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.”
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.
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
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
. . .
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)
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