Former Marine, Current Student, Future Teacher, but always a Dad!

As with my 310 blog it is hard to believe it is the end of the semester and also like 310 I plan on continuing this blog for my own enjoyment and inquiry. 

The main thing I have learned from an academic standpoint is that I have a lot more reading and writing to do before I come up with a thorough, concise philosophy on the methodology of reading both at the beginning stages and for meaning. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will end up with a pretty unique view that might not systematically line up with a current position.

What I enjoyed the most about this blog was being able to focus on the methods of reading and literary theory on my own terms. So many times in my English classes I am one of only a couple student that are not English majors (I am a social studies major) and I feel confused or intimidated while my fellow student seem so well versed and comfortable with the terms and subjects that are being discussed. Being able to research and produce what i am learning in this format makes me feel so much more comfortable. I can’t help but think that some of my students might be able to thrive with this technology also. This is what i posted on my 310 blog and it summarizes where I stand for this blog also.

My plan is to continue to use my blog and my RSS reader to continue this blog (it will probably have different categories then 310 and 311) and I might expand it to include one or two more categories about social studies and the process of becoming a teacher. I will extend my search to include and focus on more scholarly journals. hopefully this will help me develop an ongoing teaching philosophy throughout my career. To me it is the perfect way to express, review, and edit my beliefs while hopefully getting feedback from outside sources.

Here is another excerpt from the Anneburg Online Workshop.

Over the last several decades, reader-response techniques have become firmly established in American classrooms. Language arts teachers at all levels now widely accept central tenets of the theory, particularly the notion that learning is a constructive and dynamic process in which students extract meaning from texts through experiencing, hypothesizing, exploring, and synthesizing. Most importantly, teaching reader response encourages students to be aware of what they bring to texts as readers; it helps them to recognize the specificity of their own cultural backgrounds and to work to understand the cultural background of others.

Using reader response in the classroom can have a profound impact on how students view texts and how they see their role as readers. Rather than relying on a teacher or critic to give them a single, standard interpretation of a text, students learn to construct their own meaning by connecting the textual material to issues in their lives and describing what they experience as they read. Because there is no one “right” answer or “correct” interpretation, the diverse responses of individual readers are key to discovering the variety of possible meanings a poem, story, essay, or other text can evoke.

Students in reader-response classrooms become active learners. Because their personal responses are valued, they begin to see themselves as having both the authority and the responsibility to make judgments about what they read. (This process is evident in the video programs, when students are asked to choose a line of poetry and explain why it is important to them.) The responses of fellow students also play a pivotal role: Through interaction with their peers, students move beyond their initial individual reaction to take into account a multiplicity of ideas and interpretations, thus broadening their perspective.

Incorporating reader response in the classroom
As increasing numbers of elementary, middle, and secondary school language arts teachers have come to accept reader-response theory over the last 25 years, the instructional techniques that support it have become more common in classrooms: Literature circles, journal writing, and peer writing groups all grew out of the reader-response movement. These teaching strategies value student-initiated analysis over teacher-led instruction, promote open-ended discussion, and encourage students to explore their own thinking and trust their own response.

Growing up I was a veracious reader. I would read everything I could get my hands on. I might become disinterested soon after starting to read something but I would just move on to the next thing to read. Reading is not all that I did. I played sports, talked on the phone with girls, or hung out with friends but all the other time I had was spent reading. I would wake up in the morning and grab a book, before school sitting at the kitchen table I would read the newspaper back to front, and before I went to bed I would read until my eyes……just………….couldn’t………………………..stay………………………….. open ………………………………….. anymore. I loved to read and I was a horrible student, especially in English. (Brakes squaking) Wait a minute you are saying you were a porr student? That’s not the way its supposed to work. What was wrong with your school, you ask? Well i wish I could tell you that it was because they made me read the Great Gatsby and then gave me tests on it instead of putting me in a literature circle but that wouldn’t be true. I was just apathetic about my education and there wasn’t really a method that was going to get me to buy into doing homework or studying. My point is I loved to read, so I read and this developed my ability, my knowledge, and in the long run my achievement but most students are not me. They have no interest in reading and cannot see the importance of it to their long run success. They are like the kid who wants to play in the NBA but hates to practice or even play pickup games. They good players are the gym rats and the achieving student at least needs to sharpen his reading skills if not become a book rat.

As you read the above excerpt, did it makes sense to  you? It makes perfect sense to me. The idea of getting students to use tools such as reading circles allows te reluctant reader to approach a text from there own point of view but then shows them other points of view or gives them a window into other perspectives of the story. A student then is able to approach his next time reading with a different way of looking at the text along with his initial reaction. Take a student thatis reading 10 pages about the civil war from their history text for homework. The reluctant reader might just read it and look for facts to memorize but the same student who has been engaged in a language arts class that uses reader response techniques might approach this homework from an entirely different course in a different way. They might look at the major events as important but also think about what this meant for the townspeople living close to a battle or the confederate soldier who was captured, or the family of the union soldier who was killed. That same student might start to think of the connections to other parts of the book by making predictions of the ramifications. By using reader response you are able to get the student to use higher level thinking and teach them to find interest in reading because of their new ability to internalize and reconstruct what the text is telling them. I will use the following example of some of what I am talking about:

An innovative reading program held at the Woodstown Middle School was thrust into the limelight last week as Public Television cameras and boom microphones descended upon sixth-graders inside the cafeteria.

