PIRLS 2006 Encyclopedia

• Transfer the child’s oral linguistic skills acquired through their preschool activitiesinto written language;• Teach children in grades 1–2 to construct new words and use them in meaningfulcontexts, as well as to learn new words by listening and speaking;• Teach children to read different phonemes accurately;• Teach children to recognize the functions of punctuation marks and read clearlywith a natural rhythm; and• Teach children to comprehend and analyze texts so that they are able to extractfacts, information, and values.PIRLS 2006 EncyclopediaSummary of National CurriculumThe reading curriculum is part of an integrated curriculum that includes other languageskills, such as listening, speaking, and writing. This integrated curriculum is based ongraded skills developed throughout the 5 years of the elementary stage. Textbooks areused to help students acquire these skills. One goal of reading practice is to link thereading material included in the textbooks to reading text outside of the classroom, suchas signs, banners, and posters.Children begin to read two-word sentences in the first grade. As their pronunciationand understanding abilities develop, they begin to read more complex sentences. Thisleads to reading a paragraph that addresses a single idea, which students are subsequentlyencouraged to discuss. By the fifth grade, children are expected to be able to read passagesup to three paragraphs long. They also are encouraged to read short stories and simplescientific texts suitable to their linguistic and cognitive levels. Reading skills are developedthroughout the elementary stage. Silent reading begins at the fourth grade and is stronglyemphasized in the fifth grade so that students are able to:• Distinguish between the main idea in a text and other minor ideas;• Relate events to sentences;• Think and criticize;• Solve problems; and• Express what has been read.Reading Instruction in the Primary GradesReading instruction emphasizes a variety of skills. These include mechanical reading(i.e., teaching children to distinguish between words, reading aloud skills, and silentreading skills), reading a whole topic and recognizing its main idea and other minor ideas,understanding the relationships and events involved in a text, and critiquing texts.There are two stages of reading instruction in the elementary grades. In grades 1–2,practice focuses on abstraction and construction of phonemes, words, and sentences.Vocabulary is introduced in contexts relating to students’ reading experience. Ingrades 3– 5, reading practice follows another track where children are trained to spell andKuwaitTIMSS & PIRLSInternational Study CenterLynch School of Education, Boston College 225