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When Benjamin Franklin was
dining in Paris,
one of the other diners posed the question:
"What condition of man most deserves pity?"
Each guest proposed an example of such
pitiable condition. When Franklin's turn
came, he offered: "A lonesome man on a
rainy day who does not know how to read."
-- Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes
For years, this pity has been a central concern
for many in the educational profession. Ever since federal and
state documentation was presented in the 1980s, our government,
districts, and schools have worked diligently toward every child
becoming a literate adult. Now, with this new century and its
demand for high-stakes accountability, two campaigns are leading
the forefront in creating a nation of voracious readers. They are:
Scientifically Research-based Best Practices
On January 8, 2002, President Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind
Act of 2001 (NCLB), www.nochildleftbehind.org, causing
immediate and long-term changes concerning our country's reading and math practices. An extensive
NCLB panel convened to determine what reading practices have been scientifically proven to be
the best for increasing students' reading performance and life-long success. Five elements were
identified: Phonemic Awareness
(a component within Phonological Awareness), Phonics (one, or a combination of, Phonic Approaches),
Vocabulary (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing), Fluency, and
Comprehension.
I found it interesting in an article entitled: Scientifically
Based Reading Research: A Call for an Expanded View (The Reading
Teacher, Vol.56, No. 7, pp. 698-700) that the periodical's
listserv (RTEACHER) had an avalanche of comments from
classroom teachers and reading specialists concerning the passing
of NCLB. They voiced their extreme concern that a "boxed cure"
approach for our country's reading problems is not, in itself, the
answer. For example, they agree with the NCLB principals, but also feel that:
These prescribed acts [five elements and prescribed instruction]
limit the quality and variety of instructional opportunities;
discounts the experience and expertise of accomplished teachers;
and discredits the long-standing body of research that shows that
teachers, not programs, produce effective reading instruction and
achievement.
Personally, I believe a balance is the best practice!
We, as human beings must be
continuous learners. When examining what NCLB is recommending, we
should not "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and
stop using strategies and practices that we know work well for our
students and their instructional needs, but rather evaluate to see
if we need new, even better practices. For example, it is
essential that educators balance the students' reading
experiences utilizing both fiction and nonfiction text.
For years, teachers have focused on fiction. Now with quality
inservicing and a myriad of new product
availability creating a balance is definitely doable.
If you are interested in professional development
to improve the use of nonfiction text in your classrooms or focus
on best
reading practices, please
click on the link or links below that will provide further
information concerning my personal areas of expertise.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is a "step" within the phonological awareness continuum.
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Hale 2002
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Phonological awareness is concerned solely with sounds, or phonemes. Research has proven that
if a child is superior in his or her ability to identify and isolate
individual sounds (the highest level
of phonemic awareness), s/he will most likely be a superior reader (Stanovich, 1989; Adams,
1990; Yopp, 1992; Yopp, 1995). Phonics is oftentimes confused with phonemic awareness.
They are not the same. Phonics is
the marriage of phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letter symbols).
Many educators are
unaware of the nuances between phonological awareness and phonemic awareness. As you can see
in the diagram above, hierarchal nuances are critical for those young students, special needs, and
ESL/ELL students who are trying to tackle the sounds that make up our English language. I
specialize in aiding educators in understanding these nuances, as well as exploring quality
assessments, evaluative processes, and improving educational practices that enhance
phonological instruction.
Vocabulary
There are four types of vocabulary: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.
An observation I have made as an educational consultant and coach is that most educators have a
comfort level with the third and fourth types--reading and writing, but not so for the first
two--listening and speaking. Why?
I believe it is for two reasons. Number one, time. Educators feel there is not
enough time to have large-class or small-group conversational discussions concerning vocabulary. Many give a list of vocabulary words and
ask for definitions and parts of speech. The problem with this is that given the 21st Century's
call for reading nonfiction and emphasizing more specialized reading in content areas, the
look-it-up-and-define-it methodology is not, in itself, effective. It is absolutely essential
that students become actively involved in listening and speaking new vocabulary by making
personal
connections with other words, meanings, and usages before embarking on new learning. One of my
favorite sayings when working with students and encouraging a
vocabulary-rich learning environment is:
You can't tap into something new, unless they tap into what they know. It really does not
take a lot of extra time to implement the speaking and listening of vocabulary before reading
and writing experiences. The key is to make that time engaging and interesting for students.
The second reason for a non-comfort level is that there is an art to listening and speaking. Most
students do not have a clue how to carry on a conversation that calls for true listening (not just
hearing), nor for speaking in complete and detailed sentences. Unfortunately, this is partly due
to the fact that our society has become "language lazy." Conversations have deteriorated to the
least number of words possible to convey meaning. For example:
I firmly believe that an excellent (and inexpensive) educational
strategy to improve test scores in vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar is to insist that
everyone at school speaks in complete and detailed sentences! Unfortunately, adults have formed
bad speaking habits as well. Therefore, it is imperative that adults set quality examples for students.
