With all the talk in the news about politics and education, it's good to look at what is really going on in regards to education and literacy:

These statistics expose serious economic consequences for individuals, state governments, and the nation.

In order to address these issues, we must first understand what is creating this great literacy deficit. There are three key contributors:

1. The presence of learning disabilities.
2. The fact that reading is a declining activity among teenagers and adults.
3. Secondary teachers receive limited training in adolescent literacy instruction. Each factor is discussed in more detail below.

Learning Disabilities

Learning disabilities are common sources of reading problems. The most common and carefully studied learning disability is dyslexia, which affects five to 17 percent of the school-aged population, and affects 80 percent of individuals who are characterized as having a learning disability (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2001). Dyslexia affects reader’s ability to convert visual information into sounds, which makes it difficult to decode words and identify them. Fortunately,  research has shown that the brain can be “rewired” to learn these relationships with intensive phonics training (Shaywitz, S., 2003).

It is important to identify and address these deficits. Shaywitz & Shaywitz (2001) assert that “both dyslexic and non-impaired readers improve their reading scores as they get older, but studies show that the gap between the dyslexic and the non-impaired readers remains” (p. 3). In addition, Archer, et. al. (2003) report that, “74% of students identified with reading disabilities in third grade continue to have significant reading challenges in ninth grade (p. 89),” which illustrates the importance of providing appropriate intervention in intensive, systematic phonics training to struggling readers.

Reading Rates

A second contributing factor to low literacy skills is the fact that reading is declining as an activity among teenagers. Less than one-third of 13-year-olds in America read daily, and fifteen- to 24-year-olds spend 7-10 minutes a day reading voluntarily (NEA, 2007). When reading does occur, it often competes with other forms of media, which suggests “less focused engagement with a text” (p. 10). Struggling readers are less often engaged in text because they are less motivated to read (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Consequently, as the complexity of text increases, students fall further behind.

Teacher Training

A third factor that contributes to the challenges of appropriately addressing adolescent literacy deficits is the fact that secondary teachers receive limited training in adolescent literacy instruction. All secondary teachers are not expected to be trained in teaching foundational literacy skills; however, if content teachers were familiar with some of the literacy strategies used by the reading specialist or special education teacher, they could pre-teach difficult vocabulary and their class could decode difficult words together (NIFL, 2008).

In addition, secondary teachers are often frustrated that remediation services are less available and less effective for their struggling adolescent students than they are for struggling young readers and that fewer resources are directed to secondary schools for literacy. Reading and literacy specialists, administrators, and teachers are all important resources to systematically address struggling readers’ needs (NIFL, 2008).

Conclusion

In order to improve education and build a more literate nation, teachers must be trained to teach reading to students with learning disabilities and learn how to teach foundational literacy skills. As teachers learn how to remediate reading difficulties, struggling students will be more motivated to read because it will be less taxing. Teachers also need to help students discover texts that relate to their interests and match their reading level.

This post was adapted from an article on Heidi Hyte’s blog, ESLtrail.com

By Guest Writer, Tricia Underwood

In recent years, discussion has increased around the apparent decline of U.S. reading and literacy levels. Remarks like "Kids today aren't reading, they're on gaming consoles", "Reading comprehension in the U.S. is way down", and "Our education system has gotten significantly worse" seem to pepper many conversations around these topics.

Different groups of children have different learning styles. Meanwhile, every teacher is unique and each classroom scenario is constantly changing. So educators are looking at hard data and seeking new solutions to help children improve their reading skills. In doing so, students will hopefully excel in grade school and high school, select higher education, choose their college majors, graduate and successfully push forward into their career lives. Here are a few examples of current work in the area of literacy and reading.

How Does the U.S. Rank in Reading Comprehension?

So, what does the real, hard data look like? The OECD's Program for International Student Assessment compared reading, math and science competency among 15-year-old students across 65 different nations in a 2009 study. The results found that the U.S. ranks 14th in adolescent reading literacy, behind China, Korea, Canada and Japan. This 'average' score forced many U.S. educators to renew their focus on answering the question, "How do we get better?"

