DEADLINE: 7TH APRIL, 2023 03:59
WORLD BANK
REQUEST FOR QUOTATION FOR ANALYSIS OF EARLY READING LEARNING MATERIALS & SUPPORT TO DEVELOP LESSON PLANS
EDO STATE, NIGERIA
SOLICITATION NUMBER: 0002000671
INSTITUTION: IBRD/IDA
ASSIGNMENT LOCATION: FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
PROCUREMENT NUMBER: 0002000671
DESCRIPTION
The World Bank is recruiting a firm to conduct a technical analysis of learning materials for early-grade reading (EGR) and provide recommendations and resources for areas of improvement in Edo state, Nigeria. The firm will also provide capacity building for the development of lesson plans.
The review will analyze and provide expert opinion on the adequacy of the lesson plans in P1-P3 (primary 1 to primary 3) for achieving the goal of making students literate. To the extent possible, it will also include an analysis of the lessons for pre-primary if applicable and feasible.
The review might analyze and consider the seven themes below. The areas where lessons do not adequately incorporate these themes may become candidates for lesson improvement.
The review could proceed with an awareness that good lesson plans include substantial content from the themes below and conform to the suggested structure, but there is no single formula for success. Lesson plans should seek to develop multiple subskills simultaneously and in the order that these are needed by young readers to sustain their growth of skills. The analysis will review the extent to which the plans do this and the extent to which they promote positive feedback loops among the themes and skills taught as students improve individual subskills.
Finally, the consultancy will include enhancing the government’s understanding of the science of reading and providing support and capacity-building for the government to develop lesson plans and other teaching and learning materials aligned with the science of reading. The capacity-building will ensure that the government has a dedicated team with the understanding and requisite skills to develop lesson plans in-house. The support may include a roadmap for the lesson plans team as well as training and ongoing support provided by the firm for the government. This capacity-building component will be a critical part of the task.
Theme 1: Instructional time
How much actual instructional time is used for reading instruction? Does this equal the full amount of time allotted in the curriculum on English/Literacy? If not, what are the most common reasons for reduced instructional time? What are the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and total instructional time for the P1-P3 Early Grade Reading series? How does the time allocated compare to the recommended 1.5 to 2 hours per school day of literacy instruction?
Theme 2: Word Reading Subskill Promoting Activities
(A) Oral Language Ability. How fluent are students in “school English” when they start P1? Has an analysis of differences between “home English” and “school English” been conducted and results incorporated into the oral language development area of the curriculum?
(B) Phonemic Awareness. In P1, how much of the lesson focuses on the ability to hear and make the sounds of words?
- Do the lessons contain activities that specifically focus on improving students’ phonemic awareness – their ability to hear the individual sounds of words?
- Do they provide practice with the segmentation of spoken words into parts?
- Do they provide instruction and practice with the blending of sounds to make different words (bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, sat)? Do they contain activities that use rhymes, poems, and songs to increase students’ exposure to and ability to easily recognize the sounds of spoken words? Are these activities concentrated, especially in the first half of the P1 lesson series?
Phonics: Letters and sounds. How do the lessons introduce letters? Over how many lessons?
Do the lessons specifically have the teacher present/teach both letter names and letter sounds when a letter is introduced? What amount of repetition is included to ensure all letter names and sounds are learned? Do they include multiple opportunities to practice through short activities of matching or producing (writing) letters? Do the lesson plans introduce key consonant-vowel combinations after teaching letters and sounds (A M am ma mama, etc?) Digraphs, starting with the most common ones such as the “sh” combination? Do the lessons include specific instruction in decoding words, starting with the most basic spelling patterns such as consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC)? Do they spend sufficient time providing instruction and practice for decoding the full range of key spelling combinations? Does decoding instruction start with the learning of the “rules” and proceed to teach the “exceptions”? Do the exercises present groups of words that follow the rule or exception being taught (bake, cake, fake, make, rake, take, snake for long A/silent final e)? Do the lessons proceed from teaching decoding of isolated words to providing practice with decoding simple words in short sentences (connected text)? Do the lessons balance practicing decoding verbally with practicing writing letters and words that use the basic spelling combinations? Do the lessons proceed to teach students to recognize syllables within words after they have mastered decoding basics? Are high-frequency irregular words introduced in the lessons in ways that promote students’ ability to recognize these words and to recognize what spelling rules or exceptions these words contain?
