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The arbitral proceedings shall be conducted remotely (e.g., via telephone conference or written submissions) whenever practicable, or held at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. Attribution – Please cite the work as follows: World Bank (2021). Read@Home: Materials Guidance. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Translations – If you create a translation of this work, please add the following disclaimer along with the attribution: This transla tion was not created by The World Bank and should not be considered an official World Bank translation. The World Bank shall not be liable for any content or error in this translation. Adaptations – If you create an adaptation of this work, please add the following disclaimer along with the attribution: This is an adaptation of an original work by The World Bank. Views and opinions expressed in the adaptation are the sole responsibility of the author or authors of the adaptation and are not endorsed by The World Bank. Third-party content – The World Bank does not necessarily own each component of the content contained within the work. The World Bank therefore does not warrant that the use of any third party-owned individual component or part contained in the work will not infringe on the rights of those third parties. The risk of claims resulting from such infringement rests solely with you. If you wish to reus e a component of the work, it is your responsibility to determine whether permission is needed for that reuse and to obtain permission from the copyright owner. Examples of components can include, but are not limited to, tables, figures, or images. All queries on rights and licenses should be addressed to Marcela Gutierrez, The World Bank Group, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA; e-mail: mgutierrezb@worldbankgroup.org. This Manual was prepared by a core team led by Marcela Gutierrez, that included Adelle Pushparatnam, Melissa Diane Kelly, and Shirin Lutfeali. It is part of the Read@Home initiative led by Amanda Devercelli and Peter Antony Holland. A number of colleagues provided insightful comments, feedback, and inputs including Amanda Devercelli, Peter Holland, Ibrahima Samba, Penelope Bender, and Jessica Lee. Overall guidance for the development and preparation of the package was provided by Omar Arias, Practice Manager for the Global Knowledge and Innovation Team. It was designed by Marianne Amkieh Siblini. Marc DeFrancis was the copy editor. Medhanit Solomon provided administrative support. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 8 The Read@Home Initiative.......................................................................................................................................... 8 Global research on books and reading ..................................................................................................................... 9 How children learn to read........................................................................................................................................12 Parent and caregiver roles in supporting children’s literacy skills ....................................................................14 1. Book Selection......................................................................................................................17 1A. Characteristics of quality storybooks ...............................................................................................................17 1B. Identifying and selecting book titles.................................................................................................................27 1C. C osting children’s books and story-cards ........................................................................................................31 2. Guidance for Caregiver Engagement .......................................................................................34 2A. Strategies for caregiver engagement before, during and after reading ...................................................34 2B. Delivering content to caregivers as part of the Read@Home package ....................................................38 2C. Identifying country tools and guidance to engage caregivers to support children’s learning .............45 3. Monitoring for Learning.........................................................................................................49 3A. Selecting the right M&E framework.................................................................................................................49 3B. Identifying the right data collection strategies ..............................................................................................53 3C. Collecting data responsibly and sharing findings...........................................................................................60 Appendices..............................................................................................................................63 Appendix A. Sample Handout on Reading Together with Children ..................................................................63 Appendix B. Sample Messages on Reading Together with Low-Literate Caregivers ....................................64 Appendix C. Sample Handout for Caregivers on Activities without a Story/Text...........................................65 Appendix D. Additional activities for parents ........................................................................................................66 Appendix F. Read@Home Core Monitoring Tool .................................................................................................77 Appendix G. Sample monitoring tools.....................................................................................................................88 References ............................................................................................................................ 118 Source Notes ......................................................................................................................... 124 ASER Annual Status of Education Report CC Creative Commons COVID-19 Coronavirus disease DFID Department for International Development of the United Kingdom ECE Early Childhood Education EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment FCDO Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office gsm grams per square meter IAI Interactive Audio Instruction IVR Interactive Voice Recording mm millimeters NORAD Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation PASEC Programme d'analyse des systèmes éducatifs de la confemen REACH Results in Education for All Children SMS Short Message Service TV Television UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNICEF United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund USAID United States Agency for International Development The purpose of this manual is to provide practical guidance on the identification and selection of quality children’s reading materials for home use, and the identification or design of accompanying materials for caregivers to support children’s learning. The manual is part of the Read@Home initiative, which aims to deliver reading and learning materials to hard-to-reach homes. It starts with an introductory section which explains the importance of reading at home and exposes the evidence base, followed by practical step-by-step guidance on how to identify and select quality age- appropriate reading materials; how to find, design and distribute accompanying guidance for caregivers; and how to monitor and evaluate book distribution efforts. Photo: ©UNICEF INTRODUCTION 7 The objective of Read@Home is to deliver reading and learning materials to hard-to-reach homes, as quickly and efficiently as possible, along with support for parents and other caregivers to engage with children’s learning. Increasing reading in the home is a key component of system-building that will help countries address learning poverty, A develop more effective and equitable education systems and be resilient in the face of future shocks. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to make the home a supportive environment for learning was already known. Too many children have little or no experience reading at home, which limits their language development and acquisition of pre-reading skills, in turn, making the transition to school-based reading instruction very challenging. Once children arrive in school, many low- and middle-income countries struggle to provide them with sufficient instructional time. Many also struggle to promote effective and inclusive teaching approaches and to provide teacher support to ensure learning for all. All of this impacts the quality of instruction children receive. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance and potential of the home learning environment to complement school-based learning and address learning inequality. The pandemic has also exposed the digital and accessibility divide, which disproportionately impacts poor countries and poor communities within countries, worsening the learning inequalities that were already present before the pandemic. Moving forward, education systems need to embrace the idea that learning should be able to occur for everyone, everywhere. Having books at home is a low-tech first step in supporting learning happening in a home setting, especially in the most marginalized communities. Read@Home targets those families that are unlikely to be reached with the remote learning approaches being rolled out by ministries of education: parents with low literacy levels and families with no internet, no smart phones, but possibly some access to feature phones, radio, and/or TV. The effort will align with and complement governments’ distance learning efforts where possible, to ensure a wrap -around approach to learning at home. Crucially, however, it will also be designed to stand alone for families that cannot access government-managed or technology-enabled efforts. Beyond the pandemic, Read@Home will continue to play a key role in ensuring that the learning that occurs in schools is reinforced and supplemented at home, and vice versa. This manual is intended to support country-efforts to source and select quality reading and learning materials for children and accompanying materials for parents/caregivers to support children’s learning. A Learning poverty means being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. INTRODUCTION 8 Research from around the world shows that literacy skills are linked with children’s experiences with language and print from birth. 1 Before formal schooling starts (around age six in most countries), verbal interactions between adults and children are essential. Activities such as singing to children, telling them stories and rhymes, and asking questions form the foundation for language development. Studies have found that the number of words children know before they are five years old is predictive of later success and that children who begin school knowing more words are likely to develop into better readers and have stronger comprehension skills. 2 Beyond children’s early years, children need support and engagement to foster language development and access to storybooks at home to foster love for reading, which is critical to practicing and perfecting the skill. Reading is an essential skill that unlocks the door to learning in every other area; children need to learn to read, before they can read to learn. Studies consistently demonstrate that the home literacy environment, and particularly the quantity and quality of talking, interacting, and reading with a child during the early years, are strongly associated with language and cognitive development, school readiness and academic performance. 3 Providing children access to storybooks and time to engage in daily independent reading, including a variety of genres and levels of difficulty roughly matched to their interests and abilities, has been directly tied to their gaining better vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills. 4 A recent study covering families in 35 countries of varying income levels 5 found that having at least one children’s book at home almost doubled the likelihood of the child being on track in literacy and numeracy. B During a child’s early years, regularly reading with parents is associated with better vocabulary, phonological awareness, and print and letter knowledge. 6 Children who are read to multiple times a day until they are five years old hear 1.4 million more words than children who are never read to. 7 For older children, regularly reading at home is associated with higher reading comprehension, reading fluency, and receptive vocabulary. 8 Reading with parents or caregivers has also been associated with higher interest in reading, as a strong home literacy environment shows children that reading is important and valued. While the number of storybooks in a household will vary, making time in the day for the whole family to sit and read together signals to children that this is an important task. Reading daily also expands reading stamina, 9 that is, the ability to focus and independently read through a text without being distracted or distracting others. This stamina is what will aid children as they read increasingly complex texts as they get older, without teacher or caregiver support. Children need to read (and to be read to) many, many storybooks to improve their reading skills. One study undertaken across 27 countries of varying incomes (ranging from rural China, Chile, South Africa and Philippines to Germany and the Netherlands) found that children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupati on and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor. 10 B Controlling for maternal education, wealth index quintile, children’s age, and area of residence. INTRODUCTION 9 Researchers have found that volume and choice in reading materials makes a difference in building the skills necessary for reading fluently. 11 In other words, the more children read, the better they become at reading. Finally, it is important for children to read diverse storybooks. First, storybooks in which children see themselves, their families, their cultures, and their contexts help them understand their culture and background, build identity, and find role models. Furthermore, when children identify with the characters, this connects them to storybooks on a deep level, allowing for better comprehension of the text. 12 Second, storybooks where people of different abilities, cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds are represented help children learn new ideas, see the world through the eyes of that character who is different from them, and consider their attitudes about those differences. 13 14 Reading about diverse topics has been found to positively influence children’s social and emotional learning compete ncies, apart from building cultural knowledge. 15 16 Unfortunately, the vast majority of families in low- and lower-middle-income countries do not have access to age-appropriate storybooks with engaging content, in languages children understand. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 3 percent of households have more than two children’s books at home, a nd just half of all parents report regularly engaging in cognitively stimulating activities with young children. 17 While global investments are slowly starting to improve the availability of books worldwide, these efforts focus on increasing the number and quality of books, usually textbooks, in primary schools. INTRODUCTION 10 Box A. Selected examples of book distribution programs • SOUTH AFRICA. In an impoverished peri-urban setting in South Africa, a program provided storybooks and training for caregivers (parents, grandparents, aunts, neighbors) on how to engage their children in book- sharing. A rigorous impact evaluation found that it improved book-sharing interactions (sensitivity, elaborations, reciprocity), children’s socio -emotional skills (higher pro-social behavior), and attention and vocabulary among children. • KENYA. Building on the South African experience, in rural Kenya, the EMERGE program adapted culturally and linguistically appropriate children’s books from English and Swahili into Luo (a local langu age in Western Kenya). Families with young children received two books in each language (English, Swahili and Luo) along with a short training on techniques on how to read interactively with children, emphasizing how illiterate caregivers can use the books. A survey six weeks after book distribution found improvements in the vocabulary of children whose parents received the books and training. Just receiving the books – with or without the training – increased the probability of children being read to in the previous three days, while receiving books with training resulted in children being read to more frequently. The increase in reading frequency was biggest among illiterate caregivers, who used pictures to tell a story (Knauer, Jakiela, Ozier et al. 2019) • UNITED KINGDOM. The Book Start Program in the UK reaches 2 million children ages 0 – 4 each year, encouraging parents to share books, stories, and rhymes with their children from as early an age as possible. Parents and children receive a “treasure pack” from childcare centers, lib raries and community centers, which contain books and guidance on activities for home. Communication through community and national newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations and regular community-based advocacy events help reinforce the approach. At school entry, children who participate in the program consistently perform higher on literacy and numeracy tests, and 68% of Book Start children listed looking at books as one of their favorite activities (compared to 21% for children not enrolled). • BRAZIL. In Brazil, a program that encouraged parent-child book-sharing beyond preschool increased cognitive stimulation, improved the quality and quantity of reading interactions, and resulted in improved emergent literacy skills (e.g. working memory, receptive vocabulary). • MONGOLIA. In Mongolia, a home-based school preparation program supports parents to engage in daily reading, singing, and play activities with their children. Parents are trained by local teachers and families borrow materials from a mobile toy and book library for 2 to 3 weeks at a time and then trade them in for new materials. A recent evaluation found that cognitive and noncognitive skills of the children enrolled in the program were significantly higher than those enrolled in existing alternative education programs, underlining the potential for a home-based model to improve school readiness among hard-to-reach populations. Book flooding has also proven to be a successful strategy. When this strategy is well -designed and implemented, rigorous evaluations have found that it has an impact across countries, including in Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and several small island states in the Pacific. Though most of these evaluations are from the 1990s and programs were primarily delivered in schools, the resulting improvements show the potential for the physical presence of books to improve children’s outcomes: • SINGAPORE. In Singapore, the Reading and English Acquisition Programme was scaled up nationally after an initial evaluation showed that children gained between half and a full year in reading and writing, compared to a control group. • SRI LANKA. In Sri Lanka, the Books in Schools Project gave children shared access to storybooks for 15 -20 minutes per day, in addition to textbooks and workbooks. After only six months of the intervention – and despite frequent teacher absences and some school closures due to the civil war – the children who had time with the storybooks demonstrated substantial progress compared t o the control group (that had access to textbooks and workbooks only), with reading comprehension and vocabulary gains three times greater than the control group. INTRODUCTION 11 Learning to read is a complex task that involves several subskills, some of which are learned in a sequential manner (with overlaps and feedback loops). Oral language, or the skills and knowledge involved in listening and speaking, develops first. Then, children learn to hear and make word sounds, and learn the names of the letters or symbols. They then map letters to sounds and sounds to letters and understand that letters or symbols can be used to write any word. They discover how to blend those sounds together and start recognizing words. They then embark in reading connected text, increasing their fluency and “automaticity” (the capacity to recognize words with speed and without effort) and with practice they achieve reading with understanding. Throughout this process, children’s vocabulary and background knowledge of the world grows. Reading comprehension is the result of decoding (applying knowledge of the relationship between letters and sounds to correctly pronounce words) and vocabulary knowledge (critical to understand the words being read). Children do not learn to read simply by repeating text, looking at books, or chanting out loud. Core skills like letter recognition, letter-sound relationships, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension must be explicitly taught. This explicit instruction is the focus of the first years of primary school. Teachers and reading instruction specialists need to understand the process of learning to read in great detail, but caregivers who select books for or read to children need only know a child’s rough reading skill leve l. Parents and caregivers can complement the explicit reading instruction imparted at schools by providing practice on key skills. Reading, like any skill, requires plenty of practice. Having a range of reading materials that children can have read to them, and that they can later read themselves, roughly matched in difficulty to their current reading abilities (in number and length of words, complexity of sentences and ideas), and in a variety of genres, strengthens children’s literacy development. Books not only provide an opportunity to learn new things, but develop vocabulary, teach spelling and grammar, and encourage children to think critically. These skills are necessary to become a fluent reader. All children can become fluent readers. Children progress through stages in learning to read from the time they are born. The process unfolds from the moment they are born, starting as children learn to speak and listen to oral language. Although language, culture, and instructional approach will influence these stages, research suggests that there are universal literacy processes, and that all children learn to read and write similarly across language and cultural contexts. 18 However, since each child has a different pace of learning, the speed at which children progress through each reading stage varies.19 Regardless of the pace of progress, the home and the school environment can support the development of all children, respecting their pace of progress. Despite individual variations in learning progress, all children need to have strong reading foundations by the time the curriculum shifts from learning to read to reading to learn (end of third grade in many countries). Without strong reading foundations, children will struggle and fall further behind. Although the progress children make as readers does not fit neatly into separate or discreet stages —the literacy skills children develop integrate and reinforce each other — the subskills they should acquire come in a rough sequence – and some subskills need to be mastered before others for learning to proceed. Therefore, progress in learning to read in languages with alphabetic writing systems can be organized as described in Table A. INTRODUCTION 12 Table A. Overview of the stages of reading development Stage What skills children are learning in this stage? Zone color Teachers should focus on Building kids oral vocabulary by asking questions, Children are learning lots of spoken words and extending their answers, and introducing more how to use them to communicate and describe Red basic vocabulary words according to an explicit their world. plan in daily instruction Helping kids gain the ability to isolate, identify, Stage 0: Pre-Readers Children are learning to hear and make the and make the sounds that make up words, sounds that make up words (at first without breaking up words to hear it “first sound” or “last print). In contexts where they are exposed to Orange sound”, rhyming, and changing first sounds in print, they are also becoming aware of print words to make new words: c-at, s-at, h-at, b-at, and that text carries meaning. m-at, m-ay, h-ay, pl-ay, etc. (known as phonological and phonemic awareness) Having kids draw letters, or use manipulables, to Children are learning to map letters to sounds master their names, and beginning to teach the and sounds to letter. They are also learning Yellow most basic sounds that letters make-starting with letter names. the most common vowels and consonants of Stage 1: Early short, basic words Readers Children are learning to understand how words are made up of letters and letter can be used to Helping kids get the alphabetic principle: letters write any word. They are also learning about Green show the sounds of words, and all words can be spelling conventions and are practicing spelling written using letters words based on how they sound. As kids practice to recognize easy words like “help” and “want” they can learn words like Children are learning to recognize words and Blue “helped” and “wanted” where “ed” makes it in meaningful parts of words and roots the past. Teachers should only teach exception (try/tried) after lots of basics are easy for kids Stage 2: Independent Helping kids read “harder” text as they move Readers from sounding out to “automatically” recognizing Children are learning to read and write words. Slowly introduce longer words, longer progressively longer chains of words, phrases, Indigo phrases and sentences, and more exceptions or and sentences smoothly and automatically. hard patterns, paying attention to kids’ ability to read at the pace of normal speech (not by “sounding out”) Children are learning to comprehend the meaning of text read. They are expanding their vocabularies and building background and Making meaning in whatever kids read. Whether world knowledge to read on their own. Stage 3: Fluent with very basic sentences, or the progressively As they advance, children start to analyze texts harder ones, kids need practice reflecting on the Readers critically, understand multiple points of view, Violet meaning of what they have read, and explaining apply the text and their background knowledge it, and making inferences and connections to to infer or make a prediction on how the story other ideas will progress or its conclusion. They are also engaging with much wider genres and can read nonfiction texts on multiple related topics Fun, pleasure, enjoyment, and positive experiences should pervade all aspects of Children are learning to love reading and read ALL learning to read. Kids can work hard, but they will All stages do best if they derive satisfaction both from what for both enjoyment and learning. COLORS! they read and from the sense of accomplishment in being readers! Source: Adapted from Chall 1983, pp. 10-24; Adams 1994; World Bank, forthcoming. INTRODUCTION 13 All children who learn to read independently will go through these stages of literacy and they benefit from having diverse sets of literacy materials with which to practice. Not all children will make progress through these stages in a linear fashion. Developing skills related to phonemic awareness, alphabetic principle, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension is still necessary, but multisensory approaches (e.g. print, Braille, tactile and symbolic materials, sign language, oral expression) might be necessary for students to receive and communicate concepts. A more flexible approach may be needed for children who progress at a slower pace or benefit from a variety of approaches. For example, despite having trouble detecting rhymes, some children with intellectual or learning disabilities may still attain literacy skills. 20 Research has also shown that children with disabilities benefit from early identification and intervention. 