reading curriculum
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mefinn ...@students.wisc.edu (Margaret Finnane)
I have been looking into many reading curriculums used by schools including Guided Reading, the Distar method and phonology. I find many valuable ideas in each, but have difficulty believing that any can be ideal for every child.
As a future educator, I worry about my ability to educate every child if I am only able to use one method.
How does one teach many children to read at once with the varied multiple intelligences that every cl***room encomp***es?
"Teachermama" teachrm...@iwon.com
<343e731d.0111251709.2b2d2...@posting.google.com>...
We have just one reading curriculum at school--certainly not ideal for every child. I supplement that curriculum with many different materials and methods in an attempt to accomodate each child's method of learning. Unless you have a predigested , scripted program that you are expected to follow to the letter then supplementation should help solve your problem.
"Magi D. Shepley" ma...@concentric.catsincyberspace.net
You do the best you can, and hope that you can modify or adapt the program for the child's needs. There is no one reading program that will teach everything to every child.
Magi
DILLYTA ...@HOTMAIL.COM (D. Talbot)
Do not let an unattainable ideal compete with what you can attain.
How would you teach any phonics to a deaf child, or whole word "look-say" reading to a blind child? You're _never_ going to reach _every_ child and you will make yourself crazy trying.
Can you get jeans with a 38 inch inseam at WalMart? No. But is WalMart still successful in providing jeans to the vast majority of their customers? Of course.
Just as a retailer can succeed by catering to customers needing 28-34 inch pant lengths, I suspect you will meet _most_ of your kids' needs with any well-designed program. ( I like DIstar a lot, and the DI-list at U. Oregon actually has discussed using the method with deaf kids. But I digress...) The more important thing for the youngest students is that your foundational/fundatmental work ties into the overall program of your school. If you skip around with bits and pieces of this and that, you risk confusing the kids, leaving holes they'll never get filled.
If you get the rare kid who reads too well, you ***ign the complete works of Shel Silverstein. A kid who can't get even the ***isted orthography of DIstar may need special testing for eyesight, attention, discipline, whatever. But I'd suggest getting good at one best method that works for you and push it for all it's worth.
Beth Clarkson clark...@math.twsu.edu
While I agree with most of what you wrote, I must take exception to this. Are you aware that Shel Silverstein, in addition to his wonderful books of poetry for children, also wrote some very humorous and very adult stuff that appeared in magazines such as Playboy? And some rather raunchy lyrics for rock bands? I'm a big fan of his, but some of his stuff just isn't suitable for children.
Beth
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
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But if everyone has to purchase jeans at WalMart, then one cannot accept this. As the public schools CLAIM to be able to educate ALL without profound difficulties, one counterexample is already a major problem.
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No, you move the kid up the appropriate number of grades for reading.
You might be able to get away with something like what you have suggested in the very early grades in reading, but not later, and it will not work at all in the other academic subjects. If you ***ign the works of Shel Silverstein, that kid is effectively not in the cl*** to any extent; make the break complete.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
dillyta ...@hotmail.com (D. Talbot)
I suppose I should issue a correction of the sort: "Of course I was really referring ONLY to the hard-cover-bound books such as _Where the Sidewalk Ends_" . But it occurs to me that the research required to delve out magazine articles, song lyrics, and anthologized works would be good exercise and develop "reading" skills of another, highly useful, order entirely. But still, point taken.
What corpus of literature would you ***ign, given a kid aged 5-8 with vastly more literacy skills than his cl***room peers; and limiting the description of such works to one identifier, such as author?
I mean, one might introduce C.S. Lewis, thinking "Narnia" and find the kid studying up (and taking literally) _The Screwtape Letters_. Introduce Asimov for "Lucky Starr", and the science essays -- find the kid latched into _Too-Gross; 288 of the World's Filthiest Limericks_ .
And do we dare to contemplate the spectre of Mark Twain?
I think there's a version of "The Five Foot Shelf" or "Harvard Cl***ics" that's intended for kids and includes appropriate selections of Twain,Stevenson, Dumas, L.M. Montgomery, Dickens etc. Not sure how many late-20th century authors are included, nor how "diverse" the settings. But such a thing might be quite the resource if available at all.
Any ideas?
Beth Clarkson clark...@math.twsu.edu
I suppose I should have ***umed that was what you meant, but I wasn't sure if you (and others) were aware of his adult works. They are every bit as good as his stuff for children, just not suitable for children.
