by Sarah Major
WE ARE NOT REACHING A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF OUR CHILDREN:
The data:
“Many people know that about 42 percent of 4th graders score below basic in overall reading skill on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In Washington, D.C., where I am currently studying reading intervention, the proportion of students beyond 3rd grade who cannot read well enough to participate in grade-level work is between 60 and 70 percent, depending on the grade and year of assessment. Too few children can compete in higher education and about half fail to complete high school. In this community [Washington DC], the rate of adult illiteracy — reading below 4th grade level — is 37%, the highest in the nation. Nationally, 25% of all adults are functionally illiterate."
Dr. Moats is project director for a four-year longitudinal study of early reading intervention in the Washington, D.C., public schools.
DYSLEXIA AS A FACTOR:
According to research from the National Institutes of Health, Dyslexia is the most common reason a bright child will struggle with spelling, writing, or reading, and dyslexia affects 20% of our population. According to NIH research, 80 percent of children with a Learning Disability actually have dyslexia. Dyslexia is by far the most common learning disability.
All children with dyslexia can read—up to a point. But auditory processing problems prevent them from hearing all the individual sounds in a word. So they don’t read by sounding out. Instead, they rely on alternative strategies: context clues (pictures and a predictable or familiar story), the shapes of words, and guessing based on the first letter or two. This will only take them so far, however.
WHY DO BRIGHT CHILDREN STRUGGLE WITH READING?
Research:
“At any age, poor readers as a group exhibit weaknesses in phonological processing and word recognition speed and accuracy, as do younger poor readers (Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Shankweiler et al., 1995). At any age, when an individual's reading comprehension is more impaired than his or her listening comprehension, inaccurate and slow word recognition is the most likely cause" (Shankweiler et al., 1999).
"Early intervention for reading problems reduces the number of students identified as learning disabled (Dickson & Bursuck," 1999; Jenkins & O'Connor, O'Connor 2000).
In my work, I chat with parents regularly about their Kindergarten through middle-school-aged children who still cannot read. My passion is to make learning easier for our children, so hearing about their struggles and discouragement really tugs at my heart.
Back in the early 1990's, I began to seriously question why bright children can struggle to learn to read. It just didn't make sense to me! So answering that question became the driving force behind everything I did, and as I worked with children, that question guided every choice I made.
The key for me was in observing the child. My eyes never left their faces because I wanted to know immediately if what I was doing was reaching them or not. Chances were if I got this look from a child, I was heading down the wrong path!
HOW CAN WE SUPPORT OUR CHILDREN WHO ARE STRUGGLING TO READ?
The first step is to focus on the ways in which children learn most naturally.
LET'S CONSIDER TEACHING TO TODAY'S CHILD
I hear from so many parents that when their kindergarteners struggle to learn to read, they are screened or tested to identify a possible disability. I understand that acquiring a label can be very helpful as it unlocks doors to services that would be unavailable otherwise, but we need to be so careful! If the child in question is naturally a visual/right-brained learner, chances are that the traditional ways of teaching reading won't synch with the way they learn. So rather than rushing to test the child for disabilities, it would be helpful to first consider the child's best learning strengths and capitalize on those.
TECHNOLOGY IS A FACTOR:
The traditional way of teaching reading worked okay decades ago, before the age of technology, but our children today do not resemble the children of the 1950s. The brains of children today have been shaped by frequent exposure to brightly-colored images flashing and dancing on screens. Their developing, plastic, brains have been literally rewired so as to make strongly visual learners from children who might not have been markedly visual in their learning style. And then when they go to school, they are taught in ways that worked better back in the day when children were not exposed to technology, entertained by technology, and amused by technology.
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT IS A FACTOR:
Actually, the way we teach reading today didn’t work perfectly back then because, while traditional ways of teaching reading works perfectly for left-brain dominant learners, for young children it doesn't work as well because young children are developmentally in a right-brain dominant stage up to about age 7. So teaching them to read using a wholly left-brained approach is not efficient and can lead to discouragement and failure.
