The Bridge Effect: A Comparison of Early Grade Learning Gains in English and Maths
• Calculate Number of Boys and Girls Required for the Sample: Multiply the ratios found in step 4 by the target sample number to determine exactly how many girls and how many boys should be in the final sample. If the calculation yields a decimal, keep the following in mind: if the decimal is less than 0.5, round down. If the decimal is 0.5 or higher, round up. Example: Girls: Multiply the ratio of girls ( 1/3 ) by the target sample number (5). So: 1/3 * 5 = 1.7. We should have 2 girls in our final sample. Boys: Multiply the ratio of boys ( /3 ), by the target sample number (5). So: 2/3 * 5 = 3.3. We should have 3 boys in our sample. 2
• Identify the Pupils for the Sample: Use the interval to separately identify the girls and boys who will be in the sample and be assessed. See the tables below for which pupils would be selected, based on our calculations in steps 1 through 5. Our interval number was 3, so count every third girl and third boy. For the girls, once you’ve reached the fifth girl (who would be 2), start back at the top. Random Selection, Example 1 Girls G
2nd Selected Girl
G G
Boys B B
1st Selected Girl
B
G
B
G
B B
1st Selected Boy
2nd Selected Boy
B B B
3rd Selected Boy
B
Other Considerations: What if the class being assessed has fewer than 18 pupils? Follow the steps below to ensure that the order in which pupils are assessed is still random: • Separate out the pupils by gender into two lines. • Count every 3rd pupil and write that pupil’s name down, until you have written down all pupil names for both lines. This line up represents the final order that pupils will be assessed. • Example: Let’s say there are 10 pupils: 5 boys and 5 girls. Even though we know we will have to assess all of them, if we just wrote their names down in the order they stood in line and assessed them, it would not be random (maybe sleepier kids are all at the end of the line). See the table below for the order:
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Random Selection, Example 2 Girls
Boys
G
2nd Selected Girl
B
2nd Selected Boy
G
4th Selected Girl
B
4th Selected Boy
G
1st Selected Girl
B
1st Selected Boy
G
5th Selected Girl
B
5th Selected Boy
G
3rd Selected Girl
B
3rd Selected Boy
A2. EGRA & EGMA Subtask Descriptions 1. Listening Comprehension On the Listening Comprehension task, the assessor reads a passage aloud that narrates a familiar activity or event, and then asks the pupil to answer questions about what the pupil has just heard. The task tests listening comprehension, a skill that is separate from reading comprehension, as learners approach, process, and respond to speech and text in different ways. As in oral vocabulary, poor performance on a listening comprehension task suggests that the child may not have the vocabulary that the reading materials use, the child has difficulty processing what is heard, or both. Both direct factual questions (answers that are directly available in the passage) and inference questions (answers that require additional information, insight, or knowledge not directly available from the text) can be asked. This task was administered to pupils in Nursery, Pre-Unit, Class 1, and Class 2.
2. Non-word Reading The Non-word Reading task (also sometimes called the “Invented” or “Unfamiliar Words” task) measures a pupil’s decoding ability and is designed to detect problems of sight recognition of words. Examples in English include “fet,” “ca,” “ut,” and “bleb.” Many children in the early grades learn to memorize or recognize a broad range of “sight words” (words that primary school children are taught to recognize on sight, as many of these words are not easy to sound out phonetically, and thus must be memorized). Successful readers avoid memorization of text and combine both decoding and sight-recognition skills. Testing for how well a child can decode invented words provides a better estimate of the child’s ability to read unfamiliar words that fall outside his/her sight recognition vocabulary. Pupils are asked to read as many “non-words” as they can in one minute; the assessor then records the number of non-words the pupil read correctly. If the pupil reads all of the non-words before 60 seconds have passed, the assessor notes the amount of time remaining. This task was administered to pupils in Nursery, Pre-Unit, Class 1, and Class 2.
3. Familiar Word Reading The Familiar Word Reading task tests pupils’ ability to read simple, common one- and two-syllable words. One way to examine reading fluency is by assessing how well a pupil can read a paragraph. However, for the purposes of measuring word recognition and decoding skills, a better method is to assess how well the pupil can read a list of unrelated words. That way, the pupil cannot simply guess the next word
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