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Any queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to World Bank Publications, The World Bank Group, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. in Brazil 2 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................. 5 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 6 Part 1 – Context............................................................................................................................... 10 Lliteracy policies in the education systems analyzed .............................................................. 10 Part 2 – Analysis.............................................................................................................................. 18 What is the level of structure and guidance on the skills to be taught? How are skills aligned with other pedagogical resources? The role of learning sequences ..................................... 18 When do children start the literacy process?....................................................................... 19 How many hours of instruction do children have? .............................................................. 19 What to teach and in which order? How do skills compare with the Early Grade Reading Rainbow? ..................................................................................................................................... 21 How does the instructional material support teachers to cover the learning sequence? ..... 24 How do learning assessments compare in terms of their content and length? .................... 33 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................... 36 Annex ................................................................................................................................................ 39 4 Acknowledgments This paper was written by Louisee Cruz under the guidance of Michael Crawford. This paper was peer reviewed by Andre Loureiro and Adelle Pushparatnam, and also benefitted from comments from Ildo Lautharte, Sergio Venegas Marin and Maria Eugenia Oviedo. The author expresses her gratitude to the education officials in the different Brazilian municipalities and states included in this study, who graciously offered their time and shared with us different resources to make this analysis possible. This work was made possible with support from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). 5 Introduction Literacy is the basis of a successful education trajectory, and should be prioritized to foster countries’ development and recovery from COVID-19. Learning to read and understand the meaning of texts is an essential step to develop high-order skills, but it is not an easy task to achieve. Education access has been greatly expanded in most regions of the world, but still, 53 percent of world children before the pandemic could not read and understand a simple text at the age of 10.1 School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to drive up this share to around 70 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries. Estimates also point that the current generation of students are at risk of losing US$ 17 trillion in lifetime earnings, which represents 14 percent of today’s global GDP.2 It is critical, therefore, to increase and improve literacy policies. Today, there is plenty of evidence on the science of reading that can help the world progress much faster in achieving effective childhood literacy. Progress in psychology and education research have contributed to a better understanding of the reading processes that occur inside the brain and the effectiveness of different teaching practices for student learning.3 Learning to read is not a natural process to the brain, but an acquired skill, and to acquire it, it is key to receive informed and explicit instruction. Achieving reading comprehension encompasses multiple skills that can be grouped into two domains: translation of the print into recognizable words, and translation of identified words into meaning. Both domains are necessary, but actual instructional emphasis varies with the language being taught and children’s level of development. Evidence points to the importance of explicitly teaching the sounds that letters make (phonics) in the initial stages of the literacy process of alphabetic writing systems.4 With a solid basis on phonics, children can better progress towards higher order literacy skills, such as recognizing words fluently, and text comprehension. The framework adopted in this report is in line with the science of reading on what effective literacy instruction looks like: (1) Evidence-based curriculum delineating the skills’ set students must learn and the progression between these skills. A first step to improve the literacy policy is designing an early-grade curriculum grounded on the skills and knowledge that research has shown to be integral to reading development, a curriculum that clearly states what students should know and shows the progression from basic to more complex skills.5 1 World Bank (2019). “Ending Learning Poverty: What Will It Take?” Washington, DC: World Bank. 2 Azevedo, Rogers, Ahlgren, Cloutier, Chakroun, Chang, Mizunoya, Reuge, Brossard & Bergmann (2021). “The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery (English).’’ Washington, D.C.: World Bank. 3 A recent World Bank report presents this evidence in detail with the purpose to foster evidence-based literacy policies: Moats (2022). An Architecture for Literacy: Creating Effective Instructional Plans for the Grades. In press. World Bank. 4 There are different pedagogical approaches to help children learn to read and an old debate on which one is more effective. This motivated a series of research, especially in the field of psychology, about reading development and cognitive processes. For a review, see Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg (2001). “How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading” and Castles, Rastle & Nation (2018). “Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert.” 5 Moats (2022); Castles, Rastle & Nation (2018). 6 (2) Aligned pedagogical resources and high-quality efficient instruction. A second step is aligning instruction material, teacher training, pedagogical interventions, and, more importantly, teaching practice to the curriculum. A systematic, direct, cumulative instruction on the components of reading is effective for making most children learn to read.6 (3) Adequate amount of reading instruction and practice. A third step is assuring children have adequate academic learning time, meaning they are engaged in activities that are meaningful to foster learning.7 Academic learning time is a difficult measure to capture and may vary across languages, countries and available education resources. Nevertheless, increases in the amount of instruction contributes towards learning, especially in the early grades, making it imperative for schools to maximize the time devoted to literacy.8 Structured pedagogy is one type of intervention that generally incorporates the aforementioned framework and for which there is evidence of its effectiveness in improving learning in developing contexts. Research focusing on low- and middle-income countries indicates that structured pedagogical interventions, that is, interventions that include detailed instructions on what to teach, when, and how, greatly help children learn,9 increasing student time on task10 and raising learning outcomes.11 These effects are stronger when interventions are implemented in a way that is aligned with other resources, such as curricula, teacher training, textbooks, teaching materials, and learning assessments.12 The World Bank has developed several resources to help countries incorporate the evidence of the science of reading into literacy policies. Resources are listed as follows: (1) An Early Grade Reading Rainbow: A Quick Guide for Ending Learning Poverty, which is a tool that synthesizes evidence on the essential skill set in the literacy cycle and presents it in simple language to facilitate understanding by all key players in education policy13; (2) a guidance paper on the key skills involved in learning to read14; (3) a guidance paper on how to translate this set of skills into classroom experiences to help teachers deliver high-quality early reading instruction.15 (4) A compendium of lesson plans, teaching guides and other learning resources in over 40 languages16; (5) a selection of key classroom practices and accompanying teaching 6 Shanahan (2022). How to Provide Effective Reading Instruction. World Bank; Torgesen, J. (2002). The prevention of reading difficulties. Journal of School Psychology, 40(1), 7–26. 7 Shanahan (2022); Fisher, Berliner, Filby, Marliave, Cahen & Dishaw (2015). Teaching behaviors, academic learning time, and student achievement: An overview. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 50(1), 6-24. 8 Shanahan (2022); Andersen, S.C., Humlum, M.K., & Nandrup, A.B. (2016). Increasing instruction time increases learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(27), 7481-7484. 9 World Bank (2019). 10Rieth, Herbert, and Carolyn Evertson (1988). “Variables Related to the Effective Instruction of Difficult -to-Teach Children.” Focus on Exceptional Children 20 (5): 1–8. 11 Brunette, Tracy, Benjamin Piper, Rachel Jordan, Simon King, and Rehemah Nabacwa (2019). “The Impact of Mother Tongue Reading Instruction in Twelve Ugandan Languages and the Role of Language Complexity, Socioeconomic Factors, and Program Implementation.” Comparative Education Review 63 (4): 591–612; Gove, Amber, Medina Korda Poole, and Benjamin Piper (2017). “Designing for Scale: Reflections on Rolling Out Reading Improvement in Kenya and Liberia.” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 155: 77–95. 12 Piper, B., Y. Sitabkhan, J. Mejía, and K. Betts (2018). “Effectiveness of Teachers’ Guides in the Global South: Scripting, Learning Outcomes, and Classroom Utilization.” RTI Press . 13 World Bank (2022). Early Grade Reading Rainbow: A Quick Guide to Ending Learning Poverty. 14 Moats, L. (2022). How Children Learn to Read: Toward Evidence-Aligned Lesson Planning. World Bank. 15 Shanahan, T. (2022). How to Provide Effective Reading Instruction. World Bank. 16 World Bank (2022). Structured Lesson Plans for Literacy Instruction: A Compendium of Global Resources. 7 examples17; (6) a policy paper on the effectiveness of teaching in the languages that students and teachers speak and understand best18; (7) a diagnostic tool to assess the quality of teachers’ guides19; and (8) this report, which analyzes how public education systems in Brazil incorporate practices that are aligned with the evidence on how children learn to read. The goal of this study is to assess if literacy practices in the highest-performing education systems in Brazil are aligned with the Science of Reading evidence. By doing so, the study aims to provide practical examples of evidence-based literacy instruction that can be helpful for low and middle-income countries. This report is guided by the following questions: What is the degree of structure and detail of skills in the curricula? What skills should be taught and in which order? How do these skills compare with the World Bank’s Early Grade Reading Rainbow model?20 What is the level of guidance offered to teachers on what to teach and how does this guidance appear in the teaching material? How aligned are the curriculum, textbooks, teacher materials, and monitoring tools? The intended audience for this report includes education actors responsible for designing and implementing literacy policies in a governmental position or supporting governments. The report mainly focuses on the structure and alignment of literacy instruction. An evaluation of specific curricular content or the quality of pedagogical resources is beyond the scope of the paper. As previously mentioned, other World Bank reports provide more guidance on the content and high-quality teaching practices.21 The current report is deliberately descriptive, as it is primarily focused on the structure of literacy instruction, assessing the presence of key elements mentioned in the literature on the science of reading and how different resources are connected in the literacy practices analyzed. It does not quantify how well a certain system is working or make any assessments on how positive or negative a certain practice is. An assessment of the relationship between specific content and structural effectiveness can be better addressed by another type of analysis. The pedagogical strategies presented in this study refer to the pre-pandemic context, and the comparative analyses seek to exemplify good practices and not to establish a ranking among education systems. