There is no joy in reading when you can’t read at all.  The popularity of SQE’s Stairway to Reading tells me that most educators still don’t get it.  (Those that do, by the way, are our biggest downloaders of STR.)

Wonderful and just what we need. Another feel good attempt to convince the country that all we have to do is like to read in order to gain any sort of meaning or education from what we read.

Then again, Global news last week featured a segment on the TDSB recommendation that textbooks be thrown over for e-readers. Look out fundraising parents at the TDSB - you’re pockets will soon be picked for THAT fad.

That students would still need to be able to read those
“e”- readers wasn’t mentioned at all. Hey, but I bet you they’re going to LOVE the new gadgets.

Good day!

I just had a very lengthy conversation in our staffroom this lunch hour about some of these issues, especially as they relate to early elementary education.

Some very fascinating insights from primary teachers. I’ll share some of them with you later; off to class now, but I wanted to send this along as a type of placeholder!

There has been a few articles since the new year, dealing with the issue of reading for pleasure. Another reason why kids don’t like to read for pleasure, is that often homework in the primary grades is reading. It becomes a chore, and for some like my child developed a hatred for reading, because the nights that she needed to read, became a nightmare. It was easier to do spelling, than to crack open the book that she was not at all interested in the first place.

Maybe it’s just me being my usual curmudgeonly self, but I find it highly ironic that we are talking about kids losing the joy of reading.  How many articles have been written in the past few months about the ‘new literacy’.  Kids are avid users of cell phones, texting, video games, internet - and so on.  In fact, teachers were exhorted to ‘get with it’ and join the technology bandwagon.  Maybe we should text our assignments and have the students text their answers back.  Weren’t there school boards in the US buying cell phones for students for this purpose?

... and here we talk about kids losing the joy of reading - GR8 8N’T it?

Looking forward to hearing from Stephen…

I’m not going back on my promise to share some of the conversation that I had with teachers on my staff yesterday. In sitting down to try to summarize, however, I realize that I need to go back and follow-up on some of the ideas expressed.

We talked about teacher training, specifically in terms of reading instruction; we also spoke about different methods of instruction, and the need to have a whole battery of possibilities when it comes to helping those students who are struggling to “break the code”.

A couple of important ideas, however, that began to emerge before our conversation had to end:

-more reading and math specialists in primary—people that are really fluent and confident in these areas of instruction;

- more time to deal with these core areas. Taking away some of the required content in social studies and science to make way for additional literacy and numeracy work. The traditional content areas could still provide a context for reading and writing, but not as separate subjects in the first couple of years of school;

Those were the big ones and, to me, they make sense. They are probably not earth-shattering to many of you.

These folks were passionate about wanting to be effective in what they do. They feel, however, that there are systemic things that are working against their efforts: time and training being the biggies!

We shared soup, and that is always good on a Monday. Perhaps I’ll make a bigger pot next week!

“These folks were passionate about wanting to be effective in what they do. They feel, however, that there are systemic things that are working against their efforts: time and training being the biggies! “

Besides time and training, there is the board staff, along with the ministry of education, that really needs an education on all things reading. I lost track of how many board staff does not know what phonemic awareness is, and the difference between fluency and comprehension. And everything in between, especially when I was seeking highly targeted help, in fluency and decoding. It was denied to my child, because she could read better than 50 % of her peers. If my LD child was in need of reading lessons, what is the state of reading for the 50 % of children in my child’s class?  I concluded long ago, the public education system is not designed for all children to become good readers and writers. It is designed for only a small percentage to become good readers and writers. By the way, years later the 50 % quote, I learned, was determined mainly by her language arts grade, and not how well she read. I assume they felt anyone that was passing, was reading well. It would explain why her decoding and other language problems in reading and writing was ignore by the school and the board.

To support Stephen’s points, and those of others here, the following is a report from the United States:  http://www.all4ed.org/files/AdolescentsAndLiteracy.pdf

Their findings:
“There are approximately 8.7 million fourth through twelfth graders in America whose chances for academic success are dismal because they are unable to read and comprehend the material in their textbooks.”

“
Research shows . . . that students who receive intensive, focused literacy instruction and tutoring will graduate from high school and attend college in significantly greater numbers than those not receiving such attention. Despite these findings, few middle or high schools have a comprehensive approach to teaching literacy across the curriculum”

There is much more in the report, and makes interesting reading.  I’m still going through it.  My apologies if someone else has referenced this report before.

The whole mess is man created K-3 with the instruction of the day-
And,we know better.It is the Ministries of Education that must respectfully set the tone and guidance to safeguard the children they receive tax dollars for-
Instead,they play pass the buck and accept the excuses of TDSB for it`s 47% failure in Grade 3.

To add to Wayne’s link, at the end it quickly summarizes a critical link to good reading instruction in the first place, and how to overcome literacy weaknesses for teenagers.

“There is a crisis in American middle and high schools: one in four adolescents cannot read well enough to identify the main idea in a passage or
understand informational text. This keeps them from succeeding in challenging high school coursework and from graduating from high school prepared for the option of postsecondary education.
But there is a strong body of researchbased
knowledge that is available about adolescent literacy. This research demonstrates that we do know enough about adolescent literacy to make positive changes today. We know a great deal
about the literacy needs of adolescents
and the teaching practices that are effective with them. We know that skills such as decoding and fluency lead to better reading comprehension. We know that motivation and engagement are
critical elements for adolescents. We know that English-language learners face additional challenges when learning to read and write well in English…..........”