With colorful poster boards and costumed kids taking up the expanse of the room, “Classroom Close-up, NJ,” weaved in and out of the displays, recording the outcome of this six-week project.

The program, brainchild of teachers Gina Donahue and Shelly Ortman, allows students to actively participate in small groups in an effort to teach one another about a shared novel.

“It offers something different than the traditional paper and pencil test,” said Donahue, an 11-year veteran of teaching. “These literature circles give kids the opportunity to work together toward a common understanding of the book.”

The circles were composed mostly of three to four people, and put together students who would best compliment one another’s particular strengths. The final group projects were required to include a display of the book’s key story elements and a skit of some sort.

And not even a fire alarm on the last half-day before a long vacation last Thursday could derail the efforts of the students, leaving teachers reason to be proud.

“I was particularly impressed with the way they refocused (after the fire alarm), they are really involved and it’s great to see,” said Rich Fiolkowski, another sixth-grade teacher at the school.

Donahue added, “At first the whole project was a little overwhelming for them, but they took it piece by piece and I am extremely proud of the outcomes here today.”

As one student conveyed, it was a great chance to break out of the norm of your average school day.

“You get to interact and get so many other opinions,” said student Gabe Woodside. “It’s something different than just listening to the teacher all the time though take nothing away from Mrs. Donahue, she’s a great teacher.”

By offering reading in this way to students they baght into it. Now sixth graders aren’t 10th graders but I am not looking for a 10thgrader to get excited about making a poster board cut out but if i can use a literature circle to get him/her thinking about what the text means and to see other perspectives then I believe it is a good tool. By using this tool I think we can get students to view reading as something they own.

Todays Sunbeam
reading program puts kids in sunlight
by Randall Clark
April 9, 2007

Annenburg Media Online
The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School
Reader Resonse – Theory Overview
By Pat Mora and James Welch

Reader response stresses the importance of the reader’s role in interpreting texts. Rejecting the idea that there is a single, fixed meaning inherent in every literary work, this theory holds that the individual creates his or her own meaning through a “transaction” with the text based on personal associations. Because all readers bring their own emotions, concerns, life experiences, and knowledge to their reading, each interpretation is subjective and unique.
Many trace the beginning of reader-response theory to scholar Louise Rosenblatt’s influential 1938 work Literature As Exploration. Rosenblatt’s ideas were a reaction to the formalist theories of the New Critics, who promoted “close readings” of literature, a practice which advocated rigid scholarly detachment in the study of texts and rejected all forms of personal interpretation by the reader. According to Rosenblatt, the New Critics treated the text as “an autonomous entity that could be objectively analyzed” using clear-cut technical criteria. Rosenblatt believed instead that “the reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of some particular reader and a particular text at a particular time under particular circumstances.”

The above is an excerpt from an Annenburg Media online workshop explaining Reader Response theory. As I have gone through my college education trying to figure out what I believe when it comes to literature and what is important when teaching literature it has become more and more evident that what is important is getting the students to read with a connection to the text. I had never known what this was called or even that my belief would have a name. Then I started to learn this very belief and what I understood had been put into text. It just struck me that what they were saying in these texts is very important in teaching the average student to get meaning from reading.

Let me say for the record that the average student is not the future English major. I believe the knowledge of literary terms and being able to use critical thinking is important but most middle and high school teachers have trouble just getting their students to read let alone move to the point of reading with a critical eye. Many teachers believe that literature should be looked at from a New Critical stance. I am not going to delve too deep into the debate but from my point of view this does not get the student to invest in the process of reading. It does not teach the student to love reading or even like reading. It doesn’t develop an ability in the student to connect to the reading thus creating a desire to read independently, with purpose, and with a personal understanding of books outside of the academic environment. Author Scott Tinsley says in an interview for BlogCritics magazine:

Any text, regardless of its form, can be an opportunity for communicative action. In writing a very personal book such as this, I’ve felt like I’ve done my part in sharing. But I would not ask a reader to, as I said, to “compare, contrast or critique.” That misses the point of reader response theory. The beauty of plurality in reading is that the text can take you where you let it, not where it’s supposed to take you. The best example in the book is the last chapter, a very true story, a letter to my daughter as she left home for college. I’ve had numerous parents write and tell me it just broke them up. And I’ve had students respond with, “How could you embarrass your daughter like that?” They’ve allowed the story to both reflect on their own circumstances but also create a political site; a momentary struggle within their own psyche.”