True enough. It's just that some of his stuff could get a teacher fired for recommending it to a child.
That does make it difficult. Even Dr. Suess and Judy Blume have some adult stuff out that isn't to be recommended for children. I don't think you could go wrong with Louisa May Alcott and other writers of that era, including Mark Twain (whom I adore). The hide-bound morals of the Victorian age meant that most of what was written then was suitable for children. What wasn't suitable for children was usually written by 'anonymous' - a personage of varied talent but prodigious output. But as for more modern authors, I would be reluctant to name any. Even if I'm not aware of it, they could easy have written something that wasn't intended for a young audience.
That sounds pretty good. Personally, I'm very fond of many of the 19th century writers. They have a style and grace that modern writers lack. Even some early 20th century writers, like A. A. Milne, possess a beauty and flow in the way they articulate their thoughts that, IMO, is unmatched by today's authors.
Actually, I'm inclined to let my own kids read anything they want. Generally the adult stuff is just going to be boring to them, but if they are interested, it's okay. We can discuss it later and I'm glad to see them reading. But I'm perhaps unusual in that regard and I think a teacher making recommendations is under more constraints that I am with my own children. One caveat I would make
- stay away from the revised editions. I would much rather see a child struggle through the original "Black Beauty" or "The Secret Garden" difficult though they may be, than have them read the butchered versions that have been created to make them 'easier to read'.
Beth Clarkson
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org
I would (and did) look for free-reading lists by grade level. Start the kid on the lowest level, and adjust upwards as needed.
Fairfax County has summer reading lists starting with rising 6th graders, which includes Alice in Wonderland, Old Yeller, Wind in the Willows, and non-fiction as well like _The Boys War_ which includes archival material from under-16 year old soldiers in the Civil War.
http://www.fcps.edu/DIS/readlist/ It happens that this reading list has some book description and not just title and author, but there are many others out there that are just lists.
But these are readings, and not a reading curriculum, which is what the original poster asked about. A "reading curriculum" for a good reader would hopefully include some sort of comprehension work beyond merely reading the books. Comprehension work should include vocabulary development, literary elements in fiction, author intent. For these it might still be worthwhile to use a standardized system for a higher grade level for evaluating the child's progress in addition to readings with discussion and essays in response.
lojbab
--
lojbab loj...@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org
dillyta ...@Hotmail.com (D. Talbot)
Good stuff, and along the lines of the five foot shelf.
But the "reading curriculum" asked for, is for the mainstream pack.
You _know_ I would support reforms of various types that would allow exceptional kids, their parents and their teachers to craft a more indivualized curriculum. Smaller cl***es, smaller schools, more choices, more frequent ***essment-- more funding where more/better results are well demonstrated. But within the constraints of the system and cl***room (as I understand them, only based on being an elementary school volunteer) it seems to me an early-elementary teacher can best ***ist an early-elementary-AGED student in no need of early-elementary teaching by simply staying out of the way.
Rather like I'd hope a surgeon confronting a healthy patient would forbear both exercise of her incisive talents and prescribing beyond her area of expertise. "You don't need your gall bladder out. Here's a book on healthy diets, and the name of a good nutritionist..." :: "You don't need DIstar, here's a list of good reading and the name of my favorite librarian... " I had the good fortune to attend a cl***ical one-room country grammar school (actually, two rooms since there was a vinyl sliding partition down the middle...) in which it was not only possible, but trivial, for a six-year-old student to be "in" second grade for math, fourth for reading, first for penmanship, etc. Where it was physically convenient to shift a couple dozen students among two teachers and eight grades (and "standard curricula") in the fashion you suggest. I'd like to see such small neighborhood schools become much more common now. Short of that, I'm not sure how our original poster would implement such multiple-track programs. Consider the simplest problem of grading. Given a first grader reading at fourth-grade level, ***igned to a fourth grade curriculum, who does "B" level work in that curriculum. What does our first-grade teacher put on that first-grader's report card? (It occurs to me the reverse is all too common: a fourth grader un-reading at pre-school levels, remedially ***igned to a first grade curriculum, who does "B" level work in such a curriculum. Should a grade card report the recent advancement or the cumulative delays?)
dillyta ...@Hotmail.com (D. Talbot)
Agreed wholly.
Particularly since it's useful in doing ***essment for the teacher to be familiar with the literature ***igned. Come to me with a report on one of the "GooseBumps" or "American Girls" books and I'll have NO idea whether you have interpreted it fairly or even read it at all. Do the same with Edgar Allen Poe or Laura Ingalls Wilder and I'm "on the same page".
