Reading for pleasure in Honduran primary schools: Libraries to support reading as a life-long skill

• In Event: Libraries to support literacy development: scale, sustainability and impact

Proposal

In the past 15 years, the Honduran education system has made important strides tracking student performance through testing and national standards. However, reading performance in the Spanish language has stagnated according to the past five years of standardized testing results at the national level. The lack of new learning and teaching materials, especially in the Spanish language, low teacher motivation, and the lack of training in early grade reading have been determined to have affected reading in the classroom. More than 30% of children in schools are not able to read at the appropriate grade level. Furthermore, reading comprehension of advanced texts, especially in upper primary levels, is challenging for a large proportion of students. In Honduras, focused reading in Spanish is still mostly done as a classroom task rather than as a way to improve students’ skills for life-long success.

For this reason, the Honduras Reading Activity (De Lectores a Líderes) is focused on improving reading and writing skills in Spanish from first to sixth grade in 2500 schools serving 15,000 teachers in six western provinces and five high-crime urban sectors. As part of the intervention model, the project is piloting several approaches to promote the availability of books through school libraries. For this component, the project will explain its approach to engage public-private partnerships and civil society to leverage resources from Honduran businesses to sponsor schools with books, supplies and connectivity to help schools provide access to reading materials in their school libraries. For this initiative, each school must contribute a space for the library as well as identify a teacher, employee, or volunteer who will serve as the designated librarian. The presentation will bring to light the lessons learned to date in promoting spaces for reading, especially reading for leisure and fun.

Author

• Sergio Ramírez Mena, EDC