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, by the time governments were contacted, all systems were undergoing adaptations of their pedagogical strategies to adjust them to remote teaching. The paper reports pre-pandemic strategies, since these more accurately reflect the results in the IDEB 2019 used as criteria for sample selection. Nevertheless, it is likely that the alignment of pre-pandemic pedagogical practices is reflected in the responses of these governments to the educational challenges imposed by COVID-19. It is important to reinforce that the exercise carried out in this study is exploratory in nature and does not seek to establish a ranking among the education systems. This report has two parts: context and analysis. Part 1 briefly explains Brazil’s education system, the sample selection, and the main aspects of the literacy policy in each government studied. Part 2 assesses the degree of structure and alignment in the literacy policies, how the skills set in each curriculum compare with the Early Grade Reading Rainbow, the type of guidance 17 World Bank (2022). Handbook for Literacy Lesson Planning: Early-Grade Classroom Activities for Teaching Children to Read. 18 World Bank (2021). “Loud and Clear: Effective Language of Instruction Policies for Learning.” Washington, DC: World Bank. 19 Ding (2021). “Teacher’s Guide Diagnostic Tool Manual." Coach Series, World Bank, Washington, DC. 20 World Bank (2022). Early Grade Reading Rainbow: A Quick Guide for Ending Learning Poverty. 21 Especially Moats (2022) and Shanahan (2022). 8 provided to teachers, and a brief comparison of content and structure of learning assessments. The last section presents final remarks. 9 Part 1 – Context Literacy policies in the education systems analyzed Municipalities are the leading primary education providers in Brazil, but some states have a significant share of enrollment. Pre-university education is a shared responsibility among federal, state, and municipal governments in Brazil. Early-childhood education (ECE), primary and lower secondary are mainly under municipal (local) jurisdiction. Although states may provide primary and lower secondary education (grades 1-5 and 6-9, respectively), their main focus is upper-secondary provision (grades 10-12). Both entities have significant autonomy towards education financing, policy design, teachers' hiring, and training. Moreover, since states have more human and financial resources, many have regular standardized learning assessments in which municipalities are invited to participate. The federal government supports literacy mainly by setting learning expectations for each grade, establishing learning targets for states and municipalities and providing resources, especially textbooks. The federal government offers policy guidelines, financial support, and monitoring. In terms of guidelines, the Ministry of Education (MoE) approved in 2017 the National Common Curricula Base (Base Nacional Comum Curricular – BNCC), which defined learning expectations for each grade from early-childhood education (ECE) to high school and that should be followed by all schools.22 For literacy, the BNCC defines that students should be able to read by the end of grade 2. Additionally, the MoE establishes, in partnership with subnational governments, learning targets measured by the Education Development Index (Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação – IDEB23), which is composed of passing rates and learning indicators. Regarding education financing, the MoE transfers monetary and in-kind resources to subnational governments. An important in-kind transfer is the National Textbook Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático – PNLD), which provides structured material to all students enrolled in public schools in primary and secondary education. Participating schools choose from a list of pre-selected titles, and the federal government purchases and distributes the materials. With regards to the monitoring of education outcomes, the MoE conducts a yearly school census as well as biannual student learning assessments.24 There is a literacy assessment (SAEB Alfabetização), but it is currently only implemented in a sample of students in grade 2. The educational system in Brazil has a fertile environment for structured pedagogy. This report considers structured pedagogy as a set of aligned and detailed practices that help teachers know what students should learn, how to teach these skills, and how to monitor student learning. The BNCC, by setting learning expectations for students in each grade, significantly contributes to align the education system and favor structured pedagogy programs in Brazil (figure 1). For instance, student books distributed by the PNLD program must cover all the skills listed in BNCC 22 Brasil. 2018. Base Nacional Comum Curricular. Ministry of Education. Brasília. Available in http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/images/BNCC_EI_EF_110518_versaofinal_site.pdf 23 The Index for the Development of Education (IDEB) is calculated by the Ministry of Education and measures student’s achievement in grade 5 and passing rates between grades 1 to 5. All IDEB scores presented in this report refer to the year 2019 in primary education. 24 Currently, learning assessments in Language and Mathematics target grades 5, 9 and 12 on a Census basis, and grade 2 on a sample basis. There are also Humanities and Sciences exams for grade 9 on a sample basis. 10 to the respective grade. Teacher books highlight the abilities addressed in each chapter, helping teachers organize their lesson plans. State and municipal governments must align their curricula with the BNCC. Many have also established structured learning sequences that detail – for every bimester, per month, and sometimes week - the set of skills to be taught (the term learning sequences is used throughout the report to avoid confusion with overlapping curricular documents, such as the BNCC, state and municipal curricula). Likewise, learning monitoring tools (such as diagnostic evaluations and standardized assessments) are also guided by the BNCC. At the same time, considering the BNCC was recently approved, the alignment between practices and pedagogical resources is not homogeneous across the country and, for some systems, it can be considered relatively new. The majority of policies presented in this report precede BNCC and can be considered positive outliers in relation to the average level of alignment and structure present in education systems.25 Figure 1 – Alignment of practices to support teachers Our sample encompasses 7 municipalities and 2 states with the highest education outcomes in primary education. The main characteristics of our sample are presented in table 1. Ceará and São Paulo were chosen since they are the states that, in 2019, had the highest IDEB in primary education and have a structured literacy program.26 For Ceará, the second criterion is even more relevant since the state has less than 2% of primary school enrollments. The municipalities are Sobral (CE), Itatiba (SP), Teresina (PI), Apucarana (PR), Paranavaí (PR), Coruripe (AL), and Teotônio Vilela (AL). Municipalities were selected based on two criteria: those that in 2019 had an IDEB equal to or higher than 7.4 and more than 1,800 students enrolled in primary education.27 25 World Bank research already pointed to the importance of aligning pedagogical practices in Brazil, as seen in Bruns, B. & Luque, J. (2015). Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/20488. 26 We have chosen state governments based on their results on IDEB for primary education in 2019. The top four states are Paraná, São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Ceará, respectively. We did not contact Paraná because it has only 0.5% of student enrollment in primary education (most students are at municipal systems) and does not provide pedagogical support to municipalities (besides a standardized learning assessments for grade 2). Minas Gerais did not share sufficient pedagogical resources to conduct the analysis. 27 At IDEB’s 7.4, 7.5, and 7.6, plenty of municipalities qualify, and we picked one per range, the one with the highest student enrollment. Under these criteria, 12 municipalities were selected, but 4 cities in Ceará did not reply to our 11 Table 1 – Sample's main characteristics Enrollment Human IDEB primary GDP per primary Development State Municipality education capita education Index HDI (2019) (2017-18)* (2018) (2010) 1 Ceará - 6.5 3344 0.682 17,178 2 Ceará Sobral 8.4 11569 0.714 21,679 3 São Paulo - 6.5 627326 0.783 48,542 4 São Paulo Itatiba 7.5 5655 0.778 47,778 5 Piauí Teresina 7.4 37806 0.751 22,481 6 Paraná Apucarana 7.6 6502 0.748 23,872 7 Paraná Paranavaí 7.7 4721 0.763 30,150 8 Alagoas Coruripe 8.9 4597 0.626 23,971 Teotônio 9 Alagoas Vilela 8.4 3441 0.564 10,500 *GDP per capita in BRL from 2017 (municipalities) and 2018 (states). The pedagogical strategies presented in this study refer to the pre-pandemic context, and comparative analyses seek to exemplify good practices and not establish a ranking among education systems. Sample governments were contacted mainly between October and December 2020 to learn in detail about the literacy programs of each system and request their pedagogical materials to support the comparative analysis. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, all systems contacted were undergoing adaptations of their pedagogical strategies to adjust them to remote teaching. The study records the pre-pandemic strategies since these more accurately reflect the results in the IDEB 2019 used as criteria for sample selection. Nevertheless, it is clear that the alignment of pre-pandemic pedagogical practices is reflected in the responses of these governments to the educational challenges imposed by COVID-19. It is important to state that comparative analyses seek to provide examples of how aligned and structured literacy policies can adopt distinct strategies. Thus, the exercise carried out in this study is exploratory in nature and does not seek to establish a ranking among the education systems. Ceará has a highly structured program to support municipalities in literacy and is the state with the highest growth in IDEB. Ceará’s state department of education has only 3,350 students in primary education (less than 2% of enrollments) but since 2007 it implements a technical assistance program to municipalities, which are the main providers of ECE, primary and lower secondary education (municipal systems together have 500,000 students enrolled in primary education). The Literacy at the Right Age Program (Programa para a Alfabetização na Idade Certa – PAIC) provides structured material to grades 1 and 2 and technical support to municipal education departments in the topics of (i) teachers’ professional development, (ii) learning monitoring, (iii) education management, (iv) ECE, and (v) reading.28 Participation in the program contact. They are Cruz, Novo Oriente, Jijoca de Jericoacoara and Pedra Branca. We also talked to Quixeramobim (CE), but they did not send their pedagogical material. 