LitLife Blog

Richard Allington describes research-based teaching practices that improve the ability of children to read well. Notice the materials that are required for each area of practice.

Here are some of the practices: 1) writing, sound stretching, and phonemic awareness. This is as easy to do as demonstrating sound stretching as the teacher writes the morning message. Requires chart paper and a marker; 2) word walls. Using card stock, tape and a marker, a teacher can construct and present high-frequency words that students encounter often as they read and write; 3) just plain writing. The more you write, the better you read. Tools are a notebook or piece of paper and a pencil or pen; 4) extended independent reading. You must read in order to become a better reader. You need a book or other text that is at your ability level as a reader; 5) discussion after reading. Good conversation promotes understanding. Allington notes how odd it is that we frequently interrogate our children about what they have read, and how strange such behavior would be in the world outside school. People don’t quiz each other about the factual details of what they have read; they talk together about themes, characters, etc. Again, the only material needed is a text to read and discuss; 6) reading aloud to children. Not a substitute for, but a supplement to, children reading themselves. Helps especially with vocabulary growth and modeling the thinking readers do while they read. Once again, only material needed is a text; 7) appropriate texts. Providing kids with text they can actually read is the most important thing we can do to help kids become better readers. This concept is astoundingly obvious — if text is beyond a child’s ability to read, he or she will not be able to read it. Unfortunately, this concept is astoundingly disregarded — repeatedly and continually, in classrooms all across the United States. The only material required is an appropriate text.

What do we notice about the materials required for these activities? Other than the texts to be read, the materials are extraordinarily low cost. Meaning that there is no real money to be made in promoting these highly effective teaching practices. Allington wonders who will promote effective research-based practices that are not profit centers. Instead of programs that engage children in independent reading, Allington notes the push to put kids in one-size-fits-all curricular packages (which are highly profitable, it should be noted) that provide “lots of consumable, low-level seatwork activities.”

As school budgets come up for votes across the country, we wonder why people allow their money to be spend on programs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, when the keys to unlock our children’s potential as readers are available for a fraction of the cost.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.