Why kids can't read

It’s the people who don’t agree with you that are the problem, and lots of them are teachers or are teaching teachers.Statements like “all reasearch proves that children need sequential phonics” won’t convince them to change their tactics; they’ll just write you off as another “drill & killer” — and post the same kind of message supporting their views to people that agree with them. In the meantime, the kids in their classes…

I might have been one except I saw what worked and waht didn’t — but I was also with older kids, where it was painfully obvious what didn’t work (at least for those kids). I have sometimes won over a teacher or two into thinking that at least some kids need more sequential phonics, so it couldn’t hurt to learn about it.

I believe that we are not preparing our kids with skills they need to have before we teach them to read. Simply beginning earlier and earlier in their lives with teaching letters, etc. is not effective if they don’t have the readiness skills down. We need to spend more time on readiness skills.

I also believe there is too much emphasis now trying to ‘entertain’ our kids and making everything ‘cutesy’ for them to take home that we are forgetting about developing and practicing important skills throughout the elementary years.

You said it, Catherine and Sheila

Gosh, I’ll try to keep this short. I am totally opposed to whole class instruction. We know that people learn best at the level where they can achieve success, but only with teacher guidance. No one can learn anything when they are in way over their head. We do not teach a child on 2nd grade level from 4th grade level materials and expect to get good progress. Even my husband’s ski instructor understood that you must teach people where they are, that no one can learn when they are scared to death they are in way over their head.

OK, beyond that I agree that it is good to understand and to be able to apply the alphabetic principal of the English language. I believe there is a natural continuum with respect to individuals’ facility with grasping and mastering the alphabetic principal. Some students (the top 5 or so %) seem to master this with no specific instruction at all. They do not need any instruction in phonics if they are already “decoding” unknown words successfully. These students note patterns and transfer patterns from known words to unknown words. They have a natural understanding of language sounds. They know the word “band” so they readily, with almost no hesitation figure out “hand” or “bang.” These students have a right to receive reading instruction that addresses their needs and their level.

Still others learn phonics with instruction. They do need to be taught, but they are quickly taught and learn readily. They deserve to receive the correct emphasis on phonics and to be further challenged.

Finally we get to those youngsters who do not seem to grasp the phonology of the language. They range from mild to severe. The also deserve instruction at their own level and to meet their needs so they can master the task of reading and be challenged.

I believe in differentiated instruction. I do NOT believe in putting every child through the identical program, merely varying the pace. I believe the programs can be differentiated to meet the needs of the learner.

Not short, huh?

Catherine:

I must wholeheartedly agree with you!!!! How can children be expected to comprehend material if they cannot read the words?

I am currently taking a reading course and I am also learning the comprehension strategies need to be taught (but what good are they if a child cannot decode?). For many years, and even currently, comprehension is tested in the classroom, but not taught. Hopefully that will be changing in the near future.

I would like to know about differentiated instruction, Anitya. Is this type of instruction used in all subjects? I find it hard to believe this is possible. Is it at all possible that all children could benefit from sequential phonics instruction? But then if there is a class where some children cannot read words such as “cat,” “pig” or “fog” and some are reading Box Car Children books fluently than it would seem ridiculous to start them in the same place.

Margo

I agree. We all know that the bright children will learn in spite of the teacher, but it is the children with lower ability that need a good teacher.

Thanks Anitya. Differentiated Instruction is old fashioned grouping according to ability and skills achieved.

I am pleased to hear from all of you who have responded. It looks like all of you do know how to teach reading.

The problem with our district is that we have had 5 Curriculum Directors in 10 years. Every Director begins to revamp Language Arts. Every new director throws around the buzz words and some poor hard working new teachers believe that the Directors know what they are talking about. We don’t even have a basal anymore. The new teachers seem to think that basal is a dirty word, consequently there is no scope and sequence to skills or stories read. One principal in our district decided to purchase over $40,000.00 in the Rigby books and some teachers think they are teaching reading when kids have memorized these books. Now other principals are buying these Rigby books, because they don’t know much about reading and don’t want to be out done by another principal. Now all the schools have Rigby books and our scores are not improving. Our school only has 350 children, we could have purchased a complete reading program for less than $40,000.00

The testing that we did last spring proved that the 1st grade had good scores because all of the 1st grade use Companion, which is a reading program with phonics, scope, and sequence. We have no other program, so this is the best we have. They are all teachers with 20 years experience.

