Fluency/roots/Rewards for class

I had intended to ask about this one, although there is lots on these boards on this topic. I’m not sure it would work for my situation. My course is intended to be mostly strategy/comprehension based, but some fluency work is needed. A few could use Rewards for sure (2 of the 10) but I am not sure it will be possible/feasible to block time for this for the two when the course is already heavy in terms of the writing load. (It is a one semester substitute course for those who failed to pass the provincial gr. 10 literacy test—a test of reading comprehension and numerous writing tasks.)

I am reluctant to order a big expensive program that I can’t preview. (And there is no opportunity to do so.) I am PG trained and can probably do PG multisyllabic work individually with those who need it while others are working on fluency. The Sound Reading CD Roms for teens are also a thought.

JanL — for those specific topics such as prefixes and suffix, root words, Latin and Greek roots, and all that, have you tried scholarschoice.ca? You can get lots of inexpensive focused materials and put them together according to students’ needs. They have a lot of comprehension stuff that I had thought of using too. You have to sort the wheat from the chaff, but good things are in there. And prices are low enough that you can buy a sample without going broke.

BTW, what province/region are you in?

I’m in Quebec, just west of Montreal, and we have just had really depressing news about our provincial high school exams — as of last year, the number of boys finishing on time (Grade 11 in 11 years) dropped below 50% (and the girls are not that much better.) The overall completion rate, in any amount of time, seems to be around 70%. I had thought we were doing better than that. Seems to be a combination of lingering poverty and the elementary schools not keeping up to standard.

Hello Victoria,
I am just west of the home of the Ottawa Senators in ON. Our provincial results are about the same, a few negligible percent better, but last year, in our district (one of the poorest rural districts in the province) we improved the male-female differential (originally boys fared much worse in reading). Our school results were the best in the district this year, partly due to socioeconomics (closer to the big city—though our results were no different in the first year) but also due to the effectiveness of our school program—comprehension strategy blitzing, after school preparation programs, some work on decoding for the weakest in gr. 9-10 LD courses etc.

The course I am teaching is for those who’ve been able to attempt the test twice but have failed it. The course mirrors the test “products” but, of course, allows for more intensive strategy work, lots of writing process work and extensive practice etc. Some will not pass this time.

The best reading results from our elementary schools (all of which are heavy into phonics and cursive writing instruction) came from one school that uses an SRA pgm. Name escapes me—Corrective Reading I think.

Jan

The Sound Reading CD for teens would likely be a waste of time, as it starts at the very beginning of basic code (simple sound/symbol correlations) and ends with multi-syllable words at about a mid-3rd grade level.

Rather than using PG individually with the two students, I would use Rewards and do the two students together. It would take a total of about 20 hours of your time to take them through the entire program (even if you had all of the students doing it). However, even if you got through only the first 10 lessons, chances are good the decoding skills would have increased by one or two grade levels. I am assuming the two likely candidates for Rewards are reading at lower levels? I’d probably use it with all of the students, assuming you have the 20 hours available, since lessons 13-20 work on fluency and comprehension as well as decoding.

I have the Six-Minute Solution but have not seen the Jamestown leveled fluency books, so can’t compare the two. The Six-Minute readings are all one page long (less for lower grades) and look pretty interesting. The 8th grade readings generally have three paragraphs on the page. There are 20 topics for the grade 8 passages — about 8 of them somewhat specific to the U.S. (Ben Franklin, Pearl Harbor, Rocky Mountain States, Oak Ridge, etc.), but the rest of more general interest — Greek Columns, Anasazi Apartments, Roman Gladiators, Why Seven Wonders?, Olympics, etc.

Nancy

Thank you Nancy. I think I will order it. I won’t be able to get through the full 20 hours but I’ll be close for the two students, I think.

Six Min. Solution sounds less complicated. Jamestown requires you buy 2-3 books for each student for each level—too costly. How many 6 Min. exercises are there per grade level?

JanL — seems you’re near to me, less than two hours away. We should say hi some time!

