Thanks for your input. About a month ago, I had a meeting with my son's
(another child) teacher in which I was asked to have him only read the
sanctioned controlled vocabulary books that were sent home (title books).
He often reads at home and while he has some difficulty it is definitely
not the dreary sad of affais I hear from his teacher. Upon reading one of
the controlled vocabulary books, he said "now I'll read it my way" adding
the richness the text itself lacked. I found Denny Taylor's book
"Learning Denied" to be a good ethonographical tale of this process.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Micheal Erickson <mericks who-is-at ruralnet.net>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 1999 11:27 AM
Subject: Re: reading aloud
> Nate,
> What you describe is what happens when reading remediation is taught as a
> strictly bottom up rather than a top down process. It boils down to the
> idea of whether a reader is one who reads or one who is able to read.
>
> 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
> >
> >
> >
>