Recently in Reading Category

Part 1 of this article ended with the question: What's the matter with basing a curriculum on reading level?

 

What is the matter is that many, many 9 and 10-year olds (as many as 40% of them) are not "developmentally" ready to read  "4^th grade" material.

Their senses (vision and hearing) memory, and organizing functions of the brain

need more time to integrate with one another. So, if 40% of your students aren't yet developmentally ready for your curriculum, what would be the logical thing to do?

 

The current answer to that question in most school districts is to sound an alarm, label the kids, generate fear in parents and ship the kids out to reading specialists.

 

This solution is troublesome in three ways:

 

Trouble #1

No matter how much money we spend, no matter how much extra instruction we provide, no matter how much we bribe, threaten, reward or punish students, young people cannot integrate their brains faster than their inner, developmental clock allows. The saying, You can't push the river, comes to mind. As teachers and parents we often spend valuable time, energy and money pushing rivers and then feeling bad, sad and mad when we don't get the results we want, when we could be working WITH the developmental clocks of 40% of our students who aren't reading at "4^th grade level" when they enter the 4^th grade.

 

What we can do about it.

We can give this 40% of our students more time to practice their reading skills in their 3^rd and 4^th grade classrooms. Classroom reading instruction can be individualized and decentralized to allow students to learn at their own pace.

 

Trouble #2

We grade and rank young people on their reading ability. History and science are subjects and we study them for the information they give us about our world. However, reading (writing, listening and math, too) are skills that cannot be taught. To be a successful reader means that a child has matured into many skills that can be nurtured but not taught. There is a reason parents don't grade their kids on their walking skills, bicycle riding skills, or skateboarding skills. We would have many fewer kids mobile in these ways. We know fully well that walking, bicycle riding, and skateboarding depend on the coordination of a lot of separate abilities, including: depth perception, balance, coordination and muscle strength, as well as practice.

 

Reading is the integration of vision, hearing, and brain organization. Students have their own internal clock for when this integration takes place. It takes time and kids can't be threatened or bribed, rewarded or punished into doing what they aren't yet able to do!

 

What we can do about it.

Start celebrating all the tiny steps along the way that are leading to becoming a

fluent reader. As we say at LearningSuccess™ Institute: Success leads to more

success! Give students lots of time without pressure to develop to their fullest and

celebrate their accomplishments with them!

 

Trouble #3

Kids learn best in small doses (10-15 minute sessions), in familiar places, with people they trust in a spirit of play and discovery. To feel emotionally safe and comfortable they need consistent systems, methods and expectations. When they are taken to unfamiliar places to learn from unknown people using unknown methods for long, focused reading skill development sessions (40-60 minutes) the young people are being asked to learn a "new structure" for learning to read, in addition to the reading basics.

 

In addition, going to tutors almost always occurs after a full day of school when students' energy is low, and they need a snack and some free time, not more lessons.

 

What we can do about it.

The elementary school classroom can be the place where all students are able to get their reading needs met with the help of teacher-coaches who are well trained in best reading practices and are well versed in students' developmental stages of readiness.

 

We can replace reading worksheets and teacher-driven lessons with a systematic prepared environment with hands-on activities that students work through at their own pace.

 

Let our students move, investigate, self-correct, and take breaks when they need to.

 

It's all possible! LearningSuccess Institute has been helping families and schools set up nurturing reading programs for more than a decade. And Montessori schools have been doing something similar for many decades.

If your child is struggling with reading and you have questions, give us a call - 805-648-1739.

by Victoria Kindle Hodson, copyright 2011 by Willis & Hodson, Reflective Educational Perspectives LLC

www.solimaracademy.com - we customize learning programs to meet individual student needs

Join our newsletter list and get your free downloadable gift: our ebook, Midlife Crisis Begins in Kindergarten! 


I recently assessed the reading skills of three bright, capable third graders. They have been identified as "at risk readers", which means they are slated to be told that they are not reading well enough for what lies ahead, and to be shuttled to tutors (at great expense to the school district) where these kids will be put through a series of intensive exercises that may or may not be appropriate for them and may or may not improve their reading abilities.

 

In fact, it's likely that the increased concern and pressure from teachers and parents are likely to leave these three young people exhausted, afraid, and plagued with self-doubt. I want to stop what I see coming next for these kids. I want teachers throughout their 3^rd  and 4^th grades and beyond to continue to nurture and support them.

 

This situation breaks my heart, and it isn't uncommon. It was such great fun to have these three young people sharing their enthusiasm for reading with me. We sat on the floor with our backs against the cupboards in my office. They leaned forward into their books and launched into "reading". They made sense of the long strings of letters. They were proud of their efforts and accomplishments and eager to share the one-page stories with me. It is obvious that their K-2 teachers have spent a lot of nurturing instructional time with them.

 

The reading assessment I did assured me that these kids will blossom into very good readers with a bit more time to mature, more practice, as well as appropriate instruction, and encouragement.

 

The little-talked-about sub-text to all that goes on in elementary school reading instruction is this: reading instruction, in most schools, stops in the 3^rd grade. In spite of the "No Child Left Behind" mandate, all the teachers in every elementary school around the country know that kids who don't have a 4^th grade reading ability when they enter the 4^th grade will be "left behind" to some degree.

 

Third grade is the year when kids advance from "little league" reading to the "big league", and everyone MUST advance because when they enter the 4^th-grade more than 50% of their learning will depend on their reading ability.

 

If students are not reading at a 4^th-grade level by the 4^th-grade, they are at risk of not "keeping up" with a curriculum that relies heavily on a student's reading ability and provides minimal instruction in reading beyond that point.

 

What's the matter with basing a curriculum on reading level? you might ask.

 

Stay tuned for Part 2!

by Victoria Kindle Hodson, copyright 2011 by Willis & Hodson, Reflective Educational Perspectives LLC

www.solimaracademy.com - we customize learning programs to meet individual student needs

Join our newsletter list and get your free downloadable gift: our ebook, Midlife Crisis Begins in Kindergarten!