"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance:  but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath" Matthew 25:29.  Researchers speak of this syndrome as the "Matthew Effect"—which is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

First coined in 1983, by Walberg and Tsai, the "Matthew Effect" states that without intervention, students who start out with some literacy advantages tend to thrive and grow academically, while their less fortunate peers tend to get left behind. 

This is what respected author and psychologist, Margaret J. Kay, Ed.D. had to say about the matter:

“The past five years have brought major breakthroughs in our knowledge of how children learn to read and why so many fail. These new insights have been translated into techniques for teaching reading to beginning readers, including the many students who would otherwise encounter difficulties in mastering this fundamental skill.

Students who do not ‘learn to read’ during the first three years of school experience enormous difficulty when they are subsequently asked to ‘read to learn.’ Teaching students to read by the end of third grade is the single most important task assigned to elementary schools. During the first three years of schooling, students ‘learn to read.’

That is, they develop the capacity to interpret the written symbols for the oral language that they have been hearing since birth. Starting in fourth grade, schooling takes on a very different purpose, one that in many ways is more complex and demanding of higher-order thinking skills. If efficient reading skills are not developed by this time, the English language, history, mathematics, current events, and the rich tapestries of literature and science become inaccessible.

More students fail to learn to read by the end of the third grade than many people imagine. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that all schools encounter students who fall into this category and that all schools should have plans for addressing the special needs of these students.

In its 1994 Reading Assessment, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a federally supported program that tracks the performance of American students in core academic subjects, reported that more than four out of 10 fourth-graders (42 percent) in American schools were reading at a ‘below basic’ level. This means that they could not understand ‘uncomplicated narratives and high-interest informative texts.’

NAEP also reported that such illiteracy persists in the higher grades. The report found that nearly one-third (31 percent) of eighth-graders and nearly one-third (30 percent) of twelfth-graders are also reading at a ‘below basic’ level. The latter figures probably understate the problem, because many poor readers drop out of school before twelfth grade.

In contrast to popular belief, reading failure is not concentrated among particular types of schools or among specific groups of students. To the contrary, students who have difficulty reading represent a virtual cross-section of American children. They include rich and poor, male and female, rural and urban, and public and private school children in all sections of the country. According to the NAEP assessment, for example, nearly one-third (32 percent) of fourth graders whose parents graduated from college are reading at the ‘below basic’ level.”

Thank you Dr. Kay! So, it looks like the “Matthew Effect” doesn’t make much of a difference when it comes to struggling readers. Could it be that we haven’t given teachers the reading skills, tools, and strategies they need to actually teach students how to decode words?

I say, that's a fact.

What do you say?

What do you find to be the most difficult thing about teaching beginning and struggling readers? We recently asked this exact question open-endedly to educators as they registered for our latest webinar. Of all the varying responses, there was one that stood out as the most common response (being mentioned in about 30% of all responses): keeping struggling readers motivated. 

As I was researching this dilemma, I ran across these charts from the Reading Rockets website:

So how can you go from practices that demotivate students to practices that promote motivation? It’s great to have a picture of what you want your students to feel, but how to do you make them feel that way? Here are some ideas on how you can remove the following demotivating practices from your instruction:

Non-relevance: if your students don’t see how reading material or reading in general will help them in their life, they aren’t going to be motivated to improve their skills. If they aren’t provided or exposed to material that appeals to them, they aren’t going to want to read. Not only will texts that aren’t interesting or relevant to them demotivate struggling readers, it will also demotivate strong readers.

Ask your students what interests them. Learn what they care about and show them how reading can open up information about the things that do interest them. If they don’t see how what they are learning or suppose to read connects to the other things they are learning or are interested in… they are going to feel like reading is irrelevant. 

Excessive control: researchers have found that one of the core ideals that motivate each of us is that of autonomy. We want to feel like we are in control of our lives. We want to feel like we can choose how we spend our time. The more we feel this freedom, the more motivated we are. Forcing students to read materials they don’t care about is not going to motivate them. The more your students get to choose what they read, the more motivated they will be to read.

Difficult lessons: it is critically important that your lessons are not perceived as being too difficult. If students feel incapable their defenses will go up and they will resist anything that they believe will make them feel like a failure. In order to avoid making your lessons seem too difficult it is important to use effective strategies when teaching and to assure your students understanding by constantly asking them and observing what they are and aren’t understanding.

Listen to our free webinar, “Why Johnny Can’t Remember What He Read,” to learn teaching strategies and questioning strategies that ensure student understanding. View now! > 

Frequent individual work: it is important to use both group work and individual work. Although group work is motivating for some students, your more introverted students may prefer to work alone. Switching approaches or allowing choice to work alone or in groups, allows students to work in the way that most motivates them.

Disconnected units: if your teaching doesn’t have a natural flow to it your students will get frustrated or confused and lose their motivation. When teaching reading skills it is important that they systematically build upon each other in a natural sequence. It is also important to connect new concepts to past concepts so students see how they connect. You may be using a strong sequence, but your students may still be confused because you have not explicitly explained how the concepts you are teaching relate to other skills you have taught your students.

To learn how to teach reading in a systematic, skill building method, sign up for Reading Horizons free 30-day online training! >

What have you found helps motivate your struggling readers?

