Fiji Hub Achievement Report

May 2017
Objective: Education Enrichment

Reading and Phonic Assessments at Navunisea District School

Objective:

To improve literacy levels of students and increase their understanding of the English
language.

Summary:
GVI Volunteers conduct reading assessment/phonics tests three times a year, this is conducted at the
beginning of each school term. After the first round of testing in January we are able to group the
children by their ability, so that tailored literacy lessons can be taught to children who were reading
at a similar level. GVI use the information collected from these tests to inform their lesson planning,
and when volunteer numbers are limited it helps us to focus our efforts on the children who we can
benefit the most at that time.

Report:
This month at Navunisea District School GVI volunteers and staff have been working hard to ensure
that all students from classes 3-8 have been read with to assess their current reading level. This
process, already conducted in January of this year, will be repeated three times a year in total, once
at the beginning of each term. After the first round of testing in January we were able to group the
children by their ability, so that tailored literacy lessons could be taught to children who were
reading at a similar level. GVI use the information collected from these tests to inform their lesson
planning, and when volunteer numbers are limited it helps us to focus our efforts on the children
who we can benefit the most at that time. Now that the second round of reading tests are in, it is
time for us to analyse the results and change and adapt the groups, types of lessons and frequency
of lessons wherever necessary.

Classes 5-8 have had students selected for targeted interventions determined by their reading
record tests in January 2017. On average these students have been seen by GVI volunteers in small
group sessions for 30 minutes at a time usually 3 or 4 times a week. From these year groups 12
students were targeted in total for term one, resulting in 9 of these students making at least a levels
progress on their May 2017 reading record test. Of the three remaining students two stayed at the
same level with one student dropping back a level. This student had already been flagged by a
volunteer as a student who was not working well within his current peer group. In March he begun
1:1 lessons with a volunteer to see if this could rectify the problem. When the third reading
assessments have been completed we will be able to see whether this has had the desired impact on
reading progress.

GVI have been able to provide a volunteer for both classes 3 and 4 for the majority of term one, so
that all children are taken for literacy or phonics lessons at least twice a week. However, they have
had a challenging year so far as they do not have a fit-for-purpose classroom and are subsequently
temporarily housed in a UNICEF teaching tent, they are the only remaining composite class at NDS
and their teacher also has the responsibility of being the Head Teacher. Possibly due to a
combination of trying circumstances and teaching time lost due to adverse weather conditions at
the beginning of the year, not as many students have made the progress in their reading that we
would have liked to see. Out of a total of 33 students in the composite class 15 have dropped a
level, while 12 have remained at the same level and 6 students have made at least a level's progress.
Throughout term two GVI will strive to provide targeted literacy lessons for the students who have
fallen back, as we know they are capable of reaching higher reading levels with the correct
interventions. As term three begins we will be able to retest to monitor how these students are
continuing to perform, going forward we will also be creating a log which will enable volunteers to
keep track of how often students miss lessons due to weather conditions, changed timetables or
absence.

However, when all children present were again tested to assess their phonic skills (the individual
sounds that each letter or group of letters make in English) 27 out of 32 tested made progress.

The aim of the phonics assessment is to show the sounds that children know or not know, which
leads into the volunteer lesson planning for the following term. In order to improve their phonic test
score the children must be able to know the sounds and successfully blend them to read simple
decodable words such as p-e-n pen.

Some children are making huge leaps in their phonic knowledge, which will enable them soon
enough to be able to access a range of books and literature. Our next obstacle will be the lack of
comprehension, which is clearly shown in the reading assessment results. This is a harder problem
to tackle, but with careful grouping of students and tailored lesson planning we will begin to move
forward to improve the reading and comprehension progress of all students in classes 3 and 4.