Phonics Method Vs. Whole Language Approach

To teach reading, educators have traditionally used two major approaches -- the phonics system and the whole language method. The phonic system teaches beginning readers to sound out new words, and blend the "sound spelling pattens", according to a recent article in the The Vancouver Sun. The whole language method is designed to help students learn words and their meaning based on context. In terms of practicality, both methods are used often in order to teach beginning-level readers.

Canada's "New Focus on Reading"

Canada is making good strides toward increasing its literacy and reading rates. British Columbia's newly appointed superintendent of reading heads up a new program called A New Focus on Reading, which is studying research on how to enrich the reading skills of children in kindergarten to 3rd grade. According to the Vancouver Sun article, only 70 percent of 4th grade students 64 percent of 7th graders are meeting or exceeding British Columbia's reading-level expectations.

Understanding how each individual learns is a large facet of the research. Since different approaches work for different students, reading literacy should be taught with an extremely dynamic approach, custom-catered to each type of student. Student achievement is seen as being linked to "approaches that fundamentally change what teachers and students do every day, in prioritizing the teaching of reading from kindergarten through Grade 12."

Video and Computer Education-Based Games

In addition to traditional teaching methods, the use of computer and video game playing for learning has also entered the reading literacy debate. The trick is in finding a balance between technological innovation and real-world human interaction. Virtual Strategy magazine shows research that teaching children to read through educational sites like Reading Eggs can help improve U.S. literacy skills. James Paul McGee, professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, supports learning through games.

“Motivation is the most important factor that drives learning. When motivation dies, learning dies and playing stops. Since good games are highly motivating to a great many people, we can learn from them how motivation is created and sustained,” explains McGee, according to Virtual Strategy Magazine.

Finding a universally successful method for improving reading literacy and teaching children to read has always been a unique challenge. Perhaps there isn't one ideal method, but a combination of fusing phonics with a context-based approach and the use of educational computer games to create an eclectic and dynamic teaching environment. Finding the path to increased literacy remains an exciting challenge for educators and parents to find a useful solution.

Sometimes all it takes to help your struggling readers make dramatic improvements in their reading skills are simple tweaks to the way things are presented.

Here is Reading Horizons Teacher Trainer, Shantell Berrett, discussing best practices in the process that reading is taught to beginning and struggling readers:

Here are Shantell’s tips for teaching various aspects of reading:

Letter Instruction

1. Teach upper and lower case forms of each letter, name of letter, and sound of letter.
2. Put the letter into a slide.
3. Put the slide into a word.
4. Put the slide into a nonsense word.

Learn more & earn PD credit in Reading Horizons free webinar: Helping Students Transfer & Retain Decoding Skills >

Blend Instruction

1. Introduce blend and it’s sound.
2. Put blend into a slide.
3. Put slide into a word.
4. Put slide into a nonsense word.

Phonetic Skills

1. Mark vowels and blends left to right underneath the word.
2. Mark consonants working back to the vowels to figure out if it’s long or short.

Decoding Skills

1. Mark vowels and blends left to right underneath.
2. Use decoding skills to work through the word to divide the word into syllables.
3. Mark consonants working back to the vowels to figure out if it’s long or short.

These processes and sequences are important because what most struggling readers lack is processing and sequence ability. The way they see words is from more of a spatial perspective. The sequence that information is presented is vital to help them rewire their brains to see words in a way that will allow them to improve their reading skills.

There are countless tools designed to improve the education system: common core standards, standardized tests, teacher evaluations, etc, etc, etc... But are these strategies effective? Are they really preparing students to be successful, innovative, and productive members of society?

