"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?

Educators are surprised and disappointed that reading test scores continue to drop. State governments, like Arizona, are reacting to financial pressures and low scores by adopting strict grade advancement policies. And parents are looking for other educational alternatives like online, charter, or home school options.

The fix isn’t simple. The answer is.

Phonics instruction was adopted in 2000 by the National Reading Panel as the correct way to teach students reading. Many educators and teachers still oppose and are reluctant to adopt these findings. However you weigh in – the truth is that when phonics instruction is applied with fidelity, it works. Test scores increase and students gain confidence.

Explicit Phonics Instruction
Phonics can be taught implicitly or explicitly. Implicit phonics instruction begins with a whole word and looks at beginning sounds, ending sounds, and context clues. Explicit phonics instruction does the reverse: incorporating blending and building from a single letter to a word. Explicit phonics instruction is essential for students with dyslexia or other learning disabilities.

Sight words are taught from a linguistic standpoint rather than through rote memorization. This type of instruction addresses and teaches phonological awareness, phonological decoding, phonological encoding, phonological recording, print awareness, semantics, syntax, and segmentation. Additionally, it teaches language-based skills such as handwriting, spelling, directional tracking, language arts, listening, and thinking skills.

Systematic Phonics Instruction
The goal of systematic phonics instruction is to give students the knowledge required to analyze and identify just about any word they encounter-even to the point of deciphering and reading words they have never seen before!

Don’t throw another dollar toward yet another potentially ineffective reading program unless you ask five critical questions.

Find out what they are in next week’s article.

Over a lovely Christmas dinner, my brother-in-law (the veteran junior high school teacher) and I were discussing reading, writing, and spelling troubles when he casually mentions, “It’s hard to read some of the email messages that teachers in my school send out. My school principal is the worst offender. He misspells so many words!”

Hard to believe isn’t it? We have educators and teachers who either can’t (or don’t care to) write or spell correctly. We are entrusting teachers to lead by example – to give our children their very best in attitude, expertise, and yes… even correct spelling.

I just came across this article written by EzineArticles.com about spelling blunders; how timely.

The Top 5 Spelling Blunders

Loosing
Loosing is the number one, most prevailing spelling blunder! It often occurs when the author intended to use the present participle of the word lose, as in losing weight and mistakenly adds a second o. The root of this blunder stems from the confusion between the words: lose and loose.

Here's the difference: Lose means loss and loose means something is, or has been, released (or something not firmly held in place).

Example: Sam tightened his loose belt after losing weight.
Key: What do winning and losing have in common? Both have only two vowels (winning = ii, losing = oi).

Todays
Today can be defined as in the course of present time or this present time. The word today can be used as an adverb (qualifies or modifies an adjective) or a noun (person, place or thing). For the sake of brevity, we are going to concentrate on the noun: today.

Here's our issue with todays: it is a noun, sorely missing its good old friend the apostrophe. In order to form the possessive form of a singular noun, no matter what the last consonant is of the noun, you must always add an 's. To do otherwise, you will end up with the plural form of the noun (e.g. dog's vs. dogs, cat's vs. cats, etc.)

Example: John was featured in today's newspaper!
Key: If you state todays, you are essentially stating many present time, which would suggest a bend in the space-time continuum - present time overlapping present time... To fix this, simply add the apostrophe before the s: today's.

Everytime
Unless you are referring to the Britney Spears pop song "Everytime", every and time should be written as two separate words. The confusion often occurs when writers think about compound words, such as everywhere. Compound words take on a whole new meaning than if they were separated. For instance, everywhere (all places) = every (each, all, any) where (place or position).

Example: Every time you publish an article, your exposure increases.
Key: Everyone, everywhere, should add a space every time.

Aircrafts
Here's the deal with aircrafts: Whether it be singular or plural, the word aircraft is spelled the same way. Similar words include: moose, fish, and species.

Example: The aircraft are positioned on the carrier. Please watch your step when entering the aircraft.
Key: The pilot of the aircraft won't land when other aircraft are on the runway.
Alternately, this issue with aircrafts may be similar to our previously discussed issue of the possessive form: todays vs. today's. Example: Please watch your step when descending the aircraft's staircase.

Ect
No "ifs, ands, or buts," ect is not the correct abbreviation for et cetera. Et Cetera is a Latin expression meaning and so forth or and other things. Its correct abbreviation is etc.