21 While it is recognized that cadres of multi-professional support necessary to identify and support the learning of children with disabilities might not available in some settings, parents and community volunteers can provide support if given appropriate information, materials, and guidance. Children need role models to show them appropriate ways to behave and engage with the world. Parents and caregivers are the child’s first teachers. When caregivers (including older siblings, grandparents and others in the household) read to and with younger children, encourage children to read, and create an environment in the home where reading and studying are valued, these messages are picked up and internalized by the child. Ensuring that parents recognize the important role they play in the future development of their child’s love for reading and learning is essential. In every country, children spend much more time out of school than in school, making it very important to build literacy skills in out-of-school contexts. In addition to being a fun way to build connections with children, research on parental engagement and the home environment points to great benefits for children whose parents support their academic development at home. The reading experiences of children at home and at school are different and complementary: while children’s reading experiences at home tend to be conversational, reading experiences at school tend to be instructional. 22 The active participation in the reading process (e.g. when children read themselves, ask or respond questions, etc.), which is often observed while reading at home, has been associated with increased vocabulary gains for those with limited vocabulary. 23 Family involvement is particularly critical in contexts where the quality of formal instruction and available instructional time are low, or where children have some type of disability. In many low- and middle- income country contexts, children do not learn how to read at school: in fact, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 53 percent of children age 10 in low- and middle-income countries could not read and understand a short-age appropriate text. 24 This is due to a variety of factors including teachers not being valued, well prepared or supported, limited instructional materials, and very low time-on-task. Even parents and caregivers with low literacy skills can do many simple, fun, and engaging activities at home to support their children’s literacy skills. As shown in Box A, programs in impoverished peri-urban settings in South Africa and in rural Kenya have achieved significant impacts by working with illiterate INTRODUCTION 14 caregivers. In fact, in Kenya the impact was biggest among illiterate caregivers. In these programs, parents use a technique called dialogic reading, by which they help the child tell the story by asking questions about the storybook and then evaluate the response, expand on it by rephrasing or adding information to it, and repeat the prompt to ensure that the children understand. 25 Key messages In summary, the following key messages are important to share with parents and caregivers about their role in supporting children’s reading skills: • Children of all age, from babies to adolescents, benefit from parental and family engagement. • All parents, even those with low literacy, can support their children’s literacy. • Reading at home reinforces and complements skills learned at school. • Families should create an environment in the home where reading is valued and encour age children to read daily. • Daily reading is critical to build fluency. • All children, including children with disabilities, can be supported to read at home with multi - sensory approaches and materials. INTRODUCTION 15 INTRODUCTION 16 The objective of Part 1 is to provide country teams with information and suggested steps to identify and select quality children’s storybooks and story cards (including fiction and nonfiction) for the Read@Home package. Part 1 has three sections. Section 1A includes an overview on what makes a good storybook, including elements such as level and language, illustrations, diverse characters and topics, and printing specifications. Section 1B recommends steps for identifying story card/book titles and book selection decisions at the country level, keeping in mind the country context, target population needs, and budget. Box 1.1. Glossary of common terms in this section The following terms will appear throughout the section: Read@Home will focus on supporting the - Storybook A book intended to be used as an selection and distribution of children’s engaging read-aloud or an independent pleasure- reading book storybooks and story cards. Story cards are - Reader A book with text written for the specific laminated cards for the youngest readers or for purpose of teaching the mechanics of reading children with disabilities that can tell a story in - Reading level Measure of child ability to read. Used pictures or a combination of pictures and text. to ensure that children are exposed to books These cards are double-sided and laminated on appropriate to their skill. both sides to increase durability and to allow - Story content Plot, setting, characterization, parents and teachers to wipe the story cards interest/excitement, and length off between uses. They are much less - Diversity Inclusive and equitable treatment of race, religion, gender, disability, class, rural-urban divide expensive than books and so many more can - Illustrations Visual elements in a book apart from be purchased for a given budget. Story cards text (such as use of color) designed to add child can be used in many ways. Parents and appeal, perspective, focus, or inclusiveness caregivers can tell stories from the pictures, - Design The integration of text and artwork, choice children can make up stories from the pictures, of fonts, use of white space and children can begin to read simple texts - Production Choice of paper quality, binding, color printing, format with just a few words. Storybooks and story - Versioning Translating that avoids word-for-word cards are designed for children to read translation while keeping fidelity to the original independently or with a teacher, parent, older story sibling or community member. Regardless of - Mother tongue The first language one learns as a how they are used, story cards and books baby, rather than a language learned at school or as should follow guidelines for appropriate an adult language, content, diversity, illustration, and - Language of instruction Language in which formal schooling takes place; language used by teachers to design. teach Adapted from REACH Initiative’s Recommendations for Storybook Quality and from Cambridge Dictionary BOOK SELECTION 17 The main elements of each of these are described in detail below. C Please note that these are aspirational objectives and may not be easily found in existing titles of all languages. In the short term, instead of trying to develop titles that fit all of these criteria —especially in terms of illustrations —teams should select existing titles that are available or easily versioned for their language and context. D To facilitate easy reference when selecting books, the content below has been mapped to children’s reading levels, as described in Section 1B. As mentioned in the Introduction, children progress through various stages on their journey to learning to read. These stages are not completely discrete-- skills develop continuously and so it is impossible to say with complete precision whether a child is at one skill level or another. Nonetheless, understanding they skill levels helps match books and tasks to the learning and practice needs of children. Table 1.1 provides the reading level that corresponds to each stage of literacy, so that teams can identify story books and cards that will be relevant to children at each stage . Table 1.1. Overview of the stages of reading development Stage Skill level Relevant Reading Level These children have not begun formal instruction in literacy. They cannot read or identify letters or words, and therefore should be read to by caregivers. Although children might learn some letters and sounds because of Story cards and Level 1: Stage 0: Pre-Readers being read to, the goal of being read to is not to start literacy instruction but Learning to read (might rather to increase oral language abilities (basic vocabulary), enjoy being read also include Levels 2-3 to, and start understanding how print works. when being read to by literate parents) These children are learning to decode/decipher print. They should have books Stage 1: Early Readers with plenty of pictures, and few words (most of them familiar). These children are beginning to read fluently and automatically, but still Stage 2: Independent require plenty of practice with books that start with easier words and shorter Level 2: Reading with help Readers phrases and sentences, and gradually increase in difficulty. These students can read plenty of texts effortlessly and automatically – often Stage 3: Fluent Readers Level 3: Reading to themselves as “silent reading.” They need books that stimulate their independently; and Level interests and provide practice with reasonable amounts of new vocabulary and 4: Reading proficiently increasingly long and complex phrases and sentences. Source: Adapted from Chall (1983), pp. 10-24 and Storyweaver’s Reading Level Note: Although this table utilizes Storyweaver’s reading levels, there are multiple other valid classifications of levels that match the stages of reading. CFor more details, please see the REACH Initiative’s Recommendations for Storybook Quality . DVersioning refers to creating a new version of a story in another language, level or for another conte xt. It entails avoiding word-for-word translation while keeping fidelity to the original story. For more details, please see the REACH Initiative’s Recommendations for Storybook Versioning which contains examples, checklists and others. BOOK SELECTION 18 When selecting books for children, it is also important to keep in mind that many parents and caregivers may be at one of the basic reading skill levels. Likewise, children’s actual reading skill levels may lag behind the official levels expected for their grades (in many countries, children will be on levels 1 and 2 even if they are in primary education). Therefore, it is important for teams to review available data on children’s reading levels to guide the selection of books for the Read@Home package. Providing books with larger font size, vivid illustrations, and limited text will support these caregivers to better engage with their children around books. The language of the book is a critical element in making a story enjoyable. Global evidence consistently shows that students learn more in the language(s) they understand best. 26 When children have access to books in their mother tongue, their parents and communities are also more likely to be involved in their learning. 27 Stories that have rhythm, rhyme, and repetition support the youngest readers with word recognition, memory, and confidence. If mother tongue books are not available, teams may need to develop new titles, which can be facilitated through the use of title development software such as Bloom and African Storybook's software. Content refers to the elements of the story itself and how it is expressed, including topic and theme, plot and structure, characterization, setting and genre. Not all elements are applicable to nonfiction stories. The topic or theme in the story is the underlying message and should be something to which all readers can relate. Topics like friendship, loss, animals, celebration, and having fun are widely applicable. Topics can also be nonfictional and can be linked to the school curriculum. Figure 1.1. In Lost in the Dark, children deal with being lost Often children need stories to deal with and alone. difficult situations (as in Figure 1.1). Topics should encourage critical thinking and include issues pertinent to children and social issues prevalent in their communities. The range of stories should include both what young children know very well and unfamiliar topics. BOOK SELECTION 19 The plot of the story should be interesting to young children and structured with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The plot does not have to be realistic—many early readers enjoy fantasy and science fiction—but it should still be logically developed. Nonfiction books may not have a plot, but they too should present information in an interesting and engaging way. Characterization, or the development of Figure 1.2. The Green Apple and Sheep’s Beautiful Hat have characters in a story, is critical to characters who are fruit and animals but behave like children which children find very appealing. sustaining readers’ interest. Research shows that young children enjoy stories about animals or other children their own age (Figure 1.2). Stories need to have a setting (place or time) that appeals to the reader. The package of stories should include a variety of genres, or categories of literature. Fiction includes traditional tales, fables, science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Nonfiction storybooks include biographies of famous people and real-world topics related to math, science, geography, and travel. Diversity. Children’s storybooks should promote mutual understanding, empathy, and celebration of diversity within a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. Stories should expose children to both validating ‘mirror’ stories that reflect their own identities and circumstances, as well as ‘window’ stories that introduce them to worlds and lives beyond their own cultures and countries. 28 To the extent possible, a reading package should include books with one or more of the following elements: o Inclusion of rural, urban, peri- urban settings o Varying family types including nuclear, child / grandparent / female headed, intergenerational o gender diversity o Characters from different backgrounds, of different cultures and identities (including persons with disabilities). Figure 1.3. In the book Everyone Sees, the girl protagonist wears glasses. In Cloud Party, one of the girls wears a headscarf. BOOK SELECTION 20 Books should not promote tokenism, that is, stories in which diverse characters are present but do not take an active role, and they should not contain stereotypical representations. Figures 1.3 and 1.4 include examples of diversity in books. Figure 1.4. In the book Just like the other kids, one character is a child in a wheelchair The images on each page should help children understand the story, especially for early readers. It is important that the world depicted in the illustration starts with what children know and moves gradually to the less familiar. Here are some considerations: o Illustrations should be varied, including realistic, cartoon, comic, Figure 1.5. A view of the setting in An Unforgettable Adventure and emotion on the faces of the children and paintings. and dog in Please, Puppy Please. o Children like characters who look playful and friendly and who display obvious emotions. Research shows that children prefer storybooks that make them laugh. o One illustration positioned consistently per page may improve comprehension and retention. 29 There is also evidence that too many illustrations per page are distracting and can impair reading. o Illustrations should also make use of perspective, including close-up drawings to show emotions and panoramas to show setting (Figure 1.5). BOOK SELECTION 21 Content design refers to how the text and the illustrations are laid out on the page. Well-designed books are more visually appealing to children and good design assists children in reading and understanding the text. Books should be designed in a sans serif font, such as Andika, as these fonts are less complex and easier for early readers to understand. Each paragraph should be separated by four lines, and six line spaces should separate headings/titles from the body of the text to also aid early readers to understand text. Increasing font size and spacing also makes it easier for early readers to understand text. The minimum image resolution for both storybooks and story cards is 300 DPI. More details on design recommendations by reading level are included in Section 1B. This refers primarily to paper (for interior pages and covers) and binding. Paper and binding choices determine the cost and durability of books. Paper type, coating, and weight, as well as binding t ype, all have to be determined prior to book procurement. The recommended weight of paper is 80 gsm (grams per square meter), for interior pages and 250 gsm for book covers. For story cards, the recommended weight is 300 gsm, and these should be laminated on both sides to increase durability. Books under 96 pages, which will be the case for all Read@Home books other than anthologies, should be saddle stitched, using galvanized steel staples. 30 Below is a checklist designed to help teams in their book selection process. In particular, it is intended to help teams verify if the books being considered meet critical criteria with regards to reading level, language, content, illustrations, design, and physical specifications. BOOK SELECTION 22 Book Selection Checklist Reading level Illustrations Storybooks and cards take account of Varied illustrations (e.g. cartoon, realistic) the reading level of target children & Characters look playful, friendly and caregivers display obvious emotions Language Illustrations use perspective (close-up, panoramas) If possible, storybooks are written in the Design mother tongue Content Sans serif font (e.g. Andika) Paragraphs separated by four lines Variety of topics (familiar and unfamiliar Six-line spaces separate headings/titles situations) from the body of the text Variety of genres (fiction & nonfiction) Image resolution of 300 DPI or more Logically developed plot Physical specifications Diversity (rural/urban, family types, gender, background, cultures, persons Books- At least 80 grams for pages and with disabilities) 250 for book covers Storycards- 300 grams, laminated on both sides BOOK SELECTION 23 In an effort to get all children reading, countries can opt for a diverse set of literacy materials that respond to the variety of student needs. and that offer. Box 1.2 presents some ideas of multi-sensory and more accessible approaches to support children with dissability in their reading process. These range from audio books, books with large fonts or in braille and even books with simple texts. Box 1.2. Supporting children with disabilities to read: Simple multi-sensory and more accessible approaches For children with visual impairments: • Consider audio books or video read-alouds. Some books now have audio and/or video read-aloud versions that can help blind and low-vision children. • Children who are blind learn to read by decoding Braille cells that represent letters (uncontracted Braille). Every language has its own Braille code to correspond with its alphabet. Students use their fingers to recognize Braille letters, and then match the letters with phonemes, in the same way that sighted readers decode. • Produce books in large font for children with low vision. The need for Braille vs. large print depends on individual students’ vision levels and preferences. Students with degenerative vision conditions may benefit from dual media literacy, learning braille and to read print. • Choose books with simple, uncluttered pictures. Other senses may be heightened when children have visual or hearing impairments. Select books with clear contrast and bright bold colors and with photos of real objects. Large format books and font size help children see the characters and text better. For children with communication disorders: • Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) tools to enable children to symbolically express learning if they can’t participate orally and/or do not have motor skills require d for sign language. A printout of pictures referred to as Picture Exchange Communication (PEC) is an example of a low tech AAC. In the picture on the right, children demonstrate learning of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears book through the symbols on the communication board. As children learn to read, pictures and symbols can be replaced by printed words. BOOK SELECTION 24 Box 1.2 (continued): Considerations when selecting books to support children with disabilities For children who are deaf/hard of hearing: • Take advantage of their sensory strength- vision. Try this six-step process for reading with children, especially if parents and children can sign: i) parent reads or signs a storybook to child; ii) child individually reads/signs storybook with picture and parent support; iii) parent closes storybook an d models story retelling, followed by child individually retelling story with parent support; iv) child chooses print words from storybook and practices signing, fingerspelling and writing words; v) child chooses a favorite picture from storybook to draw, then labels it in print; vi) child explains in sign the meaning of the drawing in writing. • Engage other members of the adult deaf community to tell the child stories in sign and translate the underdeveloped language of signs, gestures and vocalizations of young deaf children into a higher level. • Try shared reading. In shared reading, parents or caregivers read aloud to children and stop at simple words or phrases for children to say them, sign them, or select a representation of them from a PEC board. • For young children, choose books with simple themes, rhymes, and repetition. Look for books with repetition or rhymes. Look for books with animal sounds or other sounds that represent the actions in the story. The cat says “meow, meow” or the sound in the water goes “splish, splash”. This encourages children to make the sounds and talk. For children with intellectual disabilities: • Choose more accessible books. This includes books with simple text (fewer words, familiar vocabulary, simple grammar, repetitive phrases, larger font, more spacing between lines of text) pictures/graphics that reinforce meaning and build understanding, help comprehend a sentence, and/or teach a process. Online resources (e.g. rewordify.com) can help simplify text. • Ask children to demonstrate comprehension through alternative, non-text forms of expression. Pair books with pictures for comprehension questions. For example, provide three pictures of events that take place and ask children to arrange the images in the correct order. • Be mindful of attention spans. A typically developing four-year-old can usually listen for about 12 minutes, while a five-year-old’s attention span may be up to 20 minutes. A child with delays will likely have a shorter attention span and may take longer to process stories. Simplifying stories for can help to maintain attention. For children with motor skills delays: • Glue objects onto books. Create “page turners” – such as sticks glued onto each page at varying levels to make it easier for children to grasp and turn the pages. This helps develop fine motor skills. Sources: Taken from First5 Contra Costa and USAID’s Universal Design for Learning to Help all Children Read . Additional guidance and resources can be found in Storyweaver’s read-along series which include an audio component to a digital book. As Table 1.2 shows, the reading levels of the story cards and books that are selected for children in the Read@Home package need to fit their stage of reading development. Table 1.2 maps the reading levels to the four characteristics of storybook quality. As storybooks do not always indicate a reading level, this table provides examples of what to look for to determine the level of a particular storybook in your country. BOOK SELECTION 25 Table 1.2 Elements of a quality storybook by reading levels Reading Level Content Diversity Illustrations Design - Diversity in characters (different Story cards and Level 1: - One informative - Familiar objects and experiences backgrounds, cultures, languages, - Large font (size 26) Learning to Read picture placed - Simple plots including persons with disabilities, - Double-spaced consistently on the - Word repetition ethnic minorities etc.) - One sentence per page Example Titles: page - Rhythm and rhyme - Different types of families - Less than 5 words per sentence My Brother and Me - Text and pictures - Care should be taken to include materials aimed at - Rural, urban, peri-urban settings - Repeated words should support each older readers with lower reading levels. - Gender diversity - Word range: 0 to 250 My Body other - Diversity in characters (different Level 2: Reading with Help - Simple genres in fiction and nonfiction backgrounds, cultures, languages, - Illustrations depicting - 22-24 size font - Stories with linear, engaging plots including persons with disabilities, multiple ideas - 3-8 lines of text per page Example titles: - Familiar content: home, neighborhood, and school ethnic minorities etc.) - Text and pictures - Fewer repeated words Aunty Jui’s Baby - For older readers at lower reading levels, content - Different types of families should support each - Typically, 10-12 pages total should be targeted to their interests. - Rural, urban, peri-urban settings other - Word range: 250 to 600 Different Abilities - Gender diversity Level 3: Reading Independently - Diversity in characters (different - 14-16 size font backgrounds, cultures, languages, - New vocabulary and - Popular topics (adventure, mystery, etc.) - Sentences carry over pages Example titles: including persons with disabilities, concepts may be - Short non-fiction texts on one topic - Many lines of print per page ethnic minorities etc.) illustrated to support Holidays with Grandmother - More complex characters - Longer sentences – 10 words or - Different types of families comprehension in - More unfamiliar settings more - Rural, urban, peri-urban settings nonfiction texts The Novel Coronavirus: We - Word range: 600 to 1500 - Gender diversity can Stay Safe - Non-fiction texts on many related topics - Diversity in characters (different Level 4: Reading Proficiently - Complex and mature themes (racism, bullying, backgrounds, cultures, languages, - New vocabulary and -14-16 size font Example titles: diversity) and abstract concepts (love, survival, war) including persons with disabilities, concepts may be - Up to 150 words per page - Unfamiliar plots and settings ethnic minorities etc.) illustrated to support - Sentences carry over pages Arya in the Cockpit - Longer, more nuanced stories with many characters - Different types of families comprehension in - Many lines of print per page - Rich vocabulary - Rural, urban, peri-urban settings nonfiction texts - Word range: 1500+ Grandma’s Bananas - Language play (metaphors, similes, etc.) - Gender diversity Sources: Information on word count, number of sentences per page and page count adapted from Fountas and Pinnell Leveling Guidelines and Storyweaver’s Reading Levels . Note: Although this table is based on Storyweaver´s Reading Levels, it is important to note that there are multiple valid methodologies that determine book’s Reading Levels taking on account the difficulty of the texts. BOOK SELECTION 26 Selecting the right mix and number of books for the Read@Home package is important. This section suggests steps to identify and select story card and book titles. Throughout the section, the suggestions will also address common challenges that World Bank and government staff may face in the process. Research shows that children learn to read best in a language they know and understand, even after formal schooling begins. Even with formal instruction in their home or first language, it will take at least six years of good instruction and sufficient instructional time for children to become proficient readers and writers. However, policies on language of instruction are influenced by larger political and economic considerations: language is closely tied to national and political identity, and parents often view competence in international language as key to children’s careers success. Therefore, decisions regarding language of instruction must take into account the educational evidence and the broader political and economic context. 31 Ideally, storybooks in the Read@Home package should be written in the mother tongue. In countries that do not currently use the mother tongue as a language of instruction, teams are encouraged to explore the technical, political, and economic dimensions of language policy. It may be possible to develop an agreement that the Read@Home books, which are not textbooks and are intended for home use, be in the mother tongue. This will build c hildren’s early reading skills for easier acquisition of the official language. For more information on language issues, please refer to USAID’s Handbook on Language of Instruction Issues in Reading Programs 32 or to SIL’s Good Answers to Tough Questions in Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education. 