Many of the developmental practitioners who teach learning to read
strategies rather than reading to learn enjoyment, themselves, are
non-readers. They don't read for enjoyment or even information if they are
not required. It doesn't have to be that way, but with the over-emphasis on
the prescriptive approach (medical model), the over-trained practitioners
focus only on the deficit and not on the language skills, linguistic
abilities and innate desire to learn that youngsters come to school with.
As Kozol once wrote--its a death at an early age. Sometimes, by
kindergarten the child's creativity and curiosity is killed. Some of us
learned to enjoy reading and learning in spite of them.
Hopefully, by example and sharing things in print and nonprint in which
your daughter is interested, you'll be able to ameliorate the damage that
has been caused by well meaning but benighted practitioners, who could not
see the words because of the syllables. They sort of got lost in the
orthography.
Michael E.
----------
> From: nate <schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu>
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: reading aloud
> Date: Tuesday, March 30, 1999 8:32 PM
>
> > From my experience, I would have to comment that typical readers are
not
> the same as those
> > who struggle to learn to read. And I fully acknowledge that many are
> "curriculum or
> > teacher disabled" to begin with. But I would want you to know that I
> have a skewed
> > experience with teaching reading in that the typical student I am sent
> for diagnosis or
> > remediation is one who has failed at several reading techniques and
needs
> a highly
> > individualized teacher and methodology.
>
> Ilda,
>
> I would have to agree with you. I have my share of personal experience
and
> struggles with exactly the students you share about. My daughter has
been
> through several individualized programs including reading recovery, and
the
> more title phonics based. I struggle personally with the
> developmentalist-readiness approach on one hand and the more explicit
> instruction on the other. Before she entered the life stage of public
> education, while not reading, did enjoy books and being read to. Now, it
> is a constant struggle to get her to read. She completed all the
remedial
> programs successfully and did fine while she was in the garden as Mike
> might say, but upon leaving that garden all strategies, skills were lost
> (transfer). My fear with many remedial programs is the assumption they
> can't hurt and my experience is they can. If I remember correctly the
> reading program discussed in Cultural Psychology were students with
similar
> experiences in which you mentioned. What I liked about the program was
> cognition was not solely put on the shoulder of one particular child.
>
> For me, its kind cylical, as in, in order to learn the rules the text has
> to have meaning, but the text is not meaningful if you don't know the
> rules. There are children like my daughter in which "schemes" rules,
> patterns etc are not naturally constructed. It is important to
explicitly
> draw out these connection within the context of its use. But the
> explicitness is not normally done is this way, some states its illegal,
> rather there is an emphasis on these strategies, skills etc. out of the
> context of its use. One SPED teacher was puzzled because after several
> sessions of drill and skill (words in isolation) those strategies did not
> transfer to the act of reading.
>
> I will probally regret saying this but I am seriously beginning to
question
> the privledged position that reading has in our schools. Why is reading
a
> book a more legitimate way of getting information than a T.V. show
(X-Files
> is very educational)? I do not remember reading a book (after public
> education) of any sort unitil my belated college career. I always used
to
> joke in reference to a book, I'll wait til the movie comes out. Don't
get
> me wrong I think reading is important, but do we all need to be super
human
> readers? I am reminded of one of Ken's example in On Reading, correct me
if
> I'm wrong, in which a gifted school had outside peoples assess students
and
> a large portion of the school population was labled as deficient.
>
> I very much agree with you in reference to an individualized educational
> plan, if it truely individualized. Too often in my experience the
> individualized instruction tends to be deficit driven rather than
creating
> a methodology and context in which reading can be successful. Fitting a
> child into a theory rather than constructing a theory that fits the
child.
> In a special education class I took awhile back one of the biggest
> complaints was lack of reading materials for children struggleing with
> reading. The books that were readable were preschool age or very dry,
and
> the ones that sparked the children's interests were beyond their zone.
> While student teaching I brought in many of my own books for children
> because of the lack of appropriate books in the library. One reason for
> this problem is developmentalism in which certain content is only
> appropriate at certain age ranges and all children of a given age should
be
> reading at the same level.
>
> Nate
>
>
>