John Merrow Writes a Commentary

I'm a big John Merrow guy. Everyone should be; the videos that he puts out for the NewsHour on PBS are a great resource and an important voice in the chorus.

In the December 3rd issue of Education Week John gets the back page commentary to talk about some of the things he's witnessed in the New Orleans Recovery District. He talks fondly about a classroom he observed where the 1st graders were reading fluently from Nate the Great; he contrasts that with another classroom in the city where the kids droned through what little reading they could do. It's a nice story, and you can watch the video the article is based off of here.

The bridge too far that he goes, though, is towards the end:

Our national goal—all children reading by the end of 3rd grade—is a ludicrously low floor that may have become a ceiling. Children don’t learn to walk to get somewhere more efficiently. So too with reading: Children want to learn to read so they can make sense of the world around them. Good teachers capitalize on that intrinsic motivation.

This is an assertion that sounds great on the surface, but doesn't always stand up to the reality of the classroom.

This is my 8th year of teaching first grade. In my time I've bent over backwards to try to get some of the kids to read, but it doesn't always happen despite the best efforts of every adult in that child's life. The trick is that for a good percentage of them, by the time they got to 3rd grade they were doing....OK. I've never had a struggling first grader become an advanced reader by 3rd or 4th grade, but I have had bad readers become average readers, and sometimes that's a laudable accomplishment in and of itself.

I reject the idea that Merrow puts forth, then, of 3rd grade as a floor. It's a realistic goal with some legitimacy behind it that acknowledges the different rates that kids develop at, and it's something that I think teachers can legitimately get behind. Where Merrow is going above--"If we'd only build on their motivation, they'd all be reading like the one class I saw!"--is a dead-end path.

Read more here, if any.

Workbooks That Don’t Work

We’re making a commitment to look at every aspect of our spending, and one area that is getting a close look is student workbooks, because there’s a ton of them and they’re all expensive. In my first grade room we have two different books for reading and one for math; they cost about $40 each per child. That’s about $10,000 a year, then just for workbooks for my one grade level.

Looking at that, we decided that next year we would eschew the reading workbooks in favor of a cheaper phonics workbook; we didn’t feel like we could do without math. Even in reading it will be difficult because of how the workbook paces the curriculum, and so we’re going to have to make a pretty strong commitment to bringing in other ways to teach specific reading strategies, high frequency words, and spelling.

If you’re doing a curriculum adoption make sure that you nail down what the year-to-year costs will be to keep it going. We got caught with our pants down.

Read more here, if any.

Meme: Passion Quilt

"Monica Reading" by Anne Belov.

To me the greatest joy in teaching is when I see a kid who is so into a book that the rest of the world ceases to exist. That little guy at the back of the room who is so engrossed in Sargent Rock or The Magic Tree House or Captain Underpants that he will be physically ill if I make him put the book down? That's my people, right there. As a first grade teacher getting them to that point of independence is my #1 goal, and when they finally cross that Rubicon....that's why I do it.

Thanks to Dr. Pezz for the tag.

Read more here, if any.

Garrison Keillor is an Idiot

So I read his commentary in the Chicago Tribune, and this statement is dumb on many, many levels:

There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, especially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.

Really, Garrison? Show me any Democratic platform that rails explicitly against the teaching of phonics. Show me any speech by any elected Democrat where they've stood tall and said, "Because George Bush likes phonics, we don't! Nyah!"

And Garrison, friend: the reading wars are over. Phonics and whole language both have their place in the classroom, and in most schools that's what you're seeing. Whole language still has its rabbis (Regie Routman being one of the most prominent), but any teacher will tell you that phonics has more than earned its place at the table. Why else would all those Lake Wobegon kids be above average? It's good phonics instruction, natch.

(via the Education Gadfly)

Read more here, if any.

That’s Why We Do It

There’s a gorgeous commentary from Meryl Ironson in the November 14th Education Week on the power of reading aloud to kids. It’s not only about what we do, but why we do it, and it’s a brilliant classroom artifact. Beautifully written, too:

The air was thick with the scent of rubber erasers, recently dittoed paper, and pencil shavings. Although each paint-chipped window across the wall was raised halfway, the room was warm. The morning heat had already filtered in so heavily that droplets of perspiration formed on the upper lips of at least three of the children at my table. No one moved. It was time.

You can read the whole thing at the link above.

Read more here, if any.

An Idea That I Really, Really Like!

I was flipping through the August/September issue of the IRA's Reading Today newspaper and they had a description of a project called "One School, One Book" wherein everyone in a K-5 school was given a copy of the same book to read at home or in class. Older siblings could share the book with younger, younger kids immediately had something in common with older--what a great way to get an entire school excited about reading!

If I'm ever principal, I'm going to do that.

Read more here, if any.

How Junie B. Jones Ruined America

I've never had a child in my class who didn't like the Junie B. Jones series of books from Barbara Park.

Guess I'd better not read them to the parents.

(Courtesy of the New York Times)

Mr. Alvis wasn’t so sure about that. Nor are some of the more vocal parents who discuss the books on Web sites like Craigslist and UrbanBaby. Most of the books have earned an average rating of at least four stars out of five from Amazon readers, but the negative reviews are brutal.

“I am going to throw them out,” one said. “I wouldn’t give them away, because I don’t want anyone else to read them.”

Another wrote, “I find this the mental equivalent of toxic waste.”

Better not show them Walter the Farting Dog; they'll die on the spot.

Read more here, if any.