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There is a basic distinction in writing that, in most curricula, receives far less attention than it deserves. It is the distinction between narrative (i.e., fiction) and expository (i.e., information) text. From grade one on, when reading is assigned, it is typically narrative material. Even in high school, the emphasis on this type of text continues. Almost all of the required books entail fiction. Continue
reading "Fact from Fiction: A Critical Distinction" »
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major publisher, is unveiling the biggest deal in its history. It is a $40 million, multiyear contract with Detroit public schools. But they are not going to be selling many textbooks. Continue
reading "The Times They Are A-Changing in the Textbook World" »
There are many "orphans" in reading instruction--areas that are vital to reading but which are shunted aside in the overwhelming emphasis on phonics. Punctuation is one of these areas. Whatever attention it does receive is a story of "too little, too late." As a result, for many children, the only punctuation you'll see them using is a period at the end of the first sentence. After that, it's all up for grabs. Continue
reading "Making Punctuation Fun" »
Tom Sticht, a well-known consultant in adult education has offered, for Memorial Day, an interesting piece about our history. It deals with the Civil War when the Union Army initiated the practice of enlisting freed African-Americans. Continue
reading "Literacy: A Sign of Hope in War" »
A new federal study has reported that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with very low literacy skills. Operationally, that means they find it challenging to read anything more than a children's picture book. Continue
reading "Literacy in the U.S. A. One in Seven Can't Read" »
I am delighted to be able to tell you that, in collaboration with my long time colleague Dr. Laura Berlin, I have developed a new reading program titled "Story Smarts." It is a 30 story, full color program that teaches children the essential skill of "telling stories" and it is available online.You can purchase the complete program for less than $50 or you can purchase sets of five stories for less than $2 a story.
Parents often tell me,
"The teacher says my child is having troubling telling stories."
"Whenever I ask my son what he has done in school that day, he never answers."
"My daughter dreads having to write her daily journal entry."
Story Smarts is designed to handle those problems. But there is more.
Continue
reading "Story Smarts: A New Program for Reading Comprehension" »
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh recently announced some interesting results of a brain imaging study of dyslexic students and other poor readers. They showed that with intensive remedial instruction, the brain can permanently rewire itself and overcome reading deficits.
Continue
reading "Dyslexia: Making a Change" »
If you've picked up a student's backpack recently, its weight may well have surprised you. Those books can be incredibly heavy. Now, through the rise of e-textbook sales, that may change--lightening both the backpacks and the strain on pocketbooks. Sales of digital books for college students jumped almost 30% from 2006 to 2007.
Continue
reading "Books Enter a New (Digital) Age" »
Recently, Maurice Wolfthal, an experienced teacher and librarian, wrote an article for the Arizona Republic newspaper on the issue of phonics education.
He starts out, pointing up the ethical problems that have marked and marred the No Child Left Behind Act--the quintessential government act that makes intensive phonics the law of the land. The problems include a whole range of serious questions about the selection of contractors and publishers (those who receive the money).
But his criticisms extend far beyond administrative misuse. He challenges the entire approach, saying, "intensive phonics promises much more than it delivers." Continue
reading "Teacher Challenges Overuse of Phonics" »
At the heart of the No Child Left Behind law is a $6 billion program called Reading First. In a front page story this past week, the Washington Post offered the disheartening news that that "students enrolled in the program are not reading any better than those who don't participate." Guided by the idea that comprehension is the ultimate goal in reading, the study focused on reading comprehension, rather than other aspects of reading such as whether kids grasp phonics. Continue
reading "Reading First –But Not With Comprehension" »
This month, a fascinating study was reported, showing that dyslexia affects different parts of children's brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. The study was conducted by Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong and was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI's), Tan's group studied the brains of students raised reading Chinese. They then compared those findings with similar studies of the brains of students raised reading English.
Continue
reading "Dyslexia and Different Languages" »
Years ago, spelling held a place of importance in literacy. As Thomas Jefferson wrote to one of his daughters, “Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.â€
For lots of reasons, that has changed. But if you want to get some insights your child’s reading, you would do well to take a look at his or her spelling.