28 The PAIC is a policy that has been in place for 14 years and has naturally undergone improvements over the years. Because of this, some clarifications are important to situate the instruments analyzed in this study in relation to the program as a whole. First, the program is currently called Mais Paic, because it has been expanded to students in all elementary schools (1st to 9th grades). Second, the overall goal of the program is to support the municipalities, as they are the main providers of Kindergarten and Elementary School in Ceará. The state offers a set of tools (learning 12 is voluntary and it is up to the municipalities themselves to integrate the material and the training offered into their local literacy policies. The teacher material presents a learning sequence aligned with the state curriculum, indicating the learning objectives for the week and month, in addition to daily didactic guidelines on the skills to be taught and how to develop them in class. The training occurs four times a year in a cascade model, where the state secretariat forms regional teams, which form municipal teams. The literacy process takes place between the 1st and 2nd grades, although PAIC also supports municipalities in the implementation of pedagogical strategies and training for ECE, in line with ECE socio-cognitive development goals. In terms of learning monitoring, the state prepares diagnostic evaluations to be applied by municipalities (grades 1-2) and sponsors an annual standardized assessment for students at grade 2. Since PAIC was implemented, Ceará is the state with the highest increase in IDEB scores in Brazil (considering learning outcomes from the state and municipal systems).29 The literacy program in the state of São Paulo is the largest in Brazil, benefiting about 1 million students. The state of São Paulo has IDEB of 6.6 and 627,00 primary education students under its jurisdiction (26% of total primary education enrollment in the state). In 2007, it created the literacy program Ler e Escrever (L&E), which serves about 1 million students among the state system and the 628 partner municipalities. It provides students' textbooks, teachers' guidebooks, weekly training to teachers, and learning monitoring protocols. Since the state system does not offer early childhood education, all the instructional material considers that students start the literacy process at grade 1 and, by the end of grade 2, they should be able to read and write. In terms of learning sequence, the state curriculum organizes abilities by bimester, which guides the structured material that also organizes abilities per bimester and indicates which competencies are covered in each activity. The structured material also suggests permanent writing and reading activities and a fixed classroom routine proposal (both on a weekly basis). A diagnostic evaluation is applied at the beginning of the school year and at the end of each school term, and the structured material includes quick writing assessments to be conducted throughout the school year. Additionally, the state has a standardized exam at the end of the year for grade 2 (sample) and grade 3 (census basis), in which partner municipalities also participate. The state government sponsors printing and delivering the instruction material and the implementation of the standardized exam. Each partner municipality organizes its own teachers’ training with the support of state instructors. Schools also use textbooks bought by the federal government (PNLD), but the material from Ler e Escrever is considered more structured and comprehensive. Since 2014, the state also implements a similar program in Mathematics (EMAI), with specific and weekly training for sequence proposal, didactic material, monitoring instruments) and trainings, but it is up to the municipalities to use and implement the practices. Third, the content presented and analyzed in this study is restricted to the literacy cycle because of the scope of the research, but the program also includes learning expectations, structured material, and assessments for students in primary and lower secondary education. Fourth, textbooks presented in this study were used by the state until 2020. The new material is available for download at this link: https://idadecerta.seduc.ce.gov.br/index.php/fique-por-dentro/opiniao-do-leitor 29 See more information in Loureiro, Andre; Cruz, Louisee; Lautharte, Ildo; Evans, David K.. 2020. The State of Ceara in Brazil is a Role Model for Reducing Learning Poverty. World Bank, Washington, DC. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34156. More details about PAIC in Loureiro, A.; Alves, F,; Cruz, L.; Assuncao, M.; Cardoso, T. Technical Assistance for Local Governments to Improve Education Outcomes: An implementation Guide inspired by the case of Ceará in Brazil. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2021. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/490641612772892206/pdf/An-Implementation-Guide-Inspired-by- the-Case-of-Cear%C3%A1-Brazil.pdf 13 teachers and indicating the competencies to be covered each week. In 2020, the programs' content was revised to align to the Brazilian Common Core (BNCC). Sobral has the highest IDEB among cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and its literacy policy has a great influence on Brazilian education. Sobral has 11,600 students in primary education and IDEB 8.4 (2019). In 2001, it started a series of education reforms, including setting clear learning expectations and a structured learning sequence, establishing a selection process for hiring school principals, strengthening teaching quality and learning monitoring, and providing remedial education to students lagging behind. As a result, in eight years Sobral assured that all children in grades 1-5 had adequate learning levels, closing learning gaps and eliminating student dropout. Sobral was a pioneer is defining that students should read by grade 2, which later became a national guideline. In addition, it influenced the creation of PAIC in Ceará and reforms in many municipalities in Brazil, such as Teresina. Currently, the literacy process in Sobral starts in ECE. In terms of structured material, Sobral combines textbooks from the federal and state programs (PNLD and PAIC), purchases additional material with municipal resources (ECE and grade 1), and develops its own supplementary material tailored to local needs. This tailored material includes weekly guidelines for teachers, defining abilities to be taught and linking them to activities in the materials. Unlike many municipalities in Brazil, Sobral has its own school for Teachers' Professional Development (ESFAPEGE) and an external unit that prepares learning evaluations (Casa da Avaliação). ESFAPEGE organizes teachers' training and instructional material, establishes the learning sequence, and prepares supplementary teaching material. Teachers' training occurs every month, and each school has a reference teacher to support others in that subject. The evaluation unit prepares diagnostic and standardized exams, and the municipality also participates in Ceará´s standardized exam.30 Teresina has the highest IDEB among capital cities in Brazil and builds upon Sobral’s experience. Teresina is the capital of Piauí, in the northeast of the country, has 37,800 students enrolled in primary education and an IDEB of 7.4 (highest IDEB among capital cities in Brazil). Inspired in the case of Sobral, Teresina established in 2014 a series of structuring processes to align teachers' professional development (TPD), pedagogical support, and learning monitoring. Every two weeks, teachers have TPD and leave the session with a structured pedagogical plan for the next 2 weeks. Pedagogical coordinators support teachers at schools regularly and report the results to the secretary of education on a monthly meeting. Teresina adopts a unified list of PNLD textbooks and purchases, with its own resources, extra materials for ECE, grades 1 and 2 (most of them also used in Sobral). Learning monitoring is a crucial element through diagnostic and standardized evaluations. The municipality designs its own diagnostic tests and hires an external institute to design and implement an annual standardized assessment at the end of ECE and grades 1-3. An interesting aspect of their literacy policy is using the federal fund from the Mais Alfabetização program to hire tutors who work on remedial education, supporting small groups of students (up to 5) struggling with reading and writing.31 30 More information in: Cruz, Louisee; Loureiro, Andre. 2020. Achieving World-Class Education in Adverse Socioeconomic Conditions: The Case of Sobral in Brazil. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34150 31 More information in Portuguese at Todos pela Educação. 2021. Educação que dá certo: o caso de Teresina (PI). Todos pela Educação. São Paulo, SP. Available in https://educacaoquedacerto.todospelaeducacao.org.br/redes-e- desafios/capital-com-o-melhor-ideb-do-brasil/. Access in November 14, 2021. 14 In Apucarana, south of Brazil, all students in primary education are enrolled in full-time schools, and there is greater autonomy in defining the learning sequence. Apucarana is located in Paraná, in the south of Brazil, in a region with higher income and Human Development Index (HDI). It has 6,500 students in primary education and an IDEB of 7.6. In 2013, it already had all primary schools in a full-time program (8 hours of instruction per day), which constitutes an exception in public education even nowadays, providing first graders with 10 hours of instruction in Portuguese language. The learning sequence in Apucarana is organized by bimesters and it adopts the state curriculum, which also divides abilities by bimester, and a content’s complement. The learning sequence also suggests methodologies and lesson plans to develop abilities with students. The literacy process starts in ECE and ends in grade 2. Apucarana adopts PNLD textbooks, produces complementary material and buys published materials directly from publishers, inclusively for ECE. The municipality adopts as a complement the Boquinhas Methodology,32 which values phonemic awareness and shows students images of their mouths to help them identify the sounds of letters. Learning monitoring is conducted through a specific diagnostic notebook of Boquinhas' methodology, with probing activities for each bimester, diagnostic assessments applied at the beginning of each semester, and school visits from the municipal education department every 2-3 months, besides school internal tests. The municipality also participates in the state standardized assessment for grade 2. Regarding teachers’ professional development, there are two general sessions per year conducted by external specialists, and short training sessions held throughout the year for specific topics, such as the Boquinhas methodology, socioemotional skills and digital technologies.33 Besides a structured literacy policy, Paranavaí organizes a literacy fair to showcase students’ progress in reading and writing. Paranavaí is also in Paraná, has 4,700 students in primary school and an IDEB of 7.7. This municipality adopts a unified list of PNLD textbooks and purchases material for ECE. It defines its learning sequence based on the state's curriculum. Support to teachers occurs through training (eight times a year), workshops focused on pedagogical practices, and visits to schools (three visits a year with classroom observation of every class). The municipality designed a literacy checklist that enumerates a series of best practices. For monitoring learning, Paranavaí develops its diagnostic instruments and applies them twice a year in grades 1-2 and at the end of the school year for children in ECE. Additionally, the municipality participates in the state's standardized assessment for students in grade 2. Finally, Paranavaí promotes a "literacy fair" at the end of the school year to showcase students’ learning progress to parents, other schools, and pre-school children with the goal of facilitating their transition to primary education. Coruripe has the highest IDEB outside Ceará. Coruripe is a municipality in the state of Alagoas, in northeastern Brazil. It has 4,600 students in primary education and an IDEB of 8.9 (highest IDEB among interviewed cities). In 2019, it adapted its municipal curriculum to the BNCC. Coruripe uses PNLD textbooks and purchases complementary material for students from ECE to grade 2. The municipal education department indicates which pedagogical material can be used for each curricular ability. Teachers' training takes place five times a year, and, in between trainings, teachers and pedagogical coordinators conduct customized training at the school, based on learning monitoring results. The secretary of education conducts detailed monitoring 32For reference, see https://metododasboquinhas.com.br/ 33The municipality has shared some pedagogical materials - as the learning sequence and examples of probing activities - after the comparative analysis was conducted, limiting the possibility of exploring in this study Apucarana’s instruments. 