DEBBIE JACOB

SOON, we will need to face the impact of the covid19 pandemic on student learning. Studies in the US already show 'a troubling impact' on students' reading skills - especially in the youngest students from kindergarten to Grade 2. I can only imagine the impact on our students who were not in school for the better part of two years.

In the US, a series of new studies show that about one-third of the youngest students fell behind on reading benchmarks.

A study done by Amplify, a US-based curriculum and assessment company, said that among kindergarten students, the percentage of students at the highest risk for not learning to read rose eight per cent during the pandemic, from 29 per cent in the middle of the 2019-20 school year to 37 per cent in the middle of the 2021-22 school year.

The study showed that lower income children were 'disproportionately impacted.'

Independent studies conducted by individual states within the US describe the students' digression in reading skills as 'alarming.'

Even more worrisome was a study conducted by Curriculum Associates and published in November, which concluded that in early elementary grades students returning to school after covid19 lockdowns 'have not yet caught up to pre-pandemic on-grade level performance.'

Studies attributed the loss of skills to repeated disruptions in learning during the pandemic. Younger children now in the early stages of learning how to read suffered the greatest loss because parents did not know how to teach the initial stages of reading.

In general, the studies showed that 'more students are underprepared for grade-level work compared to historical benchmarks and pre-existing inequities in learning that existed…in lower-income communities before the pandemic are being exacerbated by the condition of education during the pandemic.'

Studies showed that maths scores declined in students at all levels.

The number of studies about the impact of the pandemic on reading levels in the US is hardly surprising. Since the 1950s, the US has tracked reading levels. A pile of data exists, but doesn't seem to have done much good in addressing declining reading levels over the years.

Here in Trinidad and Tobago we need to collect data on reading, make use of those findings and push reading skills that have been neglected even before covid19. Reading is the foundation for all learning. While we strive to build back those reading skills, we need to keep in mind that comprehension and analytical skills can be developed by reading to children because children can process auditory information at a higher level than what they can read.

This is why parents and teachers must read to children at all levels of elementary school - and even in secondary schools at least from Form One through Form Three. I am often asked by school librarians or English teachers to read excerpts from my books to elementary and secondary school students, whose curiosity always amazes me.

Academic reading should not be confined to English classes, an