Mr. Tinsley’s point is an important one because he alludes to the fact that the reader has an important role in the product of literature. What makes a text valid in one person’s eyes could invalidate it anothers. To ask a reluctant reader to view a work of literature from a critical perspective would be the same as expecting a biological breakdown when asking them what they appreciate about their loved ones. Its cold, harsh, and has a negative influence on their view of reading. If we can use reader response techniques to get the reader to engage in the reading process and start to read on their own at some point they will be able to view quality works from poor writing and be able to tell you why they feel this way. We need to be able to get them to buy into reading as worth while first. We don’t expect children to go from throwing a ball, to playing T-ball, to managing the New York Yankees so why would we expect them to go from learning the alphabet, to learning to read, to interpreting literature without the proper foundations. In my mind Reader response is the methodology that follows phonetic awareness to set the foundation for students to not only become readers but critical readers. 

Annenburg Media Online
The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature in High School
Reader Response- Theory Overview
By Pat Mora and James Welch

Blog Critics Magazine
Interview with Scott Tinley, Author of Things To Be Survived
By Scott Butki
March 28, 2007

At both schools, CHAMPs, a program that sets boundaries for behavior in classrooms and during class activities, has cut discipline problems. At Highland, suspensions in 2005-06 numbered 19, down from 25 the year before. This year so far, six students have been suspended.

Highland’s focus on discipline can be seen everywhere, even on the floors. Two years ago the school painted lines of red arrows in the hallways. Now, students must follow the arrows as they travel throughout the school. There is no meandering. If they stray, teachers quickly point them back to the arrows.

“My first year here, the students ran the school,” said Ivan Brown, a fifth-grade teacher at Highland. “Once we got that shared vision, everybody got on board and said this is what we have to do, that’s what turned the school around.”

Last year, Highland’s reading score on CATS climbed from a 54.2 to a 66.2. School officials attribute the jump to the Reading Mastery program, which focuses on phonics, spelling and comprehension, and includes 90 minutes of reading instruction a day. Students are grouped by skill level, and their progress is tracked weekly.

“It wasn’t random acts of improvement. We moved from that to a much more laser-like focus,” said McCloud. “In other words, we calmed the chaos.”

A stable environment

Before these changes, school wasn’t as exciting, students say. Now students say they look forward to being rewarded for doing well on assignments and don’t act up in fear that these incentives will be taken away.

Daja Wheeler, 10, and Carah Rucks, 9, both fourth-graders, enjoy the constant praise and feedback they get from teachers.

“She kept on complimenting us for just doing good,” said Carah about her reading teacher. “We were better than all the other classes, she said.”

During a recent morning at Highland, students barely made a peep while eating breakfast. They then sat in neat rows waiting for their cue to stand. A few students took the stage with microphones and led the school in an animated recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and the school’s mission statement. Energy filled the cafeteria when students shrilled the school song — “Tell me how you spell success? Everybody now!”

An awards ceremony was the highlight of the morning assembly. Students climbed onto the stage and received applause and a strand of colored beads for doing well on practice test questions.

Fourth-grader Brodrick White, 9, was one of a dozen students who received a silver beaded necklace for scoring high on a writing assessment. He wore the necklace all day and hoped to earn another one. If students earn 10 necklaces, they receive a special prize.

“It makes it more fun, and then the students, they like to have more fun, so they try to work harder … to get better stuff,” said Devon Averitt, 10, a fifth-grader, who earned a necklace.

At this point in my reading about the methodology of teaching reading it seems like it has come down to a pretty one sided debate between phonics and whole language. It is hard to ignore the chronological history of this debate and the system-wide failures of whole language. While phonics based curriculum has its share of failure, those are instances of individual students or small portions of the student body. The truth of the matter that as an educator in literacy its is impossible to ignore the success of phonics.

That being said I think that it is important to comment on a couple of important points that need to be recognized to contextualize the argument. In every article I have read where a phonics based curriculum, such as the Reading Mastery program cited in the article above, has replaced whole language or a derivative of whole language it has been accompanied by two identical variables that must be taken into account. First, in every single one of these cases the change in curriculum was accompanied by policy that mandated an effort to increase discipline and improved classroom management. In most cases this policy was implemented by a new administrative change whether it was a principal or new superintendent or overhaul of a school-board. The second correlative is the use of some sort of token reinforcement system where by students are given prizes or rewards for improvement and or good behavior. 

The fact that there was an emphasis placed on discipline through written policy and followed through with a concerted effert by the staff of these schools cannot be overlooked. I am sure that the test scores would not have improved as greatly without the change to phonics but also believe that just by increasing discipline and taking control of educational situation that the culture was changed in these schools. Through this change academics were again put in focus and alot of the outside distraction was eliminated. We must also state that most of the phonics based curriculum is backed with an proganizational plan that forces and carries proped classroom management. In other words lesson are more planned, more structured and teachers become better managers of there classroom. Whether you choose to believe this or not it has been my experience that when a group of students is disciplined and lead by an individual who is organized, prepared, and “with it” in the educational setting, they have better moral and thus are in a frame of mind better suited to learn and achieve.

