teaching reading
The program to aid school children with their lessons, chiefly math, having petered out for some unknown reason, my eye was struck by a solicitation for volunteers to help in the Reading Seed program. This program endeavors to improve reading skills of 1st, 2nd, & 3rd graders who are behind in their reading skills, which appears to be a major problem. I signed up.
The goal of this program is to teach reading by making it fun. The volunteer will work with each kid half an hour. How bad the problem is was indicated by the spokesperson, who declared that 1 in 5 Americans is functionally illiterate, and 1 in 2 reads no higher than the 6th grade level, for which reason newspapers are intentionally dumbed down so that more people can read them. Worse, Arizona has the highest school dropout rate in the nation. Reasons for this pathetic state of affairs include the following: Arizona, being right next to the Mexican border, is on the front line of the immigration problems; there are large numbers of people who do not speak English well here. Furthermore, these people come from a largely nonintellectual culture, and traditionally have worked in agriculture or manual trades. The matter is further aggravated by the presence of several Indian reservations in the area, which likewise harbor people who come from nonliterary cultures; indeed, many of these tribes have only recently had a written language. On top of that, in recent times there have been influxes of various foreign refugees from war-ravaged parts of the world, who speak neither English nor Spanish. Some of these countries do not even have education as we know it, and the people have never even seen a book. All this is added on top of the more usual pathologies, consisting of single parent households, or households having no parent effectively present. And when households come from such circumstances, there may be no reading material present in the home, and the children grow up in a completely nonliterary environment. Such people historically have considered reading unnecessary, because they have worked in manual trades or agriculture. However, this is becoming a big problem because those kinds of jobs are disappearing overseas, and what is left in the United States increasingly requires intellectual knowledge. Indeed, filling out a job application is beyond the ability of some of these people, much less coping with the mounting quantities of paperwork that our society is increasingly requiring to do anything. This leads to prospects of unemployability, such that a certain law enforcement agency calculates its future need for jail bed-space by examining the reading scores now in the 4th grade.
Exacerbating all this, it is now expected that children entering kindergarten will be "reading ready", because reading is being taught in kindergarten. What does that mean? Well, they must the sounds of the alphabet. For proper preparation for kindergarten, it is recommended that children be introduced to books when they are 3 weeks old -- that is, that adults read from books to them at that age, and allow them to look at pictures. Many children, as noted above, have hardly even heard of the alphabet by kindergarten. (Certain experts have questioned whether children are being pushed forward too fast, but this subject did not come up in the meeting.)
The volunteers are known as "coaches" rather than "tutors" because the latter term creates misperceptions.
It became clear that this program will be unlike the previous one I was involved in, in that the children are younger. That, it is clear, will make a difference. I have not worked with this age group before, and have some misgivings. Also, the program is more complex for the volunteer, in terms of finding and assembling materials that will hold the child's attention. In the previous work, I was working from a fixed lesson sheet. that method does not, however, work with this program, in which there is, by design, no curriculum. The volunteer must engage the interest of the child, and funnel that interest into a reading environment. The material, subjects, and approach must be tailored to each child. Additionally, approaching the child conversationally is considered important, and the volunteer must endeavor to talk to the child with questions which require complex answers, not just "yes" or "no" -- asking them "how", "why", "when", "where", and "what" -- asking them to elaborate on what they have just said. So as you see, this is actually considerably more complex than the work with the older kids. But I guess it will also depend a lot on the particular kid. Some may be easy to work with; others difficult to connect to. The volunteer must weave together with the child: pictures, words in print, and conversation about the material. The volunteer may read more advanced material (well beyond the reading level of the child) to the child, particularly if it includes pictures of interest, to arouse the child's interest, and this may contribute to his advancement even if he cannot yet read that text himself. Volunteers will not be given kids with known learning disabilities, but because such children may sometimes slide through the cracks, volunteers should be aware of such possibilities and report if they run into anything that looks a little abnormal.
If successful, reading improvements lead to improved enjoyment of reading, general increase in interest, kids who actually go and pick out a book of interest themselves, kids who use a library card, kids asking questions rather than being as invisible as possible, kids who are more conversational, improved school attendance, improved homework, improved classroom behavior, and greater in-class participation.
The volunteer has wide latitude to use material from any of several libraries, or to bring material from other sources. The speaker indicated that , except for religious material (prohibited in a public school), pretty much anything is OK, even comics and ads. Well, maybe not quite ANYTHING. I would assume, although he did not say so, that there are a few kinds of materials that should not be used. I will mention only one here: publications containing ads for tobacco. Although advertising in general was specifically recommended, this question of objectionable ads did not come up. I wonder what the policy is on magazines that contain , in addition to material of redeeming social value, also contain tobacco advertisements? For that matter, what about ads for gambling? The newspapers regularly have ads of the tribal casinos, and then of course there is the dog track. No one present mentioned this.
Pronunciation vs. comprehension: Some children, knowing that doing well when reading aloud in class is socially correct, have honed their pronunciation skills well. Only problem is, they don't know what the words mean. This is a problem the volunteer must be alert to, that the child is not simply vocalizing, but actually understanding. Therefore, frequent questions should be asked as the child reads, to see if the child has actually understood it. I ran into this same problem when dealing with certain Sunday School kids, who specifically told me that they understood the material much better when not reading it aloud.
Whenever the kid does well, he should be praised. But only if he actually does.
In the event a child stumbles along in the text, do not stop him unless he has read it in such a way as to make the story incomprehensible. Then stop him and try to get him reoriented into the right words and understanding.
A child's natural interests should be exploited, and books related to it should be sought out.
The material should be interesting and fun, especially during the first few sessions. Certain books were suggested.
The child may be keeping some kind of a journal (this was not explained very well) in which he may be writing stories of his own, such as when the volunteer asks him to describe something he has done and then to write it down, and in which sticky stars might be placed to indicate progress. If the child has such a journal, don't let him take it home but keep it at the school because if the child takes it home, it will probably get lost. Likewise with library books. If the child wants to show her mommy something she has written, get a photocopy made at the front office.
Do not do the reading coaching in the classroom; this makes the kid look like an oddball. Do it in the hallway, cafeteria, outdoors, anywhere else.
Do not let teachers appropriate you for other purposes; if the volunteer has a problem this way, report it to the central office.
Codes of conduct: Be addressed as "Mr." "Mrs.", "Ms". etc. Never be alone with the child in a closed setting. No food. No driving of the child. No contact of child outside the school. Etc. Etc,.
Communicate with the teacher.
Owing to the time, that will be the end of this entry.