Reading Post 1

Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: the curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap by Teale, Paciga, and Hoffman discusses our society's concern about the achievement gap, curriculum gap and factors that influence these issues. The achievement gap is more commonly used in the education world than the curriculum gap. The achievement gap in America refers to the children in poverty scoring significantly lower in reading and writing scores than children of middle and high income families. This "gap" can also be applied to the difference between minorities (African-American and Latino) and their Caucasian peers. This achievement gap issue is particularly prevalent in urban school districts.

In order to solve these problems, reform programs have come into play such as: No child left behind and reading first. Of course, we are all familiar with NCLB. Reading First (RF) direction is to improve reading instruction, through the "big five" foundational pillars: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Unfortunately, the attempt to fix the achievement gap through these programs has caused another gap: the curriculum gap. Since the main focus has leered towards reading instruction and development, educators have been lacking attention towards curriculum elements, that many believe, to be critical for success in reading and writing development. The three dimensions of the curriculum gap , as pinpointed in the article, are as follows: comprehension instruction, writing instruction, and general knowledge of the world and core concepts.

The article explains why there is little-to-no attention paid to comprehension instruction. Teachers tend to believe that reading words accurately and fluently is the key to comprehension, when, in reality, just because a student is reading without difficulty does not mean that he is grasping the concepts of the text. The majority of teachers also use grade-level text to practice over and over and over again and expect that to develop fluent word recognition, when really students need to work with a variety of grade-level text depending on their development and advancement. In addition, teachers often believe that K-3 grade-level texts are simple, but for struggling students they are not. Many teachers are simply just concerned with teaching word recognition skills, and expect for comprehension to take its natural course on its own without helping their students understand how to comprehend a text. This idea that comprehension does not need to be taught, maybe not even until the later grades is an issue for literacy, especially in urban schools.The reason why this is an issue for urban schools is because, first, children in primary-grade levels have a tendency to not grasp two foundational skills of reading: phonics and fluency. However, during these primary grades it is also essential for these students to be learning comprehension skills; focusing on fluency and phonics neglects the fact that content is more important.

All these issues touch close to my heart since I have a passion for urban school districts; I have aspirations of teaching children who are in need of higher education and opportunity. To think that it is not only about materials and financial issues that these children face when it comes to their education is unfortunate. These children are imprisoned by statistics of the achievement gap, are placed in a box and assumed to be lower-level learners. When really, they have the potential to be higher achievers. They should have the same opportunities as other students in high-income areas; they have the right to educational equality.

Reading Assignment 3: Chapter 3 (Struggling Writers)

Chapter 3: Writing Workshop

This chapter was about how writing workshops help to organize classroom time while helping the needs of struggling writers. Writing workshop is effective because it sets up a routine for the students and ensures that they are writing for a block of time each day. There are two important structures that take place during writing workshop: minilessons and independent writing time.

Minilessons are often short lessons that focus on the writing skills and strategies, address the qualities of a good writer, or address management and organizational issues (pg 32). Minilessons are often based on the particular class or particular day. A teacher must base his or her minilesson on the assessment of the students. For example, if they are having trouble with the use of quotations, the teacher might make the minilesson about where and when to use quotation marks.

I enjoyed learning about the third grade teacher’s rules for writing workshop. I like that he had the rules displayed in a visible spot in the classroom to ensure the students could look at it while writing. I think the idea of having a “quiet” table is a great way to separate the children who need quiet. I am the type of person who needs quiet when I work, so that is the place I would be sitting at. Even now when I do my work I get the most done in complete silence. I also like the rule that there is no talking during the first five minutes. This ensures that students will think about what they want to write about without consulting with their friends first. Often times if kids see or hear their friends say they’re going to write about baseball, they will decide to write about baseball too.

I also think it is important to have discussions and peer lessons, which this chapter talks about. I think that whole class discussions are extremely beneficial to students, especially in the third grade and higher. I think this allows students to hear their classmates’ questions, comments, and concerns, often which are the same for many students. Peer reviewing also helps because it opens a student’s eyes to what they missed while they were writing. The book states that “peers are an effective and credible source of information about the craft of writing, especially for struggling writers whose relationships with teachers have often been strained by the stress of academic failure” (pg 42). I thought this was the most important piece of information in the chapter. Sometimes children feel safer talking to their peers because they’d rather hear the criticism from a peer than a teacher. I thought this was a great point and it is something that I had never thought about previously.