We're reading aloud _Anne of Green Gables_ (since the girls have about worn out the VCR playing the Megan Follows/Colleen Dewhurst video adaptation...) and it's striking what range of vocabulary was ***umed of young readers a century back. _I_ struggle with pronunciation -- especially when Anne starts describing the botanical features of Prince Edward Island.
I was shot down suggesting this work for reading in a cl***room by students 4 years older than my own oldest. Ah well.
Beth Clarkson clark...@math.twsu.edu
That's one of my favorites. I've read it aloud to my daughter at least twice and we're currently on "Anne of Ingleside" I just gave my mothers rather worn hardbound copy to my 9 yo niece to read. Seemed perfectly appropriate to me. I really think that such books are a wonderful way of exposing children to the finesse and grandeur of the English language. They knew how to write back then!
Beth
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
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Why should a first grade teacher be grading it?
If a grade means other than the level of knowledge and the ability to use it of what is graded, it is fraudulent.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
................
The first question to ask is, what is the purpose of having them read "literature"? I can see the point of having them read to learn mathematics, science, geography, history, etc., and this should be started as early as possible. The knowledge of these in our society is abysmally low. However, it is expected that everyone will learn "literature".
Literature I see as essentially a combination of art and philosophical propaganda. This is unavoidable, but it had better be recognized. Reading fiction for the purpose of reading fiction is not education, but can often be "brainwashing"; it usually presents the social or political biases of the writer without any warning of this. The better the writer, the more insidious is this.
And as for the rest, that child does not belong in that cl***room. Any school which believes in doing this because of age does not believe in education, but socialization and preaching its normative views.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
A century back, the idea was to learn the language well, and to use it well. The language expected was the "high-cl***" literary language, not the speech of the illiterates. Also, people did speak that way. This is now looked down upon by linguists, unfortunately. Even speech should be looked at not only as communication, but also as art.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
FMD fmdo...@socrates.berkeley.edu
Good lord, you really are a Philistine! One can only be thankful that you aren't in charge of any curricula anywhere.
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Those who set out to learn other things will learn a fair amount of literature as well. It is just that they will not necessarily learn what the litterateurs consider to be the literature to be learned.
I suggest you look more carefully at literature; you will then see the blatant propaganda.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
FMD fmdo...@socrates.berkeley.edu
Not only a Philistine, but patronizing to boot! I suggest YOU look more closely at literature -- granting only for the sake of argument that so clumsy a category even makes sense. You will then see the shimmering truths. You know, don't you, how Maimonides characterized truth? He likened it to a golden apple surrounded by a silver filigree. The point of the analogy is that the silver is very fine. It's tempting to stop there, and most do. A word to the wise.
dillyta ...@hotmail.com (D. Talbot)
<of _Anne of Green Gables> What do others here (parents and elementary teachers, in particular) read for recreation with kids 6-12?
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org
Exceptional kids need a reading curriculum too. I was an exceptional reader as a kid, but I consumed books voraciously without really thinking about them in the sort of depth that reading comprehension demands. As it turns out, when I first ran into having to read solid technical matter in college textbooks, my reading skills were only average, and my speed to achieve that average was awful. I still bog down in technical writing, even in my own fields (of course the scientist who can write well is rather rare).
That is precisely what IDEA does with IEPs. It is expensive though. But in reading, my kids have been working individualized since 3rd or 4th grade.
The cl*** was always working on a book or story together, but the kids had book reports wherein they could choose a book of their own level. In the lower grades, the only restriction was genre - one month it would be a biography, the next science-fiction or fantasy, the next non-fiction etc.
Starting in middle school, kids were expected to challenge themselves. My son's 7th grade teacher had a shelf with a few hundred books sorted on reading level; the kid had to choose a book of at least his reading level -
again one per month or so. The teacher had read all the books on her shelf and thus could determine how much the student understood.
That depends. If the goal is reading quantity, then that may work; my son has read most of the Animorphs books a dozen times. If reading quality is sought, more direction is needed.
Funny you should mention Distar. My son is an avid reader, but not a very skilled one. They just finished doing a 10 part Distar reading ***essment which highlighted my son's strengths and weaknesses. He is outstanding at "main idea", weak on "author's point of view", and awful at "prediction", with varying scores in the other metrics. If I were homeschooling, I would find such metrics as useful as if I were teaching strictly to the Distar curriculum.
