Hi Charles,
It's me again. (Uh-oh, I can hear you groaning from here. ;) )
You were discussing spelling/reading again, this time with Erica.
CB>Children are not stupid - they know when they are being misled.  One
  >of my friends has a little boy who came home one day last year with
  >a "story" he had written in first grade.  His mother asked him to
  >read it, which he did - trying to remember what the gibberish on the
  >page was supposed to mean.  When he was done he was clearly upset,
  >so his mother asked him what was wrong.  He explained that he
  >couldn't read what was on the page - it made no sense and didn't
  >look at all like words written in a book.
Of course, he was upset. He would be just as upset if he'd tried to read
a book that he was not ready to read yet. IMHO, the mother should have
explained to her son that the author of the book was a lot older than
him and had years of practising reading and writing. To expect the same
standards from a six year old would be ridiculous. However, this is what
many children do expect. They think that the minute they start school
they will magically be able to read and write just like most adults can.
I hope Donna Ransdale is reading this as she made some comments on this
type of thing in another Fido conference.
CB>His mother made sure her son was out of a whole language classroom
  >this year and had him placed with a teacher that uses more
  >traditional methods to teach reading and writing.
Well, I can't comment on this. I have no idea what kind of instruction
he was receiving in his so called whole language classroom or what kind
he received in his new grade two classroom.
CB>EL>If we allow for the diversity of the human population; if we allow for
  >EL>academic giftedness then we must also allow for the fact that
  >EL>some young children will take longer to go through developmental
  >EL>stages than others. We must allow for environmental factors. How
  >EL>many children have not handled a story book before they come to
  >EL>school? Where I teach, several each year.
CB>I've read quite a bit of the psychology, so I understand the
  >routine.  BUT, what is it we are going to do about these
  >differences?  One option, that promoted by many of those in the
  >"kids need high self-esteem" camp, involves lowering standards so
  >kids can develop at a more relaxed, unchallenged pace and we wind up
  >graduating kids who can't read.  An alternative option now being
  >promoted by those who are part of the "standards" movement is to set
  >standards of excellence and push the kids to reach those levels by
  >giving them the exposure they need and early intervention through
  >programs like Head Start and Reading Recovery.
I don't think that we necessary lower standards, at least not for the
entire class. You may lower expectations but for that particular child.
We don't have Head Start here - though many boards do have Junior
Kindergarten, so I guess that could be considered a head start. ;) We do
have Reading Recovery - in every single Scarborough School that needs
it. The problem, however, often is that they only take the lowest
accomplishing children which means that many that do need the program
are left out because there are others even more needy. :(
CB>Since we have kids in school to educate them, not just to provide
  >holding space for them, the correct choice seems obvious.
Reading Recovery is one of the best programs around. Of course one of
the most important factors is that it's a one to one process. All the
methods used in Reading Recovery, BTW, are methods that are used in a
good whole language classroom.
If you want more information on this I can give it to you but you are
best to do research into the work of Marie Clay whose brainchild this
is.
CB>EL>Many Queensland teachers are in NZ now training to become
  >EL>reading recovery teachers. A recent report and reintroduced
  >EL>standardised testing.
CB>REsearch here in the U.S. has shown this to be an effective tool in
  >raising reading scores (I posted an article about this a year or so
  >ago.)  We have two certified RR teachers in our district now.
How big is your district? That is how many schools do you have - early
education level now (Reading Recovery takes place in grade one)?
Sometimes a RR teacher teaches at two different schools - one a.m. and
one p.m. but many work the whole day in one school.
Does your district do RR training? One of the schools that I teach at
has a RR centre where the teachers receive some of the training.
However, the University here trains the trainers - I believe we are the
first one to do so out of New Zealand...or should I say were the first
ones as this happened several years back and there may be more by now.
I had the pleasure of hearing Marie Clay speak when she came to open the
program here.
                Bye for now,
                                -Ruth
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 þ QMPro 1.53 þ Nine times out of ten the statisticians are wrong.
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