Those awful statistics I gave were for the whole province of Quebec — no doubt abysmal in the north and in the poor areas of the city, probably slightly better in suburban areas.

English and French students seem to be doing about the same, namely terribly.

The worst thing about this is that apparently the exam pass rates and graduation rates have been dropping for several years, the opposite of what should be happening with the greatly improved economic situation around here.

Our English elementary schools have bought into “whole-language” hook, line, and sinker. One local school sends phonics-based spelling workbooks home for the *parents* to teach, but never uses them in class, defined as homework only. Most English elementary kids have few or no textbooks or workbooks, just library reading and paper handouts — and this is in the richest school district in the province.
The French elementary schools are doing a little bit better, still teaching some phonics somewhere, although they have forgotten how to teach handwriting.

Our friendly provincial government has been putting out a lot of hoopla over the last several years about “school reform”. This “school reform” is supposed to have started a couple of years ago and be totally implemented in another couple of years, a really big deal and a lot of money and special teacher training. When asked what the reform implies, the government representatives say it isn’t specific facts and figures, more a change of philosophy. My reaction is “Oh, Lord.”
Part of this “reform” is apparently that students will only be evaluated for repeating grades or any other help after Grades 3 and 6, supposedly “continuous progress” “at the student’s own rate” except at those two points. Oh, Lord again. Were you around in Ontario when they tried this one? It made a mess af my niece and nephew’s lives (early to mid 1980’s). What happened (surprise, surprise) was that the Grades 1 and 2 teachers had fun-fun-fun, baking cookies, decorating gingerbread houses, winter wading pool parties, and on and on, and then the Grade 3 teacher had to teach three years of work in one to kids who had learned that they didn’t have to do anything in school. The school went through three Grade 3 teachers in two years (surprise, surprise) and my niece and nephew bitterly regret not getting an education — both gifted, one graduated vocational and one dropped out.

I’m getting a lot of calls from parents of kids in late Grade 2 or Grade 3, because that is the first time anyone takes note. Urk. Bad for the kids, all too good for business.

I agree with Rudolf Flesch that the reason girls do somewhat better than boys (not well) on average in this chaotic setup is that girls are culturally conditioned to sit still and be nice even if the class is hopelessly boring and confusing, so girls catch more of the little teaching that does happen.

And then they want to do a study, spending millions, on why kids aren’t passing the high school exams …

Hi Victoria,
My tel. # is 613-623-8407. We should chat.

What is on your provincial exams? Is it like the old departmental exams for Ontario subjects? Or just reading and writing as in Ontario? Are Quebec schools levelled in high school like ours?

I’m glad my own kids are here. Gr. 3 is darn rigorous. My son’s teacher assesses constantly in preparation for the gr. 3 testing. Things can get a little out of whack the other way though—I did a level rating on a chapter book my Gr. 3 guy came home with (to read and produce a 4-paragraph book report) and got suspicious about the level. On the Flesch-Kincaid it is between gr. 6 and 7. No wonder he was having some trouble comprehending it! (He is currently getting vision therapy—sees double when reading just to complicate things.) I am going to level it on another scale to see if they align (Flesch). I thought the writing task was fair though.

PS, I know you are a math expert. Since my older son is NVLD, I would love to talk first hand to an expert about this area! Do you mind sharing your #?

Jan

Jan,

The Six-Minute Solution has 20 reading passages for each grade level, and grade levels are 1 through 8. The lower grade level passages are shorter, but even the longest (for grade 8) are only one page long.

Let us know how this and Rewards works out for your class!

Nancy

JanL (and other friends)

My phone numbers are 514-453-4005 (home) and 514-386-5327 (cell)
I am always all too glad to talk :D but ask that you call after 11AM Eastern time — since I tutor evenings, there has to be some time to rest.
If a nice young French-speaking gentleman answers the phone, alas it’s not romantic, just one of my tenants. (darn!)

(Just in case the wrong person is reading this post, friends please excuse me, but if I’m harassed, yes I do go to the police.)

