I recently received the letter below. I pray the same problem is not plaguing your district but just in case the infection is spreading, here's an antibiotic.

Dear Jim Trelease,

I am a principal looking for some help this morning with research/documentation, etc. In my district, the preschool teachers read chapter books to their children, something you heartily endorsed on a visit to the district some years ago. These are children who have attended the child care centers here and have been read aloud to several times each day. We’ve always found them to be ready for small chapter books when they reach preschool.

Recently one of my teachers has been cited by state inspectors for reading chapter books to preschool children — cited for “inappropriate instruction.” The teacher has firmly stood her ground, explaining she knows the developmental levels of her children and chooses her books accordingly, picture and chapter.

Could you please share any information with me that we could, in turn, provide the state consultants?

— Frustrated Principal

Dear Frustrated,

Thanks for the email. The state consultant's finding on the chapter books truly boggles the mind.

Nearly every piece of research on reading today indicates the children who have heard the fewest words and shortest sentences (poverty/at-risk) are the ones with the lowest scores and the children hearing the most words and longest sentences have the highest scores (Hart & Risley). Hearing more words accounts for greater phonemic awareness and hearing more stories accounts for greater background knowledge about both language and the world around them.

Furthermore, if a child has not had serious contact time with the printed word by first grade, remediation will the order of the day. Reading to these children early is a giant step forward, building attention span, vocabulary, and general book knowledge.

NO ONE is suggesting we abandon picture books; we're advocating the expansion of the reading palette to include chapter books. Does the state really not see the damage that's been done to children's attention spans by television and bedroom VCRs? What are they offering as a remedy for the short attention span? Shorter picture books? If they're suggesting more of Dr. Seuss' "Cat in the Hat" for kindergartners and preschoolers, maybe they should take a second look at the label on the cover of the book: "I Can Read It All by Myself." The “myself” refers to the child, not the adult! He wrote the controlled vocabulary books to be read by beginning readers to themselves. At five or six, a child is a beginning reader but they're not beginning listeners. My goodness, they've been listening daily for six years — that's called a veteran, not a beginner.

It is for that very reason that we are able to instruct children at three, four, and five years of age using words they cannot read yet but certainly can understand. The majority of 4-year-olds cannot read the words “understand” or “immediately” but they certainly can understand them. Listening level is ahead of the reading level for most children until about eighth grade. Thus most children can hear (and enjoy) books they cannot read yet. And hearing such stories whets their appetite for reading them later.

Reading appropriate short chapter books to preschoolers and kindergartners lets the child know there’s more to books than just pictures, that stories don’t end in one sitting, and there’s something else to look forward to tomorrow in a book. Add to that my earlier statements about vocabulary and attention span and you’ve got what should be the most convincing and logical reasons for this instructional practice, although far be it for me to say state-employees are always “logical.”

I hope this helps to ease the frustration.

— Jim

by Jim Trelease © 2009

good librarian or reading teacher should be as good a spy as he or she is a people-reader. “Who’s reading what?” should be a daily refrain in their professional lives.

A prime example of this surfaced in a recent NPR “Story Corps” episode in which Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Olly Neal told his daughter how he went from operating on the fringe of delinquency to college and law school. (Story Corps is part of a national oral history project attached to the Smithsonian.)

It all began one day in the high school library in Marianna, Arkansas. Neal was a senior, cutting class and hiding out in the library when he spotted a book on the shelf by Frank Yerby, at that time a little-known black author of adult novels. Between the cover and text, Neal was intrigued enough to want more. There was one problem, however.

If he took the book over to the library checkout counter, the girls attending it would notice and surely tell his peers that he was taking books out. "Then my reputation would be down, because I was reading books," Neal explained to his daughter. "And I wanted them to know that all I could do was fight and cuss."

So Neal stuffed the book under his coat and walked out. When he finished it, back he went to return it, only to find another Yerby novel in its place. "So I thought, 'Maybe I'll read that, too.' So I took it under my jacket," Neal said. "Later, I brought it back, and there was, by God — there was another book by Frank Yerby. So I took it."