15 of students' learning through (1) diagnostic evaluations (designed by the municipality and implemented three times a year for grades 1 and 2, besides an evaluation at the end of ECE), (2) monthly reports prepared by pedagogical coordinators (that conduct classroom observations), and (3) a follow-up spreadsheet. The latter indicates the abilities that students should develop each month, which, ultimately, constitutes a learning sequence that allows a holistic assessment of students’ learning. Finally, Coruripe also has a text production project called My First Book.34 Teotônio Vilela has solid literacy results and does not use structured material in ECE. Teotônio Vilela is a neighborhood in Coruripe and has 4,000 students in primary education and an IDEB of 8.4. In 2015, the municipality restructured its pedagogical practices, setting clear learning expectations and a structured learning sequence, reorganizing classes according to students' levels, and revising teachers' training. Training takes place every two weeks, and during this time, teachers work in small groups to plan their activities for the next two weeks. The technical team at the secretary of education visits schools every two weeks, conducting a very close pedagogical monitoring. They've designed a learning monitoring protocol in which the secretary states the competencies that should be assessed, and then teachers plan their activities. The municipality also has a project to foster reading and writing abilities among students, incentivizing students’ love of reading. Every year, three reading and text production projects are developed, established based on the diagnostic of students' learning levels. In terms of student material, Teotônio Vilela adopts a unified list of PNLD textbooks and purchases supporting material (the same adopted in Sobral). While in many municipalities of our sample the literacy process starts in ECE and students have structured material, Teotônio Vilela does not purchase ECE textbooks, and neither have literacy activities more intensively. Itatiba is a municipality in the state of São Paulo that participates in the state program Ler e Escrever and whose learning sequence associates student abilities to diverse textual genres established for each grade. Itatiba has 5,950 students in primary education and IDEB 7.5. The literacy cycle starts in the municipality at ECE. Itatiba adopts a unified list of PNLD textbooks, participates in the state's program Ler e Escrever, and develops its own complementary material, with didactic sequences to support teachers’ practice and a set of activities to support students. The municipal learning sequence refers to the different materials available and integrates them. Moreover, the municipality prepares training sessions for school principals and teachers and the diagnostic evaluation. Training takes place every month and aims at establishing routine for the week, discussing strategies for developing the skills expected for each bimester, analyzing the areas in which students are struggling the most and planning remedial interventions to foster learning. Part of the technical team at the secretary of education is formed by teachers that continue working in the classrooms, and each trainer is specialized in one grade. The municipality develops its diagnostic evaluations in reading and writing and implements them 4 times a year, besides participating in the state’s standardized assessment for grade 3. Although all municipalities in the sample explore text genres throughout the literacy cycle, in Itatiba there is an explicit focus on it in the learning sequence. 34Details about Coruripe’s education policy can be found in Portuguese here: Todos pela Educação. 2021. Educação que dá certo: o caso de Coruripe (AL). Todos pela Educação. São Paulo, SP. Available in https://educacaoquedacerto.todospelaeducacao.org.br/redes-e-desafios/rural-e-urbana-municipio-garante- qualidade-educacional-para-todos/. Accessed on 14/Nov/2021. 16 After this overview of the literacy policies implemented in each government, the following sections present comparative analysis in terms of pedagogical resources, learning sequences, instruction material, and diagnostic evaluations. 17 Part 2 – Analysis What is the level of structure and guidance on the skills to be taught? How are skills aligned with other pedagogical resources? The role of learning sequences The analysis of the degree of structure and guidance in curricula revealed that governments have opted for establishing a learning sequence as a tool to align pedagogical resources. The education systems assessed have a high degree of alignment between curricula, textbooks, teacher materials, and monitoring tools. This alignment occurs mainly through the definition of a learning sequence, also called teaching plan, that organizes the competencies of the curriculum, establishes progression between skills, defines a time horizon for developing these skills with students (for example, within a week, month, or two months), locates each competence in the textbooks and instruction material, and indicates activities to verify whether students have acquired each skill. As one can infer, the level of detail in the learning sequence largely determines the degree of structure and guidance offered to teachers on what to teach (with daily, weekly, monthly, or bimonthly guidelines). In the sample of Brazilian public education systems, there are high and medium levels of structure in learning sequences. Governments assessed in this report fall under two categories: those with highly structured learning sequences that have daily guidance about abilities to be taught and relate the specific pages in textbooks that cover each ability (Ceará, Sobral, and Teresina); and those with a medium level of structure, indicating abilities to be taught in the school term (which lengths approximately two months)35 and providing more general guidance on textbooks’ coverage of each ability, such as the corresponding chapter or a sample of activities to develop some competencies (São Paulo, Itatiba, Apucarana Paranavaí, and Teotônio Vilela).36 Table 2 presents details for each government. Highly structured sequences come with detailed lesson plans. Ceará, Sobral, and Teresina have structured not only a learning sequence but also detailed lesson plans. In the case of Ceará, lesson plans are embedded in teachers’ textbooks. In Teresina, the municipal secretary of education produces didactic guidance (Orientações didáticas) with two-week lesson plans. In Sobral, there is a plan of activities for each month with daily guidance included, which is distributed to teachers during the monthly training sessions so they can practice some of the indicated activities. 35In most places in Brazil, the school year is divided into four terms of approximately two months each. 36For Coruripe, unfortunately, it was not possible to identify the degree of structure as the municipality did not share its pedagogical resources by the time the comparative analysis was conducted. 18 When do children start the literacy process? Regardless the degree of structure in learning sequences, most municipal governments start the literacy process at the ECE level. Among the sample of state and municipal governments included in this paper, most municipalities begin the literacy teaching process in the last year of ECE. Municipalities with high and medium structured sequences develop the following literacy activities in ECE: stimulation of student’s oral language abilities, teaching letter names and helping students recognize the initial letter of their names, and conducting activities in which the teacher read to students. Ceará, São Paulo and Teotônio Vilela do not start the literacy teaching process in ECE. Since state governments are not responsible for ECE provision, both Ceará and São Paulo consider in their structured material that students will start the literacy teaching process in grade 1. Ceará offers pedagogical support to municipalities (including training) to help them expand and improve ECE. Teotônio Vilela, in turn, does not have textbooks for ECE students, unlike many other municipalities, but conducts activities to foster oral language development and stimulate reading. How many hours of instruction do children have? Where learning sequences are highly structured, students are assigned at least 7.6 hours of literacy instruction per week. The weekly schedule determined by the Secretary of Education indicates that in places with high structured sequences, students are assigned at least 7.6 hours per week of literacy instruction, as in the case of Ceará for grades 1 and 2. Sobral has a higher workload at the first grade (8.3 hours) than at the second grade (5 hours). Teresina is the place with more instructional time: 10 hours per week for first and second grades. Among the medium-structured sequences, weekly schedules were received from Apucarana, Itatiba and Teotônio Vilela. Apucarana also provides students with 10 hours of language instruction, but it is important to recall that the municipality has all primary education children in full-time schools. In Itatiba, students have 6 hours per week of literacy instruction, while in Teotônio Vilela children have 6.5-7.5 hours. All the analyzed schedules have a 30-minute reading period (where teachers and students alternate reading during the week) and structured activities. 19 Table 2 – Degree and structure of learning sequences and supporting materials available Key facts A - Learning sequence B - Textbooks and instruction C – M&E Degree of Daily, How many hours Start & End of Education Type of structure weekly or Textbooks and instruction per week/day of Monitoring and the literacy Granularity (specific activities) Lesson plans system system and monthly material* literacy evaluation tools process guidance guidance? instruction? - Organizes activities per day, Available Diagnostic highlighting abilities, and presents Structured material produced by Daily/ Grades 1-2: 7.6 (inside evaluations (DE) + Ceará State Grades 1-2 Very high learning goals for the week and the state government for grades 1- Weekly hours teachers' Booklet to register month. 2. textbooks) students' progress - Template of the classroom routine. Uses PNLD textbooks, uses Ceara’s state structured material, Diagnostic ECE (level V) Daily/ - Lists activities and reference page. Grade 1: 8.3 hours Samples Sobral (CE) Municipal Very high purchases additional material and evaluations + Grades 1-2 Weekly - Links abilities to the curriculum. Grade 2: 5 hours available develops a booklet with tailored available activities. - Teaching plan lists activities and textbooks' chapters (bimonthly). Uses PNLD textbooks, purchases Available Diagnostic Teresina ECE (level V) Daily/ - Reference plan links abilities to the Municipal Very high additional material and develops a Grade 1: 10 hours (Orientações evaluations (PI)í + Grades 1-2 Biweekly curriculum (bimonthly). booklet with tailored activities. Didáticas) available - Lesson plans (ODs) links activities in the textbook to abilities (daily) - Links abilities for each term and Samples Sample of refers them to the curriculum Structured material produced by available diagnostic São Paulo State Grades 1-2 Medium Bimonthly - Teachers' material is organized per the state government for grades 1- Not identified (inside evaluation term, which recalls abilities and 2. teachers' available includes a set of suggested activities textbooks) - Links abilities for each term and Uses PNLD textbooks, uses São Diagnostic ECE (level V) refers them to the curriculum & Paulo’s state structured material, Grades 1-2: 6 Sample Itatiba (SP) Municipal Medium Bimonthly evaluations + Grades 1-2 textbooks' chapters (PNLD) and develops a booklet with hours requested available - Template of the clasroom routine tailored activities. DE and classroom Paranavaí ECE (level V) Sample Municipal Medium Bimonthly - Lists abilities to each term Uses PNLD textbooks Not identified observations' (PR) + Grades 1-2 available protocol available - Links abilities for each term and Teotônio Daily/ refers them to the curriculum Grades 1-2: 6.5-7.5 Sample Checklist abilities' Municipal Grades 1-2 Medium Uses PNLD textbooks Vilela (AL) Bimonthly + indicates types of activities to hours/week requested level available develop each ability - Links abilities for each term, offers Uses PNLD textbooks, purchases Apucarana ECE + grades Grade 1: 10 hours Sample of probing Municipal Medium Bimonthly suggestions of methodological additional material and develops a - (PR) 1-2 (full-time schools) activity available approaches and lesson plans booklet with tailored activities. Coruripe ECE + Grades Not possible Uses PNLD textbooks and Municipal Monthly - Not identified - DE available (AL) 1-2 to identify purchases additional material *The Annex presents the list of textbooks and links to access them (when available). 