Policy Makers. In order for schools to engage in any improvement process, they must have support and guidance from policy makers. This section provides resources that will assist policy makers in supporting schools committed to student achievement in early literacy.

Effective early literacy assessment practices can yield valuable information for teachers. In this article, the authors draw on their lived experiences as literacy educators, using anecdotal evidence, to describe the development and use of early literacy assessments for learning at a school in Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia.

Early Literacy Assessment ‘for’ Learning: Anecdotes from a School in Kosrae (97K)

Community-school connections, especially as they relate to literacy, can be powerful resources. This paper chronicles how one school, situated within a community of dominant oral traditions and a lingering colonial past, has engaged in changing school literacy practices by using the community as an important language and cultural resource.

Change, Culture, and Community in a Micronesian School (98K)

With few L1 texts for children to read and few research and curricular resources for teaches to draw upon, teaching L1 literacy is a daunting task. This research brief explores the issues that surface when using English early reading assessments as the frame for developing L1 assessments.

Lost in Translation: From English to Pacific Languages in Early Reading Assessment (294K)

This paper uses a sociohistorical lens to examine the complex issues surrounding language-in-education policy in Micronesia. The review raises difficult questions brought into play when persuasive globalizing forces that stress the need to learn English come into contact with a more context-oriented language agenda at home.

The Language Question in Pacific Education: The Case of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (756K)

This paper presents two strategies designed to meet increased accountability requirements for student achievement: 1) Standards-Based Accountability Systems and 2) Alignment with Standards.

Using Standards-Led Policy to Align Assessment and Accountability (642K)

Assessing Reading Fluency discusses research on assessments for monitoring students’ fluency in terms of accuracy, automaticity, and prosody.

Assessing Reading Fluency (1.8M)

A Focus on Fluency is the first booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading series published by the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) at Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL). This booklet summarizes research on fluency and fluency instruction and describes strategies for fluency instruction. It also explains various ways of conducting repeated oral reading, the use of independent silent reading, an integrated fluency instruction approach, the role of texts, and fluency assessment. Complete booklet (1.9M).

Reading Fluency (1.2M)
Instruction in Fluency (961K)
Determining Fluency (569K)

A Focus on Vocabulary, the second booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series, explores vocabulary development as a component of reading comprehension by describing what research says about how students acquire vocabulary and about instruction that helps students develop the kind of vocabulary knowledge that will contribute to their reading success. Complete booklet (1.9M).

What is Vocabulary (1.0M)
Instruction in Vocabulary (788K)

A Focus on Comprehension, the third booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading Series, highlights the importance of reading comprehension. In this easy-to-read resource, the authors not only examine the factors that affect reading comprehension, but also explore components of effective comprehension instruction. Complete booklet (3.7M).

What is Comprehension (2.9M)
Comprehension Instruction (792K)
Assessing Comprehension (261K)

A Focus on Professional Development is the fourth booklet in the Research-Based Practices in Early Reading series. The purpose of this booklet is to examine what research tells us about effective professional development in early reading and its role in improving student achievement.

A Focus on Professional Development (1.1M)

The activity of alignment is integral to any school improvement process. The Pacific Communities with High-performance in Literacy Development (CHILD) Acts of Alignment is a process that educators can use when attempting to identify assessments that are aligned to their current curriculum framework. We have used this process to align the early literacy formative assessments with the curriculum frameworks of the entities listed below:

Pacific CHILD Acts of Alignment (128K)
American Samoa (102K)
Chuuk (102K)
CNMI (100K)
Kosrae (93K)
Palau (96K)
Pohnpei (102K)
RMI (96K)
Yap (107K)

Much has been written about how to do professional development, but there are few studies that look at the effectiveness of a professional development project. The focus of this research brief is the methodology used to measure professional development effectiveness. It includes information about a new instrument developed by PREL to measure the quality of professional development as it is being delivered.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Professional Development in Early Literacy: Lessons Learned (730K)

The issue of the quality of professional development is important for the study of teacher outcomes, such as teacher learning and changes in instruction, resulting from participation in professional development programs. This research brief examines the question of the quality of professional development delivered in the Pacific CHILD Professional Development Model research project.

Evaluation of the Pacific CHILD Professional Development Program (749K)