All together he head four Yerby novels that semester and a habit was formed, which eventually led him to college and law school. As I have written elsewhere, lifetime readers usually meet one book that towers above all others, a volume or author that “hooked” them so deeply they were pulled into that deep ocean of reading for life. Neal had no idea when he read Yerby that he was reading the first African-American to write an American bestseller, the first to sell a book to the movies, and an author whose sales would reach 55 million. All Neal knew was a good story when he met it.

But Neal was ignorant of something else as well, something he wouldn’t discover until a high school class reunion years later when he chanced to meet his former school librarian, Mildred Grady. To his surprise, she clearly remembered the Yerby incident. "She told me that she saw me take that book when I first took it. She said, 'My first thought was to go over there and tell him, boy, you don't have to steal a book, you can check them out -- they're free.'”

It’s here where the librarian-spy becomes a people-reader. Neal explained, “She realized what my situation was — that I could not let anybody know I was reading." But she also recognized a window of opportunity when it was open. “She and Mrs. Saunders would drive to Memphis and find another one [Yerby book] for me to read — and they would put it in the exact same place where the one I'd taken was. You've got to understand that this was not an easy matter then — because this is 1957 and '58," Neal said. "And black authors were not especially available, No. 1. And No. 2, Frank Yerby was not such a widely known author. And No. 3, they had to drive all the way to Memphis [50 miles] to find it."

It is incalculable the benefits that come with a librarian or teacher who knows what their flock is reading, who knows Billy is crazy about Anthony Horowitz and when she sees in the catalog that his new book is out, “Hey, Billy—I’ve got good news!” On such solid ground is built a lifetime reader. And as Olly Neal knows, it will also create a lifetime's debt to that librarian or teacher.

Judge Neal’s conversation with his daughter Karama can be heard online at StoryCorps www.storycorps.org/listen/stories/judge-olly-neal-and-his-daughter-karama.

A Novelist's View of Accelerated Reader

SUSAN STRAIGHT, if anything, is no lightweight. With six novels to her credit (including a finalist for the National Book Award), along with an Edgar (mystery) Award and inclusion in the 2003 Best American Short Stories, this literature professor and mother of three carries some ballast in her literary criticism. On Sunday, August 30, 2009, Ms. Straight took aim at Accelerated Reader's approach to literature in an essay for The New York Times Book Review entitled "Reading by the Numbers." She was not pleased with the program—as an author, a teacher, or as a parent. Below is a sample from her essay and a link to the complete work at The Times site.
— Jim Trelease

New York Times Book Review, August 30, 2009, ESSAY
Reading by the Numbers
By SUSAN STRAIGHT

t back-to-school night last fall, I was prepared to ask my daughter’s eighth-grade language arts teacher about something that had been bothering me immensely: the rise of Accelerated Reader, a “reading management” software system that helps teachers track student reading through computerized comprehension tests and awards students points for books they read based on length and difficulty, as measured by a scientifically researched readability rating. When the teacher announced during the class presentation that she refused to use the program, I almost ran up and hugged her.

Accelerated Reader, introduced in 1986, is currently used in more than 75,000 schools, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The Web site for Renaissance Learning, which owns the program, describes it as a way to build “a lifelong love of reading and learning.” As a novelist and mother of three passionate readers, I’m all for that. But when I looked closer at how the program helps “guide students to the right books,” as the Web site puts it, I was disheartened.

Many classic novels that have helped readers fall in love with story, language and character are awarded very few points by Accelerated Reader. “My Antonia” is worth 14 points, and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” 13. The previous school year, my daughter had complained that some of her reading choices that I thought were pretty audacious — long, well-written historical novels like Libba Bray’s “Great and Terrible Beauty” and Lisa Klein’s “Ophelia,” recommended by her college-age sister — were worth only 14 points each. “Sense and Sensibility” is worth 22.

“You have to read the Harry Potter books” she said, exasperated. “They have all the points.”

She was right. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” topped out at 44 points, while “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” were worth 34 and 32.

I puzzled over this system. Yes, I had to do the math. To reach her school’s required 50 points of outside reading per trimester, my daughter . . .

The rest of the essay can be found at The Times' site: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/review/Straight-t.html?ref=books

Benign, Distracting, or Damaging?
New Research on the Impact
of Ubiquitous ‘Multitasking’

ith the arrival of the cell phone, educators and institutions (including those in the workplace) increasingly feel the need to address the attendant issue of “multitasking.” Recently the issue of “texting” rose to the level of “life and death” with numerous states debating whether to ban its use while driving a moving vehicle. Many states already have banned even the use of a cellphone while driving.

