, 2007

who said anything about fun

Here is another literacy story:

The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, conducted by Boston College, assessed 215,000 fourth-grade students' ability to read both literary and informational texts.

Russia topped the 2006 PIRLS study, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore ...Rounding out the top 10 were Luxembourg, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium. The United States ranked 14th, followed by England at 15th. The worst performances came from South Africa, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Indonesia, Iran, Trinidad and Tobago, Macedonia, Georgia and Romania.
You might say, "Who cares?" but here is my favourite part:
The study found that girls on average showed higher reading ability than boys, and that only half of students polled enjoyed reading, with few reading for fun.

1 comment:

literacies editor said...

A few weeks ago, while waiting for a medical appointment, I overheard a teacher talking about children in Grade 4. She said that it's the first year in which kids (here in Ontario, at least) are given textbooks. If a child is struggling with reading, that's when they really begin to fall behind...and the student-teacher ratio for Grade 4s is no different than for other classes. Interesting, then, that this test is with that demographic...

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