20 What to teach and in which order? How do skills compare with the Early Grade Reading Rainbow? The analysis of skills presented here focuses on grades 1 and 2, and adopts the Brazilian National Common Curricular Base and the World Bank’s Early Grade Reading Rainbow model as references. The analysis of skills listed in the learning sequences are aiming at identifying (i) the time devoted to a set of skills, (ii) the progression and recurrence of skills along the literacy cycle (grades 1-2), and (iii) patterns and irregularities among sequences. Before beginning the comparison, it is crucial to establish a common base in terms of abilities. In order to do so, this paper adopted the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) for primary education in Brazil since three sequences already refer to it (São Paulo, Itatiba, and Teotônio Vilela). It also coded the abilities according to the Early Grade Reading Rainbow developed by the World Bank,37 which lists eight skills/knowledge areas that students need to master in order to become independent readers (table 3). The comparison focuses on grades 1 and 2, since these grades constitute Brazil’s formal literacy cycle. Nevertheless, as some municipalities start the literacy process at ECE, a brief analysis of BNCC for this level is presented below. Table 3 – The Early Grade Reading Rainbow Zone Color The student should learn: Red To know lots of spoken words, and how to use them. Orange To hear and make the sounds that make up words. Yellow To map sounds to letters and letters to sounds, and learn letter names. Green To understand how letters make words and words are written with letters. Blue To recognize words and meaningful word parts and roots automatically. To read and write progressively longer chains of words, phrases, and sentences Indigo smoothly and automatically. Violet To comprehend the meaning of texts read. Rainbow To love reading and read for both enjoyment and learning. Highly structured sequences don’t seem to have greater learning expectations, but greater detail and progression. As one could expect, learning sequences with daily guidance have a higher level of granularity in terms of students’ learning expectations. This granularity frequently means that abilities are repeated along the literacy cycle with progressive sophistication. For example, in the first quarters of the year, first graders in Sobral are expected to read 60-80 words per minute, and second graders, 80-90 words. Nonetheless, ultimately, they refer to the same reading fluency ability. This aspect has a practical implication when comparing sequences: before starting the analysis, it is necessary to systematize detailed sequences, identify core abilities and set a common basis among them. In our sample, none of the high-structured sequences explicitly refer to the BNCC (they were designed previously), and only Sobral has daily guidance explicitly and consistently linked to the municipal curriculum38. For this reason, in this exercise, only the learning sequences from Sobral, São Paulo, Itatiba, and Teotônio Vilela were included. Interestingly, the number of abilities listed in Sobral’s sequence is much lower than the others (table 4). While this might be related to the fact that its municipal curriculum is 37 Moats. 2021. An Architecture for Literacy: Creating Effective Instructional Plans for the Grades. In press. World Bank. 38 Daily guidance in Teresina is not explicitly linked to the curriculum. Still, another document ( Plano Referencial - PL) organizes learning expectations by school term using the abilities’ code defined at BNCC. Nevertheless, the PL messes with abilities’ texts and codes, hampering the systematization. 21 older than the BNCC,39 it suggests that it may have a decisive subset for literacy within the set of abilities established in BNCC. A third of the abilities listed in learning sequences refers to reading and writing progressively longer chains of words, phrases, and sentences smoothly and automatically. Table 4 presents the skills stated in learning sequences in relation to the colors of the Reading Rainbow. The BNCC defines 93 abilities for grades 1 and 2: twenty-six skills for grade 1, twenty-nine for grade 2, nineteen to be developed between grades 1-2, and other nineteen skills during the entire primary education period, which corresponds to grades 1-5. Among the 93 listed learning expectations, 35% of them refer to the ability to read and write progressively longer chains of words, phrases, and sentences smoothly and automatically (indigo color); 20% refer to reading comprehension (violet), and 13% refer to oral language abilities (red). A similar pattern is seen among other sequences, and the focus on reading and writing longer chains of words ranges from 27% in Itatiba to 41% in Sobral. Phonemic awareness is the least represented category, while phonics and alphabetic principle account for 18% of BNCC abilities. Phonemic awareness (orange) is the least expressive category. Phonics (yellow) and the alphabetic principle (green) account for 18% of the abilities listed for the literacy cycle in BNCC, varying by 2 percentage points among the other sequences. The BNCC for pre-school have 9 abilities related to colors red, orange, yellow, and rainbow. They refer to the ability to express ideas, wishes, and feelings through oral language and spontaneous writing; choose and manipulate books; retell stories orally and written (using the teacher as scribe); explore literature genres and make a hypothesis about the written language; make records of words and texts through spontaneous writing (Brasil, 2018). Regarding the latter, the BNCC explains that children should be encouraged to write spontaneously and compare what they wrote to conventional writing; write their name and recognize the similarity between the initial letter of their name and the initials of the names of colleagues; locate a specific name in a list of words in situations in which the writing of texts or words has a meaning for the child. All these suggestions ultimately support the phonological awareness and the correspondence of grapheme and phoneme. Table 4 – Abilities listed in learning sequences in relation to the Early Grade Reading Rainbow BNCC Itatiba São Paulo Sobral Teotônio Vilela Total Color code Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent Count Percent Red 12 13% 12 11% 15 13% 4 13% 21 17% 64 13.5% Orange 2 2% 2 2% 2 2% 0 0% 3 2% 9 1.9% Yellow 8 9% 10 9% 8 7% 1 3% 10 8% 37 7.8% Yellow/Green 4 4% 5 5% 4 3% 3 9% 4 3% 20 4.2% Green 5 5% 5 5% 8 7% 2 6% 6 5% 26 5.5% Blue 5 5% 8 7% 5 4% 1 3% 5 4% 24 5.1% Indigo 33 35% 30 27% 44 38% 13 41% 40 33% 160 33.7% Indigo/Violet 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 1 3% 0 0% 1 0.2% Violet 19 20% 31 28% 25 21% 7 22% 28 23% 110 23.2% Rainbow 5 5% 8 7% 6 5% 0 0% 5 4% 24 5.1% Total 93 100% 111 100% 117 100% 32 100% 122 100% 475 100% 39 It is possible that Sobral is in the process of adjusting the municipal curriculum to the BNCC. The new document is available in: https://educacao.sobral.ce.gov.br/curriculos-escolares/curriculos-escolares 22 The three predominant categories (reading and writing longer chains of words, reading comprehension, and oral comprehension) appear throughout grades 1 and 2 with progressive sophistication of skills. Table 5 displays the abilities listed in the four learning sequences analyzed (excluding the BNCC) per quarter of the school year. The same ability can be repeated throughout the school year. The three groups with more abilities - reading and writing longer chains of words (indigo), reading comprehension (violet), and oral comprehension (red) – are listed throughout the literacy cycle, although there is a concentration in grade 2. A progressive sophistication of skills is noticeable. For example, certain topics such as understanding text genres are first introduced as oral activities and then addressed as reading and writing abilities. Also, simple types of texts (short notes and recipes) are explored in grade 1, while newspaper and investigative texts appear in grade 2 together with more complex topics, such as grammar and punctuation. Phonological awareness, phonics, and the alphabetic principle are mainly taught at grade 1, while the ability to recognize and understand words are addressed at different moments in the literacy cycle. With the exception of red, the first colors of the rainbow (orange to green) appear more frequently in grade 1. These include skills such as segmenting words orally (orange), relating sound elements to their written representation (yellow), and recognizing the separation of written words through blanks (green). As children get familiar with words, they can learn “blue” abilities at different moments. For example, in grade 1, children learn to “group words by the criterion of approximation of meaning (synonymy) and separate words by the criterion of opposition of meaning (antonymy)” 40. In grade 2, they learn to “segment words into syllables and remove and replace initial, medial or final syllables to create new words”41 and to “form the word ‘magnifier’ and diminutive with the suffixes -ão and -inho/-zinho”42. Rainbow abilities related to ‘reading for enjoyment and learning’ (the final “rainbow” color) are explored along grades 1 and 2, but with a concentration in the latter. Table 5 – Distribution of abilities along the literacy cycle, per color code Grade 1 Grade 2 Total Color code Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Red 11 17 25 18 23 20 23 16 153 Orange 4 4 2 2 0 0 0 0 12 Yellow 21 8 9 10 4 3 2 1 58 Yellow/Green 8 7 7 6 4 7 4 3 46 Green 7 9 8 7 5 10 6 6 58 Blue 6 3 4 5 5 3 3 8 37 Indigo 20 33 51 33 35 43 49 43 307 Indigo/Violet 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 Violet 21 32 30 31 43 42 42 32 273 Rainbow 6 4 5 5 11 8 9 6 54 Total 104 118 141 117 131 136 138 115 1000 *Cells in light-yellow highlight school quarters with number of abilities above the average. Most of the abilities listed in the learning sequences are repeated at least one additional time during the literacy cycle. In more detailed sequences, abilities can be repeated five to eight times. When breaking down the distribution of abilities by education and by color (see annex), it is possible to estimate a ‘repetition factor’, meaning the total number of times that skills are 40 This corresponds to the ability EF01LP15 from BNCC. 41 Ability EF02LP02 from BNCC. 42 Ability EF02LP11 from BNCC. 23 listed along the literacy cycle by the absolute number of abilities. For Sobral and Itatiba, this factor is 4.2 and 3.8, respectively, which is more than double that of São Paulo (1.9) and that of Teotônio Vilela (1.7), indicating a spiraling growth of abilities. For example, Itatiba has 17 abilities that appear in all quarters of grades 1 and 2, while Sobral has 6 abilities. Learning sequences with a lower repetition factor may reinforce certain abilities according to teaching practice and the results of diagnostic assessments. This is especially relevant for São Paulo, whose program operates in many municipalities and schools, with a high degree of heterogeneity. Table 6 presents the repetition factor for each color code and points to different emphasis among governments. While in Itatiba the most repeated group of abilities refer to label red, in São Paulo they refer to yellow-green and violet, in Sobral to yellow, and in Teotônio Vilela to green. Table 6 – Repetition of abilities along the literacy cycle – per government Itatiba São Paulo Sobral Teotônio Vilela Color code A T RF A T RF A T RF A T RF Red 12 69 5.8 15 30 2.0 4 21 5.3 21 33 1.6 Orange 2 5 2.5 2 4 2.0 0 0 0.0 3 3 1.0 Yellow 10 16 1.6 8 21 2.6 1 8 8.0 10 13 1.3 Yellow/Green 5 14 2.8 4 10 2.5 3 15 5.0 4 7 1.8 Green 5 16 3.2 8 19 2.4 2 6 3.0 6 17 2.8 Blue 8 23 2.9 5 7 1.4 1 1 1.0 5 6 1.2 Indigo 30 116 3.9 44 69 1.6 13 56 4.3 40 66 1.7 Indigo/Violet 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 1 2 2.0 0 0 0.0 Violet 31 133 4.3 25 64 2.6 7 26 3.7 28 50 1.8 Rainbow 8 31 3.9 6 12 2.0 0 0 0.0 5 11 2.2 Total 111 423 3.8 117 236 2.0 32 135 4.2 122 206 1.7 A = Absolute number of abilities T = Total number of times that abilities in this group appear in the literacy cycle RF = Repetition factor (T/A) How does the instructional material support teachers to cover the learning sequence? Translating learning expectations to lessons is not a trivial task, and teachers may have at their disposal different resources commonly known as structured material. Learning sequences accomplish their purpose if they effectively guide teachers to plan what abilities will be taught in each class and choose activities that nurture