The other issue of token reinforcement must be taken into account when looking at results and the correlation involved in the change to phonics. It is easy to see how token reinforcement could be viewed as only a positive. Children are learning as a result of it, their grades are improving, the classroom is much more manageable, and schools results on standardized tests are being affected in a positive way.  When we look at this system through a more critical lens is when we see the flaws. One problem with token reinforcement is that hide or camouflages the poor skills and management of some of the teachers using it. The teachers don’t have the benefit to see how the curriculum, material, and lesson is truly reaching the student and thus these things aren’t tweaked, improved, or eliminated. Another problem is this leads to learning that is extrinsically motivated in nature. The students are not fostering a genuine interest in learning, developing strategies to solve problems, or gaining the proper intention of the life skills of respect, discipline, or understanding. They are instead just trying to earn the tokens, rewards or prizes accompanied with good grades and behavior. If and when these prizes are removed from the equation then many of these students will regress back to bad behavior and/or stagnate at the current academic ability.  

Most often in the current educational culture of standardized testing we look at what method is being used or what the curriculum includes but what is being overlooked are basic fundamentals of teaching. Terms such as management, discipline, and bearing are overlooked. These characteristics lead to a withitness the teacher possesses. To be able take control of a classroom and lead students through a lesson in a stable and organized way are skills and traits that need to be acknowledged and emphasized as much as the pedagogy being used.  

Brandenton Herald
Exemplary elementary
By Raviya H. Ismail
March 11, 2007

Anyone who is an language arts educator or student preparing to be one could tell you the pendulum in methodology is constantly swinging. During the late 80’s that pendulum had swung in the direction of whole language in ways many could not have predicted just 20 years earlier. California had forced schools within the state to move to a whole language based curriculum that totally abandoned phonics. 

This approach gained thousands of acolytes during the 1980s. The nation’s colleges of education produced a new crop of teachers weaned solely on whole-language philosophy, while influential professional associations such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association (http://www.ira.org/) embraced its basic premises. At the state level, California spearheaded a virtual reading revolution. The state department of education rewrote its entire curriculum in 1987, ditching phonics for a literature-based, whole-language approach. Teachers were told to throw out their old methods and embrace the cutting edge. Other states and local school districts soon followed. “All the major publishers moved to whole-language readers once California implemented it,” says Bonnie Grossen of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, at the University of Oregon. “They had no sequenced instruction, just pretty pictures and poetry. It has taken hold in all 50 states.”

Soon the pendulum had started to sway in the direction with attacks on whole language mounting. Scores were dropping and the whole language was to blame. The above excerpt is from an article in late 1997. While the article is old and some what dated in its arguments I include it here to give context to the criticism at the time. The mid to late 90’s were a time that whole language was under attack and people were jumping off the bandwagon. The article goes on to read:   

Most damaging to whole language’s adherents, last year California punted its whole-language curriculum altogether, stressing the need for systematic, explicit phonics instruction in the early grades. The state reversed course in response to a wave of public criticism after California’s poor performance in the 1994 NAEP, when it tied Louisiana for last place. Janet Nicholas, a member of the California State Board of Education, recently told the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce: “Unfortunately for California children, the unsubstantiated claims and enthusiastic visions of whole-language ideologues proved to be disastrous when applied to real children.”

The reaction to California’s actions was predictable. “Whole language is being used as a scapegoat for dropping scores, when California has many minorities and high immigration,” says University of Arizona education professor Ken Goodman, regarded by many as the godfather of whole-language theory. It is true that whites are a minority in California and a large portion of its Hispanic population are recent immigrants who speak bare-bones English. Yet apologists for whole language ignore the fact that scores dropped equally among children whose parents graduated from college.

“These data [from the NAEP] underscore the fact that reading failure is a serious national problem and cannot be attributed to poverty, immigration, or the learning of English as a second language,” says Reid Lyon, who has directed the NIH reading studies for the past six years.

By showing this part of the articles you can see why educators would be frustrated in the process of researched based curriculum and selection. Many people believe educators don’t want to use a methodolgy in the curriculum that is backed by research because of a belief that their profession is an art. This belief does not seem to hold water when we look a little closer at the situation. The fact is the pendulum keeps swinging as education boards and administrators keep jumping on new or sometimes old curriculum methods in the hopes of improving test scores. These new methods might be based on research but have not went through the process of having the research replicated and thereby verified. This was the case in California moving to a whole language based curriculum. This was compounded by the state not backing this curricular change wioth training for its educators that would implement the change. I would like to end this post with an excerpt from an article I wrote from another class.

