One of the most serious issues in American education today is how to teach effectively those children who have difficulty with learning to read. As a key to successful education, the most tested subject -- along with math -- in the present "accountability" craze, it is vital for reading specialists to be up to date on the latest research to know the best way to teach young learners how to become fluent readers. But according to an article published a year ago by Louisa Moats in the Journal of Learning Disabilities:
In our classrooms, workshops, and research studies, we find that teachers often feel unprepared to address the instructional needs of students with language, reading, and writing problems, although these groups compose the large majority of those in remedial and special education... Although the quality of implementation of an instructional program has everything to do with its success, poor implementation is a major reason why students at risk fail to progress.
Based on surveys on course content at teacher's colleges Moats concludes:
Special education in teacher licensing programs are often insufficient in content and design to enable students to learn the subject matter and apply it to the teaching of reading.
I am often skeptical of a "magic bullet" when in comes to solutions to educational issues as I have shown in my criticism of charter schools and high-stakes testing, but I believe that if there is proven results in these methods of improving student reading, they should be widely implemented. According to Kilpatrick:
These [findings] are based upon a body of research published in scientific journals (largely inaccessible to classroom teachers) that has resulted from countless millions of federal and state dollars in research grants by those in the finest universities here and abroad.Yet, according to Moats' study, these methods are not being frequently used by reading teachers.
A clear obstacle to improvement of the disciplinary knowledge base for reading instruction is the dearth of good textbooks and teaching material for teacher preparation and professional developmentas well as more thorough instruction for teachers who are studying this vital part of the profession. She cites the Texas Higher Education Collaborative as a model in which
student teachers prepared by faculty members in the collaborative have been shown to obtain better student outcomes than instructors from nonparticipating programs. This model could be beneficial if replicated throughout the nation.But it should be made clear that using these practices for teaching reading to students with learning problems isn't easy. The method being used by these more successful reading specialists is a complex, demanding and intensive procedure that, according to Kilpatrick, involves students in "word mapping," a term he coined. Word mapping enables children to read via orthographic [a clear recollection for the specific letter-sequence in written words] memory rather than through simple word memorization, the traditional way of teaching reading. Word mapping is Kilpatrick's term
for what scientists discovered about the mental process children use to store words for instant and effortless retrieval. While phonics appears to be an essential skill for learning to read, at some point children see a word and instantly identify it without sounding out the word. Word mapping describes how this transition happens.Average to above average readers are good at this process. Poor readers are weak at this process.
This major finding... is literally unknown to 99.9% of our educators that we now have a good understanding of this process, and it should drive our instructional efforts... Most teachers work from the assumption that we store words through visual memory. That's totally intuitive--it feels that way. But it is patently incorrect, as countless studies have shown.
fairly discouraging research has emerged in recent years that classroom teachers, as well as the education professors that train them, tend to have very little working knowledge..." of this method of teaching reading.
Like every other field, [our reading teachers] are teaching what they were taught and have learned since receiving their advanced degrees. The problem is that despite the millions of dollars poured into this research and the reputable scientific journals reporting these findings, this still represents a relatively small niche in the vast arena of academia, with countless of thousands of scientific journal in many areas--hundreds in education and literacy alone. So it is an issue of getting the right people in touch with the right research to ignite a revolution in literacy education. Bashing teachers or the professors who train them is not only overly simplistic and uninformed but likely counterproductive. Everyone along the educational pipeline wants the best for students."
First; as many in California, she's bilingual, in French, because I'm French;
Then, I always talked a LOT to her, a lot, about anything, as mother is supposed to do I believe, one critical thing is to dedicate a table/desk area for your child.
I have a desk for two! One side for her, one side for me, so one of the main things she'd be doing at 1 or 2 years old was sitting at her desk and color or anything, I showed her early on the alphabet but just having fun doing so.
Now, a critical thing is that we started going to the free story time (hence my handle here ;)) at our local library since she was a baby, about 8 months.
Another big factor for us is that I'm a singer/songwriter and language is music, so hearing, reading and music are the same and my girl started to write songs at 2 years old but this can be the case for any kid if you expose them naturally to all kinds of music and language and LOVE.
Talk to your kids, sing to them. I mentioned this on some other thread about parenting and children.
My two cents.
,))
So "word mapping" (my term) is the mental process we use to store words for instant, effortless retrieval. It turns out that phonemic awareness and sound-symbol skill (i.e., basic phonics) are essential to permanent word storage, not just to sounding out words.
