>> To me, it's pretty obvious.
The elephant in the classroom is literacy,
the lack of developing proficient readers
among our fourth graders, or eighth graders,
even our 12th graders.
This is a problem that has been persistent
in the United States for 20-odd years.
What we know is from the most recent national assessment,
about two-thirds of our children, fourth graders,
are reading at a level considered basic or below basic.
In other words, these are kids who are having issues
in reading development.
Only 1/3 of our students are considered proficient
or advanced in their literacy development.
And I might add one other thing,
this is not a problem that is new to us.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress,
our US Department of Education survey
of literacy development found in 1992
that the average literacy achievement
of our fourth graders was, had a score of 217.
27 years later, in 2019, the National Assessment
found that the average score of fourth graders was 220.
So things have gone up three points,
but that's basically, essentially nothing there.
And this is despite the fact that we've had, you know,
teachers, school districts, individual schools,
states, local governments, federal governments
putting, you know, significant efforts into this.
So, what it begs the question to me is,
we need to start thinking about teaching reading
in in different ways,
or perhaps modifying the way that we teach reading.
>> Best instruction is somewhere in the middle,
where we use science,
but we use it in what I call artful ways there.
To be a teacher of reading,
you have to be a scientist and an artist.
And I think it's when we honor teachers in a way that says,
yes, you bring something to the table.
It's not just, you know, working out certain protocols
on how to teach phonics, or reading fluency,
or these other competencies that we teach kids.
There's more than one way.
And that's the art of teaching reading.
And we need to have both, I think.
>> Teaching reading is not a monolithic activity.
There's no one way, and yet it seems like the current emphasis
is on teaching reading in one particular way,
with a great emphasis on phonics,
and making sure that that's something
that is taught in our classrooms.
And believe me, I know that that's important.
And I know that many of our children coming into school
are not provided adequate phonics instruction,
but it's much more than that. It's teaching reading fluency,
developing phonemic awareness, teaching vocabulary.
What good is it for kids to know how to sound out a word
if they don't know what the word means?
So developing all these other competencies
is equally important. And as I mentioned earlier,
in ways that are both artful as well as scientific.
>> Yeah, we've just come through, you know,
what, two years of a pandemic and you know,
how many kids were out of the classroom
for at least a whole year, trying to learn off of computer?
That, in a way disrupted
the whole social network within classrooms.
And I have a daughter, who was a first grade
teacher this past year, and her kids had, you know,
were not in the classroom for their kindergarten year.
And she found that many of the children
really had a hard time with it,
that notion of, you know, learning as part of a group.
I think, another issue, again,
this is related to the pandemic, is materials.
You know, in order to become a good reader,
you've got to read a lot.
And of course, that means you have to have
lots of material to read.
And again, with this pandemic, we had schools closed,
we had community libraries that were closed.
So lots of our students, you know,
did not have access to materials
that they could use to actually become better readers.
>> I might mention one other thing as well.
And that's what we call, for lack of a better term,
the summer slide.
We know that many kids actually lose ground
over the summer months.
And the reason is that they don't read,
or they read in a very minimal manner.
And if you don't read, you just don't say the same.
You actually regress in your reading development.
Some estimates are that some kids, if I'm not mistaken,
can lose a month and a half of reading progress
over a summer by not reading.
Well, you multiply a month and a half by six years,
grades one through six, and all of a sudden
you're talking about nine months' progress being lost,
and of course, nine months is an entire year.
Imagine what we could do
if we could find ways to help children engage
in reading over the summer months.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be books,
you know, it could be poetry.
I'm working with a colleague down in Florida
who's using song to get kids involved in reading.
So, again, there's this notion
of trying to think outside the box,
finding ways that are perhaps nontraditional,
but can have the potential
for really making a difference in our kids' lives.
>> So we know from the science of reading
that repeated readings is a valuable tool
for developing reading fluency.
But the artful question is how do you
get students into repeated readings?
In many classrooms, it's, the purpose is to read faster,
and because we measure fluency in that sort of way,
speed of reading.
I don't find that to be a terribly authentic approach,
or artful. I asked this question,
why would anybody want to read something multiple times?
And the answer to me was performance.
If you're going to perform something for an audience,
you have to rehearse it.
And rehearsal is a form of repeated readings.
So, and then the next question along the line is,
are there certain texts that are meant to be performed?
And of course, we think of things like poetry,
reader's theater scripts,
speeches, perhaps, from American history.
I remember having to learn the Gettysburg Address
as a student myself.
These are the kinds of materials that, you know, are outside,
you know, the primary kinds of texts
that we provide students. And I think we should think
about bringing these kinds of materials in,
giving kids the opportunity to learn to read something well,
and then perform it, and do it on a regular basis.
Our own research in our reading clinic
finds that kids that can do this on a regular basis
can make exceptional progress and reading,
not just in a matter of reading faster,
but actually becoming more fluent readers
and, in doing, so becoming better comprehenders
at the same time.
Fluency opens the gates to comprehension
for many of our students.
See, it's this kind of instruction that,
you know, we're talking about reading,
and reading out loud, singing out loud,
reciting and performing poetry.
Can you imagine a classroom where every Friday, students,
say in fourth grade or fifth grade,
have a poetry slam?
What that requires, though, is for every Monday,
students to be assigned a poem.
Maybe one week we're going to be looking at poetry
by Emily Dickinson. And then the next week,
we're going to be looking at poetry by Shel Silverstein.
And next week, we're going to be looking for poetry
by David Harrison. Every week a different poet.
Every student gets one poem, one poem or perhaps two,
to practice throughout the week.
So throughout the week, they get ten or so minutes
to rehearse on their own, or maybe with a partner.
Teacher goes around coaching them and again, come Friday,
that last half-hour of the school day,
the lights are dimmed,
the teacher lights a low-level, perhaps a lamp,
and puts a barstool in front of the classroom,
and children get up one after another, and they perform.
>> Yeah, I think we will definitely start
seeing improvements in our reading achievement.
But again, we need to take a look at those deeper issues,
the issue of poverty, the issue of safety in our classrooms,
the issue of access to materials for our children,
the opportunity for teachers to choose books,
you know, that they think are appropriate
for their for their kids,
the opportunities to teach parents,
help parents become literacy educators.
Those are things also,
and those are, you know, not as easily solved
as the things we can do in terms of instruction.
Nevertheless, though, I think we, if we did apply
this artful and scientific approach to teaching reading,
we are going to see improvements in that,
and what we want to see is, you know, a gradual growth.
It's not going to happen overnight.
It's going to be something that's going to take
perhaps a whole generation,
but something that's certainly worth pursuing for our kids.