Read Aloud.

I’m just going to go point-by-point in this blog. I apologize if I ramble… : )

First of all, I loved the Anna Plan. I liked how it was based on early literacy research and formatted to be flexible and inclusive. Most of all, I thought it was very important that the reading teachers reserved a day to collaborate with teachers. Not only are the teachers involved during the week in the reading program, but they also have a specific, guaranteed time to meet with the reading teachers. This ensures that there will be a congruency between literacy instruction in the classroom and in the reading room. As we have discussed many times in class, congruency is very important, and I hadn’t thought about students being taught different methods in school. Also, this designated planning period is great because I think one of the reasons teachers don’t work together is because they don’t have time! The Friday planning period allowed the teachers to sit down and plan with a reading instructor while continuing to provide the students with literacy instruction. Everybody wins with the Anna Plan!

No Child Left Behind – I’m going to try really hard to not go on and on about how much I hate NCLB (or at least how it is implemented). First of all, I hate how the NRP defined reading as alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension. Obviously, those three things are very important to literacy instruction, but, as Barone and Mallett write, that definition is incredibly limited. I think there were two main reasons why the NRP decided to define reading in such a restricted way. One, I’m going to bet that many of the politicians on the NRP were not educators. I can see how a person who was not trained as an educator, especially one not trained in how to teach reading, would see reading in such restrictive terms. Before I took education classes, I probably would have thought of reading in that way, but now I know there are many more important factors that influence how children learn to read. Two, alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension can be easily tested, and we all know how much NCLB emphasizes testing. It’s kinda hard to test for home experiences and exposure to print.

I think teachers are overwhelmed by the expectations that NCLB puts on them. They are trained to teach one way, yet are expected to generate results that do not utilize that training. With the threat of being fired hanging over their heads, it’s no wonder why so many teachers give up and teach to the test. I know when I was high school, we had to take the Standards of Learning tests (aka SOLs – shit out of luck, anyone?). Each year we would test in different subjects, and the teachers formed their lessons based on those SOL standards. Instead of teaching to their students’ needs or basing their lessons on state teaching standards (which are generally more inclusive and better designed that SOL standards), the teachers taught to the test. The exception was the year I took AP US history. 11th grade was the history SOL, but since we had a much more important test to focus on, my teacher never mentioned SOLs. Fortunately, AP tests require students to think critically about their knowledge and apply it in new ways rather than simply mark A, B, C, or D. So all year, I had been taught to think about history critically and to make connections and consider mulitple causes, and then they put the SOL in front of me. The SOL only required me to spout facts, and it conveniently provided me with multiple choice answers that were easily handled. However, I was initially shocked by the simplicity and shallowness of the SOL tests, and then I probably finished it in 20 minutes.

Finally, I just want to say that teachers don’t have to teach to the test to have their students be successful on the NCLB mandated tests. In fact, I bet the schools that don’t teach to the test have the best chances of fulfilling that ridiculous NCLB requirement of improving upon scores every year (hello! each year has different students, it’s not fair to compare them!!!). Programs like the Anna Plan help struggling students become confident, competent readers that will carry on from year to year. Those students will be able to build on their skills and improve every year. However, those poor struggling students who have phonics and comprehension rammed down their throats aren’t going to be as confident or as competent as their Anna Plan peers. Those kids are more likely to forget their memorized skills over summer break, which means teachers have to start over the next year; and, let’s face it, most teachers don’t take the time to find out what their students remember.  Literacy instruction is about so much more than test scores, and I hope someone in the government figures that out soon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.