33 Many countries and languages have existing story cards and books that have been developed by the government, by NGOs, or by local book publishers through support from USAID, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO, formerly DfID), World Bank, foundations, or other donors. Many titles are licensed through the Creative Commons (CC) 4.0 International Attribution (CC BY 4.0) or other CC licenses. Depending on the license, this may mean that books are “open source” and can be printed, distributed, adapted, and translated so long as the original authors and publisher are acknowledged. Titles developed with local authors and communities are more likely to accurately represent the culture and environment of local children and families, but it can be hard to find these titles. Country teams are encouraged to seek out titles developed for particular countries and languages, with the help of country-level stakeholders and international digital libraries. These actors and questions may be useful to find titles. BOOK SELECTION 27 Finding existing children’s books in-country . Children’s books are available from various sources, not just bookstores and publishers. Check with the following actors about existing materials in-country: • Ministry of Education officials • Publishers and booksellers • Funders (e.g. USAID, NORAD, FCDO) and sponsoring organizations (e.g. foundations) • UN agencies engaged in education (e.g. UNESCO and UNICEF) • International, regional, and national NGOs or community organizations focused on literacy (e.g. Uwezo, CODE, Save the Children, World Vision, Pratham, Room to Read, USAID implementing partners) • Private schools. Key questions for government and partners: • What open-source story cards and books are available in country? Are there catalogs or libraries of these books available? • Has a survey of reading materials been conducted in the past five years or do partners have their own catalogs that could be shared? • Is there a list of storybooks already approved or in-use within the public education system or other government channels? • Will some form of approval or review of the materials package be required? And if so, what is the process/timeline? E Finding existing children’s books globally. If your team is having difficulty identifying book titles in- country, there are global digital libraries that include illustrated and well-written books in hundreds of languages on a variety of topics aligned to the quality characteristics outlined in Section 1A. Four digital libraries are especially valuable in this regard: Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver , the African Storybook Initiative , the Bloom library, and the Global Digital Library (with its repository of print-ready files) all house many open-source children’s books produced by local and international NGOs, as well as developm ent projects. Most of these titles are also registered under the Creative Commons 4.0 International Attribution (CC BY 4.0) or other CC licenses and the platforms include software to easily version books into relevant languages and contexts. For more information on the process of versioning available titles into relevant languages and other adaptations, please see REACH’s Recommendations for Storybook Versioning . Table 1.3 summarizes the features of each of the four digital libraries mentioned above. E Given that approval processes can be complicated, teams are advised to consider titles that are already government - approved. If there are not enough appropriate, government-approved titles, teams are advised to review open-source titles available in their country or on digital platforms that could be adapted for their languages and contexts. If this is not pos sible, teams may need to develop new titles, which can be facilitated through the use of title development software such as Bloom (https://bloomlibrary.org/) and African Storybook's software (https://www.africanstorybook.org/). BOOK SELECTION 28 Table 1.3. Summary of global digital libraries. Features Library Summary Languages Search Download Translation Audio/Video Functionality to 5,000+ titles in A flagship activity of the search by Translate 72 languages Global Book Alliance, the language and Download feature to Some books currently library collects existing open levels (1, 2, 3, 4 or for print in facilitate have available with reading resources and read-aloud, which multiple file translation to accompanying the goal of 100 makes them available on is not leveled but formats more than 300 audio languages by web, mobile and for print. is usually at level languages end-2020 Global Digital 2) Library The print repository of the 500 files in 23 Currently Download No library launched in March No translate languages organized by for print in accompanying 2020 and includes print- feature available language only pdf format video/audio ready files of reading books. Developed by Pratham 25,000 titles in Functionality to Some books Books, this library has Download Easy translation 261 languages search by have StoryWeaver thousands of open-licensed for print as feature to add currently language, levels, accompanying children's stories in pdf file new languages available topic or publisher videos or audio hundreds of languages. . Developed by SIL Functionality to 6,250 titles in Download Some books International, this library has search by Easy translation 410 languages for print as have Bloom Library thousands of open-sourced language, region, feature to add currently publisher or accompanying children’s books in hundreds topic, publisher or new languages available pdf files videos or audio of languages. level (1 and 2) Nearly 1,500 Functionality to Download MAKE feature This library facilitates open books in 210 No African Storybook search by title, for print as to create, access to storybooks in languages accompanying Initiative date, language publisher or translate and African languages. currently video/audio and reading level pdf files adapt stories available When selecting books for families, it will be important to consider the actual reading level of each child in the household. Not all children learn to read at the same age, and even within age brackets there is variability in reading levels. Given high rates of learning poverty in many Read@Home countries, most children in primary school may be in Levels 1 or 2. Here are a few ways that World Bank and clients can work together to identify the levels of books needed for the target groups. BOOK SELECTION 29 Review existing data. Most countries conduct or participate in standardized assessments. Recently, there has been much more focus on assessing children in the early grades of primary schools. Internationally developed assessments such as the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), civil society assessments such as Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) and Uwezo, regional assessments such as Programme d'analyse des systèmes éducatifs de la confemen (PASEC), and national assessments are all sources of information about the reading levels of young children. Reviewing assessment data will give you and your client governments a good place to start determining which books will be most appropriate for your target beneficiaries. Engage the Ministry of Education. Discussions with Ministry of Education colleagues can help confirm the range of reading levels for the target group characteristics (e.g. rural, minority, or indigenous). If there are books already used in the classroom or in school libraries identified in Step 1 above, these examples would be helpful to both identify the reading levels and to be included in the Read@Home package. The guidelines by reading level in Table above, specifically in the columns on design and content, can support discussion. Engage relevant civil society groups, including NGOs . Groups working on improving educational quality and learning often have strong knowledge of existing reading levels among different populations. Convening focus groups or workshops to review the materials that these groups are using and to discuss appropriate materials for Read@Home will produce more appropriate materials and strengthen country ownership. Test books with children. Depending on access, country teams can also test books with small groups of children from the beneficiary target groups or those with similar characteristics. Teams can also ask decentralized government offices and civil society groups to test materials. Care should be taken to ensure that children are representative of the target population and not only a “convenience sample.” Teams can print a few selected books for use with children. If there are five or more words per page in a book that children struggle with, that book is too hard. This testing could be conducted individually with no-contact and social distancing. To support children’s emergent literacy skills, the more books availab le in a variety of genres in the home environment, the better. While the availability of titles must be taken into account, countries should aim to distribute as many books as feasible with their budget. So far, countries in the Read@Home initiative have distributed from 8-12 books per child (see Section 1C for more details on costing books). Households with multiple children will need books at different levels. In these households, even if some books are too easy for some children, they can read them out loud to younger children while improving their reading fluency. If some books are too hard, older siblings or adults can support children until they can read independently. More details on how to use story cards and story books to support children’s reading are included in Part 2: Caregiver Engagement. BOOK SELECTION 30 One way to expand the number of books available to families is through a small group exchange. This could be done by grouping families in a similar location and with using the Read@Home manual to make decisions and accompanying learning activities. In this round, families could receive different books and then be connected in small groups to rotate books among themselves, which can also facilitate support for one another. Because children and families will nee d additional books to support children’s reading, it is ideal for the Read@Home package to complement broader reading interventions at the community and school levels. The next section of this manual includes suggested strategies for ongoing engagement to promote reading at home, such as community exchanges. Costing books starts with making decisions about the desired physical characteristics, or “technical specifications,” of the books. These characteristics include paper size, paper weight, paper type, binding, trim size, and others. The use of correct specifications maximizes the number of books that can be printed for a given budget. The most important specifications are: • Number of pages (extent): Books are printed on large sheets of paper that contain multiple pages of content. Given the way that these pages are folded for the final book, the number of pages in a book should always be divisible by 4. • Paper size (format): Printing standard sized books reduces paper waste, as paper is produced in standard sized sheets and rolls. Commonly used sizes for children’s books are A4 (210mm X 297mm) and A5 (148mm X 210mm). • Paper weight (grammage): Using an appropriate weight paper is important for readability and durability. Paper that is too light will tear easily. 80 gsm is a standard weight for interior book pages and 250 gsm is a standard weight for covers. • Binding: There are multiple types of book binding. For books up to 96 pages, such as most children’s reading books, saddle stitching with two galvanized (to prevent rusting) wire staples along the spine of the book is the preferred option. Saddle stitching is the least expensive book binding method and books should last for at least one year of classroom use. Durability in homes will depend on the context. For books with more pages and settings requiring sturdier books, perfect binding (using hotmelt glue) with section sewing or perfect binding with PUR (polyurethane glue) are recommended. Most supplemental reading materials for children are printed in color, although there is little data available on the pedagogic impact of color. With advances in printing technology and the size of print runs likely in most Read@Home countries, the cost differences between black and white printing and color printing will be minimal. Story cards should be considered for the youngest readers. They are made of heavier paper and are laminated on both sides to increase durability. Lamination also allows parents and teachers to wipe the story cards off between uses. BOOK SELECTION 31 Client governments should always require samples of the paper to be used for printing during the procurement process and examine a sample of the books they receive from the printer to ensure that the books received match the technical specifications used for procurement. The Read@Home team is producing a Procurement and Delivery Guidance document which will be linked to this manual once it is ready. In the meantime, please reach out to the global Read@Home team for support. For additional information, see “ Best Practices for Developing Supplementary Reading Materials ”. Table 1.4. Indicative Costs (indicative maximums; costs in your country may be lower) Number of Cost per copy Specifications pages/cards (US$) 8 0.55 – 0.65 • Format: A5 (14.8 x 21.0 cm, about 5¾ x 8¼ in) • Paper: 80 gsm white woodfree 16 0.95 – 1.05 • Cover: 250 gsm white, coated one side • Printing: Full color offset, letterpress, or Books gravure • Binding: Two galvanized wire stitches (staples) 32 1.35 – 1.45 on spine • Order quantity: 10,000 copies 1 0.03 – 0.05 • Format: A4 (21.0 x 29.7 cm, about 8¼ x 11¾ in) • Board: 300 gsm white, laminated both sides • Printing: Full-color offset, letterpress, or Reading gravure Set of 10 0.30 – 0.50 Cards • Trim: Corners rounded • Order quantity: 10,000 cards BOOK SELECTION 32 BOOK SELECTION 33 Having books at home is critical for children’s learning. Books alone, however, will not improve learning outcomes. Books must be accompanied by guidance to caregivers that increase use and encourage supportive practices (such as reading to children and with children). Parents and other caregivers are children’s first teachers. Importantly, all caregivers—even those who are busy, cannot read, or are not accustomed to engaging with children—can play a critical role in helping children learn to read. The objective of this section is to provide country teams with information and suggested steps to find, develop, and distribute the guidance for caregivers that will be part of the Read@Home package. The section is organized into three parts. Section 2A presents strategies for caregiver involvement before, during, and after reading with children to support oral language development, emergent literacy, and advanced literacy development. This section is supplemented by Appendices A through D, which comprise sample handouts containing strategies to share with parents. These Annexes can help improve the quality of existing guidance or inform the development of new guidance. Section 2B provides an overview of options for message delivery, ranging from in-home visits to text messages. Section 2C includes recommended steps to identify existing caregiver guidance in a given country context. Caregiver engagement in reading can be beneficial for children across all reading stages. For instance, when Pre-Readers (those at Stage 0 in Table A) listen to caregivers read to them (or narrate from pictures), they increase their oral language abilities by learning the meaning of the new words they hear. They also develop listening skills, become aware of print, and start to understand that symbols and text carry meaning. When done well, being read to in this way allows children to hear books being read with proper expression. They even learn about normal speeds for reading aloud, and how these are like normal speeds for talking when not reading. F For Early Readers (stages 1 in Table A), reading out loud continues to foster a wider vocabulary. Additionally, discussions about characters and places also help build background and world knowledge. Independent and Fluent Readers (stages 3 and 4 in Table A) still need to get practice with the basic reading skills. However, they go further into making predictions on what my happen or what can be inferred from the text even if it is not stated explicitly. Practice with these more advanced reading skills helps children think critically and even understand different viewpoints. It can help put them on the road to a virtuous cycle in which they read, reflect, gain skills, and then want to read more and widen their learning. For some readers, this process never stops, as even as adults they are finding new books and ideas to challenge them to grow as readers and thinkers. What follows lays out activities that caregivers can do before, during, and after time spent reading with their children to develop their reading skills, create habits around reading, and importantly, associate reading with joy. To ease the translation of the activities into handouts or messages sent to caregivers, it F Refer to Appendix A for a list of parental activities to foster oral language development that go beyond reading. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 34 is written as if directly speaking to the caregiver. Appendices A through C present sample handouts for caregivers with and without minimum literacy skills to apply these steps. If you are interested in accessing more resources and materials, we recommend revising the Covid-19 Reading Comprehension Guidance: Tips for Parents and Caregivers developed by the Reading Comprehension Interest Group. G * For all readers: • Show that reading matters by creating a book corner. This is a space in the home where caregivers and family members can sit together to read. Empty boxes can be used to store books and other reading materials next to a bed, chair, or mat, depending on where families have space. Even in families where caregivers cannot read, it is important to show children that reading is important and enjoyable. Creating a culture of reading in the home shows children that books are valuable, and that reading should not be limited to school. Drawings, letters of the alphabet, and new vocabulary words can be stuck to the wall or hung on string attached to windows. The idea is to make a cozy space that is associated with and used for pleasurable reading activities. • Create a habit around reading by setting up a time to read. This is another way to show that reading matters and of setting an example. Routines are important for young children. They help provide structure to a child’s day and give children some guidance on what to expect. Many families read to their children before bedtime, but each family should determine what time that works for them within their daily routine. • Choose a book together. Allow children to choose which book to read among those that target their level and those that are below their reading level to increase their enjoyment. Do not worry if the book is below their level sometimes; it will still be beneficial for children. More advanced readers can handle more complex topics and themes and may have genre preferences. • Make predictions. Before beginning a read aloud, allow children to look at the illustration on the front cover, read the title and make predictions about what the story could be about. Asking children to make predictions helps them be more focused and attentive and encourages them to make linkages with the text and their own lives. GThe simplified Spanish version of the document can be found here: http://biblioteca.red-lei.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac- detail.pl?biblionumber=14393 GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 35 For re-Readers (Stages 0-1): • Read to children and help them learn how to handle books and other basic concepts about print. As children are building their literacy skills, they have yet to understand that words and letters convey meaning. They may also not know how to handle books or turn pages. Caregivers who can read can show the front and back covers, read the title and author’s name , and point to where the first word in the sentence is and say it out loud. • Use illustrations to build vocabulary. Throughout the story, point out different objects and name them. Ask where something is on the page, e.g., “Where is the red bird?” For all readers: • Read with expression when reading to and with children. Using different voices for different characters creates interest in the story and helps children to distinguish between characters . • Ask about new or difficult words. Talk about any words the child may not understand. Give an example of what the word means. • Ask questions. Ask open questions, such as, “ What do you notice?” or “What do you think about the characters?” to gauge children’s interest in the story. Ask literal questions to determine whether children have understood key ideas within the text, such as, “Where is the story taking place? ” or “What is the name of the child’s uncle?” For children with advanced literacy ski lls, ask more detailed questions about plot, character motivation, and theme. Questions can range from factual/literal (where children are asked to recall specific facts from a story) to more advanced (where children are asked to make inferences and evaluate aspects of the story based on evidence from the text). Activities for all readers: • Retell. Summarizing is an effective way to gauge whether children have understood the content of a read aloud. Caregivers can ask children to tell the story again in their own words. • Re-read the story together. Children, especially young children, love repetition and do not get bored hearing the same story read again and again. Hearing a story multiple times helps with vocabulary development and comprehension. • Write or draw a summary or key episode from the story. Ask children to draw or write a few sentences to summarize the story. Provide prompts to assist, such as (1) who are the characters in the story?; (2) what was the problem?; (3) how was it solved?; (4) who helped? Children who are not yet writing can draw images from the story and have an older sibling or adult write a summary as they dictate. If children are already learning how to write and GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 36 spell, this activity can help them practice. Caregivers can encourage more advanced readers to think about the structure of the story, with a beginning, middle, and end. • Act out the story. If there are multiple children in the household, have them play different characters in the book and act the story out. Young children love activities where they use their bodies, and this is a fun and exciting way for young children to interact with books. • Talk about the new vocabulary that comes out in the story. As children advance in reading skills, they interact with more complex texts. Unfamiliar words, mature themes, and multiple characters make it harder to follow along with the story. Making time during reading to ask questions to gauge comprehension is helpful. After reading, going deeper with vocabulary and comprehension activities ensures that learning will be retained. • Play games. Simple games that strengthen emergent literacy skills, such as letter-sound relationships, word recognition, and patterns support reading and provide a scaffold for independent reading. Appendix C includes activities caregivers can do to support their children’s literacy development Box 2.1. Reading strategies to support children with disabilities Children who have reading disabilities often feel frustration and a lack of self-confidence when it comes to reading. It is important to build their confidence and practice strategies that will help make reading m ore manageable. The following are some strategies to use when reading with children with disabilities: Explicitly focus on word-sound relationships. Research has shown that children with reading disabilities benefit from phonemic awareness activities. Some activities to develop this skill when reading include clapping out the sounds of each letter in a word in sequence; and pointing to a letter in the book and saying its sound, asking the child to provide the name of the letter. Multi-sensory learning. Children with reading disabilities need additional time and repetition to master letter -sound relationships and other key literacy skills. It is helpful for them to have their hands, eyes, ears, and voices working toget her for conscious organization and retention. Some activities to support multi-sensory learning include: Pointing out new words that start with a particular letter in the book and having the child say the word out loud. This makes a link between the sound of that word and its written form; using hand gestures to help with meaning making to help children that are more visual. For example, when reading a story, adults can assist by pointing to various objects as they read the text out loud: “Mother (poin t to herself) made tea (mime sipping tea) for the guest.” Source: Universal design for learning to help all children read: Promoting literacy for learners with disabilities (Hayes, Turnbull & Moran 2018). GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 37 2B. DELIVERING CONTENT TO CAREGIVERS AS PART OF THE READ@HOME PACKAGE After developing content for caregivers, it is crucial to distribute it in an effective way so that it can change behaviors and practices and, ultimately, make a difference in the reading levels of children. What follows starts by providing advice on how to map out existing services to distribute caregiver guidance, followed by recommendations on different approaches teams could consider to orient caregivers to the Read@Home package and caregiver guidance and to check in with caregivers. Teams and governments are encouraged to start by mapping existing services and programs in the country that are already reaching target families and approach them to explore how they could be supported to deliver, orient and then follow up with target families. The following are some potential touchpoints and step to follow: Potential touchpoints. Think through existing programs or spaces that have contact with families or caregivers. This could include: • Cash transfer programs with regular meetings and/or a parenting accompanying measure; • Education programs, such as formal or informal early childhood education programs (including center based or home visits), formal or informal basic and secondary education programs, after- school classes, and adult literacy or agriculture extension programs; • Health programs, including health and developmental checkups, home visits, vaccination campaigns, community nutrition counselling, HIV support groups, or others; • Community engagement programs run by faith-based leaders and groups (e.g. men and women’s support groups); • Community engagement programs run by nongovernmental organizations (national and international) or community organizations that regularly engage caregivers . These could be focused on savings groups, literacy, parenting, psychosocial support, or community works, among others. Those focused on literacy are ideal, but community works and others might also be useful; and • Distance education programs, especially common during COVID-19 school closures. This might involve TV, radio, Short Messaging Services (SMS), Interactive Audio Instruction (IAI), and print materials. Steps : • Start with programs that have a regular contact with caregivers in your target area. Those that involve a component of caregiver training or regular (weekly to monthly) meetings should be prioritized. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 38 If programs with regular contact with caregivers are not available, identify locations that caregivers frequently access, such as a health center, social safety net office, preschool, primary school, or partner office. Regardless of the form of delivery, the following principles should be considered during the design of distribution plans for caregiver guidance: • Language selection: Materials should be written in a language that caregivers understand. In some contexts, this might not be the language of instruction but a local language or sign language;H • Clear messages : Messages should be simple and clear. This implies avoiding jargon or technical words; keeping texts to a minimum; using language at a beginner ’s reading level; and in contexts with low-literacy adults, relying mostly on illustrations; • Wide delivery : The delivery of messages must be designed so that it reaches the maximum number of caregivers in the most compelling way and leverages existing services. This might involve a combination of audio, visuals, and print; and • Orientation and Follow-up: Caregivers need support to first understand the guidance and then to practice and form habits. Distribution plans should take into account both how to orient caregivers as well as how to continue to encourage practice and troubleshoot challenges. Methods of distributing the Read@Home package for caregivers will vary by context. Written guidance that accompanies books is the easiest to scale up. However, when the level of literacy of caregivers is low, other means (e.g. face-to-face meetings, phone calls, radio, audio messages, Interactive Voice Recording (IVR)) should be considered as well. How prevalent technology is in the community, whether there is electricity, and mobile phone ownership will also impact how materials are shared and communicated. Not all strategies will work for all contexts, and some contexts will have to use a mix of strategies. In the immediate term, since the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to limit face-to-face interaction and support, some creative approaches will be needed. Several strategies are listed below; their advantages and disadvantages are synthesized in Table 2.1. Considerations of different modalities. Home delivery of materials and one on one consultations. The ideal method for showing caregivers how to use the Read@Home materials is through a one-on-one consultation in the parents’ home , which H Please refer to the Inclusive Education Resource Guide for ideas to consider for reaching parents or caregivers with disabiliti es GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 39 should take place when a trained facilitator visits the home to deliver the materials. The session should last no more than 60 minutes. In it, the facilitator can: • Provide caregivers with a brief overview of the project; • Show them the books included in the Read@Home package, explaining what target reading level each book is best suited for; • Share some information on the importance of having books in the home, allowing children time to read every day, and on the role caregivers play in supporting children’s literacy development; • Ask what activities caregivers already do with their children in the home and provide positive feedback on their efforts; • Demonstrate the read-aloud, and the questions to ask before, during, and after a read-aloud; • Review the steps of the read-aloud with the assumption that the caregiver cannot read and adjust as needed; • Encourage the caregivers to try the read-aloud in front of them with their child and provide encouragement and feedback (positive feedback, rather than overly correcting); and • At the end of the visit, the facilitator can give caregivers simple handouts that explain some of the literacy activities in more detail and ask them to do one of these activities everyday with their children. By meeting caregivers in their own home, issues of non-attendance due to lack of transportation or cultural issues (e.g., when women are not allowed to travel alone) are bypassed. Further, caregivers may be more inclined to ask questions, may feel a greater commitment to the program, and can forge stronger relationships with the facilitator in these individualized sessions. If this initial visit cannot be made in person, it could be done over a short phone call considering the following steps: 1. Provide caregivers with a brief overview of the project. 2. With the books in front of the caregiver, talk through the books included in the Read@Home package, explaining what target reading level each book is best suited for. 3. Share some information on the importance of having books in the home, allowing children time to read every day, and on the role that caregivers play in supporting ch ildren’s literacy development. 4. Ask what activities caregivers already do with their children in the home and provide positive feedback on their efforts. 5. Ask the caregiver to look at the illustrations/messages on the handout and explain each step/activity, pausing for questions. 6. Encourage the caregiver to make commitments to use the books and guidance to read with their children daily. 7. Plan the time/date of a follow-up call/meeting. Ideally, the initial visit should be followed by additional support, either in person or by phone or text (see Box 2.2). However, this method may not be possible for programs with national coverage that aim to be GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 40 implemented quickly as part of the COVID-19 response, because a trained facilitator is crucial to the success of the home consultation. I Group workshops and pick-up of materials. In the event that Read@Home materials cannot be delivered to each household, but COVID-19 distancing still allows for small-group meetings, materials can be picked up at a trusted partner organization (place of worship, school, community center, local NGO) or through existing government programs like parental engagement sessions that often accompany cash transfer programs or adult literacy programs. Small groups of caregivers can sit down together for a short workshop (30-45 minutes) on how to use the materials when they attend these sessions or come to the pick-up location. It is important to note that facilitators can be given one or two brief (30 minute) virtual trainings to orient them on materials and activities. When planning these workshops, keep in mind the following elements to ensure meetings are beneficial for all participants: • When holding introductory meetings, consult with community members on a time that suits the schedule of parents/caregivers and ensure the meeting venue is centrally located. In some cases, multiple meetings may need to be scheduled due to distance or cultural norms . • Ensure the space where meetings are held is accessible to all people, especially those that use assistive devices like wheelchairs, walkers, canes, crutches or other mobility devices . • Ensure that facilitators speak the language of the community; keep in mind this may not be the national language but a local language. • Facilitators should share key messages on the importance of caregivers’ roles in supporting children’s learning. • During meetings, facilitators should model the steps to reading with children through a brief role play, review the package contents together, and allow time for caregivers and community members to practice and ask questions. • Ensure all participants, especially women, people from minority groups, and those with disabilities have access to information and resources. • At the end of the meeting, ask participants to make commitments to use the books and the guidance to read with their children daily. Again, follow-up support after a workshop will be essential. IIdeally, facilitators should be from the same community as Read@Home families and speak the same language. Having experience working with families and community members on programs related to health, education, community mobilization, (etc.) would be beneficial. All facilitators should be well-versed on background and goals, including the importance of books in the home and family engagement around reading. They should be trained to demonstrate all activities included in the guide and understand the skills each activity develops. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 41 Issues related to the COVID 19 pandemic may not allow country offices to hold large meetings or go to homes to distribute materials. An alternative would be to record a short video (10 minutes maximum) that explains key attributes of the Read@Home project, key strategies caregivers can do with children to foster literacy development, and showcase the materials being provided. These videos can be shown at a partner location—a school, place of worship, local NGO, health community center, or nutrition or social protection program—at predetermined times, and caregivers can sign up for a time that is convenient for them. Materials can also be picked up at these locations for caregivers to take home. For caregivers that have video-playing devices at home, DVDs can be made of the instructional recording and sent home with caregivers. For those with cellphones and data, shorter videos or instructions can be sent through WhatsApp. Television. Many homes in rural and low-income contexts have access to television (TV), and countries are using TV as a channel to reach children during school closures due to COVID-19. Further, other homes have regular access to television shows (public access or otherwise). In these contexts, TV can be a useful mode of communicating Read@Home instructional guidance. Short, weekly segments can be aired (10 minutes maximum) that start by providing background to the Read@Home project along with descriptions of the type of materials being provided to families. Subsequent segments can then focus on how to read out loud to children, with facilitators demonstrating and asking caregivers to (remotely) follow along. Caregivers should be provided with the relevant handouts on reading out loud to children based on the target population. These segments could be taped in different languages, depending on the language diversity in the community. Country offices would need to research which channels the target families subscribe to and which would be the most optimal to air content. With this initiative, it is important to find a way to let families know what time and channel to tune into to listen to the messages and to acknowledge that the audience reached might be wider than the one receiving the materials. Additional guidance on using video and TV to provide remote education can be found in USAID’s Delivering Distance Learning in Emergencies. Interactive Audio Instruction (IAI). IAI has been an effective instructional strategy for many decades, particularly in rural contexts where other forms of technology are limited. 34 IAI uses radio or preloaded devices (such as Secure Digital- SD cards) as interactive tools to disseminate information, provide instruction, and broadcast stories. Often the IAI component is followed up with an in-person component, but this is not necessary. The wide reach of radio in many low-income countries has made radio a common distance learning strategy during COVID-19. In fact, countries and regions such as Peru, Guatemala, Maranhao State (Brazil), J and Mexico are developing short parenting engagement sessions over radio that JFor further information on the experience of Maranhao State, please refer to the Brazil- Educacao Infantil no Maranhao (Early Learning in Maranhao) continuity story. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 42 last three to four minutes each. For countries where this is the case, Read@Home strategies on material use can be designed and disseminated through IAI for communities where radio use is common and is used as a regular source of information. The Covid-19 Reading Comprehension Guidance: Tips for Parents and Caregivers developed by the Reading Comprehension Interest Group contains radio adaptation examples of reading comprehension at home. Text and audio messages using mobile phones. Mobile phone ownership has become very common throughout the developing world. It can be a cost-effective way to send messages on a variety of topics. In contexts where mobile penetration is high, Read@Home strategies can be delivered by SMS text or audio-recorded, with different instructional or pedagogical ideas shared weekly. If this mode of message delivery is successful, it can be expanded to include additional topics around language, literacy and childhood development. Caregivers could be given a toll-free number to call, which would have pre- recorded information on a variety of topics that caregivers can select. An early childhood and parenting project in Bangladesh using this modality has been very well received by rural families. It will be necessary to alert caregivers that these audio/text messages are coming to ensure that they actually listen to/read the messages, as it is common for people to delete messages that come from numbers they do not recognize. Additionally, it may be necessary to have a way to update phone numbers, because families sometimes change their mobile number if they find a better deal from another provider. Finally, making sure caregivers know they will not get charged for receiving and reading or listening to a message is also important in ensuring messages get listened to/read. Posters and flyers. Social behavioral change communications campaigns have gained in popularity in the education sector. Coupled with IAI and community meetings, posters, when designed well, can convey important information and knowledge to community members. A series of posters utilizing images or illustrations of locals reading together with a simple literacy message written in local and official languages can be put up around town, with different literacy messages on each one. 35 Box 2.2. Following-up after package delivery Ideally, the initial contact with families should be followed by additional support, either in person or by phone or text, to foster habit formation. The following strategies might be useful when following up. • When contacting families through a two-way-communication channel (either by phone, in group meetings, or in socially distanced meetings): o Ask questions on how families are using books and activities. o Put aside time to share something exciting and share ideas. o Make books: a small budget for markers/paint, scissors, glue and paper/printouts would be needed. Families can contribute with cardboard for covers and string. • Send audio or text WhatsApp messages to individual families or as a group with encouragement and reminders. • Encourage families to post their successes to group messaging or social media. • Establish reading corners at community health posts. • Establish or expand school/community libraries: investment in books can go further by creating a lending system based at school or with a mobile/waterproof box. This requires identifying a community librarian and supporting his/her work through training, a book register, follow-up support and a stipend if this is not already an identified role. Possible community facilitators who could take on this role include preschool or primary school teachers, parenting facilitators, and adult literacy instructors. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 43 Table 2.1. Considerations of different modalities for the distribution of caregiver orientation Access to Requirements Interactivity parents with Contact Cost low literacy Home delivery of Consultation can • Requires trained personnel to lead one-to-one Can be materials and reinforce consultations interactive and Medium $$$ one-to-one messages of a • Not dependent on technology or electricity engaging consultation pictorial guide. • Requires trained personnel to lead group Group Workshop can workshops Can be workshops and reinforce • Requires caregivers to go to the place of the interactive and High $$ pick up of messages of a workshop and participate engaging materials pictorial guide. • Not dependent on technology or electricity • Requires agreement with partner location Video can Prerecorded Limited to one- • Requires having technology to share video with reinforce video shared at a way Medium $ group on partner location messages of a partner location conversation • Requires caregivers to go to the partner location pictorial guide. • Requires cooperation with health centers and Delivery of Consultation can caregiver participation in health programs Can be guidance when reinforce • Requires training of individuals providing interactive and Medium $ visiting health messages of a orientation engaging center pictorial guide. • Not dependent on technology or electricity • Requires TV broadcast agreement and the development of materials for TV • Requires families accessing electricity, having a Limited to one- TV can reinforce No TV TV, and tuning in (making it less accessible for way messages of a $$$$ contact most vulnerable households) conversation pictorial guide. • Might require cable access (less coverage in remote areas) • Requires radio broadcast agreement • Requires families to have a radio, a way to power it, and to tune in at the right time (likely high- Can be access in rural community but strong interactive and Radio can communications strategy needed to ensure engaging but reinforce No Radio tuning in) $$ often limited to messages of a contact • Might not be electricity-dependent one-way pictorial guide. • Low-tech requirements for user, usually no extra conversation cost • Reception might not be available in remote settings • Requires telecom agreement • Requires phone ownership (might be accessible even for vulnerable households) Can be Lack of face-to- • Might require phone data interactive and face guidance. Text and audio • Dependent on electricity engaging but However, radio No messages using $$ • Low-tech requirements often limited to can reinforce contact mobile phones • Reception might not be available in remote one-way messages of a settings conversation pictorial guide • Requires having a list of mobile phone numbers to send messages to • High reach/access if people go out to read the Often limited Lack of face- Posters and poster or are delivered a flyer. Might not be No to one-way to-face $ flyers accessed in strict COVID-19 closures contact conversation guidance. • Not electricity- or technology-dependent Source: Adapted from USAID (2020). GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 44 Ideally, caregiver guidance will build on resources that have been developed and tested in the target country. This section provides basic guidance on how to identify country tools to engage caregivers to support children’s learning, including the actors t o engage with, the steps to follow, the questions to ask and the types of information to search for. Although guidance for caregivers is not very easy to find, check with the following actors about existing materials in-country: • Ministry of Education officials or those in charge of Early Childhood Education programs ; • Publishers; • Funders (e.g. USAID, NORAD, FCDO) and sponsoring organizations (e.g. Foundations); • UN agencies engaged in education (e.g. UNESCO and UNICEF); • Nongovernmental organizations (national and international) or community organizations focused on literacy (e.g. Uwezo for East Africa, Save the Children, World Vision, Plan International, Room to Read) (see Appendix E. Indicative list of organizations working in the field of early literacy for ideas on who to contact); and • Private schools. Start with materials explicitly targeted towards caregivers or community actors to encourage reading at home. These could come in different formats: booklets with general guidance, extra pages in the books distributed to children with specific questions around the story, etc. If your target audience is mostly literate, focus on print materials (this will ease the distribution process). If relevant materials are not available, search for literacy-related materials from workshops or trainings targeted toward caregivers and other community actors, for example within the context of reading programs, community libraries or home-visiting programs. If you have multiple materials, prioritize interventions designed for delivery for caregivers in the household rather than to professionals in a library or a school. It is also worth exploring parent or community campaigns focused on topics related to parent engagement with kids in areas other than literacy or in behavioral change. These programs could shed light on useful lessons to apply to the literacy intervention. If materials are not available in your country, search for materials used in countries with similar languages, educational level of caregivers, and penetration of print, radio, TV and internet. GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 45 • Have there been national, regional or local efforts to encourage literacy that involve caregivers and/or local community actors? If so, are there materials available? • Are there complementary programs that involve or encourage reading through other means? o Interactive Radio Instruction? o Radio programs where someone reads a book? o Community libraries? o TV? Table 2.2. Types of supporting information to look for Caregiver cannot read Caregiver can read - General guidance for encouraging reading (Reading rocketsa 36; USA37; Colombia38; Global/Sesame39; Print - Pictorial images of how to use books Global/Literacy Boost40 ; COVID tips on book sharing 41) with children (Rwanda) - Guidance on questions to ask and activities to perform around a specific book (USAb, Global Storyweaver c ) Radio Stories read on the radio to accompany hard copies (Zambia42) - Text and voice to read along books available online/offline (Global - Tips by Texts on how to read sent to parents (UK)e Storyweaver) Delivery Platform - SMS messages sent to parents with stories & - Stories read-along designed comprehension questions (Zambia) specifically for android phones (Global Mobile phones/ - Tablets with preloaded digital books delivered to Storyweaver 1, 2) Computer/ Tablet parents & behavioral nudges to increase time on - Stories of the GDL available in a reading implemented (USA, PACTf) mobile app. A personal reading tutor (through AI) helps children - Facebook campaigns encouraging reading, posting understand and improve. Parents information & rewarding active families (Kyrgyz often accompany process (Global, Republic)g Bolod) Person General guidance delivered by community facilitators (Senegal, Global/Literacy Boost)h - General guidance delivered by local teachers along with a package of written guidance materials, audio guidelines and DVD players (Save the Children Mongolia) Combination - Caregiver training, SMS incentives (giving airtime) and home visits (Kenya EMERGE) - Written guidance on activities reinforced through community and national newspapers, magazines, television, radio stations and regular community-based advocacy (UK Book Start)i Notes: (a) Reading Rockets, Reading Tips for Parents of Toddlers (2008); note that this is available in several languages: Spanish; Arabic; Traditional Chinese; Haitian Creole; Hmong; Korean; Navajo; Russian; Tagalog; and Vietnamese. (b) Follow these links for examples: Cloudette-RIF Guide; Nesting Quit-RIF Guide; Tower of Giraffes-RIF Guide. (c) Requires free signup. Some of the guidance/ activities are group-based. (d) Personalized tutor that encourages children to read aloud while providing positive reinforcement when a child reads correctly and corrective feedback when a child does not. Free to use, in 10 languages, works when the user is offline, and is ad free. (e) Covers more subjects than literacy. Evaluation still pending. (f) Behavioral nudges include goal setting, SMS reminders, feedback & recognition. (g) In the Kyrgyz Republic, the Ministry of Education and Science launched the Facebook "Reading Family" campaign. Parents read with their children, post their progress, and the most active ones receive gifts and the "Akurman Uy-buloo” (Erudite Family) title. (h) The flipbook was designed as part of Save the Children’s Literacy Boost Community Action Component. As such, contains ideas for all parents to be introduced by facilitators. Since the ideas are written and are designed for facilitators instead of parent s, adaptations would be needed. (i) Access GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 46 all parental guidance materials in multiple languages (including English, traditional Chinese, Romanian, Welsh, Spanish, Ital ian, Turkish, Albanian, Arabic, Polish, Slovak, Somali, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Bengali, Czech, Punjabi, French, Urdu and Russian) here. Some of the initiatives mentioned above are part of larger programs that contain additional components. For instance, the radio intervention described for Zambia in Table 2.2 is part of a broader project (called Makhalidwe Athu, which means “Our Way of Staying”) in which community members help author early grade reading materials by submitting their favorite local stories and folktales through SMS message, voice recording, web form, paper or calling the radio. A literacy expert edits the stories to make them grade- level appropriate and parents receive them through a series of SMS messages along with comprehension questions to ask their children. The program also involved an IVR call-in for questions and oral recording of story; the distribution of hard copies of stories; the reading of the story on the radio; and monthly support meetings by community mobilizers and volunteers. A rigorous impact evaluation of the Makhalidwe Athu project found positive results. 43 GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 47 Photo: ©UNICEF GUIDANCE FOR CAREGIVER ENGAGEMENT 48 Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are key components of a well-designed project. Tracking project data and sharing results helps implementing teams be more responsive to the needs of children, families, and their communities and provides data to inform decision making and adaptations where necessary to improve the project going forward. This section will provide guidance to task teams and stakeholders on M&E efforts accompanying Read@Home. Section 3A contains guidance on selecting the right M&E framework and indicators for a given context by determining the main purpose underlying the M&E effort. Section 3B contains guidance on identifying and implementing the right data collection strategies, including: (1) selecting from the different data collection methods available, including remote data collection strategies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) identifying tools for adaptation to specific contexts ; and, (3) sampling considerations, piloting tools, and training data collectors. Finally, Section 3C contains guidance on collecting data responsibly. As mentioned in the introduction, the overall objective of Read@Home is to “deliver reading, learning and play materials to homes, as quickly and efficiently as possible, along with support for parents and others to support children’s learning.” The global Read@Home Theory of Change (see Figure 3.1) captures some of the short, medium, and long-term outcomes the Read@Home team aims to collect through the roll- out of the initiative, which can be a helpful starting point in developing more specific and targeted M&E questions based on a given country’s priorities and needs. These questions range from relatively simple ones such as, Did families participating in the program receive materials quickly and efficiently? to more complex ones such as, Did students’ reading skills improve over the course of the Read@Home project? The Global Theory of Change presented in Figure 3.1 will need to be adapted to different country contexts, depending on the inputs and activities included within the initiative and the way that Read@Home is complementing related, existing interventions. It is important to note, for example, that M&E questions about impact on literacy skills can be used in contexts where Read@Home is part of a larger literacy intervention. Because improving literacy skills usually requires a comprehensive set of interventions, centered on improved literacy instruction, it is unlikely that Read@Home as a stand-alone program will result in measurable improvements in literacy skills. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 49 Determining which questions teams want to answer is the first step in selecting an M&E framework; i.e., the main purpose underlying the M&E efforts. It is important for country teams to think carefully about what aspects of the program they want information on and to collect the corresponding data. Key considerations include these questions: • What are the project’s objectives? What are measures of success for this project? • Who are the target beneficiaries? • What are the government’s or other stakeholders’ objectives around this proj ect? • How will the data be used? • What is feasible to undertake, from a budget, timeline, and human resource perspective? MONITORING FOR LEARNING 50 Figure 3.1. Read@Home Global Theory of Change THE PROJECT: READ@HOME THE CONTEXT Objective: Deliver reading, learning and play materials to homes, as quickly and efficiently as possible, along with ITS IMPACT support for parents and others to support children’s learning PROBLEM OUTCOMES CONTRIBUTION TO INPUTS ACTIVITIES OUTPUTS ANALYSIS (Short-, medium-, long-term) SYSTEMIC CHANGE • Too many children are • $4 million in funding for the • Beneficiaries: The initiative targets children In first-wave countries: Short-term: • Establishment of quicker, growing up in homes without global effort in 2020-2021 to ages 3-12, as well as their caregivers. more efficient, and more • Read@Home packages that • In first-wave countries, the books and lack opportunities launch this approach across 13 equitable procurement • Learning package: In each country, target last-mile families, in mother Read@Home packages reach last-mile to read at home. first-wave countries. These and distribution Read@Home will pull together a package of tongue where possible. families. funds will largely go toward mechanisms for teaching • At the peak of global reading materials to be distributed at large scale. technical assistance, with • Accompanying materials for • The Read@Home distribution strategy and learning materials, school closures in mid-April These materials will be accompanied by procurement and delivery caregivers to engage in children’s reaches target communities. which can be used to take 2020, 1.8 billion children materials to support caregivers to engage in primarily financed by country- learning. materials not only to the were out of school. children’s learning, aligned with government Medium-term: level resources. homes of children, but also distance learning programs. These materials will Innovative procurement processes • The learning crisis which • Evidence of uptake: children and to schools. • The team includes expertise be in mother-tongue, where possible. and distribution mechanisms for existed before COVID (53% of parents/other caregivers are using the in: Bank operations and the Read@Home packages. • Establishment of a 10-year olds in low- and • Finding innovations and operating flexibly: Read @ Home packages. procurement processes, budget line in the Ministry middle-income countries Innovations in procurement (regional/global Global partnerships within and • Evidence of spill-over: books being of Education or other living in learning poverty) will approaches, flexibility in rules, and/or new deepen. external to the Bank, child mechanisms such as bulk purchases and reverse • Curation of materials in multiple shared with neighbours, caregivers using budgets to systematically development, home-based languages. skills learned not just with target children provide reading and auctions) and distribution processes (e.g. • Inequality in learning will learning and parent but also with other children in learning materials to the through CCT, health) as well as learning packages likely increase, as last-mile engagement, and monitoring • Evidence on effectiveness of community. homes of the most (e.g. printed and audiobooks, guides, SMS) will families are likely to have and evaluation. alternative procurement and marginalized. be explored. • Procurement and distribution methods little access to books and distribution mechanisms, learning materials at home. • Partnership at the global • Monitoring and evaluation tools to track strategies for caregiver also used for other learning materials • Improvement of the level (e.g., with the Global (e.g., textbooks) ecosystem for reading and Families need resources at progress and success of program. engagement, etc. home to support the learning Book Alliance, Room to Read), learning materials (e.g. Longer-term: local level (e.g., CSOs, NGOs, • Value proposition for countries: (i) • Guidance around putting increased demand for process, especially during times of crisis. private sector), as well as Read@Home will deploy global technical experts together Read@Home packages • Target beneficiaries show better pre- teaching and learning within the Bank (e.g., HNP, SPJ) in a just-in-time fashion increasing the quality of (including mapping of and literacy skills (e.g., wider vocabulary, print materials from families and • Read@Home is a key are key. Read@Home packages and rendering book selection from existing reading awareness) than comparison groups. increased supply of quality component of system- supply chains more efficient; and (ii) the global materials and materials for materials in local building that will help approach will help bring down costs by • This leads to better literacy skills (both caregivers), and innovative languages). countries address learning improving the quality of procurement processes procurement and distribution fluency and comprehension) and lower poverty AND be resilient in within and across countries, and finding new mechanisms. Learning Poverty. the face of future shocks. distribution approaches. • Increased awareness of the importance of books/reading. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 51 Three M&E frameworks are described in Table 3.1 below: monitoring, process evaluation, and impact evaluation. Combinations of these three frameworks are likely to be used across the global Read@Home initiative, but individual countries may use only one or two. Decisions on which framework(s) to use will depend on the inputs and activities included and the purpose of the M&E efforts, as mentioned above. Table 3.1. M&E frameworks Framework type Description Types of tools typically utilized Typically employed to track basic project outputs (e.g., how ✓ Brief surveys many participants attended workshops, or how many books ✓ Checklists were delivered) on a relatively frequent basis. Monitoring ✓ Brief interviews Monitoring frameworks can be implemented by non-expert enumerators, are cheaper to administer, and take less time to implement. All Read@Home projects should, at a minimum, incorporate a monitoring framework within their M&E efforts. Determines whether program activities have been ✓ Checklists implemented as intended and resulted in certain outputs. Can ✓ Interviews be conducted periodically throughout the life of the program. ✓ Direct observation ✓ Focus group discussions Results of a process evaluation can strengthen the ability to Process evaluation ✓ Attendance roster report on reasons for the success (or failure) of a program to ✓ Participant intake forms produce its intended outcomes, and these data can be used to improve future activities. For more information on conducting process evaluations, see this document. ✓ Direct assessments of child Looks at whether the program was successful in achieving outcomes intended outcomes—this is also called proof of concept. An ✓ Surveys impact evaluation is more rigorous, often requiring comparison ✓ Interviews ✓ Focus group discussions of at least two groups, and assessment of outcomes at two ✓ Observation tools different points in time to gauge change or improvement. Impact evaluations take more time to develop and administer, Impact evaluation are more costly, and require skilled and well -trained enumerators to ensure high-quality data. Impact evaluations are typically not implemented as frequently as monitoring efforts. Teams may consider carrying out an impact evaluation for a standalone R@H project or may consider adding R@H indicators to a broader/existing impact evaluation. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 52 Once the M&E framework has been identified, along with key questions the team would like to answer, teams can then begin thinking about the indicators to include in their M&E framework. Table 3.2 in the next section provides a sample of short, medium, and long-term output and outcome indicators for Read@Home projects. Teams should note that this is an illustrative list, and that questions and indicators will need to be developed based on specific needs, target populations, and national objectives. K Under normal circumstances, data are typically collected in person. This might still be possible in some contexts, particularly for monitoring efforts, respecting local social-distancing protocols. For example, some countries might deliver the Read@Home packages at schools, early childhood education (ECE) centers, or other community centers and spaces where families come to collect food or other resources. During that time, frontline staff could ask brief (5-10 min) questions from a print or online form. Additional guidance on in-person data collection can be found here. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teams may need to employ remote data collection methods, such as by telephone/mobile phone, by SMS, through Interactive Voice Response, and through online survey. Each of these is discussed in turn, next. Telephone/mobile phone is the simplest way to reach target populations remotely. Survey questions can be read out loud to the participants and marked on a survey form by the data collector and later transcribed electronically, or if devices such as laptops or tablets are available can be input directly into the device. This method has some limitations, as it requires families to have a landline or a mobile phone (leading to the information collected not being representative of the whole group of beneficiaries), makes rapport-building more difficult, is difficult for young children, and has higher levels of nonresponse than in-person surveys, which may bias the resulting sample. SMS data collection can be used for populations that have access to mobile phones. For countries implementing a Track and Trace system as part of Read@Home, this system could also be us ed for the monitoring of short-term indicators such as book delivery. This method is best for short surveys (5 to 7 questions) and when used to collect simple information like whether materials were received, the date they were received, and the number of books received. This is a relatively low-cost data collection method, but it is limited to literate populations who have mobile phones and can incur costs for the mobile phone owner. SMS data collection is also known for a low response rate, and surveys must be quite short in order to yield helpful data. K Additional guidance on research methods can be found here. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 53 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) is an automated phone-based technology that allows participants to access information, hear questions, and provide responses via pre-recorded messages, speech recognition, and touch-tone keypad selection. Like SMS, it is best suited for shorter surveys. IVR costs more to implement per unit than SMS, but response rates tend to be higher than SMS. This method will allow nonliterate families to participate, as it utilizes audio recording, but depending on the mobile carrier it may incur costs for the mobile phone owner. Online surveys can be created for communities that have access to the internet/Wi-Fi using SurveyMonkey and other local tools and sent to participants via email or text message to complete. It is not likely that communities participating in Read@Home will have access to the internet at home or on their phones, but where there are computer centers in communities or at libraries, this method may work. It is important to note, however, that using this method might increase the risk of bias in the data collected, as only those with minimum levels of digital literacy will be able to engage. Further, it is likely to result in relatively high levels of nonresponse, with primarily participants highly engaged with the program being responding to the survey. As such, data collected may not be fully representative of all participants in the program. In short, remote data collection is challenging, and it sees lower response rates and greater attrition amongst respondents when compared to in-person data collection. Many factors contribute to this, from the perceived ‘burden’ surveys impose in terms of time, to the type of tool used and how questions are framed. When a remote method is used, some simple strategies to improve response rates include these: • Use languages that participants know. • Respect participants’ time (make their time commitment as small as possible). • Be flexible with deadlines and when scheduling interviews/focus group discussions. • Follow-up with participants if there is no response. • Send reminders ahead of planned data collection (e.g., via phone, SMS). • Make participation easy by using simple language and limited questions. • Offer incentives for participation-additional air-time on cell phones for example or a printed certificate of participation. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 54 Appendix E contains the core Read@Home monitoring tool. It captures key Read@Home output and outcome indicators such as whether families received the Read@Home package, L children’s use of materials in the Read@Home package, and parental/caregiver engagement with children. In addition, Table 3.2 below contains sample tools and methods that can be used to collect data for the short, medium, and long-term output and outcome indicators for Read@Home projects. Country teams that are tracking engagement with minority and marginalized groups, such as children with disabilities, may consider including questions from the Washington Group/UNICEF Module on Child Functioning, which helps identify children with disabilities who are at greater risk for exclusion. The questions cover many domains, including vision, hearing, and mobility; communication and comprehension; and relationships and emotions. All measurement tools mentioned here will need to be adapted to local contexts and translated before being implemented as part of data collection efforts. Finally, before collecting data, it is important for teams to think about how to disaggregate data for different groups and indicators. For example, most data are disaggregated by gender and socioeconomic levels, to track how the project impacts girls and boys and those at varying income levels, particularly the most disadvantaged. Projects working with vulnerable populations may want to analyze how elements of equity and language impact children, for example those with disabilities and those who speak minority languages. Projects working in refugee settings where both refugees and host community members are receiving services may want to disaggregate their data by these factors. Read@Home project teams may also be interested in looking at differences between children whose parents can read versus those whose parents cannot. Teams should ensure that they collect the demographic data needed in order to enable disaggregation of results by the target comparison groups. L In the core monitoring tool, this is measured through items focused on the availability of reading materials in the home. In contexts where the Read@Home package will be identified as such, teams should use the items listed unde r the Supplementary Items section, which directly asks whether families received the Read@Home package. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 55 Table 3.2. Sample indicators and tools for data collection Evaluation M&E Question Outcome Indicators Data Collection Method Sample tool duration Short-term Did families Families # of R@H packages delivered Survey administered to See Material Delivery receive received # of books in the package mother or father in person survey, pg 88 in Appendix G: Read@Home materials # of parental engagement handouts received or over the phone or via Sample monitoring tools materials in an -Time it took for book package to reach families (e.g., from start of SMS (potentially via Track efficient and procurement process, from when books are ordered, from when books and Trace) timely manner? leave distribution centers – depending on which aspect of the book chain is of most interest) -Condition of book package - Were materials appropriate for the ages and reading levels of the children in the household (see the Book Selection section of the manual above)? -Were materials provided in a language children know? - Did the materials cater to children with disabilities? Were Procurement -Type of procurement used Checklist for country teams * Country teams and procurement methods were -Technical specifications used to fill out after materials are government counterparts methods efficient efficient and -Timeline of procurement, from print ready files to delivery to country delivered may have procurement and cost-effective? cost-effective -Match between books ordered (quantity and specifications) and books departments that have received internal policies around - Timeline of distribution from arrival in country to 90% delivered to homes procurement. Illustrative -Unit cost of distribution indicators are included here -Use of track and trace system (y/n) but it is recommended that -% of locations receiving correct quantity of books on time teams work with their -% of children receiving correct quantity of books on time procurement specialists to -% of locations/children with correct quantity of books three months post - develop more specific distribution indicators and tools. Did teams select a Families # of titles in a language children know Checklist for country teams See Book Selection Checklist, variety of books received books # of titles in language of instruction, if different to fill out per family who pg 89 in Appendix G: across level and across a # of titles representing diverse populations, including people with received Read@Home Sample monitoring genre? variety of disabilities materials toolsAppendix G. levels and # of non-fiction titles Sample monitoring genres # of titles in reading level 1, 2, 3, etc. # of titles written by local authors tools # of titles written by international authors # of titles taken from online repositories (GBA, Pratham Books, etc.) MONITORING FOR LEARNING 56 Was the Families used -# of information sessions held Interview for parents. Can See Process Level information about materials -type of information session held be given at the end of an Evaluation , pg 90 in using Read@Home effectively -parent satisfaction with information session (e.g., with location, with date information session, as an Appendix G: Sample materials and time, with facilitator) evaluation of the session. If monitoring toolsAppendix delivered -clarity of content (e.g., content shared during information session, information session is effectively? handout given to parents) conducted remotely, survey G. Sample monitoring can be conducted via tools SMS/phone. Medium- Did parental Parental -# of days/week parents read to target children Survey for parents Appendix G: Sample term engagement engagement -# of literacy activities done in a week with target children conducted at two different monitoring tools see: improve? improved -# of days/week parents read to other children in the household points (at least) during the - Paternal Engagement -# of literacy activities done in a week with other children in the household intervention period Survey, pg 91 -% change in reading/week administered in person or - UNICEF MICS Parental -% change in literacy activities/week via SMS/phone Involvement , pg 92 -%change in confidence level - Massachusetts Early Care -% change in enjoyment level and Education , pg 9104 HOME surveys-National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Did parents’ Parents’ % change in reading frequency with children KAP survey for R@H See Sample KAP Survey for knowledge, knowledge, % increase in parent’s helping children with reading participating parents Parents - Mureke Duson , attitude and attitude and % change in attitude towards reading at home conducted at two different pg 105 in Appendix G: practice toward practice % change in knowledge about importance of reading at home points during the Sample monitoring tools books and reading toward books intervention periozd improve? and reading administered in person or improved via phone Did children’s Children’s % change in perceptions about reading KAP survey for children Appendix G: Sample attitude toward attitudes % change in frequency of reading conducted at two different monitoring tools see books and reading toward books % change in confidence in reading points during the - KAP Survey for Children , improve? improved % change in enjoyment level in reading intervention period pg 109 administered in person or - Sample KAP Survey for via SMS/phone Children – Mureke Dusome, pg 110 Have community Change in % change in knowledge about importance of reading books outside of KAP survey for community See Community KAP Survey , attitudes towards community school members not directly pg 114 in Appendix G: reading changed? attitudes % change in attitude towards reading involved in R@H efforts Sample monitoring tools towards % change in attitude towards libraries conducted at two different reading % change in knowledge about engagement with children on reading in th e points during the home intervention period administered in person or via SMS/phone MONITORING FOR LEARNING 57 Long-term* Are children able Improvement % of letters, words, sentences read correctly Baseline and endline See Grade 2 Word to read in letter, word, (Data disaggregated by gender, language, disability, socio-economic status assessment (EGRA or ASER) Recognition Assessment , letters/words/sent sentence and other variables as per country teams’ priorities) developed, piloted, and pg 115 in Appendix G: ences (depending reading administered delivered to Sample monitoring tools on age) children in person. Did children’s Student % of letters words, sentences identified correctly “Core” EGRA or ASER-type Early Grades Reading reading skills reading skills % change in fluency tool developed, piloted, and Assessment (EGRA) improve? improved. # of children who can read gradelevel text administered to children at UWEZO Learning % change in comprehension baseline and endline assessment tool ASER Literacy and Math tools People’s Action for Learning Network citizen-led assessment tools Did community Community # of community libraries established One on one pre- and post- See Community Reading reading increase? reading # of books checked out weekly from community libraries interviews (or a focus group Interview, pg 116 in increased # of books purchased through community funds discussion) with members of Appendix G: Sample the community familiar with monitoring tools the R@H project (school teacher, local NGO worker, member of a religious group, PTA member, etc.); review of library records pre and post *Reading assessments should only be conducted if Read@Home is part of a broader literacy intervention. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 58 Data collection requires planning, training, and organization. Teams will need to train enumerators, select a sample, and develop and pilot tools, among other important activities. The sections below provide guidance around these areas. It is recommended that country teams work with M&E specialists and counterparts to plan the implementation of data collection. Pilot testing. Tools must be developed and pilot-tested before the full data collection effort can be rolled out. Pilot testing is used to test the validity and reliability of the tools being used as well as testing the logistics of implementing the tools (cost, time, procedures, any complications). The sample used for piloting should be as similar to the target population as possible. Results from the pilot tests should not be used as data for the project; the objective of the pilot is to check for any discrepancies within the tools and make changes. For example, when administering a parent questionnaire, if parents find it difficult to understand the wording of some questions or find the questionnaire to be too long, the team should make the necessary modifications (e.g., change/simplify terms used, prioritize items for inclusion) so that these issues do not arise during data collection. Enumerators will be essential in this process, particularly for one-on-one surveys or focus group discussions, as their interaction with the participants will provide details on what changes to make when the tools are rolled out to the target population Selecting a sample. Sampling is a critical component of data collection. Determining the right sample and then selecting a sample that is representative of the population of interest increases confidence that your data accurately capture the outcomes and impacts of your program. Choosing a sample that is too small or that is not representative may lead to spurious results and may preclude you from drawing firm conclusions about the success of your program. There are many different sampling methods, so it is important to engage a sampling expert, particularly if implementing an impact evaluation. Some initial guidance on sampling can be found here and here. Enumerator training. Enumerators are a critical component of data collection. Criteria for selecting enumerators should include: • Language proficiency in the language in which tools will be administered • Prior experience conducting assessments and collecting data • Experience working with the target population, and • Experience and proficiency using technology for data collection. It is also helpful to select more enumerators than may be required, because some may drop out and others may not meet selection criteria. Training topics for enumerators should include: • Goals of the Read@Home project, including target population • In-depth review of all tools that will be administered in the format they will be given (paper, electronic, over the phone, via SMS) MONITORING FOR LEARNING 59 • Proper communication with community members, including what language to be used, and • Practice administering the tools to trainers, other trainees, and representatives of the target population. An important area related to performing one-on-one assessments is seeing how well assessors agree with one another (inter-rater reliability). In an ideal world, assessors would mark responses exactly the same way (i.e. if two assessors observed the same behavior/situation/response, they would all fill out the questionnaire in exactly the same way). However, assessors can sometimes disagree about how to score an answer. The piloting and training process should help assessors to consistently agree with each other. Nonetheless, it is important to continuously measure the rate of agreement between assessors, as this is a critical measure of quality data collection. A protocol on assessing inter-rater reliability can be found on page 89 of the EGRA Toolkit. In addition to the guidance above, if country teams are considering the use of an EGRA or ASER to assess reading outcomes, it is highly recommended that teams follow the guidance in the EGRA Toolkit. Guidance for the use of ASER-type tools can be found here. Finally, the SIEF ECD Measurement Toolkit is also a useful resource for identifying potential measurement tools and for guidance on implementing data collection efforts. Data collection should be approached with sensitivity, because many communities may be unfamiliar with data collection protocols, utility, and objectives. In some cases, icebreakers and other types of games to gain trust and make participants comfortable may need to be conducted prior to collecting data. Furthermore, teams should be sensitive of the time families will be spending on providing data for the Read@Home project; this is time away from work and other family obligations. It is important to have clear goals for the data collection effort and to only collect data that is essential and will be used. To the extent possible, project teams should adhere to national or internationally recognized ethical standards for collection, maintenance, and reporting of personal data and information. Consider whether an ethics review by a qualified third-party is required. Other factors to keep in mind during data collection include these: • Family willingness to participate is key; no caregiver or child should be forced to participate in data collection efforts. • Before starting the process, provide an orientation to community members on goals of the project, why data is being collected, the type of data that will be collected, and the method utilized and how it will be used. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 60 • Depending on the context, verbal consent may suffice. However, whenever possible, signed waivers should be collected from each family member that will be participating in data collection efforts and from the parent or guardian of children under the legal age of consent. In addition, if in-person data collection is carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic, responsible data collection includes the adherence to local safety protocols, such as the use of personal protective equipment, appropriate social distancing, limiting the number of people in an enclosed space, providing hand sanitizer, and so on. Responsible data collection also includes ensuring that the collected data are useful for government and ministries of education, development partners, community stakeholders, and the target beneficiaries themselves. This implies sharing the findings with relevant stakeholders once the evaluation has concluded. Data can be shared with these stakeholders in different ways, as follows. For family members, the most useful format may be via a town hall style meeting where project staff provide a summary of the project’s most pertinent and relevant findings, including data related to family engagement and children’s reading skills. It would be helpful to include time for discussion and feedback, particularly around lower outputs/outcomes and to see parental and community input on how to improve the project going forward. During the COVID 19 pandemic, in-person contact is being limited. But results can still be shared remotely. For example, key achievements can be aired on TV, family testimonials and success stories can be broadcast over radio, and stories can be disseminated through a website or social media pages (being sure to use languages and technologies most appropriate to the target population). Consent. The dissemination methods listed above can also be useful in reaching a wider audience, that is, beyond the target beneficiaries. However, it is important that the families involved provide consent for their stories to be shared. For policymakers, results could be shared through briefs, reports, or PowerPoint presentations in order to influence local policy. These materials can be developed to illustrate the project’s trajectory from inception to closing, highlighting key achievements, lessons learned, challenges and how they were mitigated, and most importantly, policy implications. For practitioners and researchers . Finally, depending on the type of data collected, project results can be shared at education or literacy conferences being conducted locally or internationally. MONITORING FOR LEARNING 61 MONITORING FOR LEARNING 62 BEFORE THE STORY Find a comfortable place to sit. A Choose a time in the day to read small child can sit on a lap, and Step 1 with your children. Read to them at Step 2 older ones on a chair or on the the same time every day. floor. DURING THE STORY Show how to turn pages gently and Ask your child to choose a book. where the first word in the Make sure that everyone can see. Step 3 Show the front and back covers. Tell Step 4 sentence is. Point to it and say it out loud. Ask older readers to read the them the title and author ’s name. first word. Show the front cover again and ask Read with expression. Use different open questions like “What do you voices for different characters. Talk Step 5 notice?” Ask questions like “What do Step 6 about what can be seen in each you think the story will be about?” picture. Read a few more pages. Ask a Pause after reading one to two pages. Show the illustration and ask question like, “What do you think Step 7 a question like, “Where is the mouse Step 8 will happen next?” Point out a new hiding?” word and define it. Ask, “Can you use that word in a sentence?” AFTER THE STORY Read to near the end of the story. Read to the end of the story. Ask, Ask a why question, such as, “Why “Can you tell me the story in your Step 9 did the boy get mad?” or “Why did Step 10 own words?” Ask, “What was your mother go to the forest?” favorite part? Why?” Adapted from: Enjoying books together at home, Rwandan Children’s Book Initiative. ANNEXES 63 Low-literacy caregivers can also read together with their child. Instead of reading the story out loud, they can tell the story using pictures. Sample key messages are included here, which can be delivered through illustrations or audio messages by radio or phone. BEFORE THE STORY Find a comfortable place to sit. A Choose a time in the day to read small child can sit on a lap, and Step 1 with your children. Read to them at Step 2 older ones on a chair or on the the same time every day. floor. DURING THE STORY Ask your child to choose a book. Make sure that everyone can see. Show how to turn pages gently. Look Show the front and back covers. Ask Step 4 Step 3 an open-ended question: “What do at the illustration on the first page. Use the drawing to make up a story. you think the stor y is about?” Speak with expression and use Use the illustrations to continue to Step 5 different voices for different Step 6 tell the story. Ask your child what characters. they think will happen next. Pause for a bit and ask some Show the illustration and ask a questions like, “Where is the story is Step 7 question like “Where is the mouse Step 8 taking place?” and “Who is the main hiding?” character? AFTER THE STORY Go close to the end of the story. Ask Ask your child questions about what a question- “Why did the boy get happened in the story. “What did she Step 9 mad?” or “Why did mother go to the Step 10 like?” “What would she do forest?” differently? “ Adapted from: Enjoying books together at home, Rwandan Children’s Book Initiative. ANNEXES 64 Choose a familiar tune and ‘sing’ about an activity or topic. Ask children to suggest other ideas that could be added to the song. They may also be able to suggest some rhyming words or words that start with the same sound to add interest to the song. Sing a song (Purpose: Build Examples: A song about cutting firewood or other chores vocabulary) For older children: Songs can be a good way to remember key information. Example: Children can make up a song about food groups in health or weather events in science. Gather 4 objects. 3 of them have something in common such as: color, shape or use. The 4th one does not belong to the group. Explain to the student that there is something similar about all these objects, but one of them is a little different. Ask them to pick up the object that is different and tell What doesn’t you why they chose it. belong? Example: A plate, a cup, a spoon and a pencil. There are 3 objects that we use for eating and 1 that (Purpose: Build isn’t used, so the pencil would not belong to the group. thinking skills) After the child selects an object and tells why it doesn’t belong to the group, reverse the roles: the child sets up a group of objects and the parent chooses an object and explains their choice. Put 4-6 different child-safe objects in a bag/box. Ask your child–without looking –to pick out an object (such as a stick). Use the object as a key character or object in an invented story. Take turns so everyone gets to choose an item and add their ideas to the story. Example: (Using a stick) … “Long ago in a village like this one, there lived a small boy who had to pick up sticks every day. He looked near and far to find enough sticks to c arry home.” (Adding a hat:) “On Tell me a story his way, he saw a hat lying on the ground. …” (Purpose: Develop and express ideas) Variation: Instead of collecting objects, children can take turns to suggest the next object for the story – examples: a cow, lightning, fire … This can allow for greater variation in story ideas. For older children: Ask the speaker questions about their story to challenge them to create the most engaging story they can! Example questions: Why did he do that? What did he use? Was he successful? Source: Adapted from Global Reading Network 2020. Available at COVID-19 Reading Comprehension Guidance: Tips for Parents and Caregivers. ANNEXES 65 Talking to your child builds confidence, calms them down, and gives them a sense of security. Babies love the sound of their parents’ voice. Try the following activities with your children: Babies and toddlers • Point out your baby’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. • Count your baby’s fingers and toes out loud. • Imitate your baby’s babbles and coos. • Point out objects around the house and name them. • Explain what you are doing when your baby is with you. E.g., say “Now we will go outside and feed the cows. This is hay, it is what cows eat.” • Take your toddler outside. Point out the different colors you see. Ask your child to show you something that is red. • Involve your toddler in your chores. Name the objects you are using. E.g., say, “This is a bucket”, “this is water”, “this is soap. ” • Talk to your toddler while cooking a meal. E.g., say, “First I will wash the rice, next I will soak it, and then I will put it on the stove.” School-age children • Start each day by telling your school-age child what tasks you need to complete. End the day by talking about what you were able to complete. • Ask your school-age child how their day went. • Ask your child what the favorite part of their school day was. • Ask open ended questions-ones that don’t have a right or wrong answer -about a topic that your child will be interested in. • Ask your child to tell you about something new they learned at school. • Ask your child to retell a story that he has read. Singing is a fun way to develop language skills. Children love to hear their parents and caregivers sing and participate in a sing-along. Songs have rhythm and rhyme and new words for children to learn. Singing builds confidence and helps children express themselves. You can sing all kinds of songs: ANNEXES 66 • Common nursery rhymes like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. ” Use the actions for different words in the song, like star, up, sky, and diamond. • Popular and well-known songs that are played on the radio and are age appropriate. • Folk songs that are well known in your context. • The national anthem or other patriotic songs. • Religious songs like hymns or songs learned in church, mosque, or temple. • Make up songs with your children. Stories are a great way to develop language and literacy skills. Babies and toddlers will love to hear stories from their parents and caregivers. Stories don’t have to be complex or long. The best stories are those that have an element of suspense, interesting characters, and some humor. Make a routine of telling stories at the same time-before bed-to give children something to look forward to. After telling the story, ask children who their favorite character was, what their favorite part was, and if they were telling the story what they would have done differently. Games can be a fun and engaging way to interact with children and promote emergent literacy skills. The following games can be followed by parents who cannot read across all language groups: • Rhyming: Parent says a word and child says a new word that rhymes. For example: can, ban, man, Fran, Jan. • Name, place, animal, thing: Pick a letter of the alphabet. Think of a name, a place, an animal and a thing that starts with that letter. For example, with the letter S, a name is Sulaiman, a place is Somalia, an animal is a spider, and a thing is sugar. Try all the letters of the alphabet! • Outside: When you are outside ask your child to point out all of the things she can see that start with the letter A. Then work through the alphabet. • Opposite/same: Tell your child a story. Pick a word from the story and ask for its opposite. Ask for another word that means the same. • What am I? Gather a few everyday items like a leaf, pencil, or spoon, in a bag. Show the items to your child one at a time and ask them to describe the object using different adjectives. For example, a metal spoon is shiny, metallic, cold, hard, and long. • I Spy: Choose an item in the room and give a brief description of the item. Ask your child to guess what it is. For example, I spy with my little eye, something that is round, sweet and delicious. What am I? (A mango). • Concentration: Choose a category, like fruits, and have your child take turns saying the names of different fruits as fast as they can. ANNEXES 67 • Line by line: Take turns making up a story line by line. One person starts and the other person adds on. Ask your child to write each sentence down to create her own story book. Put the story book in your home library. The following games can be followed by parents who can read: • Last letter: Choose a word from a book you have read and say the word out loud. Ask your child to identify the last letter in that word and to say a word that starts with the last letter. For example, Glad. Dream. Marble. Elephant. • Antonyms: While reading a story, choose a few words whose meaning your child knows. Ask them to define the word. Then ask then to name its antonym or opposite. • Anagrams: Choose a word from a book that the child knows. Ask your child to make new words from that word. For example, from the word ‘bungalow’ we can make the words bun, glow, gal, ban, bag, low, law, and blow. • Fill in the blanks: Copy some sentences from a book you are reading. Include a word in each sentence that is missing. Ask your child to choose the best word to complete the sentence. For example, “It was _______ outside so I took an umbrella.” (raining) • Make a list: Name items that you need from the store and have your child write them down. Check to see that the words are spelled correctly. • Make a dictionary: When reading out loud, ask your child to write down new vocabulary on small pieces of paper. Later work together to define the words and write them down. Create a dictionary of new words and put it in your home library. Advanced readers also need parental support to improve their literacy skills. In this section, we present comprehension and vocabulary strategies for this target group, as well as sample questions that can be used during a read-aloud. 1. Re-tell the story. 2. Summarize the text in writing. 3. Draw a picture or diagram to illustrate the story or text. 4. Re-create the story as a comic book. 5. Write comprehension questions on the story. Read the questions out loud and ask a younger or older sibling or caregiver to answer the questions. M Adapted from Community strategies for promoting literacy , Save the Children and 12 ways to support language development for infants and toddlers, National Association for the Education of Young Children ANNEXES 68 6. Re-tell the story from the point of view of one of the characters, i.e. as if the character were telling the story. 7. Act out the story. 1. Act out unknown words. 2. Make an illustrated dictionary of new words-write the word, draw it, and make up a definition. 3. Find synonyms for newly learned words. 4. Find antonyms for newly learned words. 5. Look for newly learned words in different kinds of text--newspapers, billboards, labels, etc. 6. Make anagrams with newly learned vocabulary words. For example: ARGUMENT > argue, grunt, rue, ran, rag, rat, tar, ten, rent, etc. There are three main types of questions that can be asked when engaging in a read aloud: literal questions, inferential questions, or evaluative questions. Literal questions . The most basic questions that ask children to recall simple facts from the text. In the popular children’s nursery rhyme “Mary had a little lamb, ” an example of a literal question is , “What kind of animal did Mary have?” or “What is the name of the girl in the rhyme?” Other examples of literal questions include: • What is the title of the text? • Who is the text describing? • Where did the event take place? • When did the event take place? • What is the name of the main character? Inferential questions. Inferential questions are more challenging than literal questions. Making an inference involves using facts, events, images, or other explicit information stated in a text to understand and explain what is not stated. An example of inferential comprehension is as follows : Isabel is walking into her house with her mother. When she comes inside, she hears people singing happy birthday. What do you think happened? If a student can read this passage and answer: “Isabel’s friends arranged a surprise birthday party for her,” she has demonstrated inferential comprehension. Examples of inferential questions include: • Why did the event happen? • Why do you think…? • What if…? • What does_____________(word) mean? ANNEXES 69 Evaluative questions. This is the most advanced type of question that can be asked. Evaluative questions ask children to use evidence from the text to analyze and make judgments about the text. There are multiple correct answers to an evaluative question, so long as a student can back up their opinion with facts from the text. Here is one example: Deepa goes to the market. She selects different vegetables, fruits, and rice. She has two large bags to carry home. At home, she washes all her produce and then takes a nap. Based on this text, a possible evaluative question is: Do you think Deepa should have taken a nap? A child could say “Deepa was very tired after doing her chores, so yes, she should take a nap.” or “No, Deepa still had more work to finish and shouldn’t have taken a nap.” Both answers would be correct because they are based on facts from the text. Examples of evaluative questions include: • How would you feel if…? • How is the life of the person in the text different from your life? • What would you have done differently if you were the character? ANNEXES 70 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name Africa Sub-Saharan Africa. The steering committee of the The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) is a forum for policy dialogue on working group includes education. Its Working Group on Books and Learning Materials works extensively on issues pertaining Ministries of Education in ADEA http://www.adeanet.org/ to literacy, publishing, the use of mother-tongue languages, and the importance of national book Congo-Brazzaville, policies. The Working Group page cam be found at http://www.adeanet.org/en/working- Guinea, Niger, Tanzania, groups/books-and-learning-materials. Sierra Leone, Zambia, and Mozambique Piloted in Kenya, South Africa, Lesotho and Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Cameroon, DRC, http://www.africanstorybook.or Saide’s African Storybook initiative provides openly licensed stories for use, and tools for the African Storybook Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, g translation and creation of stories, which are in turn openly licensed. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Namibia. More countries added later. Book Dash is a South African nonprofit volunteer organization, established in 2014 as a project among South Africa, Lesotho, friends who wanted to use their publishing skills to create accessible, well-written, easily translatable Book Dash http://bookdash.org/ Botswana, and Esuatini storybooks. Book Dash creates content by hosting events where a crew of creative professionals get together for twelve hours to create openly licensed storybooks. CODE is a Canadian NGO focused on advancing literacy and education in some of the world's regions in Canada, Mali, Liberia, greatest need. CODE establishes engaging learning environments through the development and Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, CODE https://code.ngo publishing of locally authored and designed children books, training teachers and teacher -librarians, Kenya, Tanzania, resourcing libraries, and distributing high-quality reading materials. CODE works with affiliates in Mozambique, Ghana Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, eKitabu https://www.ekitabu.com/ Digital books, including sign language books for Kenya and Ghana Mango Tree Literacy Lab is a Ugandan NGO, based in Lira in northern Uganda, dedicated to promoting reading, writing, teaching and publishing in African languages. Mango Tree Literacy Lab provides https://www.mangotreelitlab. Mango Tree Uganda + African educators with teaching tools and methods that make literacy instruction effective and fun. org/ Mango Tree Literacy Lab creates and prints books in Leblango, so children have stories that remind them of their own lives. ANNEXES 71 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name South Africa The Molteno Institute for Language and Literacy (MILL), an NGO based in South Africa, produces (methodology used in innovative, research-based language and literacy learning and teaching materials in South Africa’s Molteno https://www.molteno.co.za/ Angola, Botswana, Ghana, indigenous African languages. It creates training courses that incorporate modern teaching Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia methodologies, models good classroom practice, and provide for classroom monitoring and support. and Zambia) MILL shares all its educational resources and content freely under a Creative Commons license. Nal’ibali (isiXhosa for “here’s the story”) is a national reading -for-enjoyment campaign to spark https://www.nalibali.org/abou children’s potential through storytelling and reading. The program has created reading clubs, trained NaliBali Trust South Africa t-us people, created and distributed multilingual books, audiostories, supplements, story cards and reading activities. Mali and neighboring OMAES http://www.omaes.org/ Books and mobile libraries Sahelian countries Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Tostan https://www.tostan.org/ Mali, Senegal, and The Adult literacy; some materials for children Gambia Cambodia, DR Congo, Ecuador, Rwanda, South VVBO https://www.vvob.org/ Africa, Suriname, Uganda, Belgian aid, working on TaRL approaches in Zambia Vietnam, Zambia, Belgium, Zimbabwe Asia Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, East Timor, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Asia Foundation https://asiafoundation.org/ Books, including books in sign language in the Pacific Myanmar, Nepal, Pacific Islands, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam All aspects of reading instruction, civil society assessment, book development software and extensive https://www.pratham.org/ book repository. StoryWeaver is a digital repository of openly licensed multilingual stories for children Pratham/Pratham https://prathambooks.org/ India from Pratham Books. The platform allows users or create, print and translate stories. Although Books/Storyweaver https://storyweaver.org.in/ Storyweaver launched with a focus on books in Indian languages, it is now a platform for stories in languages from all over the world. ANNEXES 72 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name Developed an open-source software (https://deafworldaroundyou.org/Stories) that enables Rochester Institute communities to create literacy content in local and national sign languages to be shared via an open- of Tech-Nat'l Tech https://www.rit.edu/ntid/ Philippines content digital library of folktales. Digital libraries will be viewable from any web browser, can be Institute for the Deaf hosted locally on Linux-based computers and mobile devices, and remixed by individuals (including children) with simple text and video editing tools. Makes reading materials accessible to children by adding Marathi human-narrated audio capabilities to Bookshare, the world’s largest digital accessible library. Primary schoo l students who are blind/low Benetech/ https://www.bookshare.org/c India vision were provided with accessible Marathi educational content to listen to on low-cost audio Bookshare ms/ devices in conjunction with reading braille. Teachers were trained to use the Bookshare platform and schools were visited weekly by a local “Story Auntie” to encourage reading and inspire students. Europe and Central Asia International Step by Working with 92 Step Foundation https://www.issa.nl/ associations in Europe Reading books and materials for teachers and parents to support reading for children ages 3-8 years. (ISSA) and Central Asia. Middle East and North Africa Asafeer Education https://3asafeer.com/index.ph Dubai, Jordan, Lebanon, Books, illustrations, and templates for Arabic speakers Technologies p UAE + Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Edtech company creating digital solutions and resources for school-aged children in MENA. Have an https://littlethinkingminds.co Little Thinking Minds Australia, Europe, application called Qysas with over 100 leveled books geared towards primary year students to m/en Canada, North America promote literacy which was successfully implemented in Jordanian public schools. École Nationale Assistive technology that enables educators to easily create and publish Moroccan Sign Language Supérieure des Morocco (MSL) supported educational materials for students who are deaf/hard of hearing. Mines de Rabat Latin America and the Caribbean ANNEXES 73 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name Educational model which can be used in multi-grade schools that integrates curricular and community strategies, training, follow-up and management; that promotes active and cooperative learning to the Escuela Nueva https://escuelanueva.org/ Colombia, Vietnam level of every child; and that strengthens the link between the community and the school. The model is flexible, adapted to the context and needs of rural children (e.g. integrating pedagogical productive projects). https://www.manosunidas.org Manos Unidas/ / Developed an interactive corpus of sign language words, a smartphone app, and a literacy outreach Nicaragua Señas y sonrisas https://www.signsandsmiles.o program for deaf children and their families. rg/es/inicio/ Global American Institutes https://www.air.org/ Research, particularly language mapping and transitions of Research Benetech https://benetech.org/ Books for low-vision children https://www.bluetreegroup.co BlueTree Group Book supply chain analysis and development .uk/ Chemonics https://chemonics.com/ All aspects of reading instruction + FCV https://www.creativeassociate Creative Associates All aspects of reading instruction + FCV sinternational.com/ Early Literacy http://www.earlyliteracynetw Provides links to research and resources on licensing, policies, creation, and use of high- quality Network ork.org/ reading materials in the global South. Education Development Center https://www.edc.org/ All aspects of reading instruction; distance education (EDC) FHI 360 https://www.fhi360.org/ All aspects of reading instruction The Global Book Alliance is an international effort involving multiple stakeholders working to transform book development, procurement, and distribution to ensure that no child is without books. By drawing https://www.globalbookallian Global Book Alliance together the largest public-sector investors, the Alliance can ensure that these public funds are ce.org/ invested in low cost, high-quality books, while strengthening private publishers who will sustain the supply of books. ANNEXES 74 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name The Global Digital Library (GDL) will collect existing high-quality open educational reading resources, and make them available on web, mobile and for print. It will also facilitate translation and localization Global Digital Library https://digitallibrary.io/ of these resources to more than 300 languages. The goal is to make at least 50,000 titles in 100 languages available on the GDL platform by the end of 2020. Initially, the GDL will support access to high quality early-grade reading resources. Global Reading https://www.globalreadingnet The Global Reading Network seeks to remedy the learning crisis by connecting stakeholders, Network work.net/ individuals, and organizations committed to ensuring that all children ar e able to read. International Rescue https://www.rescue.org/outco Working with Sesame Street with refugee children in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq Committee me/education www.jsi.com https://www.worlded.org/ JSI/World Education https://publications.jsi.com/JSI Research, reading instruction, track and trace, book development for Nepali languages Internet/Inc/Common/_downl oad_pub.cfm?id=14202&lid=3 The People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network is a south-south partnership of organizations working People's Action for https://palnetwork.org/ across three continents. Member organizations conduct citizen-led assessments and/or citizen-led Learning actions aimed at improving learning outcomes. Its Literacy Program provides books in local languages to primary schools and train teachers and Room to Read https://www.roomtoread.org/ librarians on how to engage with children in reading. RTI https://www.rti.org/ All aspects of reading instruction; assessment https://www.sesameworkshop Sesame Workshop Contextualized versions of Sesame Street and other resources, for ECD .org/ ANNEXES 75 Organization's Website Countries Covered Brief Description/Special Skills Name https://www.sil.org/ SIL and SIL/LEAD https://www.sil-lead.org/ All aspects of reading instruction, book development, software; sign language books http://bloomlibrary.org/ https://www.teachingattherig TaRL Teaching at the Right Level (J-PAL & Pratham) remediation programs in a range of countries htlevel.org/ Offers a free home kit of 6 narrative picture books with activity sheets focused on socio-emotional ThinkEqual https://thinkequal.org/ learning. World Reader https://www.worldreader.org/ Provides free access to a library of digital books via e-readers and mobile phones. ANNEXES 76 Note for Teams: • This core monitoring tool could be administered via different modalities (e.g., phone, text message, interactive voice recording (IVR), etc.) • Questions and responses that should be adapted for each country are highlighted in yellow. These portions of the tool should no longer be highlighted once the tool is finalized for implementation. • Additional guidance for teams is presented as footnotes and should be deleted once the tool is finalized for implementation. ANNEXES 77 Caregiver Consent Form (Read aloud to the Caregiver) N Hello, my name is . My colleagues and I are supporting the Government ministry/department to understand your child’s home learning environment. All the information we obtain will not be shared with anyone outside of our work team. For each question, please answer as best you can. There are no right or wrong answers. The most important thing is that you give honest answers. • Your participation is very important, but you do not have to participate if you do not wish to. • If you agree to participate, I will ask you some questions about your home environment and your child’s learning experiences at home. My questions for you will take approximately 10 minutes. • If there are multiple children living in your household, let’s focus the interview on only one of them aged 3 to 12 years old.O Note for enumerator: For selecting one child, request the respondent to list the ages of all eligible children in the household, then randomly select one from them. The random selection can usually be automatically handled in the CAPI/CATI application . • Your name will NOT be recorded on this form, nor mentioned anywhere in the survey data. The combined results of the assessment conducted will be shared with the Government ministry/ department. They will use the results to identify areas where children and parents/caregivers need additional support at home. • If there is any question that you do not want to answer, you do not have to. • We believe there is no risk to you in participating in this research. • You will not personally benefit from participating in this interview [This instruction is prone to change if there is some type of compensation for participation in the survey. For instance, some phone surveys may provide participants with phone credit as compensation ]. • If you want to stop the interview at any point, we can conclude it. • Do you have any questions for me? • Are you willing to participate? Parent/Caregiver provided consent (Circle to indicate consent was received): *YES* If consent is refused, record this below, thank the Parent/Caregiver, and end the interview. N The language in the consent form may need to be adapted/simplified depending on country context. O Age range and selection of target child(ren) will need to be decided for each context, with some global guidance. ANNEXES 78 Read@Home Monitoring Tool General Instructions • Ask the Parent/Caregiver to answer each question orally, as in an interview. • Wait for the Parent/Caregiver to respond to each question, then select the answer that corresponds to his or her response. • For most questions, only one response is permitted. The instructions indicate the exceptions. • Note that all instructions to interviewer are in bold letters. Interviewer ID ........................................... Participant Unique ID ........................................... Phone number For the final data set, this information must be removed to unidentified respondents. Starting time [Use 24-hour time HH:MM] : Interview date [DD/MM/YY] / / Interview status (to be filled at the end of the interview) Refused Thank Caregiver and end interview .......... 