Smart Answers to Tough Questions

1. Smart Answers to Tough Questions By Elaine Garan

2. Topics Addressed • Read alouds • Round robin reading • Big books and enlarged texts • Fingerpointing, voicepointing, and headpointing • Worksheets and homework • Commercial reading programs and guided reading

3. Topics Addressed • Independent reading or SSR • Rewards and the AR program • Phonics • Phonics for older students • Phonemic awareness • Cueing systems and eye-movement research

4. Topics Addressed • Decodable text • Fluency and comprehension/Dibels • Invented spelling • Spelling, grammar, and punctuation for intermediate students • English language learners • Phonics and second language acquisition

5. Topics Addressed • Standards, accountability and high-stakes testing: • Terminology and definitions • Problems with and inequities in high-stakes testing

6. Commercial Reading Programs and Guided Reading • The Tough Question: When I was in school, my teachers used series of reading books for reading instruction. They had all kinds of stories in them all under one cover. Instead, you use individual books for reading groups. Why don’t you use those reading series that I was taught to read from and other teachers in the school use for instruction?

7. Why not basal readers? • Less effective than programs that rely on “real” reading material • Basals include anthologies, but we don’t read like this in the real world. • Basals flit from topic to topic, rather than promoting in-depth study of topics. • Stories are often abridged or excerpts. Without the entire selection, the stories don’t always make sense.

8. Why not basals, con’t • Expensive and come with consumables that some teachers feel they have to use, regardless of the students’ needs. • Some stories are written not for the sake of the story but for “word practice” using a controlled vocabulary. They are harmful to comprehension. • Emphasis on low-level comprehension questions.

9. Advantage of Basals • Helpful to beginning teachers. • “Teacher Proof”

10. What is the Alternative? • Guided Reading • Small groups based on instructional level and using materials students can read with 90% or higher accuracy. • Groups based on the students’ needs. • Before activities • Book walk • Fingers on hard words • Introduce vocabulary in context, which gives the students a hook.

11. What is the Alternative, con’t • Emphasis on all students reading the entire text with the teacher assisting and taking notes. • Follow-up activities that are connected to the reading selection, not worksheets which fail to engage students on a personal level.

12. Something for You to Think and Talk About • Scripted teacher’s manuals may reduce teacher’ interest in the reading process. • Uninterested teachers promote unmotivated students. • Instruction is standardized, and not tailored to the students’ needs.

13. The Proof • In textbook adoption states, students score lower in reading than in those “free territory” states. • Commercial texts leech subject matter of interest and relevance by dumbing down the rich language. • National Reading Panel reports lack of relevance and interest value in basals. Access report at www.nationalreadingpanel.org.

14. Benefits of Guided Reading • Provide opportunities for students to read connected text as well as to use vocabulary in group discussions of “real” stories and “real” books.

15. Results of the Book Flood Studies • Students in both the shared reading and SSR groups significantly outperformed those in the formally structured commercial program in reading comprehension, vocabulary and writing skills. • Shared reading group outperformed the SSR group.