LET'S CONSIDER HOW TO HELP CHILDREN BE SUCCESSFUL IN READING
Traditionally, the assumption is that all children must be able to learn and manipulate individual sounds before learning whole words. That phonemic awareness is a predictor of success in learning to read. But there are many children that learn best, learn successfully, from whole to part – just like there are many adults who must see the big picture in order to make sense out of the details.
We have worked so hard using this correct way of teaching reading over the years, but many children are still unable to read, and some children who can read words do not comprehend what they have read. They can recognize words, but they cannot extract meaning from those words. In the 178 years since the McGuffey Readers were published, we have not deviated from plain symbols.
MY CONCERNS OVER RUSHING TO LABEL A CHILD
Many children are growing up with a label of disabled. The reason this concerns me is because that label sets the standard for the child. What we believe about the child is what they will believe about themselves. If we say they are disabled because they couldn't learn to read in Kindergarten, they will believe us and will rise no higher than that label.
HERE'S AN IDEA
Why don't we expose our youngest children and those who are struggling to the colorful, engaging, friendly, funny words we have available. Children are drawn to the color, the pictures, the humor, the story on each SnapWords® card.
The reason children are engaged by SnapWords® is that their brains are made for learning and their brains love the design elements that are utilized. When children don’t engage, it is a sign that their brain does not recognize the material as friendly.
o The images carry the plain word into visual memory,
o The images are recalled later even when the child is reading the plain word in a book.
o Also, the images show what the words mean!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah has homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child1st.com
800-881-0912
WE ARE NOT REACHING A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF OUR CHILDREN:
The data:
“Many people know that about 42 percent of 4th graders score below basic in overall reading skill on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In Washington, D.C., where I am currently studying reading intervention, the proportion of students beyond 3rd grade who cannot read well enough to participate in grade-level work is between 60 and 70 percent, depending on the grade and year of assessment. Too few children can compete in higher education and about half fail to complete high school. In this community [Washington DC], the rate of adult illiteracy — reading below 4th grade level — is 37%, the highest in the nation. Nationally, 25% of all adults are functionally illiterate."
Dr. Moats is project director for a four-year longitudinal study of early reading intervention in the Washington, D.C., public schools.
DYSLEXIA AS A FACTOR:
According to research from the National Institutes of Health, Dyslexia is the most common reason a bright child will struggle with spelling, writing, or reading, and dyslexia affects 20% of our population. According to NIH research, 80 percent of children with a Learning Disability actually have dyslexia. Dyslexia is by far the most common learning disability.
All children with dyslexia can read—up to a point. But auditory processing problems prevent them from hearing all the individual sounds in a word. So they don’t read by sounding out. Instead, they rely on alternative strategies: context clues (pictures and a predictable or familiar story), the shapes of words, and guessing based on the first letter or two. This will only take them so far, however.
Research:
“At any age, poor readers as a group exhibit weaknesses in phonological processing and word recognition speed and accuracy, as do younger poor readers (Stanovich & Siegel, 1994; Shankweiler et al., 1995). At any age, when an individual's reading comprehension is more impaired than his or her listening comprehension, inaccurate and slow word recognition is the most likely cause" (Shankweiler et al., 1999).
"Early intervention for reading problems reduces the number of students identified as learning disabled (Dickson & Bursuck," 1999; Jenkins & O'Connor, O'Connor 2000).
In my work, I chat with parents regularly about their Kindergarten through middle-school-aged children who still cannot read. My passion is to make learning easier for our children, so hearing about their struggles and discouragement really tugs at my heart.
Back in the early 1990's, I began to seriously question why bright children can struggle to learn to read. It just didn't make sense to me! So answering that question became the driving force behind everything I did, and as I worked with children, that question guided every choice I made.