We recently hosted a wonderful webinar presented by Jay Kelly, a Reading Horizons Teacher Trainer. The topic of the webinar was “Why Johnny Can’t Remember What He Read,” focusing on how to help students with a working memory deficits and how this affects their reading abilities. Here are some of the questions and answers that were covered during the Q&A section of the webinar:

Q: How do you measure working memory?

A: That is very much an open debate. There are a lot of measurement tools but there is debate about whether or not they actually measure working memory. There is not a definitive go-to assessment that is widely regarded as a measure of working memory. Woodcock-Johnson would be the default assessment that measures working memory, but there is not a recognized, widely regarded assessment. However, it is an area that is actively being researched. Honestly, the best assessment is informal assessments. A student that consistently is struggling to remember what he was taught yesterday – he probably has a working memory problem.

Q: In younger students, are there ways we can help develop their working memory?  Or is working memory set?

A: No, it’s definitely not set. Especially for younger students. The five strategies demonstrated in this presentation would be the best way to promote their working memory growth.

Q: I have found that sometimes older students are too embarrassed to admit they don't understand, or don't ask a question because they just want the class to be done. What would you do about that?

A: What I do is two things… ask questions really, really often to make sure everyone is on the same page with me. The other thing is that I make sure that all of my students have white boards (or white paper inside a clear sheet protector) and markers and I frequently ask them to scale things from 1 to 10 on how well they are understanding a concept, how confident they feel they could re-teach what I have been taught, etc... If you set the room up appropriately, others can’t see their answers, but I can see what is and isn’t being understood.

Q: I don’t see how I can follow these strategies and follow district pacing guides and the need to meet grade level standards in a given amount of time? 

A: Teachers often say if they use these strategies their instruction is going to go a lot slower, and it will – at first. Because you are taking your time to do it right the first time. In terms of pacing guides you are going to be slower the first time through teaching a concept, but retention and proficiency is going to be dramatically higher so you don’t have to go back and re-teach. At the end of the day it ends up being faster.

Q: Of the strategies you have discussed which would you consider to be the most important?

A: Of the five strategies none of them are negotiable, but if I had to pick one I would choose bundling modalities. One concept or skill, as many senses as possible, as close in time as possible. 

Q: Won't this approach alienate students who are stronger readers?

A: No. Because they are going to learn faster and retain better. This is going to help all of your students. But even if they do complain, you can tell them that it’s going to help them learn faster and they won’t have to study as much and they are going to retain better. These strategies allow you to reach all of your students even the stronger students, and they allow you to reach your students that are always struggling and if I can help those struggling students while still helping those stronger students, that is where I want to focus my efforts. The return on investment is on the whole far, far greater.

Q: During the feedback loop, how do you approach incorrect answers?

A: You want to do two things… one, you want to ask him why he answered in the way he did. Push him to answer and provide reasons. This way he’ll realize he was wrong or he’ll understand better in the end. Two, you want to press your students why they answered the way they did even if they got the answer right. Two reasons… one, if the only time I press them is when they are wrong, you will create defensiveness. The second reason is because that promotes good thinking… they might’ve guessed and got the right answer and they really don’t know the reason why. 

For more questions and answers, and to learn the five strategies that help improve students working memory, view the entire webinar and download the slides at the following link:

“Why Johnny Can’t Remember What He Read” – By Jay Kelly, MA

Heidi Hyte, Curriculum Director at Reading Horizons, spends her time teaching literacy workshops in underserved countries throughout the world and tutoring struggling readers locally - plus she’s a successful blogger.

Recently Heidi posted a blog about her experiences tutoring a 60-year-old man who can’t read. Heidi reports that she has been... “working with this gentleman for several weeks now, and as of two weeks ago, he has begun to read… He read a short story for the first time...by himself. He wished that his long-time friend could've been there to hear him. Since that time, his spirits have been high, and his motivation is off the charts. He even suggests material and strategies he could work on at home independently in between our visits.”

To read the entire story and learn how you can start making a difference by tutoring, visit ESL Trail.

Heidi has included links to many free resources including teaching tips to help with pronunciation and spelling.

Thanks for being such a great example to us all Heidi!

Now, how do you plan to get involved in the battle against adult illiteracy?

Barbara Franklin is a respected proposal and grant writing expert in the education field. Recently while working on The Striving Readers Grant, Barbara posted My Mother Read to Me on her blog as a way to communicate her feelings about the literacy crisis in our country.

Franklin reflects that when she was growing up that, “illiteracy was a term that usually cropped up in social studies or geography lessons and it was always associated with underdeveloped countries. 'Senegal is a very poor country in western Africa where most of the people are unable to read, i.e. illiterate.' Up until I entered the field of education in the 80’s I never associated illiteracy with the adult population of the United States but now I do. And the problem seems to be growing.”

She goes on to say that, “A mother’s literacy level is one of the most significant predictors of a child’s future success in school. 70% of mothers receiving public assistance have literacy skills in the lowest two proficiency levels. Children of adults who participate in literacy programs improve their grades and test scores, improve their reading skills, and are less likely to drop out of school.” (Reder, 1996).

This is why Barbara spends her extra time volunteering at a local literacy program. She concludes with this touching quote by that great American the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.:

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.