the development of these abilities. This process of translating learning expectations into lessons can occur in different ways. For example, teachers can select activities from a textbook; they can receive guidance from the secretary of education indicating the abilities that should be covered each month or week and sometimes indicating which chapters/pages in the teaching materials cover these topics. They can even receive lesson plans that detail how they should teach a set of activities. Ultimately, the effectiveness of each strategy depends on the degree of clarity and organization of the structured material, on teachers’ planning and pedagogical abilities, and on the time available for lesson planning. For this reason, this paper’s analysis considered the resources available to teachers that help them operationalize the learning sequence in their daily work. 24 Governments from our sample use structured material from different sources and frequently combine them (table 7). Some adopt textbooks from the PNLD federal program43, others use the material designed and distributed by the state government, others purchase directly from publishers, and some design their own booklets. These booklets produced by municipal and state governments constitute a set of activities that complement those from the main textbook collection. Table 7 – Source of structured material adopted by each government in the sample Learning sequence’s Source Government degree of structure Federal1 State2 Municipal3 Private4 Ceará (state) Very high X Sobral (municipality) Very high X X X X Teresina (municipality) Very high X X X São Paulo (state) Medium X Itatiba (municipality) Medium X X X Paranavaí (municipality) Medium X Teotônio Vilela (municipality) Medium X Apucarana (municipality) Medium X X X Coruripe (municipality) - X 1 Federal = National Textbooks’ Program (PNLD) 2 State = Designed and distributed by the state government 3 Municipal = Designed by the municipal government 4 Private = Municipal purchase directly with publishers There is convergence in the textbooks adopted by our sample. Besides the state material, which is commonly employed by municipalities in the same state, there is convergence in the choice of textbooks both from the federal government and those directly purchased (table 8). From the 13 book collections available in PNLD, only 3 are adopted in our sample. Sobral and Itatiba use the same collection. Teresina and Paranavaí too. Regarding materials acquired directly with publishers, Sobral purchases the same collection as Teresina for grade 1 and as Teotônio Vilela for grade 2. 43 Schools can select titles (each grade and subject can choose its own publisher and material from a pre-approved list by the MoE). Often there is a democratic system among schools from the same system (municipal/government) to adopt the same material and have a unified instruction policy. The school uses these textbooks for a period of four years. 25 Table 8 – Collections of structured material by publisher and funding source Governments that adopt the Access Source Grade Collection title Publisher released? material 1-2 Buriti Mais Português Moderna Sobral (grade 2), Itatiba Yes Teresina, Paranavaí, Yes Federal 1-2 Ápis Atica & Scipione Apucarana 1-2 Vem Voar Atica & Scipione Teotônio Vilela Yes Vamos Passear na Ceará state Municipal schools from the Yes 1 Escrita government state of Ceará Ceará state Municipal schools from the Yes State 2 Pé de imaginação government state of Ceará, Sobral Ler e Escrever São Paulo state Yes 1-2 São Paulo state, Itatiba government Instituto Alfa e Yes 1 Aprender a Ler Sobral, Teresina Beto Instituto Alfa e Yes 1 Caligrafia* Sobral, Teresina Beto Lendo Você Fica Sobral (grade 2), Teotônio No Private 1-2 Aprender Sabendo Vilela 2 Caminhos e Vivências* OPET Sobral No 1-2 Aprimorando Saber Espiral Coruripe No Alfabetização com No 1-2 Boquinhas Apucarana Boquinhas *Complementary resources. The next few paragraphs present details and examples about how guidance is provided to teachers. Among the 12 collections listed in table 8, seven teachers’ books were assessed; the results of this analysis are organized according to how directions are provided: through activities, teaching plans, or lesson plans. Additionally, the last sub-section analyzes the coherence between some activities and learning expectations. a) Guidance through activities All textbooks from PNLD and the structured material of São Paulo provide guidance by commenting directly on the activities. As exemplified in tables 9.1 & 9.2, in the three PNLD collections adopted by our sample, teachers’ books have a map of BNCC abilities covered in the textbook and make comments next to the featured student activities, indicating which ability is covered by each activity and giving guidance on how to implement the activity with students. In São Paulo, the structured material – both for students and teachers – is organized by topic/type of activity (i.e.: teachers’ reading and the writing system). Teachers’ books give instructions by ‘blocks’ of similar activities, listing the skills from the state curriculum contemplated in that block and providing an orientation to the skill set. In both cases, teachers have a pool of activities available and need to define which ones he/she will cover in the week and the pace at which he/she will cover the content expected for the bimester/grade. While it is reasonable to assume that the activities follow a coherent sequence that somehow can guide teachers, textbooks are designed by publishers and serve many clients. Thus, it is probable that the sequence of activities and skills addressed in the textbook differs in some aspects from the learning sequence established by each municipality. In this case, teachers must locate activities in the textbook to organize his/her lesson plan. At the aggregate level, this process can represent a massive loss of teachers’ time and generate heterogeneity among schools and classes. 26 Table 9.1 – Guidance next to activities in PNLD and São Paulo’s material (part 1) Vem Voar Ápis Table 9.2: Guidance next to activities in PNLD and São Paulo’s material (part 2) Buriti Mais Português Teachers’ guide from Ler e Escrever 27 b) Guidance through teaching plans Some secretaries of education produce a document linking the learning sequence to the instruction material, providing daily guidance to teachers. Some governments organize a teaching plan that links the learning sequence to textbooks to foster equity and optime teachers' time. In highly structured systems, such as Sobral, Teresina, and the material prepared by the state of Ceará, there is weekly and daily guidance, as presented in table 10. These materials indicate which abilities to teach and the corresponding activities to be developed with students but do not constitute lesson plans. In Ceará, the Caderno de Práticas Pedagógicas lists abilities to be taught each week, provides a pedagogical routine for classes, and offers extra activities and learning evaluations for each unit, which ultimately expands teachers' options. In Teotônio Vilela, the secretary of education guides teachers to organize a teaching plan on a weekly basis; our analysis of a subset of these teaching plans showed that different teachers follow the same structure, indicating what will be taught, why, and how it will be taught, as exemplified in table 10. 28 Table 10 – Teaching plans in Sobral and Teresina Sobral Teresina Ceará Teotônio Vilela 29 c) Guidance through lesson plans Lesson plans present the most detailed guidance, although they vary in the degree of scripting. Unlike teaching plans, lesson plans order learning activities, indicate the time necessary to carry them out, and give guidance to teachers. Research suggests that tightly structured guidance to teachers greatly help children learn,44 increasing student time on task45 and raising learning outcomes.46 Lesson plans can have different degrees of structure and prescription, as seen in the Brazilian sample. For instance, Instituto Alfa e Beto (IAB) material presents step by step guidance on what teachers should do in class and what they should ask students (table 11). The material from Ceará state is similar to IAB’s but less scripted. Since Teresina combines IAB and PNLD materials, the municipality designed didactic orientations for each day, combining both resources. As these resources already have specific directions to activities’ development, the didactic orientation focuses more on listing what should be done than explaining how to do it. Lastly, São Paulo’s material provides the most concise guidance, a lthough it also suggests expected duration, what teachers should do, and which abilities are covered in the activity. 44 World Bank. 2019. “Ending Learning Poverty: What Will It Take?” Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/32553 45 Rieth, Herbert, and Carolyn Evertson. 1988. “Variables Related to the Effective Instruction of Difficult -to-Teach Children.” Focus on Exceptional Children 20 (5): 1–8. https://journals.ku.edu/focusXchild/issue/view/1022 46 Brunette, Tracy, Benjamin Piper, Rachel Jordan, Simon King, and Rehemah Nabacwa. 2019. “The Impact of Mother Tongue Reading Instruction in Twelve Ugandan Languages and the Role of Language Complexity, Socioeconomic Factors, and Program Implementation.” Comparative Education Review 63 (4): 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1086/705426. Gove, Amber, Medina Korda Poole, and Benjamin Piper. 2017. “Designing for Scale: Reflections on Rolling Out Reading Improvement in Kenya and Liberia.” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 155: 77–95. https://doi.org/10.1002/cad.20195. Piper, B., Y. Sitabkhan, J. Mejía, and K. Betts. 2018. “Effectiveness of Teachers’ Guide s in the Global South: Scripting, Learning Outcomes, and Classroom Utilization.” RTI Press Publication OP -0053-1805. Research Triangle Park, NC: RTI Press. https://doi. org/10.3768/rtipress.2018.op.0053.1805. 30 Table 11 – Lesson plans (Part 1) More scripted Instituto Alfa e Beto (Teresina and Sobral) Ceará Less scripted Teresina São Paulo d) Coherence between activities and learning objectives Structured materials were assessed to identify if students’ activities are aligned with learning expectations and if they provide clear guidance about the abilities covered in each activity. After seeing how guidance is offered to teachers regarding which abilities should be taught, how and when to teach them, a brief analysis of some exercises from different governments is presented below to check the coherence between the activity and the proposed learning goal. As indicated earlier, the structured material from PNLD and from São Paulo list, next to the activities, which BNCC ability it covers. This proves to be a very organized and straightforward way to ensure that activities are linked to learning expectations. Table 12 translates the instructions for one of the activities from a PNLD textbook, and one can see how the activity is related to learning goals represented by BNCC abilities. 