It is also evident from going through the process of becoming an educator that there is a belief that teaching is an art acquired through years of experience and a natural calling. This art is the ability to adapt to the context of an individual classroom. Most educators seem to believe that science based research is only feasible in the controlled environment of an experiment or test but is to rigidly defined for the ever changing classroom. I cannot see any reason that science based research cannot be used as the cornerstone to methodology that is creative, flexible and honed through experience. In other words, science can be art, when used correctly by an expert professional which is what we as educators are supposed to be.

Hoover Institution-Policy Review
See Dick Flunk
By Tyce Palmaffy
November/December 1997

So where does the Department of Education stand on reading? Well, if your are interested in this subject and have been paying attention just slightly then you have probably heard of Reading First. Reading First is the part of No Child Left Behind that adresses reading instruction. When looking at the Dept. of Eds website on Reading First you can not see specificly where the Federal Government stands on this issue (Phonics vs. Whole language) but by digging a little deeper I was able to see that there ais a part of Reading First called Early Reading First that says that one of the goals is:

To demonstrate language and literacy activities based on scientifically based reading research that support the age-appropriate development of
- Oral language (vocabulary, expressive language, listening comprehension)
- Phonological awareness (rhyming, blending, segmenting)
- Print awareness
- Alphabetic knowledge

I think it would be fairly safe to say that the Department of Education falls on the side of Phonics. In reading the Purpose for Reading First the phrase “scientifically based research” is mentioned 4 times in less then 10 paragraphs. I am a big believer in methodology and pedagogy being based on scientifically based research that leads to a convergance of evidence. Does Reading First’s stance on scientificly based research and the published position favoring Phonics mean that the phonics based approach is where the convergence of evidence leads. Sol Stern writes in City Journal:

To see clearly what’s at stake, we need to remind ourselves of the gravity of the national problem that Reading First seeks to solve—and of how it proposes to solve it. That essential context is missing from both the inspector general’s reports and much of the media commentary.

After a century and a half of universal public education, and despite the highest per-pupil expenditure on public elementary and secondary education in the world, 40 percent of U.S. fourth-graders are reading below the minimally acceptable level, according to the gold-standard NAEP test. For minority students in inner-city schools, the reading failure rate is a shocking 65 percent. This educational failure bodes ill: children who don’t read by fourth grade almost always fall behind in all other subjects, often wind up in costly special education programs, and, as adults, have higher rates of drug addiction, incarceration, and welfare dependency.

Making the situation more tragic, nineteenth-century American children learned to read very well, thank you, in one-room schoolhouses, with nothing more than a single determined teacher wielding Noah Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller and the McGuffey readers. Even before a public school system existed in America, Alexis de Tocqueville had marveled at the country’s extraordinarily high literacy rates.

Happily, recent developments point the way to a solution to the nation’s reading woes. For the past several decades, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), a wing of the National Institutes of Health, has sponsored reading research at universities across the U.S, with scientists from cognitive neuroscience, pediatrics, genetics, educational psychology, and child development publishing hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that describe not just how children learn to read but why so many fall behind—and how schools can best keep it from happening.

The converging scientific evidence confirms what our great-grandmothers knew intuitively. The most effective reading instruction for most children—especially for those from disadvantaged homes—begins by training them to recognize the relationship between letters and the sounds they make (phonemic awareness), moves on to teaching them how to sound out whole words (phonics), and then focuses on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Reading science has also developed effective new technologies to assess students’ progress in mastering the skills they need to decode written language. To make an analogy with medical science, reading science has discovered not only the educational equivalent of treating diabetes but also the technology that monitors how the treatment is working.

Many people reading this will have the same questions I have as I investigate this issue. The first being, Does the whole language aproach have scientific based research backing it? The fact that phonics has some convergence does not mean that whole language does not or that phonics encommpasses all children. the second question being, While it might have evidence in research what are the field results or in other words are the rates of success as high when actually practiced in the some scientificly uncontrolled environment of the classroom. Sol Stern goes on to write:

Unfortunately, the similarities between reading science and the medical kind end there. A breakthrough in medical research soon leads to new clinical practice. In education, however, the science has collided head-on with the ideologies and economic interests of the panjandrums of public education.

Reading science is a mortal threat to what E. D. Hirsch has called the “Thoughtworld” of American education—the system of “progressive” beliefs about classroom instruction promulgated by the ed schools that monopolize teacher training. The Thoughtworld has a cult-like attachment to a Romantic theory of reading instruction called “whole language,” which recently morphed into “balanced literacy” to make it sound more reasonable to dubious parents. Balanced-literacy true believers claim that to subject children to the “drill and kill” of direct phonics instruction is a form of child abuse.

The balanced-literacy cultists believe that learning to read is a natural process and that most children can intuit the alphabetic principle and the meaning of printed words with a little guidance from a teacher and through pleasant cooperative classroom activities such as “shared reading” and “reading circles.” Basically, this approach says that kids can learn to read by reading—by immersing themselves in print. And for some children from literate homes, where print and articulate conversation abound, this approach can work.

