Thirty-two million adults in the United States can’t read. This is 14% of our population. As an educator, I find this to be as inexcusable as neglect and abuse. According to a study conducted in April 2013 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of literacy, 21 % of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 % of high school graduates can’t read” ( July 21, 2014 retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com). How can one of the wealthiest and most influential country allows its citizens to be illiterate? But more importantly, how do we correct this? We must be diligent in our approach to teaching literacy with research based, well thought out methods, such as the reading process taught to us during the recent Lesley Summer Literacy Institute. I am a kindergarten teacher at a Title I school in Concord, New Hampshire. My district does use the Literacy Workshop process developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell. I decided to take this class to improve my technique of this method. I did not expect to come away from this workshop with such an immense passion and a deeper understanding for this method of literacy instruction. I, like many primary teachers, am at the forefront of this battle against adult illiteracy. In my class, as in any literacy class, assessment has to be the first step. Fountas and Pinnell (2006) states, “you cannot teach effectively without …show more content…
But we in the United States have the financial means and intellectual means to improve, if not to erase, the illiteracy rate. We can do this by maintaining a high standard in literacy instruction. Using the Readers Workshop format throughout the grades will be a starting point to create a new society of fluid readers. Methods like Readers Workshop lend itself to developing a culture of not only competent readers, but readers who love to
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Deborah Brandt (1998) wrote “Sponsors of Literacy”, a journal where she explained her findings of the research she has done on how different people across the nation learned to read and write, born between 1900, and 1980 (p. 167). She interviewed many people that had varying forms of their literacy skills, whether it was from being poor, being rich, or just being in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
Reading is on the decline and our reading skills are declining right along with the amount of reading we do. This is happening right across the board through both genders, all age groups and education levels, people are busy and they just do not have time to read books that they are not required to read for school or work. There are serious consequences to this neglect of reading that will continue to worsen if ignored. We need to take notice of what is happening to our culture and stop this situation from continuing, we must act to correct these issues that we are faced with. These things are discussed in the essay “Staying Awake’’ by Ursula K. Le Guin who uses the NEA essays “To Read or Not to Read’’ and “Reading at Risk’’ to support her argument that there is a decline in the amount of time that we are spending on reading and our ability to understand what it is that we are reading.
For this assignment, I completed a survey to assess my school’s literacy program by using a survey that was adapted from by Patty, Maschoff, & Ransom (1996) to analyze the instructional program and the school’s infrastructure. To be able to answer my survey, I needed to go colleagues of mine in the English Department and to my administration to help with these questions. Being a math teacher, we hardly ever discuss the literacy and the students’ acquisition of it in our department meeting during staff development days. Since I am not truly current with literacy acquisition in education, I am hoping to understand more from this process so I can help all my students. I want them to be able to read texts related to math and find information that will be useful to them during the year.
After taking the Personal Assessment Literacy Survey, I learned a lot about myself and what I do know about assessments, and what I don’t. This survey allowed me to reflect on the process that I take to plan, develop, and administer tests in my class and what I need to do with the results. When I went through the criteria of all of the topics in the survey, I honestly did not know what the survey was talking about or what it meant. This was really concerning to me because I like to think that I do a pretty good job when it comes to instruction of my class and how I assess their knowledge of the material. I learned from this survey that there are a lot of things I do well during assessments and that there is still a lot that I need to learn to be an effective classroom leader.
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
Last school year, I took a college class that required hours of field experience in a high school English class. I was able to observe different English classes and different high school grade levels. What made a big impact on me was to hear some of those high school students struggling with reading more than the third grade students I was teaching that same school year. These students were expected to read and comprehend grade level text when they were reading at an elementary level. Illiteracy “is considered the blackest mark of a person’s finally in school and the greatest failure in the American school system” (Tchudi, and Tchudi 75) and there are around twenty-five million functional illiterates in the United States (75). Why are our middle school and high school students still struggling with reading? What can English/Language arts teachers do to help these struggling readers?
A pre-assessment is easier for teachers to locate students’ skill level. Certainly, using the suitable assessment tools also needs to be careful. The authors conclude that the development process should be used with a comprehensive assessment that must be on-going and include classroom-based instruction. By observing students’ reading skills and methods, teachers can administer and interpret before they plan the instruction. Ms. Martin conducts formal and informal assessments together.
In today’s society, a vast number of people are well educated. They have the equal opportunity to choose their own path in life by getting an education. A primary educational aspect of every human being is to learn to read. Being able to read is a primary goal of people in human society, as well as important in itself to society; it takes people far beyond their wildest dreams. A person who is literate has few limitations on what they can do; the world is an open playing field, because a person that is literate has the ability to become very successful in life.
Tompkins, G. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach. (5th ed., pp. 12-286). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
While I believe every child is a reader, I do not believe every child will be enthralled with reading all the time. All students have the capability to read and enjoy reading, but just like any other hobby, interest will vary from student to student. The students in my classroom will be encouraged in their reading, be provided with choice, taught how books can take you into another world but, my students will not be forced to read. This paper will illustrate my philosophy of reading through the theories I relate to, the way I want to implement reading and writing curriculum, and the methods I will use motivate my students to read and help them become literate.
Every child deserves a positive, safe, nurturing, and stimulating learning environment where they will grow academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. My role as an educator is to provide my students with this type of environment as well as an education that will help them succeed academically and become life long learners. It is the responsibility of a literacy educator to provide students with this type of environment, but also to provide instruction that will help students become successful readers and writers. There are numerous programs and philosophies about literacy and reading. Through years of experience and research, one begins to develop their own creative approach on teaching these skills. After looking at different programs and seeing the positive and negatives of each, an integrated and balanced approach of literacy seems to be the best way to teach the differing needs of each student.
Since the reading movements of the 1980’s and 1990’s, many different theoretical perspectives on teaching reading have been proposed. This paper will examine and discuss major themes, issues, and influences derived from theoretical perspectives on reading instruction that have been proposed since the 1980’s. This paper will also examine four articles related to themes and issues taken from the State University library about reading instruction. The author will relay these articles from the library; to current classroom and personal experiences.
I came from a country which has some similarities and differences from the United States in the education system. One of my government top priority is literacy; which means being able to read. My governments encouraged people to be able to read with some different ways. Literacy is the education key. I can read two languages, English and Arabic. My journey started when I was five and half with Arabic learning then I started English learning when I was 11 or 12. In Introduction to College Writing, Benjamin R. Barber, an American political theorist and author, said “On September 8, the day most of the nation's children were scheduled to return to school, the Department of Education Statistics issued a report, commissioned by Congress, on adult literacy and numeracy in the United State's. The results? More than 90 million adult Americans lacked simple literacy” (228). This is how we start school in my country.
With over 27 years of experience in the classroom, Mrs. D has a vast array of knowledge in teaching literacy with many different age groups. Throughout her years of teaching, she has always believed that a teacher should always know where the breakdown of learning is in a struggling child. For example, knowing that a child had difficulty understanding letters, it helps a teacher know what areas to target in order for the student to overcome and be able to meet the standards and objectives in place for the student. She believes in programs and activities like reading aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and just right. In the Seattle School District, many of her students are ELL and/or low-income. When it comes to the Common Core State Standards, she does not believe that the testing required with it is culturally responsive. She strongly believes that some assessments do not cater to the low-income students. She gives examples like her Native