Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation assessment resource

I rise today to inform my honourable colleagues of the Department of Education�s assessment resource that is part of a comprehensive program of initiatives to improve literacy levels in our province.

The Department of Education�s comprehensive strategy to improve literacy and numeracy, beginning in the primary grades, is well under way.

All four Atlantic provinces have identified higher literacy levels as one of their goals and through the Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation, the four provinces developed a regional literacy strategy. One outcome of this strategy is a reading assessment resource, which will be implemented by all four provinces in the next school year. We have invested nearly $120,000 in this province to ensure a copy of this resource is distributed to every school in Newfoundland and Labrador with primary classrooms.

In the resource package, there are 80 high-quality books that have been carefully selected to represent a range of text difficulty. Both fiction and information texts are included. At any time during the year, the teacher, together with the student, can select a text to assess a child�s reading progress.

The assessment resource will help teachers address the needs of each child. If the teacher observes particular difficulties for any one student, then appropriate planning can be done to help overcome these difficulties. The hope is that by identifying reading difficulties at an early stage in the child�s reading development, we can avoid the continuation of reading problems as they advance through the K-12 system.

Teachers will also be able to use the resource to provide information to parents. Based on the results of the assessment, teachers will be able to suggest appropriate reading selections for parents to read with their children, suggest strategies for helping their children learn to read, and provide appropriate activities for parents to use at home.

We remain committed to our goal of improving this province�s literacy levels and will continue to focus on innovative programs and strategies, such as this one, to accomplish that goal.

2001 05 17                                      2:10 p.m.