Please feel free to contact me if your school or district's action plan calls for improved
vocabulary literacy.
Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension starts with "active communication." If the language of the
reader is not the same language of the writer, there will be no true communication--or
comprehension. You may be thinking: Well, yes, if the reader
does not understand or know how to speak the language.
But it is a much deeper issue! First, one must realize that reading is
a two-way oral
communication system. The writer thinks "orally" and writes a series of symbols that covey his or her
thoughts. A reader picks up the text and interprets the symbols back into an oral language in
his or her head. The languages may appear on the surface to be the same, but in actuality they
are not due to linguistic nuances.
A great example comes from a personal experience.
In high school, I was a foreign exchange student to Germany. I had a wonderful experience and decided to reciprocate as a
young adult. My husband, Johnny, and I had been married for only two years when we
"birthed" a
17-year-old girl named Katja. Katja was from Germany and had completed five years of English.
She enrolled as a senior in our local high school. After attending classes for
approximately one month, this scene took place...
She was working on her homework at a coffee table.
My husband was nearby
"channel surfing." I was preparing dinner in the kitchen and could hear an occasional
conversation taking place between the two. For a while there was silence.
Then I heard Katja
ask my husband: Excuse me, please. Do you have a rubber?
Well, my husband bursts out laughing and practically falls out of
his chair! Katja has the most puzzled look on her face. She could
not figure out why he was laughing so hysterically. I, ever being the teacher, walked into the
room and shared with her that in the United States she needs to ask for an
eraser! So, even with five years of English, (Oxford
English, that is) there was no "active communication" taking
place.
As equally important as active communication,
educators must focus on making certain
that students are comprehending before, during, and after reading
by using questions and thought that take them to the higher
domains
of Bloom's Taxonomy. This is crucial due to the fact that 65% to
75% of reading questions asked on state and national tests are at
the three highest domains: Application, Synthesis, and Evaluation. There are wonderful
research-based techniques and strategies
to help students become active readers. If reading comprehension
is a recognized area of improvement for your school or district,
please contact me to discuss designing a one-time or on-going
training package.
Nonfiction Reading Strategies
Since the majority of my published books are nonfiction, I am very familiar
with reading, researching, and writing nonfiction. Most students and educators,
though, are more familiar,
and oftentimes comfortable, with reading and comprehending fictional materials.
A great concern of mine is teaching educators how to teach comprehension and reading strategies
differently for nonfiction materials.
I have worked quite extensively interviewing librarians, reading specialists, and classroom
teachers to come up with the continuum you see below. I
recently had an article published in a Virginia State Reading
Journal (Resources)
concerning this issue.
Notice the "fine line" between
Historical/Event Fiction and Biographical Nonfiction. A study
released in The Los Angeles Times, September 1999, revealed that
students nationally Grade K-12 spend 80% of their school time reading fiction (above the line). Once these
students become high school graduates, 90% of what they read is nonfiction (below the line). What a huge
discrepancy!
Because of this discrepancy, more and more states are testing using nonfiction as
its base.
Educators must incorporate research-based practices that include not only reading more
nonfiction, but better methods for pre- during- and after-
nonfiction reading strategies. Research
has revealed that educators should begin educating students using a "bottom up" method (The
Reading Teacher, Vol. 55, No. 6, March 2002, pp. 552-565). In other words, if you look again at
the above chart, an educator should start with Factual Nonfiction and move upwards toward Fantasy
Fiction. Unfortunately, most educators do just the opposite and teach "top down!"
For students to be successful, educators must consider the needed
change. My
desire is to help you, your staff, and/or district make a fiction-to-nonfiction transition run
smoothly and effectively. Via one-day awareness training, or sustained ongoing mentor-coaching,
it is essential that educators and support staff are given the time to become confident with
utilizing nonfiction text. Please feel free to contact me concerning your needs.
Nonfiction Links
www.teachercreated.com
On the home page of Teacher Created Materials, click on
Curriculum Programs, then Exploring Nonfiction. This is a fabulous resource kit to help teach students the twelve basic skills and
strategies needed to be topnotch nonfiction readers. All of the articles in the kits come from
articles that originally appeared in TIME™, TIME for Kids™,
Sports Illustrated™, and Sports
Illustrated for Kids™. The kits focus on the major content areas of social studies, science,
math, and language arts.
www.steck-vaughn.com
Enter "Pair It" in the search box; then select By Title.
You will eventually get to this product's area on the site. I like this series and think it is well
done. Each pair of books has a theme or content-specific topic: one
nonfiction, the other
fiction. They currently have book pairs up to the intermediate-grade readers. (Note: This
company also has a wonderful series entitled Think-Alongs. This series is designed to help
students prepare for test taking by increasing comprehension while reading rather than after reading.)
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