Background

The acquisition of reading and writing is a crucial aspect of childhood development, fundamental for several school subjects and with a significant impact on subsequent academic success, later adaptation and quality of life in adulthood. Struggling in reading and writing has a profound impact on other learning skills and socio-emotional development, resulting in high rates of school dispersion and low well-being.

Aims

The READy project aims to:

• Enhance primary teachers’ skills on the societal and cognitive underpinnings of literacy acquisition disadvantage and on the digital solutions to tackle them;
• Identify children at risk for learning and school difficulties;
• Empower transnationally universal cognitive reading-writing skills across different circumstances.

Target Groups

The target groups involved in the project are:

• Primary school teachers
• 1^st and 2^nd grade primary school children

Activities

The READy project involves the school communities in:

• The creation of a training package for primary teachers including national and transnational courses as well as exchange workshops in four European countries;
• The participation in an Interactive Evaluation platform for primary teachers to early identify children at risk of literacy difficulties;
• The use of a Game-based Intervention Toolkit on the cognitive underpinnings of reading and writing;
• The use of machine learning algorithms and case studies to identify different clusters of needs and learning paths.

Results

The READy project provides school communities with:

• Vast European cooperation sharing knowledge and digitalised procedures to address early difficulties in literacy acquisition;
• Advanced teacher preparation and use of digitised tools to contrast learning disadvantage;
• Innovative educational strategies to early address societal and cognitive needs underlying literacy acquisition;
• Integration of new, evidence-based technological toolkits in the educational practices;
• Personalised education paths supported by machine learning.

Partners

• University of Florence, Italy
• IC Gandhi, Italy
• Pixel, Italy
• Agrupamento de Escolas Alto do Lumiar, Portugal
• Iscte, Portugal
• Unión Sindical de Inspectores de Educación, Spain
• University of Seville, Spain
• Romanian-American University, Romania
• Scoala Primara EuroEd, Romania