Previous Story
‘Students’ reading skills remain low’
|
Posted on Mar 03 2005
By Marconi Calindas
Reporter
CNMI students continue to demonstrate low reading skills, prompting the Public School System’s reassessment of their reading and comprehension skills this week.
Pacific Resources for Education and Learning director for Pacific Assessment Systems and Services Don Burger expressed yesterday his concerns over the reading fluency of students in the CNMI.
Burger, together with PSS officials from Curriculum and Instructions Assessment group, is currently conducting a workshop among teachers to refine the reading and comprehension curriculum that was revised some time three years ago.
Burger said the low level of reading skills in children is generally affected by several factors. One factor could be caused by the different languages in the CNMI, which is unlike the mainland, where there is only one generally spoken language in the schools and in the community.
Another factor could be socio-economic. Burger said that due to financial problems, reading is not encouraged at home. Parents could also be very busy earning a living, which affects the reading motivation of their children at home.
Yesterday’s session was participated by teachers from all public schools not only from Saipan but also from Rota and Tinian. PSS coordinator for language arts program Stephen Smith also facilitated the workshop.
The participants were divided into groups that scrutinized the level of the curriculum on reading comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and phonics.
Burger said the results of the workshop would be used by the PSS to measure the progress of the CNMI students in terms of their reading skills. Also, the results will be used by teachers to also gauge the development of their students in the classrooms.
“I am very impressed with the new teachers participating in this workshop,” Burger said, comparing the enthusiasm of the attendees this year to the previous batch from three years ago.