The Whole Word method began as a part of formal instruction in the U.S. in the 1820s, with phonics to follow in the 1830s. The disagreements ensued immediately. Whole Language hit the scene in the 1880s (called the "Sentence Method"). All were promoted before the scientific study of reading, and none correctly addressed how words are stored. Now we know, but only a small community of scientists are aware of it.
My dissertation in psychology at Syracuse University dealt with the neuropsychology of reading disabilities. I was gung-ho on "brain" related stuff. I still think it is the most fascinating topic, however, it is quite removed from the actual practice of teaching reading.
One of my professors and a member of my dissertation committee (back in 1994) was Dr. Benita Blachman. She and several others out of Yale and Haskins Laboratory did a study a few years back where they took brain scans of students before and after an intensive reading remediation program. The areas in the brain scans that lit up after the intervention were different than the ones before! Most everyone THOUGHT that good remedial instruction would change the brain, but this team was the first to actually demonstrate it with brain scans.
Actually, the temporal lobes appear to be key to understanding most word-level reading difficulties. The temporal lobes appear to mediate a conglomeration of skills that appear to be interrelated in ways that are not fully understood, namely phonemic awareness, phonological blending, rapid automatized naming, and the phonological loop of working memory. Difficulties in these areas seem to disrupt the ability to store or retrieve written words. If word memory is weak, comprehension suffers.
Thanks for sharing your story. You show how important motivation can be in overcoming reading problems. You had the ability to comprehend, but it seems the words were holding you back. Fantastic job!
"Although I salute Dr. Shatsky for abandoning the "all phonics, all the time" idiocy that has plagued us." Thanks Sara for your post.
Whole Language "The biggest arguments tend to be focused on student interest. Whole Language proponents claim that we may be doing more harm than good when we force our children to learn systematically and intensively with workbooks and basal readers. BORING!!! "
Whole Language as I was taught has at its core, the five component of all best practice reading philosophies. The focus was to use real literature to get to your goal of Literacy. Start with Dr. Seuss (In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring.) and move forward, but if you have 70% of 4th graders not reading at grade level you cant just do more of the same.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS—The knowledge and manipulation of sounds in spoken words.
PHONICS—The relationship between written and spoken letters and sounds.
READING FLUENCY, INCLUDING ORAL READING SKILLS—The ability to read with accuracy, and with appropriate rate, expression, and phrasing.
VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT—The knowledge of words, their definitions, and context.
READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES—The understanding of meaning in text.
We all love whole language once the kids can read and spell.Whole language instruction helps children memorize all their language-we need to have the mechanics of Reading taught properly before the children can have the fun of accessing whole language.
Sorry-It is important that we ask you to defer to research based instruction.
Universities do a very poor job of teaching you how to explicitly teach Phonemic Awareness-and show you how much fun it is to activate their ears to the phonemes of English.
My Students Data Using Whole Language Methods in Just 20 Days!
Students growth, 31% POINTS in reading (NWEA MAP), The class 74% at or above the mean in reading in all domains, and 87% of students are reading at grade level in the domain on reading comprehension (NWEA MAP)! My school average using phonemic awareness as the primary reading methode 38%
Reid Lyon who over saw a half a billion dollar research study on how students learn to read and synchronized research results from the prestigious Universities of Yale,Harvard,University of Texas and University of Florida-follow the NICHD team,Sally Shaywitz,Barbara Foorman,Jo Torgesen and Louisa Moats as stated above-Linnea Ehri Columbia-
Ken and Yetta Goodman did not research their theory properly-common in Education-we used to have a 25% problem-now it`s a 70% problem.
Reading Recovery was found to have positive effects on alphabetics and general reading achievement and potentially positive effects on fluency and comprehension.
Reading Recovery is a short-term tutoring intervention intended to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. The goals of Reading Recovery® are to promote literacy skills, reduce the number of first-grade students who are struggling to read, and prevent long-term reading difficulties. Reading Recovery supplements classroom teaching with one-to-one tutoring sessions, generally conducted as pull-out sessions during the school day. Tutoring, which is conducted by trained Reading Recovery teachers, takes place daily for 30 minutes over 12–20 weeks.
Full report http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/reports/beginning_reading/reading_recovery/
we can come to a consensus. Phonological Awareness is well known to all teachers that teach Reading and English, its when you condescend that people will respond in kind.
