Many of our younger children struggle with learning to read at epidemic levels.. According to a recent study, “A majority of fourth graders in the United States are still not reading proficiently, according to a “Kids Count” report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.The data shows that 80 percent of lower-income fourth graders and 66 percent of all kids are not reading at grade level at the start of fourth grade.”
However, most of these kids, those who struggle with the early stages of reading, are not “learning disabled”. Nor are they all on a path toward illiteracy, deliquency, or other social maladjustments. It’s just a matter of finding alignment between the instructional practices, often described as “research based”, and each student’s learning style, needs, and instructional profile. And it needs to begin in Kindergarten; a fundamental year for so many children. Sounds easy? However, within the current educational environment, it actually is more difficult than it needs to be.
Here’s how I see it: From the Education Advocacy lens, from which I walk everyday, I see patterns. And many of these patterns present themselves though practices and policies throughout the American educational system, especially at the Kindergarten level. I am sharing this with you for just this past weekend, I received a call from our oldest, who has a bright and engaging five year Kindergartener. He wanted to talk to me for his son’s teacher had shared “great concern” and highlighted that his son was “not doing well” in the reading program. Apparently, when all the other kids come together for reading circle and related activities, our precious grandson is more interested in playing and socializing rather than worksheets and paper & pencil tasks.
So this caused me to review what I know about Kindergarten as far as what I see in today’s schools: Basically, two critical variables appear to be in play right now and significantly impact why many of our youngest students struggle to learn to read: Developmentalism (Out of Whack) and Professional Development (Simply a Matter of Lack).
Out of Whack: Within the context of the Common Core, and high stakes testing, we are expecting our youngest students to perform a wider range of academic tasks than ever before. In fact, many teachers would site these changes as developmentally impropriate: Within a recent article published by the NEA Teachers Union, Brenda Alvarez shares in the June 2015 NEA journal as follows: ““People are pressured to show good test scores and the standards are being re-interpreted to fit this idea that if we want students at a certain lexile level at the end of high school then they have to be reading in kindergarten,” says the 20-year veteran. “This doesn’t align with how kindergarteners’ brains are wired or how they learn—but some [people] are panicked. This panic has created angst among educators, who have gone from a play-based learning environment to structured classwork with more academic preparation and less social development. And in the name of high achievement, kitchen sets have been put away, recess cut, and creative curriculum swapped for worksheets.” As a result, we have kindergartners and first graders being asked to do things that may not be with their developmental framework. And in many cases, we are expecting our four and five year olds to read and write when they should be experienceing play, social skills, and pre-academic learning.
Lack: Furthermore, a majority of teachers are being asked to present instruction without a solid foundation related to learning, developmental theory, and instruction. For example, most elementary teachers are not provided extensive professional development within the content of reading mastery, as such there is a true lack of training in the field when it comes down to teaching kids to read. In fact, many teachers today, are relatively new to the profession and often rely on their “student teaching” practice as the foundation for their instructional experience. In fact, in a 2011 article written by Sevil Omer for Education Nation (MSNBC), stated, “The odds that a child will be taught by a new teacher have increased dramatically over the past two decades. In 1987-’88, the most common level of experience among the nation’s 3 million K-12 public school teachers was 14 years in the classroom. By 2007-’08, students were most likely to encounter a teacher with just one or two years of experience”.
In addition, today’s teachers are often expected to follow scripted programs when teaching reading and literacy. This serves a purpose for it provides inexperienced teachers opportunity to work within a “tried and true” model of instruction. However, the downside of this practice is that there may often be a lack of flexibility and understanding when it comes to differentiated instructional methods required to meet the needs of an ever-changing student population. One of the foremost researchers in reading and literacy instruction, Dr. Joseph Torgeson, shares the following insights related to effective reading instruction*: ” I agree with Barbara Foorman, who in a recent keynote talk at the International Dyslexia Association meetings in Philadelphia indicated that effective schools are ones that consistently have a “sensible reading curriculum”. What she meant by that was this: Schools need a reading curriculum that provides sufficient support to new or less knowledgeable teachers that they can rely on the materials to help them learn how to provide explicit instruction in critical areas, to orchestrate effective practice, and to align their practice materials with their initial instruction. They also need to have guidance in how to engage students in meaningful assignments and discussions that increase their authentic literacy skills. This “sensible curriculum” should also allow more experienced teachers to use the wisdom, judgment, and knowledge they have acquired through many years of teaching to deviate from and enhance the core reading program in areas where they can improve on it for their individual students. There is no such thing as a perfect published reading program, nor are all the instructional routines in these programs well adapted to the needs of specific teachers and classrooms. There is always room for enhancement by smart, experienced, and dedicated teachers.”