Progressive educators don’t cite scientific research to support their approach, however, because none exists—not one study based on randomized field trials. In 2002, the whole-language-dominated National Council of Teachers of English passed a resolution attacking Reading First for favoring only “one model” of science and called instead for “implementation of diverse kinds of scientific research, including teacher research.” Translation: teachers can evaluate instructional methods by observing their own classrooms, science be damned.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, a mainstream public education advocacy group, recently surveyed ed schools and found that 85 percent of their elementary education classes don’t teach the principles of phonics and scientific reading instruction. “The resistance from many educators to [teaching phonics] has been palpable,” the report concluded. Of course, interests other than pedagogical are at stake. If a major shift occurred in teaching methodologies, tenured jobs and professional development contracts from the $500 billion-plus education industry would suddenly be up for grabs.

Such was the state of affairs when NICHD’s chief reading scientist, Reid Lyon, and House education committee staffer Robert Sweet drafted the Reading First legislation, early in 2001. Lyon had just become President Bush’s informal advisor on reading instruction, while Sweet was a former teacher and longtime advocate for science-based reading programs. With the president’s encouragement, Lyon and Sweet consciously designed Reading First to do an end run around the deeply entrenched whole-language movement.

“We knew we were battling a culture of intellectual corruption and hostility to science in the education industry, and we had limited weapons to use effectively against it,” recalls Sweet. “Reading First was created to be a catalyst, to provide a financial incentive for schools finally to start doing the right thing for the millions of kids left behind in reading.” You could say that Reading First was a $6 billion federal bribe to get districts to do what they really should have been doing already.

Getting the program enacted required walking a political tightrope between Republicans wary of federal interference in local decisions and Democrats who liked spending more federal education dollars, but with no questions asked. Compromising, the Reading First legislation abandoned the idea of requiring participating districts to use only scientifically tested reading programs. Instead, districts could also use untested ones, as long as they adhered to the principles of scientific reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

It wasn’t everything Lyon and Sweet wanted, but it was enough—or so they hoped. The two reformers bet that a critical mass of schools would sign on and implement the general principles of reading science, which would then produce evidence that this instructional method was lifting achievement in previously struggling schools. Such a real-life demonstration, they believed, would ignite a countercultural education movement of teachers, parents, administrators, and education activists who would spread the Reading First gospel.

Four years later, the evidence is starting to come in. More than 5,600 schools in 1,700 school districts nationwide have received Reading First grants. The participation level is impressive in itself. It means that state education agencies and a large number of districts have pledged (in writing) to use Reading First grants exclusively to teach according to the principles of Scientifically Based Reading Research—a phrase that appears so often in the legislation that it has become an acronym, SBRR. So unless officials are lying and just grabbing the money, we now have a critical mass of educators willing to try the pro-science side of the reading wars.

We also know that 100,000 K–3 teachers are receiving training and continuous professional development in reading science. That represents a critical mass, too—one that takes on even greater significance if the Reading First teachers appear to be improving the academic performance of their low-income, at-risk students. Reading First has pulled off something of a coup just in removing all these early-childhood teachers from the ed schools’ ideological orbit.

A comprehensive study by an outside evaluator will appear in 2007, measuring Reading First’s influence on student achievement nationally. But some states and districts are already seeing significant improvement. When the relevant congressional committees hold hearings on NCLB reauthorization, they might start by looking to neighboring Virginia, where they’ll discover a dramatic example of Reading First’s power. With apologies to Dickens, we might call it a tale of two school districts—one welcoming Reading First, the other disdaining it.

The first, Richmond, offers a classic profile of an inner-city school district. Of its 25,000 students, 95 percent are black, more than 70 percent are poor enough to be in the free-lunch program, and 44 percent change schools during the year. Until 2001, Richmond’s student test scores were among Virginia’s worst. Only five of the district’s 51 schools achieved the status of full state accreditation.

But 2001 is also when Richmond school officials embarked on an ambitious reform, whose centerpiece was a standardized reading program based on evidence from the NICHD studies. By the time Reading First funds were available in 2002, Richmond was already up and running with a phonics-based reading program called Voyager Universal Literacy. The district channeled the modest $450,000 Reading First grant into a handful of its lowest-performing schools. But the principles of scientific reading instruction took hold throughout the district.

Since then, Richmond’s test scores have skyrocketed. By 2003, the number of the district’s schools achieving full state accreditation had climbed to 22. The next year, it rose to 39 and has now reached 44.

While this is just one person writing from a standpoint of support for the Dept. of Ed.’s program we have to admit he sites bases for his support. Many will say that Reading First’s recent political scandal taints anything it supports the facts are that the methodology of phonics is supported by a convergence of evidence despite any flaws it might have. With out making any judgements on whole language i think I can at least answer some questions I had at this point. A phonics based approach does work and that if applied correctly can improve results for many children in most situations.

