As a new teacher who strives for professionalism, I am happy to be a member of ASCD, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. The benefits of membership are well worth the cost – five books a year, lots of magazines, access to online articles and professional development, and probably a few other things I haven’t discovered yet. Anyway, I get excited in my nerdy little way when I see the newest magazine in my mailbox. The authors always have a unique way of presenting their research so that I can learn a lot in one short publication.
The topic of each month’s volume is always relevant, but none more so for me than March’s Volume 69, Number 6 – Reading: The Core Skill. Being that I was hired as a “reading specialist” of sorts, I was very excited to dive into this issue. I’ve only read two articles so far, but they have already helped me feel better, like maybe I am helping my students a little bit? Put it this way – I don’t think I’m doing any harm, but I still feel unprepared on most days, wondering if I’m doing the right things for the kids.
The first article I read was Allington and Gabriel’s “Every Child, Every Day”, on pages 10-15. The authors outline the six best practices for teaching children to read, especially those who struggle with reading. In their view, these are six practices that every child should be doing every day in school. And the good news? Most of these practices are what they term “high-impact, low-input” strategies. They have a very positive and significant effect on student’s reading skills, and they are relatively easy to implement; no special materials are required and no sacrifices are needed to time or money.
The first best practice is “every child reads something he or she chooses”. This makes sense to many educators and anyone who knows about intrinsic motivation. As Daniel Pink has argued, engagement is only possible when we are allowed some autonomy. Allington and Gabriel agree: “The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read”. It isn’t that students should only read items of their choosing, the authors maintain, but they should have their choice at least once a day.
The other best practices are similarly sensible: (2) “Every child reads accurately”, (3) “Every child reads something he or she understands”, (4) “Every child writes about something personally meaningful”, (5) “Every child talks with peers about reading and writing”, and (6) “Every child listens to a fluent adult read aloud”.
When I read the details of children reading accurately and comprehending, I couldn’t help but think, “Just tell me how. Tell. Me. How.” How do I know when they are reading on level? How do I know when they experience “high-success reading”? I’m still not sure.
I was happy to read that the authors want students to be learning comprehension strategies as a connected whole, rather than in parts. Many remediation programs focus on skills one at a time as though they are mutually exclusive, which is ridiculous. We don’t read a text to identify the author’s purpose OR to understand context clues OR to make predictions. We use all of those skills when we read, plus a lot more. Instead of learning “basic skills in isolation” we should be “reading connected text for meaning”.
The best practice that made me feel quite relieved was the last one – every child listens to a fluent adult read aloud”. I do this with my students every day, usually doing all the reading aloud. I know that they need to hear the correct pronunciation of words. They need to have some phrases, idioms, and other items of note pointed out to them. Most importantly, though, they just need to hear proper fluency. By no means am I the best and most fluent speaker, but I’m a much more experienced reader than most of my struggling and reluctant readers. Maybe I am having a positive impact on their reading skills? I sure hope so. I will keep working, studying, and trying new strategies, and report as much as I can along the way.
P.S. If I had to pick the most important sentence in the whole article it would be this: “When we consider that the typical 4th grade classroom has students reading anywhere from the 2nd grade to the 9th grade reading levels (and that later grades have an even wider range), the idea that one workbook or textbook could meet the needs of every reader is absurd” The bottom line is that workbooks and textbooks are not the end-all, be-all. Students need a great variety of real books to learn to read and to enjoy reading.
