…extensive research in the reading difficulties of children show that large classes are the basic cause of failure in reading as well as in other subjects. ~Professor Arthur I. Gates, nationally known authority in the field of reading instruction. Elementary School Journal; February 1937. When parents and teachers debate phonics and whole language, they might […]
What’s Better than Grit? Reading Books and a Good Teacher
Angela Duckworth graces the Costco Connection this month talking about the character grit that she says made her who she is today. She wants America to teach children to have grit too, so they will be successful. She has a Grit Scale. HERE. And she runs a character lab. Her grit goals for children include […]
My Blogging Anniversary: How Has School Reform Changed in Five Years?
I recently passed the five-year anniversary of when I started writing my blog. What has changed? In this post, I analyze some of the issues I’ve written about over the years. Then, I thank you for your support. Change or lack of change in education can seem dark and foreboding, but there’s a great deal […]
Does this Summer Reading Program Bypass Librarians, Teachers, and Fun, While Tracking Students?
READS is a summer program for disadvantaged children promoted by the i3 (Investing in Innovation) Fund and The Wallace Foundation. It uses computer algorithms to figure out a student’s interests. Next, it matches them to books. It gives students in kindergarten through fifth grade 10 free books, but there are strings attached. Both the i3 […]
Preparing Teachers to Teach Reading: What Happened?
It’s easier to be ideological if you don’t have children sitting in front of you day after day. When you’re trying an approach and it’s not working, you have to back up and say, ‘I have to try something else.’ You can’t say [students] don’t fit the program. ~Dottie Fowler, a 15-year veteran teacher, 1998 […]
How Did We Learn to Read? Is There a Teacher to Thank?
The debate surrounding how to teach children to read is ongoing. What we tend to forget and ignore is how we learned to read ourselves. I think it’s important to address what helped make us the readers we are today, or what problems we encountered. Perhaps we can recall what worked, and what didn’t, by […]
Worries about Tech and the Chan/Zuckerberg $30 Million Support of “Reach Every Reader”
Reading is essential for learning, yet students across the U.S. are completing elementary school with inadequate reading abilities. So begins the announcement in The Harvard Gazette telling us about the new $30 million grant Chan/Zuckerberg will hand over to Harvard’s School of Education and MIT’s Integrative Learning Initiative (MITili). Learning to read, all of us […]
California’s Reading Crisis: Why Aren’t U.S. Kids Reading Well?
Children in California are not reading well. The New York Times reports that lawyers are suing the state on behalf of three schools, one a charter, for not following state literacy experts who are concerned about students learning English, those with disabilities, and African American and Hispanic students. Here are some thoughts when it comes […]
FORCE & FLUNK: Destroying a Child’s Love of Reading—and Their Life
We are now in the dangerous era of FORCE & FLUNK when it comes to children and reading. Here’s how it works. FORCE A frenzy surrounding reading is caused by school reformers and the media, claiming children are not learning to read fast enough. Kindergarten is the new first grade, automatically making preschool the new […]
Why Are Schools Still Using Response to Intervention?
Schools have only been in session for a few weeks. Already parents are troubled by reading problems their children are bringing home from school. It’s painful to hear of an otherwise happy child who succumbs to anxiety and distress over school due to reading. Reading should be a joyful experience. But for many children—reading is […]