The key for me was in observing the child. My eyes never left their faces because I wanted to know immediately if what I was doing was reaching them or not. Chances were if I got this look from a child, I was heading down the wrong path!
HOW CAN WE SUPPORT OUR CHILDREN WHO ARE STRUGGLING TO READ?
The first step is to focus on the ways in which children learn most naturally.
- In these days of lack of funding, the good news is that we don't have to spend a lot of money to support our students - it is more a matter of aligning ourselves with the way young children learn most naturally.
- It isn't necessary to keep children in school longer nor to start them earlier - in fact if we hit on the right approach, lesson times will be shorter. If we align ourselves with how the child learns most naturally, we will go from trying to insert a square peg into a round hole, to matching round pegs to round holes.
- Our instruction doesn't have to be more and more complicated and detailed. If we align ourselves with how a child learns most naturally, instruction can be greatly simplified. For children who learn best from whole to part, increasing the details in the process of learning to read only serves to deepen their confusion. The most effective way to help our young children learn to read successfully is to identify the ways young children learn naturally and to use those same exact ways to teach reading
LET'S CONSIDER TEACHING TO TODAY'S CHILD
I hear from so many parents that when their kindergarteners struggle to learn to read, they are screened or tested to identify a possible disability. I understand that acquiring a label can be very helpful as it unlocks doors to services that would be unavailable otherwise, but we need to be so careful! If the child in question is naturally a visual/right-brained learner, chances are that the traditional ways of teaching reading won't synch with the way they learn. So rather than rushing to test the child for disabilities, it would be helpful to first consider the child's best learning strengths and capitalize on those.
TECHNOLOGY IS A FACTOR:
The traditional way of teaching reading worked okay decades ago, before the age of technology, but our children today do not resemble the children of the 1950s. The brains of children today have been shaped by frequent exposure to brightly-colored images flashing and dancing on screens. Their developing, plastic, brains have been literally rewired so as to make strongly visual learners from children who might not have been markedly visual in their learning style. And then when they go to school, they are taught in ways that worked better back in the day when children were not exposed to technology, entertained by technology, and amused by technology.
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT IS A FACTOR:
Actually, the way we teach reading today didn’t work perfectly back then because, while traditional ways of teaching reading works perfectly for left-brain dominant learners, for young children it doesn't work as well because young children are developmentally in a right-brain dominant stage up to about age 7. So teaching them to read using a wholly left-brained approach is not efficient and can lead to discouragement and failure.
LET'S CONSIDER HOW TO HELP CHILDREN BE SUCCESSFUL IN READING
Traditionally, the assumption is that all children must be able to learn and manipulate individual sounds before learning whole words. That phonemic awareness is a predictor of success in learning to read. But there are many children that learn best, learn successfully, from whole to part – just like there are many adults who must see the big picture in order to make sense out of the details.
We have worked so hard using this correct way of teaching reading over the years, but many children are still unable to read, and some children who can read words do not comprehend what they have read. They can recognize words, but they cannot extract meaning from those words. In the 178 years since the McGuffey Readers were published, we have not deviated from plain symbols.
MY CONCERNS OVER RUSHING TO LABEL A CHILD
Many children are growing up with a label of disabled. The reason this concerns me is because that label sets the standard for the child. What we believe about the child is what they will believe about themselves. If we say they are disabled because they couldn't learn to read in Kindergarten, they will believe us and will rise no higher than that label.
HERE'S AN IDEA
Why don't we expose our youngest children and those who are struggling to the colorful, engaging, friendly, funny words we have available. Children are drawn to the color, the pictures, the humor, the story on each SnapWords® card.
The reason children are engaged by SnapWords® is that their brains are made for learning and their brains love the design elements that are utilized. When children don’t engage, it is a sign that their brain does not recognize the material as friendly.
o The images carry the plain word into visual memory,
o The images are recalled later even when the child is reading the plain word in a book.
o Also, the images show what the words mean!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah has homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child1st.com
800-881-0912
