More than 100 organizations from the public and private world, including the Ministry of Education, formed the network “For a Chile that Reads”, whose purpose is to contribute to finding solutions for educational reactivation, supporting classroom teachers and providing pedagogical suggestions to improve the level of reading comprehension of each student in charge.
“By having a personalized diagnosis, strengths and weaknesses can be identified and work based on them,” says Carolina Melo, a researcher at the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de Los Andes.
To achieve this goal, a technological platform called Dialect will deliver a diagnosis and pedagogical suggestions, so that “we can help each teacher move the needle, taking into account individual differences,” Melo said.
It should be noted that the information provided by the platform, which evaluates reading comprehension and other reading sub-processes such as vocabulary, listening comprehension, phonological and print awareness, knowledge of the alphabet, reading frequent words and others, is a snapshot of the skills , and the results and suggestions are delivered immediately, also delivering a reading comprehension skill metric that allows you to align your skills with the level of difficulty of the texts that are read, which makes it unique in the country.
“From Diagnosis to Action”
After the complex results, today the organizations that are part of the network are working on a second stage called “From Diagnosis to Action”, which mainly consists of making content, didactic tools and tips available, so that mothers, fathers and parents encourage the reading of boys and girls, making a call to take advantage of the vacation period. In addition, this stage of the campaign also includes the incorporation of Youtubers, where young people, boys and girls will make videos reading their favorite books.
Regarding this, the academic from the UC School of Government, Susana Claro, indicated that “we want to take advantage of all the knowledge and experience that the different actors in the system have developed to solve a challenge that we have not met for years: to ensure that all Second grade boys and girls finish that course knowing how to read.” For this reason, the professional maintains that “this work hopes to be an opportunity for network learning, instances of collaboration and amplification of impact.”
As Claro commented, “the Center for Public Policies of the Pontificia Universidad Católica will offer workshops to continue planning the actions of 2023 that we can carry out together”, and ensures that “work groups have already emerged for actions within the classrooms and we hope that others will be created, such as one with a focus on early childhood education”. These will take place in the coming weeks and will bring together academics, members of the central and local government, as well as representatives of the organizations that participate in the network.
On how to encourage reading in boys and girls, the Research and Development Manager of the Sara Raier de Rassmuss Foundation, Pamela Balboa, argues that “it is essential that parents and caregivers understand that learning occurs if it is related to a positive emotion, so that is the role we must fulfill at home with the boys and girls; we need to link reading with entertaining and motivating actions.”
Likewise, Balboa indicates that “it is not about replicating the activities they have done at school, but about taking advantage of what they achieved in that formal space and giving it meaning, that is, taking it to a nearby or significant space, linking it to their interests and In this way, a taste for reading is generated ”.
To do this, the specialist recommends “finding a space as a family to investigate what we like, search in different media for free activities to do or on a map where the nearest library is located, as well as we can make a list of activities that we will carry out in the week, a letter/invitation for a friend, friend, neighbor or neighbor to accompany us to some of the activities and thus we are managing actions that allow us to practice writing”.
By way of conclusion, Balboa argues that “reading comprehension and written production are fundamental resources in society, but without solid training they can serve very limited purposes, such as acquiring consumer goods and forming opinions from social networks without the ability to evaluate them.
tv show
In addition to these tips, the Sara Raier de Rassmuss Foundation makes AlfadecaTV available to the school community, a television program that addresses literacy gaps, providing tools to support children’s learning in these subjects.
The chapters of this channel can be found on its website www.alfadecatv.com or through YouTube, characterized by having learning capsules that accompany children in a fun way in their reading process.
On this platform of the Sara Raier de Rassmuss Foundation, students and teachers can also access guides that they can download in order to reinforce the teaching and learning process, as well as find multimedia content such as an alphabet song for children learn by singing and materials to learn more about the AlfadecaTV characters.
In addition, the Ministry of Education, within the framework of the Educational Reactivation Plan, launched the Summer Plan, with more than 500 initiatives, including music, sports, cultural and pedagogical workshops deployed in the 16 regions of the country, and which will be accompanied by the provision of educational resources and guidance in digital format, to encourage reading and writing through the place and the Contigo Juego y Aprendo App, developed by the Undersecretary of Early Childhood Education.
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