This post is authored by Don Peek, a former educator and past president of the training division of Renaissance Learning. He now runs
Reading – The Most
Important Skill
In my last post I discussed the merits of a skills-based
curriculum. I firmly believe in that
concept, especially for students with disabilities. Out of the many possible skills that we teach
children in school, I don’t believe any is as important as reading. When children master the skill of reading,
the world truly opens up for them.
That is especially true today with high-speed Internet
available to almost everyone. Once a
person learns to read and comprehend what he/she reads, all of that information
in books and on the Internet, every idea or concept ever imagined becomes
accessible. That wasn’t true just 25
years ago. Our world has truly changed.
Only a very small percentage of our students lack the mental
capacity to learn to read well. Other
students may struggle, battle with dyslexia, or have other difficulties, but in
the end, if we concentrate on teaching them this one very important skill, they
can master reading and change their lives forever.
I taught remedial reading myself at the middle school level,
and my wife taught 1st graders to read for 34 years before she
retired. I can’t say it’s an easy task,
but it is worth every bit of the time and effort you put into it. Some students can’t hear the vowel sounds
properly. Some students aren’t seeing
the same symbols on the page that you see.
But the key to reading well that so many educators ignore is that once
students have obtained even the most basic reading skills, the way for them to
improve is by practicing their reading.
Worksheets may be helpful for students struggling with
blends, vowel sounds, prefixes, suffixes, or compound words, but in the end, if
a child doesn’t practice reading in a real book written by a real author, those
minor skills they pick up on worksheets are not going to stick.
When I was a principal in Northeast Texas, we moved our
reading scores from less than 50% passing the state reading test to more than
90% passing the state reading test in two years. Every teacher in that middle school became a
reading teacher. Students practiced
independent reading an hour each day (broken down into two 30-minutes segments)
in library books appropriate to their own individual reading levels.
Yes, we used Accelerated Reader (a commercial product from
Renaissance Learning that helps educators monitor independent reading) to help
monitor and motivate our students. I
won’t apologize for that for one main reason.
It worked. It worked for us, and
it worked for our students. When we first
started our program, our students were reading an average of two grade levels
below the national norm. After two
years, they were reading on grade level.
Their grades went up in all subjects. Why not?
They could now read and understand their textbooks in science and social
studies. Many of our learning disabled
students were dismissed from our special education program. Even if they had really had a legitimate
reading disability when they started our program (such as dyslexia), they were
able to overcome it by learning to recognize the reading symbols they were
seeing and practicing their reading an hour each day at the appropriate level
for them.
Next time I will discuss our balance of reading to students,
reading with them, and having them read independently.
In this blog, I just
want you to know that if you were forced to teach only one skill to your
students, disabled or not, that skill should be reading. No other single skill can have the impact on
their lives that reading does. Make sure
your students can read at the highest possible level, and you can change their
lives forever.
-----------------------------------------------------------Grant Info:
Grant
Name: Presidential Awards for Excellence in
Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring
Funded by: National Science Foundation
Description: The PAESMEM Program seeks to identify
outstanding mentoring efforts that enhance the participation of groups (i.e.,
women, minorities, and persons with disabilities) that are underrepresented in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The awardees serve as
leaders in the national effort to develop fully the Nation's human resources in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This program provides
educational opportunities for undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral
fellows, k-12 educators.
Program
Areas: Math, Science/Environmental, Technology,
Disabilities
Recipients: Public School, Privates School,
Higher Education
Proposal
Deadline: 6/6/2012
Average
Amount: $10,000.00 - $100,000.00
Contact Person: Richard A. Alo
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: (703) 292-4634
Availability: All States
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