Update, 6.9.20: The headline and some of the text of this post have been changed for clarity, and quotes from author Zaretta Hammond were deleted because they didn’t fully and accurately reflect her views.Order Form - Fountas & Pinnell Classroom™ If people truly understood the needless damage being done by our schools every day, they would be out in the streets demanding change. Well-intentioned as it may be, the prevailing approach to literacy is failing millions of children who are disproportionately black and brown. Even if students manage to graduate from high school, they may not be able to read and understand a newspaper article or an instruction manual-or read and write at all. Their teachers water down grade-level material because they don’t know what else to do. When they get to high school, they may not know basic facts like the difference between a city and a state, or what the American Revolution was-not because they can’t learn those things, but because no one has taught them those things. In addition to depriving them-and us-of the opportunity to live up to their potential, this system is making untold numbers of them feel like failures for no good reason.Įspecially in schools where test scores are low, students may get nothing but math and “reading” through middle school. And given stagnant or declining reading scores, there’s plenty of evidence it doesn’t. There’s no evidence that leveled reading boosts comprehension. Maybe by this time you’ve concluded that you’re just not a good reader and never will be. When school finally reopens, your teacher finds you’ve slipped to a first-grade reading level. Now imagine your school has been closed for months because of Covid-19, and you’ve had little or no access to instruction of any kind. In any event, you keep practicing your “skills,” because your teacher assures you that if you do you’ll become a better reader. Or maybe almost everyone in your class is also reading below grade level. Maybe you jealously eye other kids who are reading books at level R or S-or even T, a fifth-grade level. After the test, the teacher says you’re a level “L”-a second-grade level.Įvery day during the two- or three-hour reading block, your teacher demonstrates a comprehension skill-maybe “visualizing,” or “comparing and contrasting.” Then you and your classmates practice it on books you can choose, as long as they’re at your level. Nor do you know the words fossil, ancient, and grubs. Maybe you can’t even read those words because you’ve never been taught how to sound them out. You’re not sure what a crocodile or a dinosaur is you haven’t learned anything about them in school. One day, she gives you a passage about how crocodiles are related to dinosaurs. She’ll ask you to read a text while she counts the number of mistakes you make, then ask questions to test your comprehension. Periodically, your teacher takes you and each of your classmates aside and tests your individual reading levels. By contrast, most elementary classrooms use a form of tracking that goes by the name “leveled reading.” Imagine you’re a fourth-grader.
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