Example: Writing supplies may include pens, pencils, paper, etc.
Key: Don't forget to pack eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, etc. in your lunch.

There you have it - the top 5 most common spelling blunders! Take these five words and post them next to your computer. Over the next week, make it a point to train your eyes to catch these errors in your articles. And who knows? You might find more!

This is a call to all educators, teachers, and parents - let’s help our children become better readers, spellers, and students by becoming better readers and spellers ourselves. It’s never too late to improve your spelling or reading skills. Learn more about Dysgraphia and Sequencing here>

It’s been pointed out time and time again that schools are struggling to get their students reading at grade level. This is of particular concern since it has been discovered that if a student isn’t reading at grade level by third grade they are 4x’s more likely not to graduate from high school.

But what can be done to solve this problem? There are several ideas that have been posited, one being that government support for for-profit schools could be the answer to accelerating the process that effective reforms are revealed.

In a recent article, the following positions were made in support of this opinion:

As Silicon Valley blogger Sarah Lacy noted, "I've spoken to many venture capitalists who say they'd love to use technology to change education, but few think they can make money at it."

Washington deems it acceptable to make a profit by reducing greenhouse emissions but not by reducing dropouts.

Ultimately, our public policy should urgently seek to better educate our children by any means necessary. We need to embrace a quality revolution that focuses solely on holding organizations accountable and responsible for improving student outcomes. Those that do should be rewarded and scaled so that we can ensure that students receive the education that they deserve using the entrepreneurial spirit and genius that have made America so great.

Another popular opinion is that the government needs not to support for-profit schools, but to support the educators they themselves hire.

Jon Steward, an unlikely voice for reform, recently said: “I’ve always found with education that individuals are the ones that make the enormous difference. And the more that you are able to empower a great teacher, a great principal, a great superintendent, that can make enormous differences. How do we empower the individuals to have the authority and responsibility to make those changes and not tie them to arbitrary objective realities or goals?”

Here’s a clip from his recent interview with Melody Barnes, one of the chief government officials in regards to education policy:

With few exceptions, every individual that goes into education wants to make a difference, whether in their work in public education or private education. In both of these markets the individuals working on the forefronts have their hands tied with regulations – whether it be standards to abide by or barriers to entry.

Why not capitalize on educators’ passion for helping students by granting them more freedom to do the job they elected to do? Do you think this would raise or lower the number of low-level readers in this country?

Courtesy of NEIRtec.org

Phonemic awareness, typically a focus in grades K and 1, is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds of spoken words---for example, to know that "cat" consists of three sounds, /c/, /a/, and /t/; that the first sound matches the first sound of "cake" and that the last two sounds match those of "hat", "rat", "bat", and "that."

Understanding that words are made up of speech sounds, and being able to compare sounds in different words, divide words into constituent sounds, and blend sounds together to form words, all form an important foundation for learning to read.

Note that the word "phoneme" refers to the individual sounds of language, and that "phonemic awareness" is about awareness of speech sounds separate from written forms of language. One could have phoneme awareness without ever encountering a written language.

Computers can present a variety of phonemic awareness practice activities and provide feedback to students and reports to teachers about students' progress. Multimedia presentations can address many different learning styles by integrating sound, text, and moving images. These presentations can also accept input from a variety of sources by letting students enter responses by pointing, typing, or speaking.

For example, many software programs for young children incorporate matching activities in which students are asked to match a sound with pictures of objects that start with that sound, a sequence of sounds with the word they form when blended together, or pictures of objects with names that start with the same sound or which rhyme.

If you are looking for a reading software program there are some key questions to consider regarding the effectiveness of the technology to teach children to read and subsequently raise reading test scores.

1. Is a process established in your school or district for reading specialists, technology specialists, classroom teachers, and special educators to collaborate on reviewing the possibilities and recommending uses of technology to enhance reading instruction?

2. What technologies (hardware and software) are available in your school or district to support reading instruction? How are they currently being used? How are teachers prepared to use them effectively?

3. Which of the five components of effective reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension) need to be strengthened in your school or district? Which technologies can enhance these components?

4. How is your school providing reading instruction to students who are reading below their grade levels? ESL students? Special needs students? How can technology support teachers in helping these students?

5. Is information being provided to parents about how technology can help their children learn to read both at school and at home?

Technology is redefining how we teach children to read. Incorporating reading technology into an individual school or school district can be challenging. If you are interested in learning more or getting a price quote, contact us at info@ReadingHorizons.com