This Bush Education Reform Really Works
By Sol Stern
City Journal
Winter 2007

Reading First Web Site

I have an 11 month old daughter and like most new parents my wife and I are constantly worrying about bench marks. We worry about when she will crawl, walk, use her fingers as pinchers, when she is babbling, how she is babbling, when she says her first word. All these things fly through our brains and conversations on a daily basis. Believe or not we have already discussed how we will prepare her for school and whether our day care has the best curriculum. Soon my daughter will be in school and ready to start to learn how to read. So the question to ask at this point is: How do we teach a child how to read? 

Here is where my status as parent and future educator converges. In education there is a battle in this area of teaching reading. Many teachers believe in a whole language approach while others believe phonics is the best way. I want to use this post to cover the basics such as definitions and a little bit of history so that I (or we) at least have a starting point in my effort to come to a conclusion. 

So what is the difference between whole language and phonics? Jenny Curtis writes on Superkids.com:

What’s the difference?
The traditional theory of learning established in the 19th century draws on the notion that children need to break down a complex skill, like reading, into its smallest components (letters) before moving on to tackle larger components (sounds, words, and sentences). Phonetic reading instruction applies this theory; children are taught to dissect unfamiliar words into parts and then join the parts together to form words. By learning these letter-sound relationships the student is provided with a decoding formula that can be applied whenever they encounter an unfamiliar word.

Whole language learning is less focused on rules and repetition than is phonics. It stresses the flow and meaning of the text, emphasizing reading for meaning and using language in ways that relate to the students’ own lives and cultures. Whole language classrooms tend to teach the process of reading, while the final product becomes secondary. The “sounding out” of words so central to phonics is not used in whole language learning. Instead, children are encouraged to decode each word through its larger context.

The stance of educators on this subject, like many others, seems to vacillate. To give a brief (Very, very brief) history of teaching reading methodology, I have used this excerpt from an article by Sharon Cromwell in Education-World:

 THE PENDULUM SWINGS THROUGH TIME

The debate over the best way to teach reading isn’t new. In fact, the question has been argued through much of the 20th century. A number of different approaches to teaching reading have dominated during that time span.

The “look-say” reading method was widespread for 30 years, from around 1940 to 1970. From around 1970 to 1990, phonics was popular. And whole language gained a foothold around 1990. Several other approaches have also been utilized for a briefer time before they were found wanting.

After a global approach, such as the “look-say” method, is popular for at time, the pendulum tends to swing in the opposite direction toward a more analytical approach, such as phonics. Proponents of one method are often extremely critical of another method, as if the effectiveness of each method precluded the success of another.

After reading this, what do think is the best approach? I can’t come to a conclusion from the tiny bit of information I have sited here but at least I understand what the different approaches are at a base level.

Jenny Curtis
Superkids
SuperKids Software Review – Phonics vs. Whole Language: Which is Better?

Sharon Cromwell
Education World
Whole Language and Phonics: Can They Work Together?

Before I get to far along in my “Blog journey” to discover the in and outs of the different methodologies of teaching reading I want to mention that it takes more then just the perfect methodology to teach a child to read. If we could just look at the different methods in teaching a child to read I am sure that some sort of conclusion would be ascertained fairly quickly. We all know that all children are the same though. They come from different cultures, with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Some students have learning difficulties while others have different disabilities. There are many different variables that come into play in any given classroom, let alone school, district, state, or country that the question of what methodology is pretty tricky. The complexity of the issue was illustrated in a column by a Carol Cedarholm, a reading teacher in Ithaca, NY in which she writes:

As a result of my 23 years of teaching reading in the Ithaca City schools, I can say with certainty that the ‘direct instruction’ method is a method used in most classrooms in Tompkins County. Any teacher who stands in front of a group of first graders and tells them: “This is the letter A. It makes the sound ‘aaaaaaaaaa’ like at the beginning of the word apple. Let me show you how to make an ‘A’ …” is using a “direct instruction” method. This is a tried and true method but not the only one.

Teaching quality is also a very critical factor in reading success as a letter writer to The Journal pointed out on Nov. 9 (“Improving teaching is the key”). Poverty, racism, parents’ level of education and health care are just a few others. I don’t mean to minimize the importance of teaching method on reading success. In fact the best teacher won’t be successful using an ineffective method. Neither will an excellent teacher be successful using Direct Instruction/Reading Master if the child is hungry, hasn’t slept, hasn’t been read to, can’t focus, has only 30 minutes of reading instruction four times a week, etc. My point is that Lion, although well meaning, exhibits a naïve understanding of the task of teaching reading in today’s world.

