tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post177555314824807590..comments2024-03-28T11:57:21.902-04:00Comments on CURMUDGUCATION: Can the Reading Pendulum Be Swinging?Peter Greenehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16511193640285760299noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-1198938904317672752018-05-06T08:58:42.613-04:002018-05-06T08:58:42.613-04:00I would like to hear from educators in other state...I would like to hear from educators in other states on what we are witnessing in Texas. These poor core standards are manufacturing a crisis of misunderstood and I believe mislabeled learning disabilities. Students are being tagged with a host of diagnoses, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, etc when it seems the reality is that the absence of pure phonetic learning that is prohibiting them from fully developing in reading comprehension. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-71380943963360415722018-04-21T19:00:06.579-04:002018-04-21T19:00:06.579-04:00I think this gets at the idea that students need c...I think this gets at the idea that students need context for their content. They're not going to become more knowledgeable through reading boring, random, easily forgotten snippets. They will become more knowledgeable about a topic of inquiry that they investigate in depth over a period of time.<br /><br />And here is where, although I agree very much with Peter Greene on content, I believe that it will do us no good to try to define the various topics that children should study at different grades. Some people will think that the logical way to learn history is chronologically. Some people will think that it should be learned geographically, starting with the student's own locale and widening out from there. Some people will think that the best approach is developmental: what are students curious about at a given age? All of these ideas have a logic to them and are defensible from one standpoint or another. I would like to see the matter left up to individual schools and school districts to determine. <br /><br />I do realize that if we don't all agree on the exact topics to be studied at each grade level, we can't develop one universal content test to be given to all students. But we need for this relentless drive to standardize curriculum and assessment to end, anyway. So that would actually be good.gkm001https://www.blogger.com/profile/04288582206956930505noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-46322376341244634542018-04-19T08:38:08.999-04:002018-04-19T08:38:08.999-04:00The lack of what used to be routine knowledge we a...The lack of what used to be routine knowledge we are seeing at the middle level is disturbing. Reading comprehension depends completely on knowledge and vocabulary stored in long term memory. The reform movement got it completely backwards. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-52037007912825690112018-04-18T18:53:25.104-04:002018-04-18T18:53:25.104-04:00I agree that content shouldn't be standardized...I agree that content shouldn't be standardized and that Kindergarten shouldn't be learning about some of these content areas for a while.<br /><br />In old social studies discussions, students started with themselves and their families in K-1, then community in grades 2-3, then state in 4, U.S. in 5th, and world in 6th. And while retention is, of course, lost, at least students didn't used to ask me things like: "What does U.S. mean?" or "If Mount Everest is in Asia, why are there U.S. presidents on it?" Actual, real, serious questions asked to me by students in the last few years. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-56620354943851445182018-04-18T18:48:25.901-04:002018-04-18T18:48:25.901-04:00And TODAY, I had a student ask who the first U.S. ...And TODAY, I had a student ask who the first U.S. president was, and another ask who the current president is. BUT, my district is making elementary school students take coding class....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-33866419517098440892018-04-18T08:47:51.059-04:002018-04-18T08:47:51.059-04:00Lack of content retention has always been an issue...Lack of content retention has always been an issue with schools and students. What gets taught rarely gets learned, and what gets learned rarely gets remembered. Because content, just like discreet isolated skills, is typically decided by adults removed from actually working with students. Content is no less compulsory, than meaningless isolated reading skills. Content usually has no immediate context for application for students. The Wexler piece would become significantly more agreeable if we replaced the word "content," with "context." The last thing we need right now is a continued attempt to further standardize learning opportunities for students. It's not working for reading and math. It certainly will not work for other content areas. Also, regarding the teaching of Native Americans and Columbus in kindergarten, are we going cutesy teacher-pay-teacher smiley face coloring pages, or are we digging in to genocide right off that bat? Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-17434034435851754882018-04-18T08:07:25.478-04:002018-04-18T08:07:25.478-04:00I hope some administrators are reading this and ta...I hope some administrators are reading this and taking it to heart. I teach 8th grade science and we are seeing the same lack of content knowledge posing huge problems. My school is on the Hudson River and when I ask students which ocean it flows into, most just shrug their shoulders with an IDK look on their face. If I ask them what a tide is, same thing. The move to ignore history, geography, science, and arts content under the Common Coercion, in favor of ELA and math test prep, has also put a big wet blanket on student enthusiasm and curiosity. Its an awful lot of institutional inertia going in the wrong direction.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-79279672830086891162018-04-17T23:58:51.900-04:002018-04-17T23:58:51.900-04:00The appalling lack of knowledge of middle level st...The appalling lack of knowledge of middle level students shows how little students learn content. Yesterday, I had 8th grade students asking me if all places with "South" in the name are in South America, and if Russia, "has ever tried to be its own continent." Real, serious, questions. By treating history and geography as simply something to do in a "reading exercise," they have destroyed basic knowledge that students used to learn in elementary school, making secondary teachers start from the very beginning, and not being able to go into more rich, nuanced information, because secondary teachers are teaching the basics. I do NOT blame teachers for this--but the reliance on the BS Tests have destroyed history and geography (and, I presume, other subjects as well), because the background knowledge is not being taught until 8th or 9th grade. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-69862663657421695382018-04-17T17:10:58.883-04:002018-04-17T17:10:58.883-04:00I would LOVE to go back to how I started teaching ...I would LOVE to go back to how I started teaching in the 90s that was very concept/progress based that taught skills within the content of reading etc. But. . . how can this be in the day of data driven instruction where every thing has to be measurable. For instance. . reading has been simplified to fluency, how many sight words a child knows, vocabulary, and answering multiple choice questions at the end of a short text. <br />And. . . when everything is centered around standards and learning targets "I can use the title of a reading topic to predict what it's about." And other really really stupid daily lessons. . . I don't know how we get back to instruction that involved content.<br />My 3rd grade daughter was never strong at learning skills in isolation. She's very content and meaning based. With all of this early childhood push to have kids reading by the end of kindie, they wanted to label her as deficient and have her attend a skills based class taught by a nonteacher. I said no.<br />We read a lot at home. I read to them, they read to me and we all read to ourselves. Her teacher this year has commented that while her fluency is a struggle, her comprehension is extremely strong. I asked how she measured her comprehension and she said through her conversations with my daughter.<br />I don't think kids need to study certain topics, but I do think they need to study topics and in depth. <br />Yesterday I subbed for a class where the child was enamored with frogs, snakes etc. Let him use what he knows to learn more. <br />But with today's push for personalized/standardized learning that involves reducing learning to data/numbers, I don't think we'll see this real learning model any time soon.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6534665086749553287.post-55293797244967171952018-04-17T10:58:28.846-04:002018-04-17T10:58:28.846-04:00Rob
It should have been [6] words longer!
"B...Rob<br />It should have been [6] words longer!<br /><br />"By reading texts in history/social studies [class], science [class], and other disciplines [classes], students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas. Students can only gain this foundation when the curriculum [outside of ELA] is intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades. Students also acquire the habits of reading independently and closely, which are essential to their future success."<br /><br />The problem was, schools thought that if ELA teachers read random, out of context snippets/articles from science, history, geography, and the arts, that students would gain the background knowledge they needed. Many of us knew this would never work as intended. And it didn't. <br /><br />Better if ELA reading comprehension tests included advanced topics. For example, Grade 6: weather, mountains, colonization, farming. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com