Continue
reading "Spelling: A Mirror into Reading" »
If youve had contact with a child in the early primary grades doing "reading homework," you're bound to have seen what are typically referred to as "word families." Those are the words that end with the same sets of letters--such as fat, cat, sat, mat or sand, hand, land or fall, tall, call. In many reading programs, these word families occupy a central place --since the groupings are thought to help children learn to identify (i.e., read or decode) words more easily.
But is that really what happens? Continue
reading "Word Families: Is It Time to Disown Them?" »
When Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight show, one of his routines involved playing Carnac, the Magnificent---a psychic who picked up a sealed envelope and divined the answer to the question inside. Then, when the envelope was opened and the question was revealed, the "answer" proved to be prescient --and funny. Here is a sample:
(Carnac holds the sealed envelope up to his turban)
Carnac: The American condor, the American eagle and the American car industry.
(Carnac rips the envelope open and removes the card)
CARNAC (reading): Name three things on the endangered species list.
Now, when the answer is "You can't," what might the question be? Although not humorous, it is "How can I get my child to love reading?" Continue
reading "The Answer Is "You Can't": But What Is The Question?" »
When should my child start to learn to read? it's a question I get asked several times a week-and it's a question you can see raised regularly in parents' magazines, newspaper articles, and the like.
At first glance, it seems simple and straightforward. So it should be one that can easily be answered. Its steady re-appearance, however, is a sign that the issue is more intricate than you might expect. Continue
reading "Teaching Reading: When Is The Right Time To Start?" »
When I lecture on reading skills, I often talk about "memory for visual sequences." Because this topic is almost never discussed, the initial response is usually "If they're so important, what haven't we heard about them before?"
The question is legitimate since the role of visual skills in reading is almost never discussed.Yet, despite the neglect to which they have been subjected, they are critical to reading success. Further, until instruction catches up with this reality, vast numbers of children will continue to be condemned to a life of reading difficulties. Continue
reading "What Can A Phone Pad Tell Us About Reading?" »
In teaching children to read, the main focus is decoding. That is, teaching them how to put sounds on letters, so that they can look at cluster of letters and identify the words they represent.
While not receiving nearly the same level of attention, there is another critical skill children must master. That skill is fluency. That term refers to the fact that true reading requires not simply decoding, but decoding at a steady pace. If that is not happening, and a child steadily requires lots of time to figure out most of the words, the reading is basically ineffective.
According the National Reading Panel (http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org), fluency is the ability to read text with speed, accuracy and proper expression. The key characteristics of fluency are the ability to
• recognize words automatically and accurately
• read aloud at a smooth, steady rate
• read with the right expression or “feelingâ€
If a child takes to reading like a duck to water, the issue of fluency does not ever seem to arise. As is so often does with natural talent, it just “happens.†But a high percentage of children are not that fortunate. For them, reading remains a slow, plodding affair that becomes increasingly tense and painful. The good news is that there are techniques to help a child master this vital skill.
Continue
reading "A Key to Reading Success: Fluency" »
For years now, E. D. Hirsch and his colleagues have been at the vanguard in trying to revamp the teaching of reading. They want to have it move beyond the almost exclusive focus on "sounding out" and incorporate what he terms "cultural literacy." By this, he is referring to the knowledge that members of a society share about the world--such as the American Revolution, the Ten Commandments, Thomas Edison and so on. Without this knowledge, it becomes impossible to understand the ideas being discussed on the printed page.
In some ways, this view turns the usual focus of reading on its head. The common idea, expressed succinctly by none other than Dr. Seuss himself is that "The more that you read, the more things you will know." In other words, reading is correctly seen as critical to expanding one's knowledge.
But what Professor Hirsch has highlighted is the chicken-egg nature of the situation. Continue
reading "Reading: It's Not Just Knowing How; It's Also Knowing About" »
Time magazine, a few months ago, had, as a lead story, How to Build a Student for the 21st Century. It started as follows: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century ...and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls—every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."
