A study of Strategies for developing the Reading Skills of Key Stage 1 Students

Abstract

This paper examines the structural use of integrated cognitive reading strategies to address the language-literacy gap faced by Key Stage 1 learners in English-medium private schools in Sri Lanka, using an action research model. Young multilingual learners often master automated phonetic decoding, whereas a lack of understanding of meaning is enormous under traditional rote learning. Building on an intervention in a primary classroom with 30 pupils that took place over six weeks. Data collection instruments were teacher questionnaires, pre- and post-test student literacy assessments, and student decoding scores, oral fluency percentage, and text comprehension. The descriptive statistics showed a significant positive transformation. The average reading fluency for the cohort was from 37.33 WPM to 52.20 WPM, and the average reading comprehension score improved from 3.73 to 7.47 (out of 10). The author concludes that applying strategies early in the learning process is effective in moving beyond mere word calling to independent meaning construction.