31 Table 12 – Sample of activities from distinct structured materials Teachers’ guide from Ápis collection for grade 1, page 25, adopted by Teresina and Paranavaí The first instruction refers to a pre-reading activity: the guides suggest teachers to ask the students about what they imagine a book cover should have. Is the illustration on the cover important? Why? Should the name of the book be highlighted? Why? These and other questions can be asked and answered orally. It also encourages teachers to stimulate the exchange of information and opinions based on the students' hypotheses. Reference: BNCC - EF15LP02: Establish expectations in relation to the text to be read (assumptions that anticipate the meaning, the form and the social function of the text), based on their previous knowledge about the conditions of production and reception of this text, the gender, the support and the thematic universe, as well as about textual saliencies, graphic resources, images, data of the work itself (index, preface, etc.), confirming anticipations and inferences made before and during the reading of texts, checking the adequacy of the hypotheses made). Activity 13, page 13 from Aprender a Ler (IAB) adopted by Teresina and Sobral. Activity 13 asks students: What do you see in the picture? Make a circle in the figure of a cat. Underline the word ‘gato’ (cat). Mark an X over the word MIAU. It relates to Sobral’s ability 1.1.1.a b c d e (Relating phonemes and graphemes) Activity 13, page 13 from Aprender a Ler (IAB) adopted by Teresina and Sobral. Teachers’ guide Students’ textbook Instructions The teacher guide indicates the activity from students’ textbook, asking students to read his name and tell colleagues what he/she knows about his/her name. In the teachers’ guide it is possible to see the didactic goal of the activity (which is reading students’ names) and instructions to teachers: split the class into small groups, so each student reads his/her name and gives everyone the opportunities to talk. 32 How do learning assessments compare in terms of their content and length? All governments in our sample apply diagnostic evaluations regularly. A pivotal step to tracking student learning is the use of diagnostic assessments. They are usually applied at the beginning of the school year to identify students’ levels and the degree of heterogeneity within a class, which guide the pedagogical planning. The importance of learning monitoring is recognized by all the governments in our sample, and they use diagnostic assessments regularly. In some cases, as in Sobral, Ceará, Teotônio Vilela, and others, teachers have a skill/ability “spreadsheet” to monitor students’ progress throughout the school year. Assessments can be re-applied throughout the school year to gauge students’ progression. In our sample, all governments have shared at least one of their learning monitoring instruments; most of them consist of the diagnostic assessment applied at the beginning of the school year, as presented in the Annex. The following paragraphs present details and considerations about the shared instruments, although many governments apply a wider set of tools, such as quick assessment activities and students’ monitoring spreadsheets. There are considerable differences among the topics covered in the tests and the grade in which a particular ability is assessed, indicating that governments adopt different paces in their literacy policy. The sample of diagnostic evaluations includes tests for students in pre- school, grades 1 and 2. Table 13 compares the topics covered in the tests, by grade. There are 24 distinct and not always coincident abilities measured through a list of exercises that range from 4 to 20, which indicates substantial variability in length and topics assessed by each government. Since diagnostic evaluations consist of internal tools to monitor student learning, this variability is not necessarily negative. It indicates that governments have different paces in their literacy policies. The BNCC lists the set of abilities that students should master by the end of grade 2, but municipalities and states have the freedom to define when and how they will cover this content. For instance, seven out of the nine governments in our sample start the literacy process in ECE. Still, in the diagnostic evaluation from Paranavaí and Teresina, pre- school kids are expected to be familiarized with letters and relate pictures to their written representation (words). At the same time, the same ability is assessed at grades 1 and 2 in Itatiba and grade 2 in Ceará. Another example of variance relates to recognizing lower-case letters, which appears only in Paranavaí, Teresina, and Ceará at grade 2. As the last example, Sobral and Teresina apply an oral test to assess reading fluency, measuring students’ speed to read words, phrases, and texts. Teresina seems to start the literacy process early in pre-school, introducing at this stage topics from grade 1. As mentioned in section 4, the BNCC for pre-school states that children at this stage should express their ideas and write stories both orally and through spontaneous writing and explore hypothesis about the written language, primarily through the recognition of the written form of their names and relating their initial letter to the initials of other words. This means that children at this stage would be mainly familiar with the written representation of letters and words, which are mainly the topics covered in Paranavai’s pre-school test. Teresina’s evaluation, in turn, goes beyond and tests if children can write phrases, relate pictures to phrases, and assessing reading fluency. Their teaching plan to pre-school indicates that children at this stage learn several phonemes. In grades 1 and 2, the most comprehensive evaluations are from Itatiba. Tests in Itatiba assess specific literacy competencies (as writing hyphotesis, how to distinguish letters from numbers, identify letters, compare words to identify initial and final sounds, write words and phrases) and reading abilities (as relate pictures from objects and animals with their names, recognize names 33 of colleagues from badges with their list of names, identify the purpose of an instructional picture and interpret a comic strip). The main purpose of these assessments conducted in grades 1 and 2 is to identify students’ writing and reading levels and adjust the pedagogical planning to the reality of each class. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect teachers in Itatiba have a more detailed diagnostic that will allow them to tailor their lessons and adjust to students’ needs. Ceará has the longest assessment with 20 exercises and mainly focuses on reading comprehension. The test prepared by the state of Ceará targets students in grade 2. It contains 20 questions, measuring if students can read words with syllables in a non-canonical pattern, identify rhymes, read sentences, identify the theme or subject of a text, find explicit information, recognize the discursive genre, find explicit information, and produce a short text. Most of the questions are based on a different text, indicating that, while the test can assess a set of abilities, it heavily depends on reading comprehension, which constitutes a key goal of the literacy process. 34 Table 13 – Diagnostic evaluations’ content Pre-school Grade 1 Grade 2 São Paranavaí Teresina Paulo Itatiba Paranavaí Teresina Sobral Itatiba Paranavaí Teresina Ceará # Questions 14 7 13 11 11 4 10 10 17 20 Content Subtotal Write given name 1 1 1 3 Write full name 1 1 1 3 Identify and write letters 1 1 2 Write words 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Write phrases 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 7 Write short texts 1 1 1 1 4 Distinguish letters from numbers and other graphic signals 1 1 1 3 Relate pictures to their first letter 1 1 Relate phoneme to grapheme 1 1 1 1 4 Relate pictures to their written representation (multiple choice) 1 1 1 1 1 5 Relate pictures to phrases 1 1 2 Locate letters from a list 1 1 1 3 Locate words from a list 1 1 Locate words from a text 1 1 1 3 Identify the purpose of a text 1 1 1 1 4 Reading comprehension 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 Reading fluency 1 1 Read words 1 1 Read phrases 1 1 2 Read short texts 1 1 1 1 4 Lower case letters 1 1 1 3 Understand how spaces are used between words 1 1 Pronoms 1 1 Recognize alphabetic order 1 1 Subtotal 4 9 5 11 5 5 4 9 7 7 7 35 Conclusions This report considered how successful state and municipal education systems in Brazil organize their literacy policy, with a particular aim to identify the presence of key elements aligned with evidence on the science of reading. By doing so, the study aims to provide practical examples of evidence-based literacy instruction. The small set of selected education systems is a limitation, but it does not undermine the primary purpose of the analysis. The exercise carried out in this study is exploratory in nature and does not seek to establish a ranking among the education systems, or to quantify how positive or negative a certain teaching practice is. With that said, the analysis offers five take-aways for countries and governments that want to strengthen their pedagogical policies, especially for literacy: 1. In the education systems studied in this report there is a high degree of alignment between curricula, textbooks, teacher guidance materials, and monitoring tools. This alignment seem to be conferred by a learning sequence/teaching plan that connects all resources and offers guidance on what to teach. In the sample of states and municipalities, this alignment of practices has existed for some years and occurs mainly through a detailed and structured learning sequence that organizes the competencies of the curriculum, locates competencies in textbooks and instruction material, and prescribes activities to verify whether students have acquired each skill. At the national policy level, the approval of the National Common Curricular Base (BNCC) in 2017, which sets learning expectations for all students in each grade, has been critically important in guiding the alignment of the education system in Brazil, such as by promoting the adaptation of local curricula, requiring textbooks to specify the skills developed in each activity, and guiding learning assessments according to the expected set of skills a student should master at the end of each grade. This alignment can be pursued both by schools and by public education systems that wish to strengthen their learning strategies. 2. The Brazilian education systems assessed have a clear set of skills that should be taught and establish progression among skills. At minimum, they highlight which skills should be taught in the bimester, but some offer guidance day after day. The BNCC has set the skills students should learn in each grade and established progression between skills, but the assessed systems go a step further by setting a learning sequence that organizes this skill set in the school calendar, determining what should be taught in the bimester, or in the month, week or day. The level of detail in the learning sequence largely determines the degree of structure and guidance offered to teachers on what to teach. Systems with a medium-level degree of structure indicate the skills to be taught in the bimester and give slightly broader guidelines about the teaching material (they indicate textbooks’ chapter or give examples of related activities). In highly structured systems (Ceará, Sobral and Teresina), there is daily guidance on the skills to be taught and on textbooks’ pages that address each skill, in addition to offering lesson plans. 3. In systems with a high level of structure, those with daily orientations, students are assigned more instructional time (at least 7 hours per week). This level of structure is 36 in line with evidence that structured pedagogical interventions have significant effects on learning outcomes.47 4. There is a correspondence between the skills listed in the Brazilian sample and the World Bank’s Early Grade Reading Rainbow model, but learning sequences for grades 1-2 in Brazil have a predominance of more complex skills, such as reading and writing progressively longer strings of words, and reading comprehension. In relation to the Early Grade Reading Rainbow, learning sequences in the Brazilian systems in this study have a predominance of more complex skills. This may be related to the fact that the BNCC for pre-school anticipates some early skills suggested in the Rainbow, as it lists nine abilities related to oral comprehension, phonemic awareness, phonics, and enjoyment of reading. In grade 1, children are mainly expected to learn phonological awareness, phonics, and the alphabetic principle, which corresponds to the first colors of the Early Grade Reading Rainbow (except for red, which refers to oral comprehension and appears throughout the literacy process). As children get familiar with words, they can learn ‘blue’ abilities (recognize words and roots automatically) at different moments. Reading and writing longer chains of words, and oral and reading comprehension, are the three predominant categories of skills in the literacy cycle (grades 1-2). Although they appear throughout the cycle, there is a concentration in grade 2. The same happens to Rainbow abilities, those related to reading for enjoyment and learning. 