Automaticity of familiar word reading:
How well do the lesson plans develop students’ abilities to recognize known words (words in their oral language vocabularies) in their printed form? How well do they promote the transition from slow “sounding out” to smooth and automatic word recognition and reading?
Theme 3:
Text Reading: Do the lessons provide opportunities for students to read from the beginning of the series, using only decodable words and sight words? Do the lessons include daily practice in text reading that slowly but progressively increases in difficulty? Do the lessons include activities where teachers model text reading to students? And/or use “I do, we do, you do” protocols for guiding students to read appropriate texts? Do the lessons provide time for teachers to check and help students individually and guide their reading one-on-one at least briefly?
Theme 4: Vocabulary Development:
Do the lessons contain an explicit plan for introducing new words, both verbally at first and later in writing, to students as part of the daily literacy work? Do the lessons present new words as part of stories read by the teacher to the students? Do the lessons require the teacher to teach new vocabulary words first and then use them in stories and texts?
Theme 5: Text Comprehension:
Do teacher read-alouds include skills of activating existing knowledge, predicting, questioning, summarizing, extending/connecting, etc? Do the lessons contain activities wherein the teacher asks the students first about the meaning of individual words in the text/passage and then about the relationship among the words? (Anna is hungry: who is hungry; the bear scared the boy: what happened to the boy?) Do the lesson plans ensure that the text read by teachers to students (as stories) is more complex and challenging than the texts that students are given to read? Do the lessons contain activities that demonstrate how meaning is expressed by morphology (such as “ed” being used to indicate the past: baked, faked, timed, walked)? Do the lessons contain practice identifying how pronouns relate to the words they replace (The players were happy. They won the game.)? Do the lessons provide opportunities for students to explain how they use prior knowledge and background knowledge to know what a text means? (I like the forest, but the noises scare me: why are noises in a forest scary?)
Theme 6: Lesson Structure and Explicit Instructions for Teachers:
Are there lessons for each day, and is the sequence of lessons explicit and easy for the teacher to understand and use? Does the format in which the guidance for teachers appears to allow the teacher to see what the students see in textbooks/student materials?? Is the language level of the teacher’s guide appropriate for the teachers’ knowledge of English and literacy level? Is the font size large enough for teachers to read the guide without glasses? Does the guidance for teachers provide explicit instruction for the teacher for each activity at the beginning of the year and then use the guided release to reduce the length of teachers’ guides as the year progresses? Do the lesson plans identify the goal of the activity and make this explicit to the teacher? Are the activities of the appropriate length (3 to 7 minutes) each? Do they guide the teacher to pace the activity correctly to achieve the right duration and pace of learning? Are they grouped into lessons that match the school timetable? Are the activities varied, and do they combine a logical progression of subskills each day? Do the lesson plans embed appropriate activities to allow the teacher to “check for understanding” at different levels and do ongoing informal assessments of the extent to which students are understanding the lesson? Do the lesson plans provide the opportunity for teachers to (a) vary from the script as they see fit occasionally; (b) allow for differentiated instruction in small groups or individually in the appropriate amounts; (c) encourage teachers to re-teach if students are not mastering particular skills?
Theme 7: Supplementary Reading Materials:
Do the overall P1-P3 EGR Series include time for independent reading? Does the program transition from guided reading to more independent reading through a “gradual release of responsibility” from the teacher to the student? Are the P1/P2 stories appropriately simple, with decodable words and simple sentence structure? Does the available supplementary reading material increase progressively in difficulty on various levels – spelling patterns, vocabulary, and degree of background knowledge needed for comprehension? Do texts vary in length to allow students to practice persisting in independent reading? Are students allowed to take books home for additional reading practice?