Recently, Rick Roach, a member of Florida’s Orange County Board of Education, decided to take the standardized test required of all 10th grade students in his state, here are some excerpts from his experience:

‘[The chairman] said that by 2013 or 2014, he wanted 50 percent of the 10th graders reading at grade level....I’m thinking, ‘That’s horrible.’ Right now it’s 39 percent of our kids reading at grade level in 10th grade. I have to tell you that I’ve never believed that that many kids can’t read at that level. Never ever believed it. I have five kids of my own. None of them were superstars at school but they could read well, and these kids today can read too.

"So I was thinking, ‘What are they taking that tells them they can’t read? What is this test?"

He asked someone who works at the board to help him take the FCAT but state law only allows it to be taken by students, so it was arranged for him to take a version of it.

On the reading section, he scored 62 percent, a ‘D’ in Orange County. On the math, he said he knew none of the answers but guessed correctly on 10 of the 60.

“On the FCAT, they are reading material they didn’t choose. They are given four possible answers and three out of the four are pretty good. One is the best answer but kids don’t get points for only a pretty good answer. They get zero points, the same for the absolute wrong answer. And then they are given an arbitrary time limit. Those are a number of reasons that I think the test has to be suspect.

It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelors of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.

I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.

It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.”

Aside from discovering the rants of Rick Roach, I have also run across several articles this past week about the common core standards being unrealistic and leaving little time for what younger students need the most: play, social skills, and the arts.

By increasing the number of standards teachers and students must master perhaps we are actually lowering the standard of education. Suffocating creative thought. Teaching every single child in our nation the same things, the same way of thinking, instead of teaching them to think differently and come up with new ways to solve problems.

Undoubtedly there is foundational knowledge that is important for students to know, but often that knowledge doesn’t compare to the value of creativity, innovation, and problem solving – skills that are difficult to measure by the only measure most education systems use: standardized testing.

As so well put by Annie Profitt (Goldie Hawn) in the 1987 movie, Overboard:

“My children are in need of medical assistance! And you can sit here and smugly lecture me on the importance of tests? Tests which exist to pigeonhole children's potential, a thing which cannot possibly be measured!”

More and more, people are realizing that standardized testing is not an effective measure of student achievement or potential. What do you think should be changed? How should students' be assessed?

Recently, Dr. Robin Lovrien Schwarz presented a very resourceful webinar for Reading Horizons on teaching emerging literacy to non-literate ELL students (with an emphasis on adult learners). Here are some of the questions and answers from the presentation:

What is the difference in the timeline of learning these skills between a kindergartener and an ELL adult?

We have no norms whatsoever for non-literate adult learners particularly those coming from a different language. It is very difficult to say what is normal. But don’t forget that a kindergarten child has already spent 6 years pursuing pre-reading training and has heard language and played with literacy based tools, such as books and toys with letters. It’s not comparable to compare a non-literate adult to a kindergarten child.

It was said that English readers start in the left corner and read down the page, has this changed with the prevalence of internet use?

No.

What are some of the significant differences between students from oral cultures and literate cultures who have not themselves participated in literacy?

There are two big differences between these groups. One is, a person from a literate culture knows that books and signs contain important information that is helpful to them. A person from an oral culture has no orientation to text whatsoever – so they aren’t even looking for information from text. The other thing is that people who come from oral cultures have a heightened sense of oral information.

How to differentiate whether a ELL student has a learning disability or if the student is just taking longer to learn the material?

It’s almost impossible to determine that and besides even if you did determine that you would still teach them in the same way – start with what they know and gradually build on that. You should rarely focus on learning disabilities when it comes to ELL students.

Does the age of the non-literate ELL learner affect their success in accomplishing literacy?

Probably… but there is little scientific data on this. We do know that age makes processing more difficult for older learners. But  I have worked with learners that are in their 70’s and 80’s that have had success. It is very individualized.

Where do you stand on teaching literacy through a student’s first language rather than English (their 2nd language)?

No question it’s easier to teach students that are literate in their first language, however, students that are not literate in their 1st language may not want to learn literacy in their 1st  language because it doesn’t offer them much value. Also many of these learners do not have a written language in their 1st language.

Click here to watch the entire webinar and to download the presentation slides! >