The children in those classrooms who spot Rip might well envy him. He is only a century out of synch; by contrast, their life is dominated by a system of reading system that is even more out of date. It stems from the 19th century.
The problem is not simply that the system is antiquated; it is extraordinarily ineffective. Government figures consistently show approximately 40 percent of bright, capable children have trouble in learning to read. Yet, despite its epidemic proportions, this crisis, for the most part, is "off the radar screen."
Continue
reading "Can Reading Instruction Enter the 21st Century?" »
I recently received an interesting question from a parent in Malaysia. She said, "My daughter is expected to learn three languages in school: English, Chinese and Malay. This is not a choice but mandatory. Please advise me on how should I approach this problem. Is it more advisable to stress one language first and then help her acquire the other languages at a later stage..."
In the United States, of course, schools with trilingual demands are rarely, if ever, to be found. Nevertheless, in our nation with its huge numbers of immigrants, bilingual situations are common. This leads many parents to confront choices that are similar, albeit less intense, than the mother in Malaysia. So a key question is "How to approach literacy when more than one language is involved?"
Continue
reading "Teaching Reading in More Than One Language" »
Dyslexia is a topic that arouses enormous passion and anxiety. It's not surprising. With reading playing such a central role in our lives, we know the severe consequences that can follow from the failure to master this critical skill. So, not unexpectedly, lots of effort goes into trying to overcome the problem. But the efforts fall painfully short of the mark. Indeed, many of the efforts to help actually work to aggravate the difficulties.
It's easiest to see this if we step outside the area of reading. To do this,
Continue
reading "Teaching Reading to Dyslexics: It's Time to Exit the World of Alice in Wonderland" »
Michael Shaughnessy, the editor of the New Mexico Journal of Reading, recently interviewed me about my ideas for transforming reading education. It gave me a great opportunity to expand on an idea that I think has tremendous potential for bringing reading success to all. That idea rests on adopting a public health model in our classrooms.
The interview started with the following question:
1) You are proposing that we adopt a major change in our approach to teaching reading. How would you describe the current approach?
Here is my response: Continue
reading "A Path to Success: Using a Public Health Model to Create Reading Programs" »
Worksheets are a major part of reading homework in the early grades--and even beyond. And multiple choice items are one of the favorite formats used. For example, there may be five sentences where each sentence has a missing word or phrase. The child’s task is to fill in the missing words by selecting from a set of 10-15 words that are presented in a list above, below or next to the sentences. For children who are proficient in reading, this format --like most of the reading tasks--poses no problem. But for children who have reading difficulties, the experience can be a nightmare. Continue
reading "Worksheets: Reworking A Homework Ordeal" »
There is a radio broadcast on the stock market that always has a segment titled, "Now let's do the numbers."
That sentence kept going round in my head as I listened to a lecture on reading education. It focused on the idea that classroom teachers can, and must, meet the needs of each individual child.
How important is this idea? Very!
How idealistic is it? Very!
How realistic is it? Now the answer changes. Despite being wonderful and desirable, there is no way for this goal to be met in current classroom instruction.
Why? Well let's do the numbers.
Reading is the area that takes up the largest amount of time in the first three grades. So let's be more than generous and say that three full hours are spent in this critical area. That's 180 minutes. Now let's assume there 25 children in the class (although many classes are larger).
Let's assume further that the teacher is a super-human dynamo and has arranged to spend only 30 of those minutes in group instruction (focused on activities such as handing out papers, reviewing previous assignments, giving new assignments and so on). Every other minute --without taking even taking a few seconds to pause--is spent in one-to-one teaching.
How much time does that give each student? The answer--- Continue
reading "Let's Do the Numbers" »
A teacher recently wrote to me, asking if the techniques in Phonics Plus Five could be adapted for older students--ages 12-17--who have poor reading skills.
The answer happily is YES. The issues involve a host of complex factors and it's best if they are dissected into manageable pieces. So for now, I'll cover some of the issues in comprehension.
