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 […]
The Power of Invented Spelling: Giving Children Control
What we’ve found over the years is there seemed to be something with kids who are doing invented spelling on their own that’s really helping them learn how to read. ~ Gene Ouellette, Associate Professor of Psychology at Mount Allison University It looks like it’s best to hand young children paper and pencil instead of […]
Learning & Brain Conference Alert! Making Kids “Happy” in “No-Excuses” Schools
Teaching children to be happy and resilient, to have grit, in a “changing and chaotic world,” and telling parents their children will now need skills “well beyond good test scores,” raises serious questions when you consider the no-excuses schools so many students now attend. I am referring to the upcoming Learning & the Brain conference […]
Hemingway for 5 Year Olds? Do These 22 Things To Teach Reading Instead!
In “Forget Pat the Bunny: My Kid’s Reading Hemingway,” The New York Times hypes KinderGuides where children read the simplified versions of adult novels converted to picture books–without the X-rated parts. The whole purpose of this is to get 5-12 year old children ready for adult books. I am not one to hold children back […]
What Happens to Artists Who Aren’t Good Readers?
Imagine children in public schools today, who do not read well, but who are undiscovered, gifted artists. They are continually drilled in reading and get few opportunities to express themselves artistically. In some schools, if a student does not test well in reading they do not get to be in the band, or they are […]