In 2nd grade we have all new teachers with less than 8 years experience. They work very hard, but they think the Rigby books with no scope and sequence is a reading program. They pick any books that they want. These kids could go through all the grades missing some of the basic phonemic patterns. When the scores at the end of the 1st quarter in 2nd grade were lower than they had been at the end of 1st grade, the 2nd grade teachers were very hurt, some were in tears after this was presented at a faculty meeting. The principal was more concerned that her pets(2nd grade teachers) in second grade who had their feelings hurt, than the fact that the children regressed. Obviously the scores proved what was being taught.

3rd grade test results showed that half of the children were reading below grade level. In 1st grade about 3/4 of the children tested above grade level. 3rd grade teachers make the parents sign a form that the kids read at 30-60 minutes at home every night. The population of our school has parents who are fighting economic survival and working two jobs to pay the bills, these parents don’t have the time to supervise their child’s reading. All this teaches the kids is that their parents will lie for them, and sign the form because they are too tired to fight the teacher. All the 3rd grade teachers are new and have less than 3 years experience. They need to make time for these children to practice reading in the classroom. These teachers would rather read to the kids than let the kids read. Reading to kids is great, but kids need time in class to read also.

Until teachers realize that the teaching of reading needs to take place in the classroom, scores will not go up and children will not get reading practice until the teacher finds time for it in the classroom.

The veteran teachers are teaching skills from old basals that they did not throw out when one of the Curriculum Directors gave the order to throw the basals. These teachers kept the books because they knew that they would be there many years after the Director left. They were correct. These veteran teachers use Accelerated Reader, which levels the library books. In these grades the scores did improve.

When we are short of money and cuts are made the Curriculum Director is usually cut. The veteran teachers say that everytime we get a Curriculum goes to He…

Are there any other districts or buildings that operate like this?

Catherine

I am in now attending a reading class that I need for SDC authorization. There are about 32 credentialed teachers in this class and I am the only SLP grad student in there….The first night we had a getting to know you activity….one of the questions was you had to find a teacher who knew what the alphabetic principle was…all of the teachers I asked didn’t know what it was!! I did….:-) We also had a 100 question test to determine what we knew about teaching reading, and the areas that we scored lowest on are the ones which we will do our research papers on. I scored in the top 1/3 of the class on this test but that meant that 2/3 of credentialed teachers were below me. Scary huh? The professor of the class is in his late 50’s early 60’s, has a Doctorate and the first night he told us of his passion to teach reading and why….he had been retained not only once in 1st grade but twice in 2nd grade. He was a casualty of the sight word methodology… I absolutely love this class, he is setting these misinformed teachers straight about having flexible grouping, teaching phonemic awareness, sequential phonics instruction to kids, ways to get past decoding, into fluency and comprehension……The textbook is by Burns, Roe and Smith called Teaching Reading in todays Elementary school. I know much of this already it is just fun to be immersed in a class with a wonderful mentor that is on the same wavelength…There are some great college instructors out there you just have to find them.

Wow - You are so lucky!!! I am going to be taking a reading course called The Foundations of Reading Instruction. The two texts are Literacy for All edited by Jean Osborn and Developing Literacy by Donald Bear. I like many of the ideas espoused in Literacy for All (the chapters I’ve read), but I’m not sure about Developing Literacy yet. The class starts in a week. I’m a little nervous since most of the students will be certified teachers, but then they are mostly probably teaching the three cueing systems, and using context clues to figure out words.

I can certainly understand why your professor would be passionate about teaching reading. I got involved because I knew my older daughter would not learn to read the way the school was teaching. I becamse “immersed” in reading about teaching reading. I became certified in Phono-Graphix and taught my younger daughter using it (as well as a few tutors). I served on two of our district committees — reading and spelling & language. Anyway, I decided to take a course in teaching reading. I’m considering pursuing either an initial licensure in special ed. or a master’s degree in reading. I’m just not sure if I have the needed prerequisites for a reading degree.

Good luck with your class. I’d be interested in hearing more about it.

Sincerely,

Margo

YES, I AGREE WITH YOU, MOST OF THE CHILDREN I TREAT DON’T HAVE DYSLEXIA, THEY ARE VICTIMS OF THE TEACHING METHODS OUT THERE. I WAS DIAGNOSED WITH DYSLEXIA AT AGE 5, I RECENTLY OPENED MY BUSINESS FOR DYSLEXIC CHILD. I TRAVEL THROUGHOUT THE RIO GRANDE VALLEY, BUT I’M LOCATED IN AUSTIN TEXAS. I WAS A VICTIM OF THE TRADITIONAL TEACHING METHODS.
DYSLEXIAWORLD 512 507-3732

What I don’t understand is that when the kids have reading problems and go to Corrective Reading they are taught Phonics but the students in regular reading classes don’tget any phonics instruction. I think that should tell the educators that they need both Phonics and the “word wall”.

yes teachers should get specialized training for child with learning difficulties

I would like to hear what state you are from and where you are taking this class and the name of the instructor. I am familiar wiht the Burns and Row informal oral reading screening(not sure of the name of the test) but I would like to know the title of the text.

