1/9 - “In the second wave we acquired much more evidence that schoolchildren are almost equally, if not more infected by SARS-CoV-2 than others.”

2/9 - “The problem is not that schools are unsafe for children,” Mr. Boris Johnson said last week. “The problem is schools may nonetheless act as vectors for transmission, causing the virus to spread between households.”
3/9 - “An antibody survey conducted by researchers in Geneva in May and December, using thousands of random samples, found that children of age 6 to 18 were getting infected as often as young adults. The study has yet to be peer reviewed.”
4/9 - “One reason for this: The Swiss city’s schools have been open since the summer, while restrictions have been placed on adults, meaning schoolchildren played a bigger role in transmitting the virus during the autumn surge.”
5/9 - “In Austria, a nationwide survey by universities and medical institutes found that children under 10 showed a similar rate of infection to those between 11 and 14, and that the children in general were getting infected as often as teachers.”
6/9 - “Scientists also point to data from the U.K. which conducts a weekly random survey of the population. Just before the Christmas break, when schools were still open, the positivity rate among children was higher than in most adult groups, especially in those older than 11.”
7/9-“In Germany, researchers found that a majority of some 40 cases at a school in Hamburg in Sept were likely linked to a single person,which some scientists say highlights the risk of schools becoming #COVID19 clusters. Still, many policy makers in Europe say schools are safe.”
8/9 - “In France, which managed to curb infections while keeping schools open, PM Jean Castex ordered a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew but said it was a fundamental goal to keep schools open. FR is now imposing stricter rules for school canteens, and stepping up testing in schools.”
9/9 - “Austria, one of the first European countries to shut schools in November, plans to reopen them gradually from Jan. 25, but in staggered systems and with millions of test kits distributed to reduce the risk of infection.”

More from Education

An appallingly tardy response to such an important element of reading - apologies. The growing recognition of fluency as the crucial developmental area for primary education is certainly encouraging helping us move away from the obsession with reading comprehension tests.


It is, as you suggest, a nuanced pedagogy with the tripartite algorithm of rate, accuracy and prosody at times conflating the landscape and often leading to an educational shrug of the shoulders, a convenient abdication of responsibility and a return to comprehension 'skills'.

Taking each element separately (but not hierarchically) may be helpful but always remembering that for fluency they occur simultaneously (not dissimilar to sentence structure, text structure and rhetoric in fluent writing).

Rate, or words-read-per-minute, is the easiest. Faster reading speeds are EVIDENCE of fluency development but attempting to 'teach' children(or anyone) to read faster is fallacious (Carver, 1985) and will result in processing deficit which in young readers will be catastrophic.

Reading rate is dependent upon eye-movements and cognitive processing development along with orthographic development (more on this later).

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