The largest use of multimedia and multitasking is among the young, making the issue a concern of educators. Is it benign, slightly distracting, or harmful? The evidence of its dangers while driving is now conclusive, but where’s the research for its implications in homework and the classroom? With Wi-Fi readily available on college and even some high school campuses, it’s not unusual for students to be listening to class lectures while both surfing the internet and texting friends. As a result, a growing number of teachers have banned cell phones and laptops from their classrooms.

Conversely, more and more colleges are making their classes available as podcasts. If you think that trivializes the course matter, you might want to look at the course listings for the University of California-Berkeley (see iTunes U at the iTunes Store). Among other advantages, the availability of the lecture as podcast at least allows the distracted student to listen to a lecture multiple times, perhaps with fewer distractions.

Taking the question to a post-graduate level, as technology strengthens its grip on the workplace, individuals are increasingly asked to cover more and more ground that used to be the work of multiple employees. What are the implications? A slimmer workforce may make for smaller payrolls and higher profits but does it also lead to more mistakes that go unnoticed for too long because of the multitasking?

Abusers are losers

The answer to many of these questions can be found in a new study from three Stanford University professors (”Cognitive control in media multitaskers” in the science journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). The study offers strong evidence that the biggest users/abusers of multitasking are also the biggest losers when it comes to intellectual performance. Just as worrisome is the finding that heavy users faired poorly in their performances even when distractors (laptop, ipod, iphone, etc.) were turned off, suggesting there’s a lasting negative impact from distracted-living, at least for brain-work.

One of the Stanford author-professors, Clifford Nass, brought his findings to KQED’s public radio “Forum” and took calls from listeners in the San Francisco Bay area for a program called "Multitasking: Does It Work?" (Aug. 28, 2009 / 55 min.). To download the program as MP3 audio, click DOWNLOAD. or listen via the panel below.

Nass has been a professor of communication at Stanford since 1986, and founded and directs the university's Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) lab. The findings in Nass' latest research reflects one of the earliest studies in "distraction and communication," done by the founding father of communication as science, Wilbur Schramm. Schramm's studies concluded that, among other things, the more distractions we have before us, the less we choose to read. More of that study can be found here at Schramm study. An application of that study to present circumstances would be this: We are presently raising the most distracted generation of children in the history of the world. Any wonder why they are reading less than children of 50 years ago?

A Parenting Lesson from the
First Day of Kindergarten

Let me introduce you to the "sponge factor" in education, the largest of all the missing ingredients in the NCLB legislation. We start with a young lady named Bianca Cotton whom I met for the first time in 2002 on the morning my grandson Tyler began kindergarten.

Families were invited in for the first hour to help break the ice and I was snapping some pictures of Tyler and a new friend when I gradually became aware of an extended conversation going on behind me, in the little housekeeping section of the kindergarten. Turning around, I found Bianca cooking up a make-believe meal on a make-believe stove, while carrying on a make-believe conversation on a make-believe cordless phone. And, as you can see here in the photos I snapped in the ensuing moments, she had all the body language down for talking on the phone and cooking at the same time.

While these are our children, they are also our little sponges. If Bianca had never seen her mother talking on the phone while "cooking," she'd never think to grab a phone while cooking her first kindergarten meal. If Bianca isn't proof enough of the sponge-like quality of childhood, consider this one: Since 1956, no newspaper, network, or news agency has been able to correctly predict the outcome of all 14 presidential elections—except for one group. Every four years for a half century, the quarter million children who vote in the Weekly Reader Presidential poll have been right every time but once. They even nailed the contested Bush-Gore election.

Like little sponges, they sit there in living rooms, kitchens, and cars, soaking up all the words and values of their parents, and then walk into a classroom and squeeze them onto a piece of paper. It's simple arithmetic: The child spends 900 hours a year in school and 7,800 hours outside school. Which teacher has the bigger influence? Where is more time available for change? (See also the first three minutes of the Flash video from Jim's film which can be viewed here at Film-Parents)