5. All state and municipalities studied use learning assessments as a pedagogical tool to track students’ progress throughout the year. The use of diagnostic assessments as a tool for planning and monitoring learning is present in all systems assessed. Diagnostic assessments do not require the same level of technical sophistication as standardized assessments, but they have enormous potential to provide a quick snapshot of students' learning levels, allowing teachers, schools, and school systems to intervene quickly to ensure that all students develop essential skills. In the sample, there are considerable differences in the topics covered in each test and also in the grade in which a particular skill is assessed, indicating that governments have different paces in their literacy policies. Since diagnostic assessments are internal tools for monitoring student learning, this variability is not necessarily negative. Teresina starts the literacy process at the beginning of pre-school, introducing at this stage topics that correspond to the 1st grade. The most comprehensive evaluations occur in Itatiba, suggesting that teachers there have a more detailed diagnosis that allows them to adapt their classes and better adjust to students' needs. Ceará has the longest assessment, with 20 exercises, and focuses mainly on reading comprehension. Most of the questions are based on a different text, indicating that, although the test can assess a range of skills, it relies heavily on reading comprehension, which is a key objective of the literacy process. 47Piper, B., Sitabkhan, Y., Mejia, J., & Betts, K. (2018). Effectiveness of teachers' guides in the Global South: Scripting, learning outcomes, and classroom utilization. RTI Press. RTI Press Occasional Paper No. OP-0053-1805 https://doi.org/10.3768/rtipress.2018.op.0053.1805 37 38 Annex Table A1. List of textbooks Type of State Municipality Grade Textbook title Publisher Link system 1 Vamos Passear na Escrita Ceará State https://paic.seduc.ce.gov.br/index.php/fique-por-dentro/downloads/category/187-2018-06-12-16-50-25 Ceará - State 2 Pé de imaginação government https://paic.seduc.ce.gov.br/index.php/fique-por-dentro/downloads/category/262-2019-10-22-13-31-59 1 Aprender a Ler Instituto Alfa e Beto https://alfaebetosolucoes.org.br/produto/aprender-a-ler/ Caligrafia Instituto Alfa e Beto https://alfaebetosolucoes.org.br/produto/colecao-grafismo-e-caligrafia/ Buriti Mais Português Moderna https://pt.calameo.com/read/00289932707453a390361 2 Ceará State Ceará Sobral Municipal Pé da Imaginação https://paic.seduc.ce.gov.br/index.php/fique-por-dentro/downloads/category/262-2019-10-22-13-31-59 government Caminhos e Vivências OPET https://www.editoraopet.com.br/caminhos-e-vivencias.php Lendo Você Fica Sabendo Aprender https://www.aprendereditora.com.br/novo-lendo-voce-fica-sabendo Buriti Mais Português Moderna https://pt.calameo.com/read/0028993277250a96f566e 1 Aprender a Ler Instituto Alfa e Beto https://alfaebetosolucoes.org.br/produto/aprender-a-ler/ Caligrafia Instituto Alfa e Beto https://alfaebetosolucoes.org.br/produto/colecao-grafismo-e-caligrafia/ Piaui Teresina Municipal Ápis Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/apis-lingua-portuguesa-1-ano-atica/ 2 Ápis Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/apis-lingua-portuguesa-2-ano-atica/ 1 São Paulo State https://efape.educacao.sp.gov.br/curriculopaulista/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/49734001-1o-Ano-aluno-V1- Ler e Escrever São Government MIOLO.pdf - State Paulo 2 https://efape.educacao.sp.gov.br/curriculopaulista/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/49734003-2o-Ano-aluno-V1- Ler e Escrever MIOLO.pdf 1 São Paulo State https://efape.educacao.sp.gov.br/curriculopaulista/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/49734001-1o-Ano-aluno-V1- Ler e Escrever Government MIOLO.pdf Buriti Mais Português Moderna https://pt.calameo.com/read/00289932707453a390361 Municipal Coletânea de Alfabetização PDF link - grade 1 São government Itatiba Municipal Paulo 2 São Paulo State https://efape.educacao.sp.gov.br/curriculopaulista/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/49734003-2o-Ano-aluno-V1- Ler e Escrever Government MIOLO.pdf Buriti Mais Português Moderna https://pt.calameo.com/read/0028993277250a96f566e Municipal Coletânea de Alfabetização PDF link – grade 2 government 1 Ápis Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/apis-lingua-portuguesa-1-ano-atica/ Paraná Paranavaí Municipal 2 Ápis Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/apis-lingua-portuguesa-2-ano-atica/ 1 Vem Voar Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/vem-voar-lingua-portuguesa-1-ano-scipione/ Teotônio Alagoas Municipal 2 Atica & Scipione https://www.edocente.com.br/pnld/2019/obra/vem-voar-lingua-portuguesa-2-ano-scipione/ Vilela 1-2 Lendo Você Fica Sabendo Aprender https://www.aprendereditora.com.br/novo-lendo-voce-fica-sabendo Alagoas Coruripe Municipal 1-2 Aprimorando Saber Espiral https://www.editoraespiral.com.br/didatico Alfabetização com Paraná Apucarana Municipal 1-2 Boquinhas https://www.loja.metododasboquinhas.com.br/livros/alfabetizacao Boquinhas 39 Table A2. Distribution of abilities (per color code) along the literacy cycle – per government Grade 1 Grade 2 Total Government Color code Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Red 7 8 8 8 10 10 9 9 69 Orange 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 5 Yellow 6 1 2 3 1 2 1 0 16 Yellow/Green 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 14 Green 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 16 Itatiba Blue 3 3 2 3 2 2 3 5 23 Indigo 13 13 15 16 15 14 15 15 116 Violet 16 15 16 19 18 17 15 17 133 Rainbow 3 4 3 3 4 5 4 5 31 Total 54 49 51 57 53 54 50 55 423 Red 0 3 7 6 3 3 7 1 30 Orange 0 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 4 Yellow 7 4 5 5 0 0 0 0 21 Yellow/Green 2 2 2 2 0 2 0 0 10 Green 1 4 4 4 0 4 0 2 19 São Paulo Blue 1 0 1 2 1 0 0 2 7 Indigo 3 9 14 9 9 7 12 6 69 Violet 4 7 5 3 15 13 12 5 64 Rainbow 1 0 1 1 5 1 3 0 12 Total 19 31 40 33 33 30 34 16 236 Red 2 3 4 0 2 3 3 4 21 Yellow 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 8 Yellow/Green 2 2 3 2 2 2 1 1 15 Green 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 6 Sobral Blue 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 Indigo 2 6 12 1 4 11 10 10 56 Indigo/Violet 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 Violet 0 2 4 3 2 6 5 4 26 Total 9 16 25 7 12 24 21 21 135 Red 2 3 6 4 8 4 4 2 33 Orange 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 Yellow 7 2 1 1 2 0 0 0 13 Yellow/Green 2 1 0 0 1 1 2 0 7 Green 3 2 1 1 3 3 3 1 17 Teotônio Vilela Blue 1 0 1 0 2 1 0 1 6 Indigo 2 5 10 7 7 11 12 12 66 Violet 1 8 5 6 8 6 10 6 50 Rainbow 2 0 1 1 2 2 2 1 11 Total 22 22 25 20 33 28 33 23 206 1 3. Diagnostic evaluations adopted by sample governments a) Assessments in pre-school Pre-school in Brazil constitutes two years when children are 4 and 5 years old. Seven out of the nine governments in our sample start the literacy process in pre-school, some when children are four, others when children are five. Not all governments apply diagnostic assessments at this level. In Teresina and Paranavaí, children from both years of pre-school take a simple test. As presented in table 3.1, in Paranavaí the diagnostic evaluation consists of 9 exercises of language and mathematic principles. In terms of language, students are asked to recognize the letters of their names from a list of letters, write their names, and relate pictures to their written representations. Evaluations from Teresina are more advanced in covering topics usually addressed in grade 1 and constitute a test for reading and another for writing applied twice a year at the beginning of each semester. The evaluations from the first and the second semester have the same structure, containing seven exercises, and try to assess the same abilities: in writing, it assesses students’ capacity to identify and write letters, words, and phrases. In reading, the evaluation tries to measure if students can distinguish letters from numbers, if they recognize letters, syllables, words, and phrases. Additionally, each month teachers should apply a writing and reading exercise. The writing exercise consists of asking children to write four words (1 polysyllabic, 1 trisyllabic, 1 disyllabic and 1 monosyllabic) with the phoneme studied in the month. The reading test consists of measuring how many words a student can read in one minute from a table of 50 words with the phonemes studied in the month. See table A3.1 in the next slide. 2 Table A3.1 – Diagnostic evaluations for pre-school Paranavai’s pre-school Teresina’s pre-school reading Teresina’s pre-school writing assessment (first page) assessment (first page) assessment (first page) Table of words from Teresina’s monthly reading assessment (pre-school) 3 b) Assessments for grade 1 In grade 1, the assessment prepared by the state of São Paulo and the municipality of Itatiba have a few abilities in common to pre-school tests from Teresina and Paranavaí. São Paulo, for example, asks students to write their given name, write words and phrases and locate words in a text. It expands the scope by asking students to write short texts (details are presented in table 3.2). Itatiba has a reading and a writing assessment in the first grade that, in common to pre-school’s evaluation (especially from Teresina), ask if students can distinguish letters from numbers, identify letters, recognize objects and animals and associate their correspondent’s name, recognize names of colleagues from badges with their list of names, write words and phrases. It goes beyond ECE assessments by measuring if students can identify the purpose of an instructional picture, interpret a comic strip. Table A3.2. - First graders’ diagnostic assessment in São Paulo and Itatiba São Paulo Itatiba 4 Regarding Paranavaí, its assessment for grade 1 measures if students can write their names, differentiate letters from other graphic signals, identify letters of the alphabet, relate phoneme and grapheme, and write simple words. In Teresina, for grade 1, students take at the beginning of each semester an evaluation with 11 exercises and that have the same structure. It assesses if pupils can read and interpret a short text (one paragraph), identify the story's main character and the meaning of idiomatic expressions. It asks students to write words, phrases, and a short text based on a comic strip in terms of writing. Table A3.3 – Diagnostic evaluations for grade 1 in Paranavaí and Teresina Paranavai’s grade 1 Teresina’s grade 1 reading Teresina’s grade 1 writing assessment (first page) assessment (first page) assessment (first page) In Sobral, the diagnostic assessment for grades 1 and 2 consists of an oral evaluation that measures students’ reading speed while reading a table of words, phrases, and a short text. Afterward, students should answer three questions of reading comprehension. Both tests have the same structure and are written in upper case. 5 Table A3.4 – Sobral’s oral test (grade 1) Teotônio Vilela did not share their diagnostic evaluation with us, but a scale of proficiency that the secretary of education uses. The SME conducts visits to schools every two weeks and closely monitors students’ progress through the proficiency scale. Figure 2 below presents the scale for grade 1. 6 Figure A2 – Proficiency scale used in Teotônio Vilela (Grade 1) 7 c) Assessments for grade 2 In Itatiba, the writing assessment for grade 2 asks students to write their full name, a list of words, a phrase dictated, and short parts of a familiar song. The reading assessment contains ten exercises written in upper-case. They ask students to relate pictures to words, locate words in a text, identify words with the same phonemes, recognize genres of texts, interpret short texts and comic strips and identify the correct way of splitting words. In Paranavaí, the test consists of 10 exercises. It assesses if students can write their full name, write dictated words, recognize the alphabetic order, identify letters in different formats, identify the purpose of a simple text, read phrases, and write words and phrases. In Teresina, students take a diagnostic test each bimester. The assessment contains 17 reading and writing exercises, and it is written in lower case. In reading, students must read and interpret short texts, as well as answer questions about pronouns. In writing, they are asked to write words, phrases, and a short text. In Ceará, the assessment targets second graders. The state distributes a virtual copy to municipalities, and they are responsible for implementing the test and registering the results at the state monitoring system. The assessment has 20 questions and tries to assess if students can relate pictures to their written representation, read and interpret a short text, identify rhymes, identify the purpose of texts and write a short text. The assessment is mainly written in lower case. See Table A3.5. 8 Table A3.5 – Diagnostic evaluations - Grade 2 Itatiba Paranavaí Teresina (sample exercises) Ceará (sample exercises) 9