"METHODZ ov teeching reeding hav graevly impruuvd sins Max Müller roet dhe wurdz kwoeted abuv. Neverdheles, eeven nou lurning to spel iz a far longger proeses for dhe Inglish chield dhan for children in meny udher kuntriz, such az Jurmany, Italy and Finland, and eeven dhe naetiv children ov dhe Goeld Koest and vaeryus udher parts ov Afrika.
Eg.teeching(your above statement)-e -as in open syllable-even-ee as in street and feet-ea is in teach-ey as in hockey-ie as in piece-then the rule-ei as on ceiling-y as in funny or lazy-Exceptions-eo as in people.
Aslo graphemes need to be taught after the oral segments-
lurning-
Er as in a herd of elephants,ir as in first,ur as in nurse,ear as in learn and or is in color,flavor-
Long words are handled with 6 kinds of syllable instruction in which we use our phonemes to read and spell.
Whole language fails many more children than this work-it`s all about succeeding with many more kids-and this work is just as rapid.
I am not here to put you down-but the argument is crucial to children`s well being and also to teachers learning what works!
"METHODZ ov teeching reeding hav graevly impruuvd sins" This is not my invention but comes from the http://www.spellingsociety.org a group that wants to modernize English.
Ken and Yetta Goodman are not deserving of anyones hate, they have dedicated their lives to childrens literacy. I do agree phonemic awareness has to be part of a good reading program but their is a point of reciprocity.
"Reading Recovery" is a short-term tutoring intervention intended to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. Based on these five studies, the WWC considers the extent of evidence for Reading Recovery to be medium to large for alphabetics, small for fluency and comprehension, and medium to large for general reading achievement.
Sean Taylor M.Ed
I have spent my entire career teaching beginning reading, and have never taught two classes in the same way. It's not about me, it's about what helps them. By the way, I also have a M.Ed and M.A.
Fanned!
It is best to teach the phonemes systematically and to make sure the kids can segment them to spell and blend them to read.
There are 44 speech sounds in the English Language and 90 grapheme representations for example long vowel sound e has 8 pictures.
Once the kids read the words fluently we elaborate on their meaning.
But this need not cost anything!!!
In Orange,NJ, where I work in the schools, I give out gently used children's books that I collect from wealthier suburbs. A great recycling effort of "outgrown" childrens books is what is needed.
I call my program (it's just me) "ReRead", and it IS the answer to closing the gap!
I have a free "bookstore" (The Children's Book Pantry of Orange at the Y), where wonderful childrens books are given out free. I collect (in a myriad of ways) baby through young adult books.
No rent at the Y. Donated books (dictionaries, picture books, early readers, chapter books,etc) are free to students, parents and teachers. No Money is Involved! Nada. You just need some committed volunteers (I need more!). Imagine! (Easily replicated, too!)
It's very important to have diverse and fun books at home. Don't forget also the importance of reading aloud to your kids - from their very infancy. Don't read to them to get them to sleep, find good books and have a great time together.
Read Aloud .. Dad
http://ReadAloudDad.blogspot.com
@ReadAloudDad
happy. I did learn to listen very carefully so I could memorize some books to pass as if I could actually read. Phonics is the start of whole language but its not the great panacea its made out to be. I guess China is lucky they have no choice but to learn by sight. No need torturing kids for years with phonics. Thank you Joel for the forum on literacy. Whole Language gets a bad rap but its really just best practice. 掃盲為所有的人的禮物 Stop Sight Reading?
Sean Taylor M.Ed
In my desire to create more success across the classroom and do preventive work rather than remedial as well as reading so much of the Reading Research available from the NICHD research study and books written by Dr.Diane McGuiness,I realized the importance of teaching this way day one.We have to understand that this work is crucial,like Penicillin is crucial to infection or insulin is crucial to Diabetes.To get 90% of your students reading day one deliver phonological awareness training prior to teaching phonics and work hard on fluency-it is the bridge to reading comprehension.
There is an importance nuance in phonemes versus phonics and it`s crucial to successful instruction.
2 more points I`d like to make.
The Universities that prepare teachers should be bashed,not the teachers.They don`t train them properly in research based reading instruction.It is not their fault.
Sight word reading instruction is flawed and the root of all our literacy problems.We know it,how do we make them stop!
Sight word reading phase of Education has to end
DATA for 20 days.