I don’t think anyone can argue that some of the points being made in the above article. There is much more to teaching reading, or any material/subject for that matter, then just going into a classroom with what you believe is the best method and giving a lesson based solely on that method. Children have issues beyond just receiving and working through the curriculum we are using. This does not mean that we as teachers throw up our arms and say, “Its not my fault Joey or Suzy can’t read because she’s poor and he’s ADHD,”.  What we have to do is take the different dynamics that a child or set of children bring to the educational table and be aware of them when coming to decision on the tactic we will use. As I discuss the different methods use in teaching reading I will try touch on the different aspects involved in a child’s learning process and each methods viability in addressing these variables.

Carol Cedarholm – Guest Columnest                                                                                            January, 3, 2007

The Ithaca Journal – www.theithacajournal.com – Ithaca, NY

 I am taking this class at the same time I am taking a taking a Ed. Psych. class. In that class we are talking about scientific based research, NCLB, etc. Pretty much what you would expect at the beginning of this type of class. In an example that is used in that class they talked about the “whole language” method of teaching reading. This has got me very interested in the subject matter of the different methodologies of teaching reading. I should say at this point that I know very little about this subject and I don’t have a stance on it at this point (knowing myself, a great big “yet” should be added) but it interests me greatly. I should also add that I am a social studies major with an english minor so some of you English majors will have to be patient as I post and work through the concepts.

As I said I have just barely begun to investigate the surface of this subject but as I researched whole language I stumbled across this article about the reading program in the Butte, MT schools:

“We were consistently in the 80th percentile and suddenly we were in the 60th percentile,” said Judy Jonart, the district’s curriculum director. The statistics showed many of Butte’s students were struggling with reading, a building block for all other subjects.                                                                        So began a dramatic shift in the way the district’s nearly 4,600 students attacked reading: They hired an outside consultant, used a different curriculum and added reading coaches in every school. More time was devoted to the subject: teachers and students spent at least two hours of every school day learning and practicing reading.

New system                                                                                                            Just a few years ago, the buzz word in reading was the “whole language” method. Whole language devotees believe all children can learn to read naturally, encouraged by immersion in good books and literature that will make them lifelong and eager readers.”You couldn’t find anything that wasn’t whole language,” Jonart said of the materials available to districts.But Butte statistics showed whole language wasn’t working and parents complained the system did not emphasize phonics and “drill and kill” methods with which they learned to read.In 2001, the district started a pilot program in five classrooms using a program called Reading Mastery, which emphasized phonetic awareness – especially in the younger grades – and fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and other skills.Developed by a scientist, Reading Mastery was resisted by teachers who weren’t sold on the new curriculum.                        “It’s scripted and it’s very strict,” Jonart said.                                                    The system provides a script from which teachers read and lessons are plotted, leaving some teachers feeling robbed of creativity and spontaneity. The program also requires total devotion or “fidelity,” meaning teachers must not stray from the boundaries.

Reading earlier, faster                                                                                      But the latest batch of numbers offered encouragement.Not only are kids reading earlier, they are advancing faster. By fourth grade, some students have tackled high school material from 20 years ago with Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.”To be sure, in Shannon Tregidga’s class on a recent day, about 20 students sat in front of a board filled with small words as Tregidga – who had perfect command over squirming bodies – practiced each word, taken from their reading, in rapid-fire fashion.Weeres encourages teachers to put their mark on the system, even though it is scripted, paced and repetitive. “I say you can’t take anything away, but you can add (to the lesson),” she said.

Reading this article left me with many different feelings. None of which reduced my interests on the methodology of teach reading. First and foremost I think that the article leaves me with a great sense of hope. That a school district could come to this point from where they were is exciting. It proves that it can be done. At the same time it is discouraging to think that the art or craft of teaching has been taken away from these teachers. Their personal teaching style has been replaced by a system that does not allow for modification. No matter what the success rate is these teachers have to feel less personal satisfaction. There experience and insight has been replaced by specific inflexible modules.

This article also leaves me with some serious questions. What is the background of the teaching system/methodology? Was it studied/researched/published? While the success rate of the whole district went up, were there instances of children that had trouble learning this way? For those children, does the school allow for different methods to be tried? While these children are learning to read, do they understand the meaning, concepts of text or literature at later ages?

There are just so many questions that this article has left me with. I look forward to investigating and researching about “Reading Mastery” (phonics based) and about other methods such as whole language. I plan to move from this whole language vs. phonics debate to literary theory. I hope to touch on some of Jeff Wilhelm’s articles and books besides “”You Gotta Be the Book” and use this as a base to explore other theorist to iclude competing points of view.  This is the beginning of this trip but hopefully by the end of the semester I will have a much better view and stance on the subject.

As sources for this blog I am using the education feeds from the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Seattle Times. I am using a number of search quesries to include “Whole Language Methods”, “Reading Mastery”, “Teaching Reading”, and “Literary Theory” with these leading me to other searches at times. I also am using the blog “Phonics – The resource for teaching children to read”. As they sources change as my subject changes i will be sure to update them.

Strict reading program puts Butte schools in spotlight

1/9/2007 at 12:18 am

By Leslie McCartney
Montana Standard

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/01/09/news/state/67-reading.txt