Thanks,
Catherine

Margot,

I think all teachers need better training. It sounds like pattim has found a place to get great trainging.

What I find interesting is that when children need help in reading, many principals and corporations feel that if the child is pulled out of class and if they sit out in the hall and try to read with retired senior citizens, the child will miracously learn how to read.

Teachers have found it difficult to teach because senior citizens are invading the schools pulling kids out to class.

Why does the public feel that a senior citizen can teach a child to read, better than a teacher?

The school administrators are more concerned with PR among the community, than letting the teachers teach. They feel that this involvement with senior citizens is great PR

Catherine

well i have my own business called DYSLEXIAWORLD i got this training from a person from mexico he tried all types of methods and came up with the pattern method, for many years i struggled with math, but after taking his course and getting certified to give this program, love math. I have seen my clients improve greatly for more info contact me 512 5073732

Patti, we would have to get into the dreadful teacher training programs in CA. I personally believe the liberal studies degree, followed by a 5th year to be an ineffective program. You cannot learn to be a teacher in 1 year. We are finding that more and more keeps being placed on the plates of would be teachers, the programs taking longer and longer. I think we need to return to a serious elementary teacher prep program that provides a strong program in teaching language arts and math and results in a bachelor’s degree. They don’t know how to teach math, either. My college put every elementary ed. major through three semesters of basic math (K-8 level math skills) to make certain we understood what we taught, before we took our math methods class.

Margo, I just don’t think there is any way we can lock-step instruction in reading . The LD students I teach in resource take about three years of daily, intensive instruction to learn the fundamentals of decoding. These are students who cannot discriminate short vowels from one another. They cannot segment the sounds in a short word and so must be TAUGHT to do so. We must assess students well and provide instruction to meet their needs. If they need to learn to segment words, they get mondo practice on this prereading skill. If they can do this with ease, having never had instruction, they move on. If they learn short “a” in one lesson, they move on, if it takes a week or a month to learn short “a” then so be it. It won’t do any child any good to be provided even the best curriculum/instruction if the pacing is way too fast to promote mastery. Nor, is there any benefit to requiring a phonemically “mature” child to sit through a year of daily drill/practice on material he or she can do in her sleep. That is what I mean by differentiating. In general ed. you cannot teach individually to each child, you need to use grouping (grouping is not precise, but it is close). Even in special ed. we need to group to get to all our students daily.

pattim,

cheers to you. of course you knew what the professor was talking about because you study hard and really care.

keep us posted.

pattim,

cheers to you. of course you knew what the professor was talking about because you study hard and really care.

keep us posted.

pattim,

cheers to you. of course you knew what the professor was talking about because you study hard and really care.

keep us posted.

pattim,

cheers to you. of course you knew what the professor was talking about because you study hard and really care.

keep us posted.

pattim,

cheers to you. of course you knew what the professor was talking about because you study hard and really care.

keep us posted.

Are there any other districts or buildings that operate like this?

Catherine

In my experience, most districts are this disorganized. Someday I hope to run into a school system that actually has a system, but so far in both my work and my daughter’s education it has not happened.

I have been personally involved with:

a school system that had a programmed curriculum and taught Chapters 1 through 13 in junior high and 16 through 20 in senior high, leaving two chapters of structured development in a black hole

the same system where the kindergarten teachers declared that the district’s program was play-type kindergarten, not academic, and the reading coordinator said that Grade 1 teachers did not teach the alphabet because it was done in kindergarten

my daughter’s Grade 1 teachers who invented their own reading textbook and used it because the one provided by the system was a joke with no content

my own first year teaching where the high school math textbooks arrived in May — and we had no copy machine, one old ditto for the whole school, kept locked up by the secretary

another system I tried to teach in where one high school would not hand out texts for the first three weeks of school because kids changed classes so much

a principal who was upset that my daughter was so advanced and proposed slowing her learning down to “normal”

my daughter’s high school math program which deliberately omitted all of the second half of the text, where the high school work is, and set the curriculum to be only the first half which reviews junior high work

a country school with only four teachers where three teachers on average were fired every year (the continuity of the 100% change years was pretty weak)

Need we go on?

Unles parents and teachers and PTA’s fight for schools to be educational institutions, we are going to continue to have this kind of foolishness.