As a result, we are all faced with a complex question: How can we meet the needs of our children in today’s schools given the context of Common Core, high-stakes test emphasis, and developmentally inappropriate instruction? For one, I believe we would best take Dr. Torgeson’s advice and seek sensibilitiy in our decision-making process. Also, we might want to take a serious look at the developments found within the most successful programs; I tend to face any education decision with the following question: What already works?
And within the most recent research, we often find Finland showing us a refreshing sense of sensibility within their programs. In fact, Finnish schools have received substantial notoriety and praise because of their overall performance on international performance assessments. In a recent article about the Finnish Kindergarten experience,which features a significant amount of “play time”, the author, Timothy Walker, writing for The Atlantic, shared the following insights:
“When children play, Osei Ntiamoah continued, they’re developing their language, math, and social-interaction skills. A recent article, “The Power of Play”, supports her findings: “In the short and long term, play benefits cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development…When play is fun and child-directed, children are motivated to engage in opportunities to learn,” the researcher concluded. It’s not a natural way for a child to learn when the teacher says, ‘Take this pencil and sit still.’” The school’s kindergarten educators have their students engage in desk work—like handwriting—just one day a week. Reinikka, who directs several preschools in Kuopio, assured me that kindergartners throughout Finland—like the ones at Niirala Preschool—are rarely sitting down to complete traditional paper-and-pencil exercises.”
It appears that the Finnish primary program does not emphasize reading till the children have had a rich experience within the school setting and then, typically by the age of seven, Finnish students are exposed to reading-specific strategies. “But there isn’t any solid evidence that shows that children who are taught to read in kindergarten have any long-term benefit from it,” according to Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emeritus of early childhood education at Lesley University. “Under the Common Core [in America], children should be able to “read emergent-texts with purpose and understanding” by the end of kindergarten. Ultimately, they’re expected to, at the very least, be able to decode basic texts without the support of a teacher.”
So here’s what I am suggesting; let’s get back to a sensible way of looking at reading and especially, I believe we need to re-think the Kindergarten experience in our schools. Specifically, it would be worthwhile for our elementary teachers to review research from a global perspective, including “best practices” demonstrated in Finnish schools as well as other developmentally appropriate programs. Furthermore, I believe we need to re-invest in our instructional teaching program through extensive Professional Development. It’s time we take a step back from the current “do more” trend as if our kids are in the midst of a race and explore developmental practices and policies impacting our youngest students. Finally, I believe we all would benefit from having more “play time” during school. For it just doesn’t really appear to be fun anymore. For example:
Just today, I visited an elementary school in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. When we were talking about the daily schedule and what our primary students experience from Kindergarten onward, the principal, coordinators, and teachers all shared the same sentiment: “We just don’t have time for hands-on activities like art, science, or social studies; it’s all about reading, writing, literacy, and math; there just isn’t enough time in the day to do those things within the Common Core.” Somewhere down this road, the American educational system lost the sense of play and joy within the learning process. It all feels so serious as is it’s all “business”, rather than kids play.
Again, within Timothy Walker’s article, the following impressions were highlighted: “Play is a very efficient way of learning for children,” she told me. “And we can use it in a way that children will learn with joy. The word “joy” caught me off guard—I’m certainly not used to hearing the word in conversations about education in America, where I received my training and taught for several years. But Holappa, detecting my surprise, reiterated that the country’s early-childhood education program indeed places a heavy emphasis on “joy,” which along with play is explicitly written into the curriculum as a learning concept. “There’s an old Finnish saying,” Holappa said. “Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.”
Makes sense to me. It’s time for us to rethink what Kindergarten looks like as well as the whole educational system. As stated, “Those things you learn without joy you will forget easily.”
For more information, please write larrydavis@specialeducationadvocacy.org
* http://www.fcrr.org/science/sciencePresentationsTorgesen.shtm