1 Partially completed ............................................................. 2 Completed ............................................................................ 3 ANNEXES 79 BACKGROUND INFORMATION 1. What is your child’s name? Who is (name)’s primary caregiver? o Person completing interview (1) 2. The primary caregiver is the adult at home who o Other (specify relationship with child) (2): most frequently looks after the child. _____________ o Mother (1) o Father (2) o Grandparent (3) 3. What is your relationship to ( name)? o Other relative (4) o Other non-relative (specify): _________(5) 4. What is your gender? ⃝ Male (1) ⃝ Female (2) What is the highest level of school attended by 5. (name)’s mother? Never attended school ..............1 Primary incomplete .................2 What is the highest level of school attended by Primary complete ...................3 (name)’s father? Intermediate incomplete ............4 6. Intermediate complete ..............5 Secondary incomplete ...............6 If caregiver is not mother or father, what is the Secondary complete .................7 highest level of school attended by Bachelor incomplete ................8 7. caregiver? Bachelor completed or higher .......9 Other (specify) ...................10 What is (name)’s date of birth DD MM Y 8. [If exact day of birth is not known , enter Child’s month/year of birth] 9. Is (name) a boy or a girl? ⃝ Male (1) ⃝Female (2) ANNEXES 80 HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS 10. Does your household have: [ do not ask if Yes (1) No (0) No answer/ don’t already known/visible] know (88) 10a. Electricity [regardless of source] 10b. Radio 10c Television 10d. Mobile telephone 10e. Non-mobile (landline) telephone 10f. Computer (includes laptops and tablets) 10g. Internet PARENTAL SUPPORT AT HOME 11. For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t Please let me know if, during the last 3 days, did you or know (88) any household member age 15 or over engage in any of the following activities with ( name): Check the box that applies for each question. 11a. played with [name]? 11b. read books or looked at picture books with [name]? 11c. told stories to [name]? 11d. sang songs to or with [name], including lullabies? 11e. took [name] outside the house? 11f. named, counted, or drew things for or with [name]? 11g. helped [name] with homework/schoolwork? 12. How many children’s books or picture books do you have [enter number] for (name) at home? (Some teams may want to add an additional question about digital reading devices such as tablets, Amazon Kindle or other gadgets, available for children at home. ) ANNEXES 81 CHILD ENGAGEMENT WITH EDUCATIONAL CONTENT (From Poverty GP COVID-19 Survey) For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t In the last 15 days, has [name] accessed free learning know (88) 13. content on: Check the box that applies for each question. 13a. Radio 13b. Television 13c. Computer with Internet 13d. Computer with no Internet 13e. Smart phone or tablet 13f. Feature phone using SMS (text messaging) Printed materials from school (e.g., textbooks, 13g. notebooks, exercise books, assignments, or copies) Printed reading materials (e.g., reading books for 13h. children or adults, magazines, religious reading material) In the last 3 days, has [name]: 14. Check the box that applies for each question. 14a. Read a book on his/her own? Read other material (e.g., newspapers, magazines, 14b. comics) on his/her own? Asked you or someone else in your household to read a 14c. book to him/her or tell him/her a story? Read a book to someone else (e.g., sibling, relative, 14d. friend) ANNEXES 82 ENROLLMENT IN CHILDCARE/SCHOOL Was [name] attending any of the following before ⃝ Nursery / Childcare childcare centers and schools were closed due to the ⃝ Community center COVID-19 pandemic? ⃝ Preschool ⃝ Primary school 15. ⃝ Secondary school ⃝ Religious school ⃝ None ⃝ Do not know ⃝ Other: ____________ Are you planning on sending [child] back once 16. childcare or school reopens? ⃝ No (0) ⃝ Yes (1) Ending the Interview : [check whether all items were answered ] These are all the questions I had for you. Thank you for your participation. Do you have any questions for me? COMMENTS: Did anything happen over the course of the interview that makes you think the data are compromised or not trustworthy? Please describe. Were there any items you think the interviewee did not understand? If so, please list them here. From your point of view, what was misunderstood or needed more clarification? ANNEXES 83 SUPPLEMENTARY ITEMS HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS Aged 0-2 ________ X1. How many other children live in (name)’s Aged 3-6 ________ household? (list number by age) Aged 7-9 ________ Aged 10-17 ________ X2. Who are the adults who live in this o Mother (1) home? o Father (2) o Grandmother (3) Check all that apply o Grandfather (4) o Other (5) READ@HOME PACKAGE (should be applied in countries where the Read@Home package will be clearly identified as such ) For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t X3. Check the box that applies for each question. know (88) Did your family receive the Read@Home package? X3a. (If no, skip to next set of questions) Did your family receive books as part of the Read@Home package? X3b. • Specify number of books: ______ Did your family receive caregiver handouts as part of the Read@Home package? X3c. (add items if necessary to cover all materials provided as part of Read@Home package) Do you and your child still have the complete Read@Home X3d. package? In the past 3 days, did you read any of the Read@Home books X3e. to your child? In the past 3 days, did anyone else in your household read any X3f. of the Read@Home books to your child? In the past 3 days, did (name) read any of the Read@Home X3g. books on his or her own? In the past 3 days, did you carry out any other Read@Home activities with your child? X3h. (This item can be expanded and made more specific depending on the Read@Home package within a given contextP) PThis could include access to/participation in radio and TV programming, home visits, and other elements of the Read@Home program in a given context. ANNEXES 84 SIBLING SUPPORT AT HOME (Should be included in contexts where siblings are specifically targeted.) For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t Please let me know if, during the last 3 days, did you or any know (88) X4. household member age 15 or over engage in any of the following activities with (name): Check the box that applies for each question. X4a. played with [name]? X4b. read books or looked at picture books with [name]? X4c. told stories to [name]? X4d. sang songs to or with [name], including lullabies? X4e. took [name] outside the house? X4f. named, counted, or drew things for or with [name]? X4g. helped [name] with homework/schoolwork? FOOD SECURITY Q No (0) Yes (1) Don’t know (88) In January of this year, was there a time when your household ran out of food because of a lack of money or X5. other resources? During the last 15 days, was there a time when your X6a. household ran out of food because of a lack of money or other resources? During the last 15 days, you, or any other adult in your X6b. household, were hungry but did not eat because there was not enough money or other resources for food? During the last 15 days, you, or any other adult in your X6c. household, went without eating for a whole day because of a lack of money or other resources? QThese questions were taken from the COVID-19 response survey designed by the Poverty Global Practice at the World Bank Group ANNEXES 85 CHILD’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t Please let me know if (name): know (88) Check the box that applies for each question. Language/Literacy concepts Can (name) follow text in a correct direction from left to right X7. and from top to bottom, even if they cannot read? Can (name) name at least 10 letters (does not need to be able X8. to label/match the letters, only to name them)? X9. Can (name) read four simple words? Can (name) write at least three letters such as A, B, C or some X10. letters in his/her name? X11. Can (name) write a simple word? CAREGIVER WELL-BEING For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t Please let me know if during the last 15 days you have: know (88) Check the box that applies for each question. X12. found it difficult to be affectionate to your child. X13. been feeling more irritated or angry. X14. found it difficult to get enough sleep at night X15. been nervous or anxious. X16. not being able to stop or control worrying. CHILD INTERNILIZING / EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIORS For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t In the last 15 days, please let me know if your child has been: know (88) Check the box that applies for each question. X17. crying more than he/she used to. X18. speaking less well than he/she used to. X19. being withdrawn or very quiet more than usual. ANNEXES 86 X20. being irritable more than he/she used to. X21. defiant (does not follow the house rules) more than usual. X22. destroying or damaging things more than usual. CHILD DISCIPLINER For these next items, please answer with YES or NO. No (0) Yes (1) Don’t Adults use certain ways to teach children the right behavior know / Not or to address a behavior problem. I will read various apply (88) methods that are used. Please let me know if, during the last 15 days, you or any household member age 15 or over has used this method with ( name): Check the box that applies for each question. X23. Called (him/her) dumb, lazy or another name like that. Spanked, hit or slapped (him/her) on the bottom with X24. bare hand X25. Hit or slapped (him/her) on the hand, arm, or leg. X26. Hit or slapped (him/her) on the face, head or ears. Hit (him/her) on the bottom or elsewhere on the body X27. with something like a belt, hairbrush, stick or other hard object. Beat (him/her) up, that is hit (him/her) over and over as X28. hard as one could. Do you believe that in order to bring up, raise, or educate a X29. child properly, the child needs to be physically punished? R From UNICEF MICS. ANNEXES 87 Read questions 1-3 below and write the response as the parent gives it. 1 Family Name: 2 Children’s names: 3 Did your family receive the Read@Home package? If no, skip to question 14. If yes, continue with questions below. 4 What date did your family receive the Read@Home package? If a specific date cannot be remembered, can you estimate whether it was a day ago, a week ago, or longer. (Write their estimated date). 5 What was the condition the materials were in? Circle one option. Poor Fair Good 6 Was the packaging open or torn? Circle one option. Yes No Don’t know 7 How many books were included in your Read@Home Package. Write number given. 8 Were reading materials at the right reading level for your child? Yes No Don’t know 9 Were reading materials in a language your child can read and Yes No Don’t know understand? 10 Have your children read any books on their own? Yes No Don’t know 11 Have you read any books with your children since you received the Yes No Don’t know package? 12 Did your family receive handouts for parents? Circle one option. Yes No Don’t know 13 Were the handouts in a language you can read? Circle one option Yes No Don’t know 14 Were you told that you would receive a Read@Home package? Yes No Don’t know 15 Who did you communicate with about receiving a Read@Home package R@H staff Other staff Don’t know S Please refer to Table 3.2 for further information ANNEXES 88 Name of village__________________________ Number of families participating in Read@Home project__________________________ Total number of books in each Read@Home package_____________________________ Please fill out the checklist and include exact amounts of each if known. Yes No Number We included books in local language(s) We included books in the national language We included titles written by local authors We included titles written by international authors We included titles taken from online platforms like Global Book Alliance, Story Weaver, Pratham Books, etc. We included non- fiction titles Some books had female lead characters Some books had a diverse character (child with disability, child from a minority group, etc.) Some books reflected the local context We included books across reading levels (please indicate number of books in each level in number column) We included wordless books for the youngest readers ANNEXES 89 Parent Survey-Effectiveness of Read@Home Information Sessions Parent name: Village: Date: Information session Logistics 1. Did you attend an Read@Home information session? Y/N 2. If yes, what was the format of the information session: a. In person with a facilitator b. Recorded video at a partner location c. Audio recording sent to your phone d. Other ________________________________________________ 3. If you attended in person, where was the session located: a. At my home b. At a location within the community c. Other_________________________________________________ 4. Was the date and time of the information session convenient for you? Information session content 1. How satisfied were you with the content of the information session: a. Very satisfied b. Satisfied c. Not satisfied 2. How clear was the content in the information session: a. Very clear b. Clear c. Not clear 3. How satisfied were you with the facilitator’s knowledge? a. Very satisfied b. Satisfied c. Not satisfied 4. Did you receive a printed hand-out after the session? a. Yes b. No 5. If you received a printed hand-out after the session, how clear was the content about what to do with the materials? a. Very clear b. Clear c. Not clear 6. Was the facilitator able to answer all of your questions? a. Yes, all my questions were answered b. Some of my questions were answered c. The facilitator could not answer any of my questions ANNEXES 90 1 Family name: 2 Children’s names: 3 How frequently to do you read with your child? 4 or more 2-3 times Once a Never Circle one option. times a a month month month 4 How frequently do you do a literacy activity 4 or more 2-3 times Once a Never with your child? Circle one option. times a a month month month 5 How confident do you feel reading to your Very Confident Somewhat Not child? confident confident confident 6 How confident do you feel doing a literacy Very Confident Somewhat Not activity with your child confident confident confident 7 Which age child do you interact with the most Youngest Middle Oldest All with reading? (birth-3) (4-8) (10-12) 8 How do you feel when interacting with books Very happy Happy Neutral Upset with your child? 9 Do you have a reading corner in your home? Yes No Don’t know 10 Do you have a place to store your books at Yes No Don’t know home? ANNEXES 91 Modules for parental involvement and foundation learning mics6 (may 2017) See for latest questionnaires PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT PR PR1 . Check CB3: Child’s age? AGE 5-6 YEARS......................................................1 1 ⇒ End AGE 7-14 YEARS ...................................................2 AGE 15-17 YEARS .................................................3 3 ⇒ End PR2. At the end of this interview I will ask you if I can talk to (name). If (he/she) is close, can you please ask (him/her) to stay here. If (name) is not with you at the moment could I ask that you now arrange for (him/her) to return? If that is not possible, we will later discuss a convenient time for me to call back. PR3 . Excluding school text books and holy NONE .................................................................. 00 books, how many books do you have for (name) to read at home? NUMBER OF BOOKS ......................................0 TEN OR MORE BOOKS....................................... 10 PR4 . Check CB7: Did the child attend any YES, CB7/ED9=1....................................................1 school? NO, CB7/ED9=2 OR BLANK..................................2 2 ⇒ End CHECK ED9 IN THE EDUCATION MODULEIN THE HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILD IF CB7 WAS NOT ASKED. PR5. Does (name) ever have homework? YES........................................................................ 1 2 ⇒ PR7 NO .........................................................................2 8 ⇒ PR7 DK..........................................................................8 PR6 . Does anyone help (name) with YES.........................................................................1 homework? NO .........................................................................2 DK..........................................................................8 PR7 . Does (name)’s school have a school YES.........................................................................1 governing body in which parents can NO .........................................................................2 2 ⇒ PR10 participate (such as parent teacher association or school management DK..........................................................................8 8 ⇒ PR10 committee / use local terms)? ANNEXES 92 PR8 . In the last 12 months, have you or any YES.........................................................................1 other adult from your household attended NO .........................................................................2 2 ⇒ PR10 ameeting called by this school governing body? DK..........................................................................8 8 ⇒ PR10 PR9 . During any of these meetings, was any of the following discussed: YES NO DK [A] A plan for addressing key PLAN FOR ADRESSING educationissues faced by (name)’s SCHOOL’S ISSUES................................. 1 2 8 school? SCHOOL BUDGET................................ 1 2 8 [B] School budget or use of funds receivedby (name)’s school? PR10 . In the last 12 months, have you or any YES.........................................................................1 other adult from your household received NO .........................................................................2 a school or student report card for (name)? DK..........................................................................8 PR11 . In the last 12 months, have you or any adult from your household gone to (name)’sschool for any of the following YES NO DK reasons? A school celebration or a sport event? CELEBRATION OR SPORT EVENT .................................. 1 2 8 To discuss (name)’s progress with TO DISCUSS PROGRESS (his/her) teachers? WITH TEACHERS.............................. 1 2 8 PR12 . In the last 12 months, has (name)’s school been closed on a school day due to any of the following reasons: YES NO DK [A] Natural disasters, such as flood, NATURAL DISASTERS ........................ 1 2 8 cyclone, epidemics or similar? [B] Man-made disasters, such as fire, MAN-MADE DISASTERS .................... 1 2 8 building collapse, riots or similar? [C] Teacher strike? TEACHER STRIKE ............................... 1 2 8 [X] Other? OTHER .............................................. 1 2 8 PR13 . In the last 12 months, was (name) YES ........................................................................1 unable to attend class due to (his/her) NO .........................................................................2 teacher being absent? DK..........................................................................8 ANNEXES 93 PR14 . Check PR12[C] and PR13: Any ‘Yes’ YES, PR12[C]=1 OR PR13=1 .................................1 recorded? NO .........................................................................2 2 ⇒ End PR15 . When (teacher strike / teacher YES ........................................................................1 absence) happened did you or any other NO .........................................................................2 adult member of your household contact any school officials or school governing body DK..........................................................................8 representatives? FOUNDATIONAL LEARNING SKILLS FL AGE 5-6 YEARS .............................................. 1 End AGE 7-14 YEARS............................................ 2 AGE 15-17 YEARS.......................................... 3 End FL1. Now I would like to talk to (name ). I will ask (him/her) a few questions about (himself/herself) and about reading, and then ask (him/her) to complete a few reading and number activities. These are not school tests and the results will not be shared with anyone, including other parents or the school. You will not benefit directly from participating and I am not trained to tell you how well (name ) has performed. The activities are to help us find out how well children in this country are learning to read and to use numbers so that improvements can be made. This will take about 20 minutes. Again, all the information we obtain will remain strictly confidential and anonymous. YES, PERMISSION IS GIVEN .................................... 1 May I talk to (name )? FL28 FL2. Record the time. HOURS AND MINUTES ... : FL3. My name is (your name). I would like to tell you a bit about myself. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself? When the child is comfortable, continue with the verbal consent: Let me tell you why I am here today. I am from National Statistical Office. I am part of a team trying to find out how children are learning to read and to use numbers. We are also talking to some of the children about this andasking them to do some reading and number activities. (Your mother/ Name of caretaker) has said that you can decide if you want to help us. If you wish to help us, I will ask you some questions and give you some activitiesto do. I will explain each activity, and you can ask me questions any time. You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do. After we begin, if you do not want to answer a question or you do not want to continue that is alright. Are you ready to get started? YES, PERMISSION IS GIVEN.....................................1 1 ⇒ FL4 NO, PERMISSION IS NOT GIVEN.............................2 2 ⇒ FL28 ANNEXES 94 FL4 . Before you start with the reading and number activities, tick each box to show that: You are not alone with the child unless they are at least visible to an adult known to the child. You have engaged the child in conversation and built rapport, e.g. using an Icebreaker. which page is open. FL5 . Remember you can ask me a question at any time if there is something you do not understand. You can ask me to stop atany time. FL6 . First we are going to talk about reading. YES NO [A] Do you read books at home? READS BOOKS AT HOME…..1 2 [B] Does someone read to you at home? READ TO AT HOME…………... 1 2 FL7 . Which language do you speak most of the time at home? LANGUAGE 1 ............................. 1 LANGUAGE 2 ............................. 2 Probe if necessary and read the listed languages. LANGUAGE 3 ............................. 3 OTHER (specify)……………………..6 DK ............................................... 8 FL8 . Check CB7: Did the child attend any school? YES, CB7/ED9=1 .........................1 1 ⇒ FL9 NO, CB7/ED9=2 OR BLANK……. 2 CHECK ED9 IN THE EDUCATION MODULE IN THE HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILD IF CB7 WASNOT ASKED. FL8A. Check FL7: Is READING & NUMBER BOOK availablein the YES, FL7=1, 2 OR 3 .....................1 1 ⇒ FL10B language spoken at home? NO, FL7=6 OR 8..........................2 2 ⇒ FL23 FL9 . What language do your teachers use most of the LANGUAGE 1 ............................. 1 1 ⇒ FL10A time when teaching you in class? LANGUAGE 2 ............................. 2 2 ⇒ FL10A LANGUAGE 3 ............................. 3 3 ⇒ FL10A Probe if necessary and name the listed languages. OTHER (specify)………………………6 6 ⇒ FL23 DK ............................................... 8 8 ⇒ FL23 ANNEXES 95 FL10A. Now I am going to give you a short story to read in YES ..............................................1 (Language recorded in FL9). Would you like to start reading NO...............................................2 2 ⇒ FL23 the story? FL10B. Now I am going to give you a short story to read in (Language recorded in FL7). Would you like to start reading the story? FL11 . Check CB3: Child’s age? AGE 7-9 YEARS...........................1 1 ⇒ FL13 AGE 10-14 YEARS.......................2 FL12 . Check CB7: Did the child attend any school? YES, CB7/ED9=1 .........................1 1 ⇒ FL19 NO, CB7/ED9=2 OR BLANK……. 2 CHECK ED9 IN THE EDUCATION MODULE IN THE HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONNAIRE FOR CHILD IF CB7 WASNOT ASKED. FL13 . Give the child the READING & NUMBER BOOK. Open the page showing the reading practice item and say: Now we are going to do some reading. Point to the sentence. I would like you to read this aloud. Then I may ask you a question. Sam is a cat. Tina is a dog. Sam is 5. Tina is 6. FL14 . Did the child read every word in the practice correctly? YES .............................................. 1 NO............................................... 2 2 ⇒ FL23 FL15 . Once the reading is done, ask: SAM IS 5 YEARS OLD ................. 1 1 ⇒ FL17 How old is Sam? OTHER ANSWERS...................... 2 NO ANSWER AFTER 5 SECONDS ......... 3 FL16 . Say: Sam is 5 years old. ⇒ FL23 and go to FL23. FL17 . Here is another question: TINA IS OLDER (THAN SAM) .... 1 1 ⇒ FL19 Who is older: Sam or Tina? OTHER ANSWERS...................... 2 NO ANSWER AFTER 5 SECONDS ................................................. 3 FL18 . Say: Tina is older than Sam. Tina is 6 and Sam is 5. ⇒ FL23 and go to FL23. ANNEXES 96 FL19 . Turn the page to reveal the reading Moses is in class two. One day, passage. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Moses was going home from school. He Thank you. Now I want you to try this. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Here is a story. I want you to read it saw some red flowers on the way. aloudas carefully as you can. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 You will start here (point to the first word The flowers were near a tomato farm. on the first line) and you will read line by line (point to the direction for reading each line). 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Moses wanted to get some flower for When you finish I will ask you some s questions about what you have 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 read. his mother. Moses ran fast across the If you come to a word you do not 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 know,go onto the next word. farm to get the flowers. He fell Put your finger on the first word. Ready? 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 Begin. down near a banana tree. Moses started 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 crying. The farmer saw him and came. 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 He gave Moses many flowers. Moses was 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 very happy. 71 72 FL20 . Results of the child’s reading. LAST WORD ATTEMPTED.................... NUMBER TOTAL NUMBER OF WORDS INCORRECT OR MISSED.................... NUMBER FL21 . How well did the child read the THE CHILD READ AT LEAST ONE WORD CORRECT................................................................ 