Let’s All Learn to Read -LALR is a comprehensive and innovative model for learning literacy for elementary school students. Using face-to-face and digital strategies such as:
1. Training and support for teachers in pedagogy, classroom management, and the synthetic phonics method.
2. Design and provision of fun materials (k-5), for learning to read through socio- emotional skills.
3. Tutorials and personalized materials for children with difficulties.
4. A timely and personalized evaluation system to identify and level students with learning lags.
Significant impacts of LALR:
1. It currently benefits 703,277 children and teachers from public schools in Colombia and Panama.
2. It was evaluated by the Inter-American Development Bank and Harvard University, through three experimental assessments which in all cases showed improvements greater than 0.26SD.
3. Colombia and Panama adopted the program as a public policy.
Future Developments
LALR is transforming the lives of children and teachers in Colombia and Panama. Additionally, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic want to join this successful model and the interest is to reach all Latin-American countries. According to experts, a proper implementation of the program for 5 years would increase reading performance on standardized tests by 30%. This model has all the potential to transform Latin-America’s education in unprecedented ways.