We’ve finished learning the alphabet, and some of my little friends actually know the whole damn thing, so we’ve been celebrating our accomplishments with some spirited readings of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. On Monday we made a mural, and each child did his or her own little chicka tree, using templates I found here.
Now the children keep going around muttering, “chicka chicka boom boom,” and they are fighting over it in the reading corner.
Now that we’re in the home stretch, our theme is “Ready for Kindergarten,” and all the books on our shelf are about kindergarten and school. Z. commented that some of them looked familiar, and I told her that we’d had a bunch of them out at the start of the year. I was impressed, but not surprised, that she remembered.
Yesterday at storytime I didn’t have enough time to introduce our new “special story” (the repeated interactive read-aloud), so I grabbed Miss Nelson is Missing off the shelf.
(For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, Miss Nelson’s class is the worst behaved in school. They never listen to their poor, sweet teacher. One day she goes missing, and in her place is the substitute, Miss Viola Swamp. She has an ugly black dress and is perhaps a real witch. She is strict and mean and scary, and everyone buckles down. Finally, when they are exhausted from working so hard, Miss Nelson comes back, and from then on the children all appreciate her, do their work, and behave beautifully. No one ever knows that there is an ugly black dress in Miss Nelson’s closet….)
I had never read this book to any of my preschool classes, and I wasn’t sure how it would go. However, with all their practice discussing books this year, they loved it and had a lot to say. With a little guidance, they even figured out the true identity of Miss Viola Swamp at the end.
When I closed the book, I asked, “Why were the children so happy to see Miss Nelson at the end of the book?”
Z. said, “They missed her.”
I asked, “How do you know they missed her? Why do you think that?”
Z. replied, “Well, when you are gone, we all miss you. So I think Miss Nelson’s class missed her the same way.”
Zing! My heart melted. It is so nice to be appreciated, especially by four and five year olds.
Well, duh, yes of course it does. But when I saw that that was the title of an op-ed piece in the LA Times, explaining why Reading First isn’t working, I rolled my eyes and figured it would be more moaning about how parents aren’t doing their jobs, so teachers can’t do theirs. (I’ve heard that often enough this year from my coworkers; I’m not kindly disposed toward this way of thinking.)
However, I was wrong. The author, Esther A. Jantzen, brings up one of my favorite books, the landmark study on language acquisition Meaningful Differences, by Hart and Risley. Here’s what she has to say about what Hart and Risley found:
The most astonishing literacy-related information I’ve ever seen came out over 10 years ago, in Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley’s “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.” Their shocking news: There is a huge difference in the number of words and the prohibitive or affirmative tone of words heard by young children depending on whether their parents are on welfare, in the working class or professionals.
They found that by age 3 children of welfare parents heard 10 million words, those with working-class parents heard 20 million words, and those with professional parents heard 30 million words. In addition, with children 13-18 months old in welfare families, almost 80% of the feedback to the child was negative, in working-class families about 50% was negative, and in professional families more than 80% of feedback to the child was affirmative.
Anyone who has read that can’t forget it. A 20 million word difference? No wonder we have an achievement gap — the children in welfare families arrive at kindergarten already behind in vocabulary, and what the teacher talks about makes less sense to them than it does to the children in professional families, who keep adding to their store of knowledge and keeping pulling farther and farther ahead.
And the ratio of positive to negative feedback is just heartbreaking. Plus, Hart and Risley found that the four-year-olds in the professional families had larger vocabularies than the mothers in the welfare families.
Anyway, Jantzen actually has a proposal on what we need to do next. (Here I’ve been thinking about ways to improve vocabulary instruction. Solid, but prosaic.)
Here are ideas: How about directing some Title I funds to educate and support parents in lower-wage workplaces–big-box stores, fast-food restaurants, factories, hotels, data-processing companies, government offices — places where many employees are young mothers and fathers. How about enrolling the goodwill of the Salvation Army, Red Cross, United Way and the huge nonprofits that attract lots of volunteers of all classes and education levels, and bring them on board to reach out and encourage parents?
How about harnessing the political campaign troops of all parties, the caring people who make calls to our homes? How about involving the direct sales industry and those who create those recorded sales calls? How about using the public service components of media in all its shapes, sizes and forms — radio, television, gaming and entertainment, newspapers and magazines?
How about providing workshops, materials and leadership for churches, hospitals, clinics and social welfare offices? How about setting up video-link programs in prisons so that parents in jail could talk and read to their children?
The simplest form of the message we need to get out is this: Parents, grandparents, caregivers, baby sitters, uncles and aunts — talk kindly to children a lot from birth on, using big words. Listen to them and read aloud to them in whatever language you want to use. And do these no-cost things often.
If the foundation for literacy is laid in the home, then schools can do their job. If foundation is not laid, even heroic amounts of intervention by the school won’t be sufficient.
It’s that straightforward. And yes, we can.
I’d vote for that.
New Connecticut teachers are going to have to take a test to prove that they know enough about teaching reading. I’ve been following this with interest, and have read several angry comments from CT teachers.
I’m for it, and would have no problem taking this test if I lived in CT. Teaching reading is rocket science and it’s clear with our poor reading test scores that not enough teachers know how to do it.
I was very frustrated when I started teaching, with a newly-minted M.Ed. in Early Childhood Education. While I had learned a lot of things about reading, I didn’t really learn how to teach it, and what I did learn was slanted strongly toward whole language. I had to try to learn on my own, and wasted a lot of time.
Now I’m actually learning what teachers need to do, and am really grateful for the information and the professional development. I hate to say it, but of the teachers who are protesting, how many of them are scared they won’t pass?
Some weeks ago, a person from the early childhood department was visiting my classroom, and she saw me doing story time using the repeated interactive read-aloud strategy, so we talked about how it works, and I offered to do a little workshop on it for the other pre-K teachers in the district. She said, “sure”, so then she came to my room three times to videotape me doing the three read-alouds.
Yesterday was the all-day meeting for the pre-K teachers, and my part was after lunch, after the head of the early childhood department spoke to us. (I was hoping she’d leave for some important appointment, but alas, she stayed put. I’m not sure how she feels about me, because on the one hand I have a solid reputation as a good teacher, but on the other, I ask difficult and pointed questions at our meetings.)
A third of the way through my presentation (what is a repeated interactive read-aloud (RIRA)? how is it different from the way teachers usually read stories? what does the research say? how is it connected to the standards? etc.) I started to worry, as no one was asking questions and everyone’s face looked blank. Thankfully, Sarah’s video was perfect, and people started to warm up and ask questions, and at the end, the other teachers were excited about it and I was hugely relieved.
It was quite nice to come back to school today and hang out with four and five year olds.
I read in the paper yesterday that schools designated as Reading First schools, who get extra funds to do extra work in teaching reading, are not getting the hoped-for results. My school isn’t a Reading First school, but my heart sank when I read this. It makes me wonder if the things my school and district are doing — moving toward balanced literacy and readers & writers workshops — will make any difference.
I’ll bet the Reading First schools are filled with teachers who have been working really hard to use best practices to teach reading effectively, and that they are all so disappointed.
Or am I wrong? Because the Reading First grants are part of NCLB and thus come from the Bush administration, are they suspect? What really goes on at a Reading First school, anyway?
