Majority of Students Succeeding in Reading and Writing

Nova Scotia's first elementary literacy assessment shows that 89 per cent of Grade 6 students are meeting expectations in reading, and 81 per cent are doing so in writing. Students who are not meeting the standard are getting extra support to catch up.

"I'm pleased to see that the vast majority of students are succeeding in reading and writing, but we want all students to succeed," said Education Minister Jamie Muir. "The test identifies students who need more support, and it will help guide our investments to improve learning and make our entire system more accountable to students and their parents."

The test is part of the province's Learning for Life plan to help students succeed. Grade 6 students wrote the test in October 2003. It measured reading and writing skills that students had developed in their first language by the end of Grade 5. It helped identify students who are struggling so teachers and parents can give them more support. Additional funding to help support these students will be part of the spring budget.

For the first time, the Department of Education is sending each child's results home to parents, via schools this week. Teachers are contacting parents to work together on plans for students who need more support to improve their reading, writing or both. The support will continue for as long as it is needed.

Providing individual and school-by-school results is also a first. These results will help teachers, principals and parents with their plans for improving their schools.

Learning for Life initiatives have provided an infusion of resources for students over the past three years. Active Young Readers and Active Readers have put one million books in primary to Grade 8 classrooms. Writers in Action is providing a grammar and writing handbook for each student entering Grade 4, plus classroom dictionaries and thesauruses for grades 4 to 6.

Students and teachers also have more time to focus on reading and writing. The province's Time to Learn strategy mandates between 90 and 120 minutes of daily instruction in language arts for elementary students, of which a full hour must be spent on reading.

Teachers have been provided with more teaching resources and ongoing professional development to help them support students in reading and writing.

"Literacy has always been a priority for elementary teachers, so we've welcomed recent department and board initiatives that have given us current instructional techniques and much-needed resources," said Janet Porter, a resource teacher at Hillside Park Elementary School in Lower Sackville. "Teachers use a variety of tools and methods for assessment on a regular basis. The literacy assessment is one more tool to help us gather information. We use all of this information to help our students grow as readers and writers."

Nova Scotia teachers helped develop the assessment, set the standards for meeting expectations and field-tested it with students across the province. The department also used feedback from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, Black Educators Association, Nova Scotia Federation of Home and School Associations, a Reading Recovery specialist, numerous elementary teachers, researchers from Nova Scotia universities, and several parents and students. More than 100 teachers helped mark the test papers in November 2003.

Students who speak English as their first language wrote a test based on their language arts curriculum. Students in the Acadian school board wrote a different test, based on the French language arts curriculum. The English and French results cannot be compared as they are not based on the same curriculum.

The test was designed to assess first language literacy skills so that support could be given to students who need it. The Acadian school board is interested in its students' second language skills and requested that they also write the English test. The school board has these results. Parents can ask to see them through their children's schools.

During the test, students read a variety of materials and answered questions based on them. The materials included a short story, a poem, visual media texts, such as an advertisement, and information texts such as a brochure. Students also wrote a letter and a story. They wrote the test over four days, spending an hour to an hour and a half on different sections each day.

Results of the elementary literacy assessment are available online at www.ednet.ns.ca .