1 story? THE CHILD DID NOT READ ANY WORD CORRECTLY............................................................. 2 2 ⇒ FL23 THE CHILD DID NOT TRY TO READ THE STORY ........................... 3 3 ⇒ F23 ANNEXES 97 FL22 . Now I am going to ask you a few questions about what you have read. If the child does not provide a response after a few seconds, repeat the question. If the child seems unable to provide an answer after repeating the question, mark ‘No response’ and say: Thank you. That is ok. We will move on. Make sure the child can still see the passage and ask: [A] What class is Moses in? CORRECT ((MOSES IS) IN CLASS TWO)................1 INCORRECT...........................................................2 NO RESPONSE / SAYS ‘I DON’T KNOW’ …………... 3 [B] What did Moses see on the way home? CORRECT (HE SAW SOME FLOWERS) .................1 INCORRECT...........................................................2 NO RESPONSE / SAYS ‘I DON’T KNOW’ …………... 3 [C] Why did Moses start crying? CORRECT (BECAUSE HE FELL)..............................1 INCORRECT...........................................................2 NO RESPONSE / SAYS ‘I DON’T KNOW’ …………...3 [D] Where did Moses fall (down)? CORRECT ((MOSES FELL DOWN) NEAR A BANANA TREE).................................................. 1 INCORRECT...........................................................2 NO RESPONSE / SAYS ‘I DON’T KNOW’ …………... 3 [E] Why was Moses happy? CORRECT (BECAUSE THE FARMER GAVE HIM MANY FLOWERS. / BECAUSE HE HAD FLOWERS TO GIVE TO HIS MOTHER)........................................................... 1 INCORRECT...........................................................2 NO RESPONSE / SAYS ‘I DON’T KNOW’ …………... 3 ANNEXES 98 FL23 . Turn the page in the Reading & Numbers Book so the 9 child is looking at the list of numbers. Make sure the child is CORRECT .................................... 1 looking at this page. INCORRECT ................................ 2 NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 Now here are some numbers. I want you to point to each 12 number and tell me what the number is. CORRECT .................................... 1 INCORRECT ................................ 2 Point to the first number and say: NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 30 Start here . CORRECT .................................... 1 INCORRECT ................................ 2 If the child stops on a number for a while, tell the child what NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 the number is, mark the number as ‘No Attempt’, point to the 48 next number and say: CORRECT .................................... 1 INCORRECT ................................ 2 What is this number ? NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 74 STOP RULE CORRECT .................................... 1 If the child does not attempt to read 2 consecutive numbers, INCORRECT ................................ 2 say: NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 731 Thank you. That is ok. We will go to the next activity. CORRECT .................................... 1 INCORRECT ................................ 2 NO ATTEMPT ............................. 3 FL23A. Check FL23: Did the child correctly identify two of the YES, AT LEAST TWO first three numbers (9, 12 and 30)? CORRECT .................................1 NO, AT LEAST 2 INCORRECT OR WITH NO ATTEMPT.................................2 2 ⇒ FL28 FL24 . Turn the page so the child is looking at the first pair of numbers. Make sure the child is looking at this page. Say: Look at these numbers. Tell me which one is bigger. 7 5 Record the child’s answer before turning the page in the book 11 24 and repeating the question for the next pair of numbers. 58 49 If the child does not provide a response after a few seconds, repeat the question. If the child seems unable to provide an 65 67 answer after repeating the question, mark a ‘Z’ for the answeron the appropriate row on the questionnaire, turn the 146 154 booklet page and show the child the next pair of numbers. If the child does not attempt 2 consecutive pairs, say: Thank you. That is ok. We will go to the next activity. ANNEXES 99 FL25 . Give the child a pencil and paper. Turn the page so the child is looking at the first addition. Make sure the child is looking at this page. Say: Look at this sum. How much is (number plus number)? Tellme 3 + 2= the answer. You can use the pencil and paper if it helps you. 8 + 6= Record the child’s answer before turning the page in the book 7 + 3= and repeating the question for the next sum. 13 + 6= If the child does not provide a response after a few seconds, repeat the question. If the child seems unable to provide an 12 + 24 = answer after repeating the question, mark a ‘Z’ for the answeron the appropriate row on the questionnaire, turn the booklet page and show the child the next addition. If the child does not attempt 2 consecutive pairs, say: Thank you. That is ok. We will go to the next activity. FL26 . Turn the page to the practice sheet for missing numbers. Say: Here are some numbers. 1, 2, and 4. What number goes here? If the child answers correctly say: That’s correct, 3. Let’s do another one. If the child answers incorrectly, do not explain the child how to get the correct answer. Just say: The number 3 goes here. Say the numbers with me. (Point to each number) 1, 2, 3, 4.3 goes here. Let’s do another one. Now turn the page to the next practice sheet. Say: Here are some more numbers. 5, 10, 15 and . What number goes here? If the child answers correctly say: That’s correct, 20. Now I want you to try this on your own If the child answers incorrectly say: The number 20 goes here. Say the numbers with me. (Point to each number) 5, 10, 15, 20.20 goes here. Now I want you to try this on your own. ANNEXES 100 FL27 . Now turn the page in the Reading & Numbers Book with the first missing number activity. Say: Here are some more numbers. Tell me what number goes 5 6 7 here (pointing to the missing number). 14 15 17 Record the child’s answer before turning the page in the book and repeating the question. 20 40 50 If the child does not provide a response after a few seconds, 2 4 6 repeat the question. If the child seems unable to provide an answer after repeating the question, mark a ‘Z’ for the 5 8 11 answeron the appropriate row on the questionnaire. If the child does not attempt 2 consecutive activities, say: Thank you. That is ok. FL28 . Result of interview with child. COMPLETED.......................................................... 01 NOT AT HOME...................................................... 02 Discuss any result not completed with MOTHER / CARETAKER REFUSED........................ 03 Supervisor. CHILD REFUSED .................................................... 04 PARTLY COMPLETED............................................ 05 INCAPACITATED ................................................... 06 OTHER (specify) 96 ANNEXES 101 FS11 . Record the time. HOURS AND MINUTES .................. : FS12. Language of the Questionnaire. ENGLISH.............................................................. 1 LANGUAGE 2 ...................................................... 2 LANGUAGE 3 ...................................................... 3 FS13 . Language of the Interview. ENGLISH.............................................................. 1 LANGUAGE 2 ...................................................... 2 LANGUAGE 3 ...................................................... 3 OTHER LANGUAGE (specify) 6 FS14 . Native language of the Respondent. ENGLISH.............................................................. 1 LANGUAGE 2 ...................................................... 2 LANGUAGE 3 ...................................................... 3 OTHER LANGUAGE (specify) 6 FS15 . Was a translator used for any parts of YES, THE ENTIRE QUESTIONNAIRE ................... 1 this questionnaire? YES, PARTS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE ............... 2 NO, NOT USED ................................................... 3 FS16 . Thank the respondent and the child for her/his cooperation. Proceed to complete the result in FS17 in the 5-17 CHILD INFORMATION PANEL and then go to the HOUSEHOLD QUESTIONNAIRE and complete HH56. Make arrangements for the administration of the remaining questionnaire(s) in this household. ANNEXES 102 List of MICS6 Indicators on Parental Involvement and Foundational Learning Skills LITERACY AND EDUCATION Availability of Number of children age 7-14 enrolled in schools 7.20 information on PR providing student report cards to parents Total number of children age 7- 14 children's school attending school performance Opportunity to Number of children age 7-14 enrolled in Total number of children age 7- 14 7.21 participate in School PR schools whose governing body includes attending school Management parents Number of children age 7-14 attending school Participation in school Total number of children age 7- 14 7.22 PR whose household member participated in school management attending school governing body meetings Number of children age 7-14 attending school Effective whose household member discussed key Total number of children age 7- 14 7.23 participation in PR education/financial issues during school governing attending school school management body meetings Discussion with Number of children age 7-14 attending school Total number of children age 7- 14 7.24 teachers regarding PR whose household member discussed child’s attending school children’s progress progress with teachers Number of children age 7-14 attending school Total number of children age 7- 14 Contact with schoo l whose household member contacted school attending school who couldn’t 7.25 concerning teach e r PR representatives when school was closed and/or attend class and/or whose school absence/strike class didn’t take place because of teacher was closed due to teacher absence/strike absence/strike Total number of children age 7- 14 Support with Number of children age 7-14 attending school 7.26 PR attending school who have homework who receive help with homework homework Availability of books Number of children 7-14 years who have three or Total number of children age 7- 14 7.27 PR at home more books to read at home years Reading habit at Number of children 7-14 years who read books or Total number of children age 7- 14 7.28 FL home are read to at home years School and home Number of children age 7-14 attending school Total number of children age 7- 14 7.29 FL languages whose home language is used at school attending school Children with Number of children 7-14 years who SDG foundational reading successfully complete Total number of children age 7- 14 7.30 FL Indicator and number skills (a) three foundational reading tasks years 4.1.1 (b) four foundational number tasks ANNEXES 103 ANNEXES 104 7. KNOWLEDGE SCALE Now I am going to read some statements regarding Ngiye kugusomera interuro zijyanye n'imyumvire ushobora knowledge you may have about literacy. Please tell kuba ufite ku byerekeye gusoma. Urambwira niba ubyemera me whether you strongly agree or disagree, cyane, ubyemera buhoro, ubihakana buhoro cyangwa somewhat agree or somewhat disagree. There is no ubihakana cyane. Nta gisubizo cyiza cyangwa kibi. Urambwira right or wrong answers, they are simply personal uko ubyumva gusa. views on the topic under consideration. Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Parents should be Somewhat Ababyeyi bagomba kugira Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN39 involved in teaching their Disagree uruhare mu kwigisha abana children how to read. Strongly Disagree babo gusoma. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat You know how to help Uzi gufasha umwana wawe Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN40 Disagree your child learn to read. kwiga gusoma. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Kumenyereza umwana Only teachers should Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN41 Disagree ibitabo n'izindi nyandiko teach children to read. Strongly Disagree akiri muto ni ingirakamaro. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 It is important for a child Somewhat Abarimu ni bo bonyine to be exposed to books Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN42 Disagree bagomba kwigisha abana and other writing from a Strongly Disagree gusoma. Simbyemera na gato 4 young age. Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Parents and teachers Somewhat Ababyeyi n'abarimu Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN43 should work together to Disagree bakwiye gufatanya teach reading. Strongly Disagree kwigisha gusoma. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response ANNEXES 105 Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Children should ONLY Abana bagomba gusoma Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN44 Disagree read to learn kugira ngo bige gusa. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Abana ntibashobora Children cannot learn to Somewhat kwigishwa gusoma na Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN45 read from their older Disagree bakuru babo cyangwa siblings or friends. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 inshuti. Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Some children do not Abana bamwe ntibakeneye Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN46 Disagree need to learn how to read. kwiga gusoma. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat There are many benefits Kumenya gusoma bifite Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN47 Disagree to knowing how to read. akamaro kanini. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Abana bashobora gusoma Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN48 Children can read for fun. Disagree mu rwego rwo Strongly Disagree kwishimisha. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Children can read for Abana bashobora gusoma Ntabyo nemera 3 PKN49 Disagree learning. bagamije kwiga. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response ANNEXES 106 PARENT ATTITUDES AND MOTIVATION CODE / NO. QUESTIONS RESPONSES IBIBAZO IBISUBIZO NIMERO Literacy Attitudes. Now I am going to read some statements regarding your attitudes about literacy. Please Ngiye kugusomera interuro zijyanye n'imyumvire tell me whether you strongly agree, somewhat ushobora kuba ufite ku byerekeye gusoma. Urambwira agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree. niba ubyemera cyane, ubyemera buhoro, ubihakana There is no right or wrong answers, they are buhoro cyangwa ubihakana cyane. Nta gisubizo cyiza simply personal views on the topic under cyangwa kibi. Urambwira uko ubyumva gusa. consideration. Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Nemera ko abantu bo mu I believe people of my age Somewhat kigero cyanjye bakwiye Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT01 should read with their Disagree kujya basomera hamwe children. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 n'abana babo Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Rimwe na rimwe gusomera Reading a storybook for Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 PAT02 abana ibitabo by'inkuru children is sometimes dull. Somewhat birarambirana. Ntabyo nemera 3 Disagree Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Schools are entirely Somewhat Amashuri yonyine ni yo Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT03 responsible for teaching Disagree afite inshingano zo children how to read . Strongly Disagree kwigisha abana gusoma Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 lyo umuntu ambwiye ngo I feel comfortable saying Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 mugurire inzoga aho NO if someone wants me Somewhat kugurira abana banjye Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT04 to buy beer /soft drink Disagree ibitabo by'inkuru instead of storybooks for Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 NDAMUHAKANIRA nta my children. Don't know / No mususu. Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 If a neighbor wants to Somewhat Agree Umuturanyi aramutse Ndabyemera 2 influence me to leave the Somewhat ambwiye ngo uburezi Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT05 teaching of children to Disagree bw'abana banjye teachers, it would be Strongly Disagree mbuharire abarimu, Simbyemera na gato 4 difficult for me to refuse. Don't know / No byangora kumuhakanira. Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response ANNEXES 107 Both schools and parents PAT06 are responsible for Amashuri n'ababyeyi, teaching children how to bombi bafite inshingano zo read. kwigisha abana gusoma. Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 I feel comfortable telling lyo inshuti zanjye zimbwiye Somewhat my closest friends that I ngo uburezi bw'abana Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT07 Disagree do not want to leave banjye mbuharire abarimu Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 reading to teachers. ndazihakanira nta mususu. Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Gusomera umwana igitabo Somewhat Reading a storybook with cy'inkuru cyangwa Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT08 Disagree a child is educational gusomera hamwe na we Strongly Disagree bimufasha kwiga. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Somewhat Reading a storybook is Gusoma igitabo cy'inkuru Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT09 Disagree pleasant birashimisha. Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Ni byiza kuganiriza abana It is a good idea to read a Somewhat bari hagati y'umwaka Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT10 story book with children Disagree umwe n'imyaka itandatu ku of 0-6 olds Strongly Disagree Simbyemera na gato 4 gusoma ibitabo by'inkuru Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 Learning reading skills s Somewhat Kwiga gusoma byagombye Ntabyo nemera 3 PAT11 wait until children start Disagree gutangira umwana atangiye school. Strongly Disagree ishuri. Simbyemera na gato 4 Don't know / No Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response Strongly Agree Ndabyemera cyane 1 Somewhat Agree Ndabyemera 2 I believe that Children Somewhat Numva ko n’abana bafite Ntabyo nemera 3 with disabilities can also Disagree ubumuga bashobora PAT12 attend and participate in Strongly Disagree kwitabira amahuriro yo Simbyemera na gato 4 the reading club Don't know / No gusoma Simbizi / Nta gisubizo 999 response ANNEXES 108 8. Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) Survey for Children Respondent Name___________________________ Age___Village_______________________ Please select the response that best describes how you feel about the following: 1. I enjoy reading books. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 2. I feel confident when I read a book out loud to my family members and siblings. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 3. Children should read books at home and not just at school. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 4. I read at home… Everyday 2-3 times a week Once a week Once a month 5. If I have free time, I want to: a. Read a book b. Help with chores c. Play outside d. Watch TV 6. If a community library were to open in my area, I would go with my friends to borrow books. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know ANNEXES 109 9. Children’s Questionnaire (English-Kinyarwanda) CHILD KNOWLEDGE NO. QUESTIONS RESPONSES **I am going to read some statements. Please tell whether those statements are true or false. There is no right or wrong answers, they are simply personal views on the topic under consideration.** TRUE An illiterate parent cannot help CKN01 FALSE his/her child learn to read. Don’t know / No response TRUE Only literate parents can help their CKN02 FALSE children learn to read. Don’t know / No response TRUE You know where to access reading CKN03 FALSE materials in your community. Don’t know / No response By which age do you think a child can start interacting with books? CKN04 *INTERVIEWER: Enter age in years. Enter 999 for "Don't Know."* By what age do you think a child should be able to read an age CKN05 appropriate book by himself/herself? *INTERVIEWER: Enter age in years. Enter 999 for "Don't Know."* By what age do you think a child should be able to write by CKN06 himself/herself? *INTERVIEWER: Enter age in years. Enter 999 for "Don't Know."* Pre-primary Primary 1 Primary 2 By what grade should children be able Primary 3 CKN07 to read simple sentences like “ My Primary 4 mother is cooking”? Primary 5 Primary 6 Older than Primary 6 Don’t know / No response Poverty In your opinion, what are the factors Ignorance that prevent parents from supporting Illiteracy CKN08 children's reading at home in this Lack of Awareness community? Lack of Time / Parents are busy working or going out ANNEXES 110 Parents do not care about children's reading Conflict at home Other Don't know/ No response CKN09 Specify other factors Now I am going to read some statements that have to do with reading/literacy, and I want you to tell me if you strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree with CKN10 each of the things I say. There is no right or wrong answer it is just your personal view. Let’s try some examples first! "I really like to play football." Strongly Agree *Wait for the child to respond. If the Somewhat Agree CKN11 child does not know how to respond, Somewhat Disagree help them to understand how you Strongly Disagree want them to respond.* Don't know / No response “Doing homework is very fun.” Strongly Agree *Wait for the child to respond. If the Somewhat Agree CKN12 child does not know how to respond, Somewhat Disagree help them to understand how you Strongly Disagree want them to respond.* Don't know / No response “Children who disobey their parents Strongly Agree should be punished.” Somewhat Agree *Wait for the child to respond. If the Somewhat Disagree CKN13 child does not know how to respond, Strongly Disagree help them to understand how you want them to respond.* Don't know / No response Very good! Now I am going to read some more statements and I want you to tell me your opinion Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. Strongly Agree It is important for a child to be Somewhat Agree CKN15 exposed to books and other writing Somewhat Disagree from a young age. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Only teachers should teach children CKN16 Somewhat Disagree how to read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Parents should be involved in teaching CKN17 Somewhat Disagree their children how to read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response ANNEXES 111 Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Parents and teachers should work CKN18 Somewhat Disagree together to support children’s reading. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Some children do not need to learn CKN19 Somewhat Disagree how to read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree There are many benefits to knowing CKN20 Somewhat Disagree how to read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree CKN21 Children should ONLY read to learn Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Children cannot learn to read from CKN22 Somewhat Disagree their older siblings or friends. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree CKN23 Children can read for fun. Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree CKN24 Children can read for learning. Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Storybooks are helpful to learn CKN25 Somewhat Disagree reading. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response ANNEXES 112 NO. QUESTIONS RESPONSES Now I am going to read some statements regarding attitudes you may have about literacy. Please tell me whether you strongly, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or CAT01 strongly disagree. There is no right or wrong answers, they are simply personal views on the topic under consideration. Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Only schools are responsible for CAT02 Somewhat Disagree teaching children how to read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Schools are responsible for teaching Somewhat Agree CAT03 children to read but parents should Somewhat Disagree help occasionally. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Both schools and parents are Somewhat Agree CAT04 responsible for supporting children to Somewhat Disagree read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Even if a child can read alone, I still Somewhat Agree CAT05 feel that it is the parent role to help Somewhat Disagree him/her read. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree CAT06 It is difficult to find time to read. Somewhat Disagree Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree I feel comfortable saying NO if Somewhat Agree someone wants my parents to buy CAT07 Somewhat Disagree beer instead of storybooks for Strongly Disagree children. Don't know / No response Strongly Agree I feel comfortable telling my parents Somewhat Agree CAT08 not to leave teaching me reading to Somewhat Disagree teachers. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response Strongly Agree If a child can read alone, their parents Somewhat Agree CAT09 do not have to help them read Somewhat Disagree anymore. Strongly Disagree Don't know / No response ANNEXES 113 Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) Survey Respondent Name___________________________ Age___Village_______________________ Please select the response that best describes how you feel about the following: 1. Reading books helps children develop reading skills and children should read every day. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 2. Children should only read in school and not at home. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 3. Parents should read and interact with books with their children because it helps develop their literacy skills. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know 4. If my child has spare time, I want her to: a. Read a book b. Help with chores c. Play outside d. Watch TV 5. If a community library were to open in my area, I would go with my child to borrow books. Agree Somewhat agree Disagree Don’t know ANNEXES 114 Directions: This assessment is for children in grade 2 or 7-8 years of age. Provide the child a sheet with the sight words written in large size font. Ask them to read each word out loud, going from top to bottom. Scoring : On your sheet, circle the words the child does not read correctly. Calculate the words read correctly as a percentage of the total. Always Gave These Around Goes Those Because Green Upon Been Its Us Before Made Use Best Many Very Both Off Wash Buy Or Which Call Pull Why Cold Read Wish Does Right Work Don’t Sing Would Fast Sit Write First Sleep Your Five Tell Found Their Second grade sight words taken from Dolch Sight Word List. ANNEXES 115 Date____________Village name_____________________ Name of interviewer________________________________ Name of interviewee________________________________ Role or title__________________________ If community library exists ask these questions If a new community library was established recently ask these questions When was the community library established? Was a library established during the R@H implementation period? Where is the library located? Where is the library located? Who established it and where does it get its If yes, who established it and how was it funded? funding from? How many books does the library have and where How many books does the library have and where were they purchased or donated from: were they purchased or donated from: a. Community donations a. Community donations b. International donations b. International donations c. School/community based fund c. School/community based fund d. Through NGOs d. Through NGOs e. Through INGOs e. Through INGOs Are there titles for all ages? Are there titles for all ages? How many community members use the library? How many community members use the library? How many of these are children? How many of these are children? Has library use …since R@H started Who manages the library? a. Increased b. Stayed the same c. Gone down What is the plan for replenishing books when they What is the plan for replenishing books when they are lost or in poor condition? are lost or in poor condition? What hours and days is the library open? What hours and days is the library open? ANNEXES 116 ANNEXES 117 “Concepts of print”. The balanced literacy diet: putting research into practice in the classroom. The Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto, www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Concepts_of_Print.html. Accessed 15 July 2020. Adams, M.J. (1994). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Allington, R. (2017). 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SOURCE NOTES 124