Continue
reading "Help for Older Students" »
In a recent interview I gave for a local educational TV program, one of the first questions put to me was, "Why are there so many reading programs? Parents constantly call in, saying that the wide array leaves them confused and unable to determine which program is the right one for them to use?"
My immediate reaction was, and continues to be, "Technically, there may be a large number of programs. But the variety is deceptive because all are variations on a single theme. In one form or another, they represent teaching that is based on the "sounding out" ideas and rules of traditional phonics.
There would be nothing wrong with this--if the approach was effective. Unfortunately, it is not. It has for generations been responsible for enormously high failure rates--including the current national failure rate which steadily hovers around the 40% level.
Given its lack of effectiveness, one might wonder why the approach continues to hold center stage. Continue
reading "The One That Appears in Many Guises" »
Everyone knows that reading and spelling English words is far from simple. If only our language were as reasonable as a language like Spanish where there is one sound for one letter. But our mother tongue refuses to follow that kind of simple system. Instead, it takes even the simplest of words and makes them inaccessible to “sounding out.†Take words like done, bread, love, and said and see where you end up when you put a sound to each letter.
So classrooms across the nation devote lots of time to helping young children cope with the complexities. The long-held, dominant view is that “rules†are the way, indeed the only way, for children to get a handle on the system. That’s why early grades focus on having children memorize rules, lots and lots of rules. In fact, almost 600 are offered just to get through the demands of third grade reading. Continue
reading "The Rules of Reading? The Ones that Confuse and the Ones that Matter" »
This young child says it all: "It just happened one day and suddenly it felt like 'Yippee, I CAN READ, and it made me feel different inside my tummy. I felt kind of powerful."
You can almost feel the joy that this child is feeling at his new found ability. Even in this high tech age, there are few things more exciting than learning to read. For what has seemed endless time, the squiggles on the page are an impenetrable mystery. Then suddenly, the confusion vanishes and it is all so clear. The code has been cracked! It is exactly the way the child puts "it just happened one day."
Happily, this is an experience many children have. And once they have it, the reading experience is transformed. The stumbling over words, the slow sounding out, the hesitations all gone. In their place is smooth, accurate reading.
Unfortunately, for many children, this is not what happens. And the numbers for whom that is the case are unbelievably large--about 40% of the population. Yes, you read that figure right. That is the percentage of children that government figures indicate have problems learning to read. For those children, the clouds of confusion do not vanish. They even seem to worsen as the failure and frustration are repeated day after day. Continue
reading ""Yippee, I CAN READ"" »
Almost a century ago, Samuel Orton, a physician posited that visual difficulties were at the root of problems in learning to read. Among other things, he thought that children who failed to learn to read saw things backwards (e.g., perceiving saw for was). That, in fact, was not the case but it led people at the time to view visual skills as central to reading. Even now, it is because of Dr. Orton that people still think that "dyslexia" means seeing words in reverse.
Ironically, while that incorrect idea hangs on, the rest of Orton's interesting views were essentially discarded. How did this happen? It came about when researchers found that all children showed a range of visual difficulties when they start on the path to reading. As a result, the idea took hold that visual "problems" were not problems at all, but rather a normal part of development that would automatically resolve themselves as the children mature. Hence there was no need to give any special attention to the area. And so after a rush of interest in visual processing, this realm fell into the background. Continue
reading "How Did We Ever Lose Sight of Vision?" »
It's obvious that reading requires a lot of "seeing." But children seem to be seeing fine in all their daily activities and so little or no thought is given to the fact that reading imposes a range of visual demands that many children have not mastered. As a result, in contrast to "sounding out," which receives endless attention, visual skills are almost totally ignored in the teaching of reading.