Our provincial exams are like the old Ontario ones, a complete comprehensive exam for the whole course. They actually do a lot of good, keeping the high schools working for high expectations. The problem I see is too many kids going into the high schools without the skills they need to even start.
The exam is supposed to count for 50% of the final marks with teachers reporting the other 50%, but the government has adopted a complex norming adjustment formula depending on the student’s reported grade from the teacher, the class/school average reported by teachers, the student’s grade on the exam, and the provincial average grade on the exam. Students have no idea how the adjustment is done and tend to take it as a matter of chance, unfortunately.
Years ago students had to pass four Grade 10 exams and five Grade 11 to graduate; the grade 10 exams seem to have been discontinued at least in the districts I’m in, but the Grade 11 requirements are stiffer — for college entrance in any program at all a mimimum of grade 10 academic-level algebra is required.

The junior high schools are not tracked, apparently supposed to be the same general program for all students Grades 7-8-9 (called Secondary 1-2-3 or Premiere Cycle Secondaire since the big reforms of 1968)
In the original setup in the 1970’s, there was a “Pre-Secondary” Class for students who were ill-prepared, making the school system twelve years instead of eleven, but some time when I was out of the province the Pre-Secondary option disappeared and all students get dumped into a highly demanding Grade 7 right off.
The senior high schools, Grades 10-11 or Secondary IV-V or Deuxieme Cycle Secondaire, have three different math tracks. I haven’t seen tracking in the other subjects although it may exist; the trouble shows up in math. Only the top-level academic Grade 10 algebra or a surprisingly demanding Grade 11 (equivalent to a US junior college Finite Math class that I taught) are acceptable for college entrance. This is causing a lot of students to have to do extra work and colleges to offer summer re-take classes. They do seem to be reaching this standard, because the colleges are fairly full.

As far as teaching/learning math, my daughter and I and my mother all hit over 90% of the criteria for NLD on any list I’ve seen published, but we are all good at math, and I even majored in it. I see people saying that they can’t do math because they think in pictures, and I go “WHAT?” because I DO think in pictures — and so do most of the really good original creative mathematicians I have met. My mother even did algebra questions on an IQ test in pictures. On the other hand, my daughter who got up to Calculus 2 in high school, says she doesn’t visualize at all. Something is really, really wrong with the way math is being taught, is all I can say.
In general, present math very concretely and visually, make sure the concept makes good sense (in a real-world way) before attempting questions, work together and give constant feedback to prevent practicing errors and developing frustrations, keep coming back to previous topics and *making relationships*, and *after* the comprehension is in place, drill and overlearn like crazy. For specific hints, just ask the question.

Back to the original question, last subject but one as according to the White Queen, I see that this “Six - Minute Solution” appears to consist of twenty single-page stories, each supposed to take six minutes. Hmmm. Supposing there is a page of questions to go with the story and you spend twelve minutes, twice as long, on the questions, well, you appear to get a total of forty pages and six hours of work. And twenty assignments come to less than one per week over a year, barely over one per week for a semester. (Always fun to crunch those numbers!) It may be a very helpful supplement, but it can’t be much more than a small supplement at this rate.
If it is inexpensive and covers something you need, OK, just good to do a cost-benefit analysis on something this limited.

REally OT guys but gosh putting up your phone nos?! Most of us are nice but there are a few exceptions that I can think of off the top of my head , well one I guess.

—des

This is just a side comment. For my purposes, 20 reading selections at a grade level would not be adequate for kids with real fluency problems. I chose Quick Reads as it supplies around 90 passages per grade level (at least in the two levels I bought). Yes, it is $30 per set of 3 books, but 90 passages is adequate whereas 20 would not be enough.

Janis

I agree with Janis that ninety assignments per year would be more likely to give enough practice than twenty.

Phone numbers — well, they are already up on my advertising, have to be. I don’t have too much trouble (if only my creditors would lose the number …). And I do know how to call the police.