Elementary reading instruction can contribute to poor literacy attainment for older children.
Studies of reading instruction of elementary schools show that there is a tendency to emphasize the process of reading rather than the ideas, information, and concepts in the readings causes a gap in reading comprehension, which is a necessary skill for succeeding at the secondary level. This may also contribute to the fourth grade slump, a term describing the trend of students falling significantly behind in reading abilities in the fourth grade. Also, a child may grasp the mechanics of reading in early elementary school, but reading is an ongoing process. If students don’t get opportunities to continually practice and develop reading skills, they will not make progress in later grades.
Reading test scores are extremely important for evaluating the reading levels of students to allow teachers to know what needs to be taught and to let school policy makers know what areas need extra focus. It is nearly impossible for anyone to lead a successful life without knowing how to read and write fluently. If a significant portion of students are doing badly on standardized reading tests, it lets educators know something needs to change. It can also help to pinpoint the problem. If one grade level or particular group of students have lower scores than the other students, it will be easier to find a connection and make a change to help those students improve. For example, NAEP results recently revealed an achievement gap between the reading and writing scores of white students and students of color in the 8th and 12th grades. Now that the scores show a problem, educators can collaborate to find ways to close the gap.
The reality about literacy myth that surprised me the most was that Literacy refers to more than just reading and writing. I never thought of literacy encompassing a “variety of social and intellectual practices that call upon the voice as well as the eye and hand”. I just always associated literacy with handling the written word rather than concepts. I also didn’t include digitalized, hypertext, or hypermedia in my understanding of literacy. But now that I think about it, I have heard the term “computer literacy”, so the broader definition makes sense.
I know that since all content areas has its own vocabulary and concepts, reading is a necessary skill that applies to all subjects and must be taught and developed in them along with specific content. One technique for emphasizing reading in a classroom like science or history is to have the students read from the textbook silently or aloud in class, write a quick impression or summary of the text, and then pair up with a partner to discuss and work together to create a shared summary to share with the whole class. Another good strategy to ensure reading comprehension, especially with dealing with a difficult text, is to prepare a more accessible source on the same topic for the students to read first before they read the more challenging text. That way, they will have a schema for the information to build on, and will be less likely to be put off by difficult vocabulary or writing style.
One example of a literacy practice is checking comprehension while reading. To make sure one understands the content of the reading, he or she can stop every section and create a summary of the main concepts in his or her own words mentally or by writing.
Discourse communities are groups that share ways of communicating with established norms, such as ethnic, online, or popular culture communities. Facebook is an example of a discourse community.
If extracurricular literacies are labeled by educators as illegitimate, the literacy abilities of many students will be ignored. For example, a student may be able to read and comprehend comic books extremely well, but struggle with reading in the classroom. If the teacher is aware of this ability, he or she can take advantage of it by giving the student texts about comic books to practice reading, or ask the student to write his or her own comic. Using the outside interests of students can be useful to developing literacy in other areas and should not be ignored.
When I was in the third grade, I had a wonderful teacher whom I largely credit with teaching me to love reading. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she took every opportunity to include reading, no matter what subject we were learning. She also used many of the research based strategies to motivate us to read and write in class. For example, she allowed student choice to give room for creativity. Every morning the first thing we would do once we entered the classroom was to pick a sticker out of a basket at the front of the room. We then would write a short story about the sticker or why we picked it. Then we would read the stories aloud to the class. It was a lot of fun for me, and since I got to pick my own sticker (and keep it) the exercise was more effective than it would have been had she simply given us all the same prompt.
The elementary, middle, and high schools I attended all had very little ethinic diversity. Almost everyone was white, spoke English (with the same accent) and had lived in the same area all their lives. So it wasn’t until my junior year of high school, when I took AP Human Geography that I started to see the world as the diverse place that it is. I learned a lot about other cultures and languages and started to cultivate a more universal mind set. In the class I learned to think of Caucasion as a race, rather than just all the other skin colors as races. I know that sounds terrible, but I really did need to be taught that since I was exposed to close to zero multicultural experiences in my everyday life, and did not get the opportunity to discuss the subject in other classes or settings. After Human Geography, I began to understand the vast variety of people and not every place is as homogenous as Farmington, WV.
The students of teachers who are recognized and respected by their peer tend to do better on high-stakes testes. These teachers share the common characteristics of teaching with a focus on critical thinking, participating in professional development, managing their classrooms effectively, developing quality relationships with students, addressing the diverse needs of students, possessing characteristics such as caring and creativity, developing a commitment to literacy instruction, and use a significant amount of class time on literacy activities.
Source
The National Council of Teachers of English. (n.d.). Adolescent literacy. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/Chron0907ResearchBrief
Own the Word
Source
Bolima, D. (n.d.). Contexts for understanding: Educational learning theories . Retrieved from http://staff.washington.edu/saki/strategies/101/new_page_5.htm
Images
Student Struggling with school work. Retrieved from:
brandonishere.hubpages.com
Parents and Schools. Retrieved from: eduguide.org
