LearningA-Z and ExploreLearning

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• WELCOME

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• Who wants marks? Parents or Children?
• Do you know what children really want?
• Do flowers Fly?

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• In our quest for Marks and Ranks, we are
  neglecting Fundamental aspects of Education.
• As a result
• We have students who score high in examinations
• But
• Score very low in reading skills, comprehension
  skills,
• Average to below average expression skills
• Not so good Mathematical and scientific literacy

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• We want to make a difference in the system of
  education through
• Shifting our focus from
• Marks to Real Understanding
• From Stressful education to enquiry based
  education
• Are u Ready for the Change????

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• India is said to have an examination system but
  not an education system.
• ..CNR Rao, Head,
• Scientific advisory council to PM
• How do our children learn

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• There is a complete disconnect between education
  and Nature.
• Pre-primary to class V crucial for proper
  foundations.
• Need of the hour is to go back to Fundamentals
  of Education. One of the fundamentals are Reading
  skills.

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• How important is Reading ?

• Reading is regarded as the most important skill
  that a child must acquire in schooling years.
• Children learn to read. Adults read to learn.
• Reading is a skill which means- it is not an
  inborn talent and must be taught, be put to
  practice over and over again.

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• Skill of Reading

• There are two main reasons for reading
• Reading for pleasure
• Reading for Information
• There are several ways of reading
• Skimming, Scanning, Extensive reading,
• Intensive reading

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• Current scenario

• Have we ever discussed about importance of
  reading in school?
• Do we have any plan of action for promoting
  reading skills among students?
• Do students know about various methods of reading
  practices for varied purposes?
• What do you understand about Reading Literacy?

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• Reading to Comprehension

• Reading involves a variety of skills
• Recognizing the script of language .
  Understanding explicitly stated information.
  Understanding information when not explicitly
  stated . Understanding conceptual meaning
  ..understanding relations within the sentence
  interpreting text by going outside it
  .selective
  extraction of relevant information from the
  text. Transcoding information to diagrammatic
  display.

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• SKILL OF SPEAKING

• Speaking is a muscular activity. People use
  speech organs to produce sounds.
• Learning to speak our own language, we learn
  certain specific muscle habits.
• Where sounds of a second language are different
  from those of our mother tongue we have to learn
  new muscle habits

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• Current scenario in India

• More than 50 of 5th class children in Rural
  India can not read even class 2 book ASER
  report 2011 (Annual status of Education report by
  Pradham, NGO)
• PISA 2009 report .
• Report after report suggest that India stands at
  bottom of the list of Developing countries where
  quality of education is concerned.

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• PISA 2009 REPORT

• PISA program for international student
  Assessment. PISA seeks to measure how well the
  students have acquired knowledge and skills to
  function as a successful members of the society.
• Conducts exam once in 3 years for OECD countries
  (Organization for economic cooperation and
  Development which includes all major developed
  countries)
• First time students from two states from India
  have participated.
• Conducts tests on Reading skills, maths and
  science skills of students of age 15 yrs to 15
  yrs 3 months.

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• Where do we stand?

• Average overall reading skill score
• OECD countries 493
• China- (Shanghai) 556
• Tamilnadu 337
• Himachal Pradesh 317
• Out of 78 countries participated, India stands at
  77th position in overall ranking only above
  Kyrgyzstan.

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• What is reading literacy

• An individuals capacity to
• Understand
• Use
• Reflect on
• Engage with written text

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• Approach to Reading Development

• NCERT says print rich environment is necessary
  for language development.
• Their text books are not sufficient to develop
  language skills
• We need to introduce lot of other interesting
  books for children.

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• What kind of books are there for children to
  develop reading and comprehension skills?
• Learning a-z has scientifically designed books
  which are appropriate for their age, topics
  selected are native and includes multiple genre
  like fiction, non-fiction, poetry etc.
• More importantly introduce English as a
  language and not as a subject.

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• Criteria for leveled books of Learning a-z

• Word count
• No. of different words
• Ratio of different words to total words
• No. of high frequency words
• Ratio of high frequency words to total words
• No. of low frequency words
• Ratio of low frequency words to total words
• Sentence strength

• Sentence complexity
• Predictability
• Language pattern and Repetition
• Print size, spacing, and No. of words per page
• Illustration support
• Concept load
• Topic familiarity

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• Who are using Learning A-z

• Nearly 50 of the school districts in USA and
  Canada use these resources.
• Teachers from 155 countries use these resources
• Kendriya a Vidyalayas in India are launching
  from June 2012.

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• THANK YOU