3. The key components of successful literacy programs – highlighting elements that foster local context and inclusion – Part 1

• In Event: Achieving reading skills in a contextualized, inclusive way to mitigate the risk for conflicts – what does evidence-aligned reading instruction tell us?

Proposal

The first part of this presentation will emphasize that literacy is critical for social cohesion and there is now strong evidence on how teachers can best promote literacy in LMICs.
Literacy brings many civic benefits: it increases social cohesion and civic and social engagement and decreases poverty and inequality. Yet large numbers of children in many LMICs are not learning to read, partly because of a lack of evidence-based instruction in the classroom. There is now strong evidence from LMICs on which instructional practices are most effective in promoting literacy in primary schools.

Teachers should provide explicit and systematic instruction in six core reading skills:-
- oral language development,
- phonological awareness,
- systematic phonics instruction,
- reading fluency,
- reading comprehension, and
- writing.

The presenter will highlight key evidence from LMICs with concrete examples, and also discuss “dosage” of the instruction for these core skills, and how the dosage may need to change over the course of a child’s education.

Author

• Benjamin Piper, Gates Foundation