My students growth, 31% POINTS in reading (NWEA MAP), 27% POINTS in language arts (NWEA MAP), I have students on IEPs (4) and English Language Learners (9) Behavior was far from ready for instruction. The class is now 74% at or above the mean in reading in all domains, and 87% of students are reading at grade level in the domain on reading comprehension (NWEA MAP)! The funny thing about all this hype about reading interventions is I was diagnosed with dyslexia, and now I use what I learned to teach my students to read!
The only thing you need to teach reading is great literature. Sean Taylor M.Ed
http://reading-sage.blogspot.com
Thanks again!
B-You have touched on the core of the problem in education-in medicine.Dr.`s all do the same thing because we honor the science.
In education,we are honoring opinion.The teacher walks into Grade 1 and does whatever-1/3 will learn no matter what-the other 2/3 are in big trouble.If mom and dad find the right help-lucky kid.If they don`t we get what we have today-Waiting for Superman says only 28% of students are learning to Read by grade 3.
Research shows if you don`t learn by then you have a 75% chance of not learning.
The obsession with reading comprehension testing when they ignore the instructional components and students guess is ridiculous.
Part one-phonemic awareness,phonics,fluency training,vocabulary and comprehension.These are sequential steps to success.
I am not a genius,I read the studies and empirical research.
Why isn't word mapping on WWC? Because it is not a teaching method, and the WWC is designed to evaluate teaching methods and reading programs. Word mapping is our scientific understanding about how words go from being unfamiliar to familiar to the point of being instantly and effortlessly recognizable. So mapping is an explanation of a cognitive process and is not a teaching method. I'll be happy to provide you with references to the scientific journals that establish word mapping as our best explanation of the process of word storage, but unfortunately, they are difficult to access these journals. Only those with a university account can access them online, though anyone can walk into a university library and read the printed copies if they know where to look. If interested, I will add another box with references.
More helpful than the WWC is the Doing What Works Clearinghouse site & Florida Center for Reading Research site. Google those to get some good stuff.
A thought on Phonics vs. Whole Language: A billion people in China, Japan, and other countries that use character (logographic) based language have no phonics.How do they learn to read? They learn the character by sight. They are sight readers like 99% of all literate adults. We act like phonics/alphabetics is the solution to all reading problems, a Billion plus people have no ability to use this method to read and they do amazingly well. Reading experts have divided literacy into so many parsed bits that we will be totally illiterate as a society in the next 50 years. The 4000 exceptions to phonemic rules in common English makes phonics/alphabetics a flawed system to teach English. English was never modernized as many languages in developed countries, and we try to teach our arcane language to 5 year olds. We ponder why we have problems!
Sean Taylor M.Ed
http://reading-sage.blogspot.com/
Mike Ford said, "Anyone who thinks there is only one best way to teach kids hasn't met two kids."
There are four skill to decoding: being able to take words apart into their sounds, being able to run the sounds back together into words, associating letter combinations with sounds, and sequencing the sounds off the page. Once those skill are automatic, getting meaning from text is as easy as getting it from words.
And "word mapping?" Children recognize words "instantly" when the decoding is so easy and automatic that they can't help but read.
PHONICS. PHONICS. PHONICS!
Yes, English has lots of "exceptions," but most of each word follows the rules, and most of the exceptions follow the rules of the language they came from. Learning a few Greek and Latin rules takes care of most of the exceptions.
I emphasize again that I learned all this by helping both adults and children with reading and spelling, and that I have had 100% success.
I have been to New Zealand and it is such a wonderful place. I just loved it. I do have to point out that your country is much more homogenous than the United States. Whole Language works best for the 20% of children that have learned the phonemics spontaneously. I think that systematic instruction is required for the other 60% and 20% require intensive instruction. I have been teaching children to read all my life . Whole Language usually works best on upper-middle class children with a wide experience base.
Take the spelling issue--if children start a journal in kindergarten and first grade, and they are told that in this one instance spelling is a secondary consideration, they can be comfortable with writing thoughts while they learn to spell.
Incidentally, learning phonics teaches spelling. I have worked with all sorts of neighbor's children who have been getting nowhere in resource classes, and phonics has worked for both reading fluency and spelling every single time. That is important, so I will say it again--it has worked every single time!
However, and this speaks directly to your point, decoding is the absolutely necessary first step. A child who can't decode fluently will never do well at getting meaning from text.
Prof. Kilpatrick is entirely off-base.
My proof? A whole bunch of dyslexic readers!
Both I and Prof. Kilpatrick are puzzled by your comment that you feel he is "entirely off-base" when it appears you agree with him on the matter of the importance of "decoding." Are you using the term differently than he does? Please respond.