Reading Assignment 2: Chapter 1 (Strategies That Work)

I enjoyed this chapter in the book because I liked what the teacher Steph did with her sixth grade class. I love when middle school teachers read to their classes because I think it keeps them interested and attentive. I also loved that she gave them insight into her own childhood comparing it to the book she was reading. No matter what age, students love to hear about their teacher’s experiences and lives. She modeled how when you read a book it is beneficial to connect it to your own life because you are “more apt to engage in the reading as well as understand it” (page 12). Engaging in the text is extremely important because I know from experience that if you are not interested in what you are reading, your mind wanders. I often find myself reading a page in a textbook while thinking about a million other things. When I finish the page I have no idea what I just read. It is so easy to think about other things while you’re reading, which is why visualizing and connection to the book is crucial.

I also liked the section that talks about how much pressure teachers are under. Between performance, curriculums, standards, standardized tests, and so on, it seems so easy to lose track of what is important. This is one of the fears I have with becoming a teacher. I’m worried about all the pressure that is put on teachers. It is a huge responsibility to teach a classroom of students all the things they need to be knowledgeable and successful in their next year of schooling and if life. However, the pressure builds when standardized test scores are used to reflect the teacher. This reminded me of the article that I posted last week about the school in the Bronx. The school’s low test scores put them under the watchful eye of the Department of Education, yet the fact that the students’ were achieving much more in school and were gaining much success compared to year before was ignore.

I want to be the teacher who encourages active literacy in the classroom. The book states that classrooms with active literacy “burst with enthusiastic and engaged learners” (page 16) where teachers and students weigh in with opinions, examples, and ideas (page 16). I want to promote dialogue in my classroom, even in the younger grades. I think that conversations are extremely important because kids learn from each other’s questions, thoughts, and ideas.

Reading Assignment 1: Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools

Beginning Reading Instruction in Urban Schools: The Curriculum Gap Ensures a Continuing Achievement Gap by William H. Teale, Kathleen A. Paciga, and Jessica L. Hoffman

This article talks about literacy achievement gaps among groups based on income, culture, gender, and so forth. I find these types of articles extremely interesting because of the disparities within these types of groups and areas. As the article states, “children from poverty backgrounds score significantly lower in reading and writing than children from middle and high income backgrounds and that a similar gap exists between African American students and Latino students and their higher scoring Caucasian peers” (page 344). This always made me wonder about what factors cause this discrepancy. From just reading the introduction from the article, it already brings me to questions such as: Is it the parents fault for not reading to their children or helping with homework? Are the parents not helping because they are forced to work long hours just to provide for their children? Is it because the schools lack the necessary supplies needed to aid in literacy? Is it because the schools lack proper teachers that have the patience and drive to teach these students literacy? Many of my questions were focused on in the second paragraph where it states how much funding was made available for teachers to learn proper reading instruction, materials, and assessment programs.

The article also brings up the fact that districts have been reducing instructional time in social studies and science by an average of 90 minutes and 94 minutes per week respectively in primary grades (page 346). This is a huge disadvantage for those children even if it means more time with reading speed and reading accuracy because they will not only lack knowledge in these two subjects but they also won’t be able to understand texts in these subjects when they get to higher grade levels. When I was in school, whenever our Language Arts or Math periods were cut short or ran long, my teachers always borrowed the time from science and social studies. It wasn’t until 6^th grade when I actually began to learn about these subjects and I feel like I lost out on a lot of information. My teachers could have easily incorporated science and social students into language arts by using texts from these two subjects to draw on important literacy aspects. Reading a book on the solar system can teach students about a science topic while letting them practice their reading speed and accuracy. In my clinical classroom I now see things like this implemented, which I think is extremely beneficial. My first grade students are learning about water and complete different science experiments dealing with water throughout the week. There are big books that go along with the water unit that allow children to read aloud with the teacher, master sight words, and learn new vocabulary. They also practice their writing during science by filling out papers with what they think will happen and what did happen. I believe that all the subjects are important for children to learn and master and if they struggle in one subject it will often cause difficulty in another subject.

Although the article tracked the performance differences between “different groups” it made me think about a lot of different aspects. There are many factors that lead to these discrepancies amongst students and some of them are harder to detect than others. Ultimately I believe that there needs to be a way to promote literacy among students that does not involve taking them away from other areas.