Anitya — we have the *opposite* problem here in Maryland and in most of the areas of Canada and the US where I have lived.

The teachers here take a four year elementary ed degree. There are two problems with this: first, that’s almost all they do, elementary ed. They take no real math classes, only elementary ed classes where they may get to long division and very basic algebra if they’re lucky. They take hardly any real English classes, mostly elementary ed classes where they read children’s book, or books about books.
Second, the entrance requirements to this program are the lowest of all college programs. Some very good people go into the program, but also a number who are not working at a college level. I know because I have taught them and tried to correct their papers. I have also heard my daughter’s teachers speak and have seen their writing.
One time, when my daughter was in Grade 9 in a selective technical high school, she left an English assignment on the table. I glanced at it, looked again, and asked if this had been copied out by one of her classmates. No, she said, that was her teacher’s writing. On the one page written by her *English* teacher, there were five major grammatical errors. The most notable was (I am NOT kidding) “Make sure the subject and verb agrees.” Also notable was that the teacher handwrote in a style which I class as middle-school, using a ruler underneath her lines and making all the descenders squashed.
She has also been correcting teachers’ spelling and arithmetic errors (Politely, she’s a nice kid) since third grade. One in Grade 8 could note read the word “causal” in a science text and tried to make it say “casual”.

Given the choice of people who can hardly read or write, and can’t add or subtract, attempting to teach their mistakes and misconceptions to my child with the “best” educational methods, or of people who have actually graduated from a real college program working out how to teach in practice, I’ll take the second, thanks.

VICTORIA,
YES, IT’S TRUE OUR SCHOOL SYSTEM NEEDS ALOT OF HELP, AND NEEDS TO CHANGE!!!
I HAVE ALWAYS AGREED THAT THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE SOON, OR OUR CHILDREN ARE GOING TO SUFFER EVEN MORE.
AISD COMPLAINS OF NOT FINDING TEACHERS, BUT YET, THEY CLOSE DOORS ON TEACHERS THAT ARE CERTIFIED TO TEACH, BUT DON’T HAVE A DEGREE..YOU MUST HAVE A TEACHERS STATE LICENSE TO BE ABLE TO TEACH,AND I THINK THAT IS NOT FAIR. WE ALL HAVE TO DO OUR PART, I’M DOING EVERYTHING TO MAKE A CHANGE, AT LEAST IN TEXAS….

I teach reading to 6th grade LD students and in my opinion you must teach sequential phonics and comprehension strateiges. It is not an either or situation. Reading is understanding. I teach both parts of reading. I do direct explicit instruction in reading strategies to enhance comprehension to the entire class. Many of my students can docode the words but they do not comprehend what they have read. They have had years of phonics instruction but very little instruction in comprehension strategies. They cannot sequence, they cannot answer open ended questions. They cannot tell you why an author wrote in a certain way. These skills are at least as important as phonics. To advance into high school literature classes they must do more than decode words. Comprehension is reading without it you are only calling words. I do direct word work at another time of the day. I do not spell words for students. I teach them strategies to figure outthe spelling by using the phonics they already know. We have been in school 4 weeks and they do not ask for me to spell words anymore. They are bieginning to transfer these phonics skills into their reading through practice, practice, practice. The most important part of reading to me is understanding. Phonics is a tool but comprehension is the goal.

Nancy:

I agree with most of your post. Certainly, comprehension is the goal of reading.

Sequential phonics in 6th grade? I’m a little bit confused. By sequential phonics do you mean teaching from the simple to the complex? In beginning reading, the text that children read should be aligned with the phonics taught for true sequential phonics instruction. When children are at the point where they still need “decodable” materials, learning to decode and then developing fluency really are more important than developing comprehension. Not that they cannot comprehend the material they read — perhaps by rereading if reading is still disfluent. And comprehension strategies can be taught through teacher read alouds and student response.

Once a child becomes a fluent reader, then certainly comprehension strategies need developing. I think that many people believe that once a child is a fluent reader, comprehension will automatically follow. Also, until recent years, comprehension strategies were not taught. Comprehension was tested, but children were not taught how to develop it. Thank goodness this is changing!!!

I do believe that decoding and comprehension are both important. However, the mind can only concentrate on so many things at once. Once decoding is fluent, much effort is freed for concentrating on comprehension. But as you note, comprehension instruction is needed, just as systematic decoding instruction is needed.

Margo

I agree. I have asituation I know someone who is in her 30”s and can’t read. She has asked me to teach her. I would love to but I am unsure where to start. Any ideas??
Ellie