Promoting German reading skills through multilingualism-sensitive reciprocal teaching in primary school lessons (meRLe)

Principal investigators:

Prof. Dr. Jasmin Decristan (University of Wuppertal)

Prof. Dr. Dominique Rauch (Ludwigsburg University of Education)

 

Research assistants:

Dr. Victoria Bertram (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Dr. Valentina Reitenbach (University of Wuppertal)

Katharina Schneider (Ludwigsburg University of Education)

 

About the project:

Did you actually know how many languages the students in your classroom have? With our meRLe project, we have taken up the linguistic diversity and integrated it into our program for learning and reading strategies. Reading is a key aspect of successful education. The reading and learning strategies taught in the project help students to actively participate in classroom learning and instruction. Reciprocal teaching is a empirically proven method for acquiring these strategies. Students can learn and practice the strategies together in small groups. The innovative element of the meRLe project is that the students are allowed to use all the languages in the class that help them to  apply these strategies. This aims at estavlishing a cooperative learning environment in which German and all other languages are welcome.

The meRLe project was implemented at primary schools in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg. The participating teachers received free, scientifically based training on the program as well as accompanying teaching materials. Teachers were offered suggestions on how they can further promote the German reading skills of students who speak several languages without having to speak these languages themselves. We have scientifically monitored the use of the method in the classroom. This enabled us to examine the effectiveness of the program and the conditions under which the method is particularly effective.

 

Duration:

10/2017 - 09/2020

Funded by:

Federal Ministry of Education and Research