Grade 3, Grade 6 Students Do Well in Reading, Writing

Nova Scotia elementary students performed well in reading and writing in three provincial literacy assessments.

Results released today, April 21, show that 92 per cent of Grade 6 students met expectations for writing in the 2007-08 Elementary Literacy Assessment. This marks an improvement over the 2006-07 assessment when 88 per cent met expectations.

Students also improved in reading with 86 per cent meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 83 per cent in 2006-07.

Francophone students performed as well as they have in the past on the French-language Appréciation de rendement en littératie à l’élémentaire. Scores in reading and writing were 81 per cent and 63 per cent respectively.

"It is good to see our students continuing to do well and to improve in language arts," said Education Minister Karen Casey. "These assessments give us a valuable provincewide picture of student achievement and system performance. They are an integral part of our strategy to identify where things are going well and target interventions where more attention or change is needed."

Grade 6 students not yet meeting expectations for reading and/or writing will receive literacy support through to Grade 9.

The Elementary Literacy Assessment was administered to 10,261 Grade 6 anglophone students last October. The Appréciation de rendement en littératie à l'élémentaire was done in September by 343 students in the Conseil scolaire acadien provincial, the province's French-language school board.

Nova Scotia's English Grade 3 students did the provincial Early Language Literacy Assessment for the first time in September. Students were assessed in reading, writing and listening. Seventy-five per cent met expectations in reading and 80 per cent in listening.

Writing results were also positive. The results showed that:

• 87 per cent of students wrote in an organized fashion
• 82 per cent of students demonstrated knowledge of the conventions of language, including spelling, capitalization and spacing
• 80 per cent of students used a range of sentence structures and word choices
• 77 per cent of students were able to provide detailed information from a specific writing prompt

Grade 3 students not meeting expectations in reading and/or writing will receive additional focused classroom support.

"It is crucial that we know how our youngest learners are doing at the early elementary grades so we can ensure that we are giving them the strong foundation they need to succeed in later grades," said Ms. Casey.

"The information gathered in the assessment gives teachers detailed and individualized information on where students are strong and where they have challenges, so teachers can focus their instruction and better support students who need help."

Students' individual results from the English and French assessments have been shared with schools and are being sent home to their parents beginning this week.

School-by-school results will be published in the annual Minister's Report to Parents, which will be released this spring.

Information on the English assessment is available on the Department of Education's website at http://plans.ednet.ns.ca/ .

The department administers literacy assessments at grades 3, 6 and 9.