You can see the price children pay for the teaching failure when you see them
i. using their fingers to track the words they are reading because they have not learned how to track with their eyes
ii. sounding out words they just sounded out one or two lines before because they cannot recall what they have just seen
iii. inaccurately spelling words they can read because they have not developed a complete image of the letters in the words
iv. getting high marks on their spelling tests, but then forgetting those words a couple of weeks later because they do not have the visual system in place that is required for long-term recognition
v. spelling the same word in different ways from one time to the next because there is no solid recognition of the component letters
vi. using capital and lower case letters in an indiscriminate manner because they fail to "see" the patterns that govern their use. Continue
reading "Setting Our Sights on Vision" »
The shabby state of reading in our nation is nothing new. Government figures consistently show approximately 40 percent of bright, capable children have trouble in learning to read. Each times these sorts of figures are published there is the call to "go back to basics." Behind this advice, is the firm, but unfounded, belief that way back, our country was in fine shape with literacy and that the current failure is based on having deviated from the practices of those older days.
Admittedly, for a couple of brief periods in our history, some other forms of reading instructions were attempted. One was whole word teaching (where children were to learn whole words rather than sounds); another was whole language teaching (where children were to read whole books right from the start). These efforts were even more unsuccessful than the phonics instruction they were designed to replace and their tenure was brief. So for almost the entire history of our country, phonics has held sway. Hence, the call to "go back to basics" is essentially a plea to continue doing what we have been doing for generations. Continue
reading "Back to Basics? You Mean--Just Keep Doing The Same Thing?" »
If you're like most parents, "What did you do in school today?" is probably the first question you put to your child at the end of the day. And if your experience is like that of other families, it's likely that the query serves mainly as a conversation-stopper.
Most parents cannot understand why. The question, asked with the best of intentions, seems so simple! Are the children just being ornery? Did they do something awful in school that they do not want to talk about? Are they so tuned out that they don't know what happened?
Occasionally, those conjectures are relevant. Usually they're not. The question is far more complex than appears on the surface and it truly stymies many children. It only seems simple because you already have the skills to come up with an appropriate answer. And as with any skill that's been conquered, there is amnesia for the process that got you there. For example, do you remember how you learned to talk, or how you learned to read, or how you learned to play a sport? With rare exceptions, this type of knowledge is irretrievable.
Still you might be wondering, "Where is the complexity in the question?" The answer is "all over the place." Continue
reading ""What did you do in school today?" The Tip of an Iceberg" »
People often ask me how, after decades of work, I continue to feel so passionately about reading. The answer is simple: I believe that reading is the single most important skill an individual can learn.
In elementary school, a story in the history books that "hit home" for me concerned the extraordinary and often brutal efforts slave owners expended in keeping their slaves illiterate. It was not difficult for me to understand their dreadful motivation. From the time I was in kindergarten, I had witnessed the devastating consequences of not being able to read. Many in my family had immigrated from poverty-ridden villages in Eastern Europe where there was no opportunity to go to school. Their illiteracy was a recurrent source of shame and helplessness. Among my early memories is one where my aunt writes an X on an official piece of paper and then, with downcast eyes, steps aside so that my father can authenticate what she has done by putting a "real signature" underneath.
These experiences showed me the power reading grants when it is achieved and the devastation it inflicts when it is not. These experiences made reading central in my life and I have had the good fortune to be able to pursue my interest in this area through the four decades of my career.
When I started out, I assumed that literacy in our society was a given. So rather than focusing on ways to teach the skill, I chose to research fascinating issues such as the ways literacy affects the mind.
Over time, I came to realize my assumption had been wrong. Literacy was far from a fait accompli. Unbelievable as it seems, government reports consistently show that approximately 40% of normal, healthy children are failing to learn to read. Continue
reading "Reading: WE Can Grant Children their Birthright" »
Did you ever see a young child--or perhaps not so young a child--using an index finger to point at the words while reading? Oftentimes, children do this because this practice is encouraged in school. Unfortunately, it's not a wise suggestion since effective reading requires us to use eye movements if we are to effectively scan lines of print. Finger pointing can delay this development.
While it's not the best practice, many children spontaneously go beyond what they are told and make the necessary shift so that they are scanning the lines of print with their eyes and not with their fingers.
Many others, however, do not. Their visual scanning is so weak that finger pointing is the only way they have of scanning a line of print without losing their place. Is this a problem? Yes! Is this seen as a problem? Rarely. Continue
reading "Who's Pointing A Finger?" »
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