Easily, if that was the intent. Sandy Lieber has posted before about running multiple reading tracks within a standard-sized cl***. Special ed teachers of course have to do so on an individualized basis. My own reform ideas posted a couple years ago are oriented around individualized mastery-learning.
In our local schools, students from grades 1 to 3 are graded on both effort and achievement. Such a student clearly is above-average on achievement.
Insufficient information is given to say what the effort was. There are no true percentage-based ***essments until 4th grade.
The obvious question is: should such a kid be in a cl*** where his best effort gets him a B, or should he perhaps be in a somewhat slower curriculum where his best effort would get him an A or should he be so challenged that he has to struggle to get a C or a D?
Most parents do not want their bright kids to have to kill themselves in every subject in order to get an A.
That depends on the purpose of the report card. If the parent knows what level the student's curriculum is, I think that a grade by the standards of that curriculum is in order.
This becomes important in high school. My daughter was a B+ student in 9th grade world history and her instructor encouraged her to move up to AP history in the second half of the course in 10th grade. Her first quarter grade was a D-. What grade is appropriate? As an informed parent, I've chosen to be bothered less by that D- than I would be by a D- in her English or Math cl***es. Other parents, and colleges as well, seem to look at the GPA as all-determining, leading to curious methods intended to make AP grades comparable on a transcript with non-AP grades. I think that they fail miserably. (My own solution to this would separate grades from credits, ***ign each cl***/curriculum a relative difficulty which would be multiplied by the grade to get grade points - thus a D on a difficulty 4 course might count as much as an A on a difficulty 1 course, but both courses might still count 1 "credit" towards graduation).
lojbab
--
lojbab loj...@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org
The best place to ask that question is rec.arts.book.childrens which has many people knowledgeable about the range of children's literature. When I pick books on my own, I mainly pick the ones I read when I was younger, and so miss out on a lot of quality stuff. If you ask on that group, giving some examples of what you currently read, you'll get a lot of good recommendations for more.
lojbab
--
lojbab loj...@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Now how did Philistines ever get ***ociated with lack of literary culture? There is nothing in the Bible to indicate that this was true of the Philistines, nor that the Israelites had any non-Biblical culture.
Philosophers keep trying to find "truth" by mental gymnastics. There was a "definition" of "philosopher" which I read which I believe points out what is the actual case: A philosopher is someone who is looking for a black cat in a totally dark room, which isn't there, and finds it!
Considering how much difference there is in what philosophers call "truth", whom should we believe?
Each philosopher and author is trying to tell us what to believe, and what is propaganda if not that? Truth is a property of the real world, and does not come out of rhetoric or novels.
Of course, good literature is an artistic filigree, but the artistry is not the underlying truth.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
dillyta ...@hotmail.com (D. Talbot)
Isn't such an anecdote, uhm, fiction? A fable?
A tale that, while divorced from common reality, illustrates some universal aspect of that reality in a memorable and useful fashion? Uhm... Literature?
And I thought you were claiming that literature was a waste of time? ;-) Or is that one of those transistive things. What I do is literature. What you do is reportage. And what _he_ does is... lies, errors, and a waste of our time?
hru ...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
It was not literature; it was intended to point out how philosophers think. Even some philosophers supported it when it appeared.
So what is literature? Show me some literature which is not what I claimed it to be.
It can even be propaganda in ways the author did not intend it to be. Dickens was surprised that _Oliver Twist_ was seen as anti-Semitic that he wrote another novel to try to erase that image of him.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399 hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
FMD fmdo...@socrates.berkeley.edu
The Biblical culture is a literary culture. The Philistines got a bad press because they were thought to have no viniculture -- only beer. Recent excavations suggest that this may not be so.
There's nothing unreal about the novel; it is very much part of the real world.
The various sorts of people one might aspire to become are shaped by stories we tell about what it means to be human. Your characterization of the philosopher suggests that you haven't read, or understood, much philosophy; for instance, it doesn't account for the major text of the Western philosophical tradition, Plato's REPUBLIC. Nobody in that dialogue is trying to tell anyone what to believe.
Rather, they are all trying to find out what one SHOULD believe, with mixed results. Other Platonic dialogues are even less about what to believe: they begin with characters whose beliefs are firm but unexamined, and end not with new beliefs but more skepticism about the existing ones. The modern novel, too, is not at all about urging beliefs. You seem simply to have missed the point of literature and philosophy.
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