Covid-19 school closures negatively impacted elementary-school students’ reading comprehension and reading fluency skills

Reading Comprehension and the COVID‐19 Pandemic: What Happened and What Can We Do About It?

“…Similar results were also found for fourth graders in Germany who experienced a significant decline in reading comprehension scores on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) from 2016 to 2021 (Ludewig et al, 2022). Likewise, Starling‐Alves et al (2023) found that although Brazilian students' reading comprehension in grades two through five continued to grow during the pandemic, it grew at a slower rate, which led to an overall delay of at least 1 year in reading comprehension. Younger students who received less in‐person instruction than students in higher grades experienced more significant delays in reading comprehension.…”