Open Discussion Forum

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Sharon Schwartz
NY
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Hello Sharon,
I really like these websites for resources and articles: Alliance for Childhood (look for the article called Crisis in Kindergarten) and Defending the Early Years (straight talk about the common core).  Thank you for holding on to developmental emergent reading and writing for our kindergarteners. Good Luck!

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Carol Murray
Bard Nursery School
Red Hook NY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

Original Message------

Hello Sharon,
I really like these websites for resources and articles: Alliance for Childhood (look for the article called Crisis in Kindergarten) and Defending the Early Years (straight talk about the common core).  Thank you for holding on to developmental emergent reading and writing for our kindergarteners. Good Luck!

------------------------------
Carol Murray
Bard Nursery School
Red Hook NY
------------------------------

​Hi Sharon,
Please hold strong in your commitment to providing meaningful, relevant literacy experiences for your kindergarteners! Heavy-handed, skills-focused reading instruction too early might prompt higher scores on reading tests but they don't encourage the kind of thinking and motivation that leads to lifelong, joyful readers.

A book that I love and use with my EC teacher candidates, that values and encourages the reading of our youngest learners, is I Am Reading by Kathy Collins and Matt Glover. "Learn to read," for these authors, doesn't mean being able to parrot all the letter sounds or fill in worksheets. A couple of quotes, just from the introduction: "In the rush toward ever higher reading levels in the early years, we may fail to value the strategy use and high-level thinking children do before they are reading conventionally." And "With regard to early literacy, specifically, we frequently see instruction that is focused on moving young children to the next text levels as fast as possible, and whether children enjoy reading or fall in love with books or develop habits that will benefit them throughout their lives becomes an afterthought, not a priority."

I hope you are able to advocate for your children's needs over elementary administrators who urge developmentally inappropriate  literacy practices. Thanks for supporting your children's literacy in real ways!

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Sherry Sanden
Illinois State University
Normal IL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

This is such an important question. I just left a data walk in our local community looking at the data that shows in our local community our rates have not significantly increased and in Ohio after ten years of the third-grade reading guarantee progress has been flat according to the <g data-gr-id="671" id="671" class="gr_ gr_671 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_hide Style multiReplace replaceWithoutSep">https://earlychildhood.ehe.osu.edu/files/2019/03/Third-Grade-Reading-Whitepaper_032019_WEB2-1.pdf .</g>

https://www.nctq.org/blog/The-Science-of-Teaching-Reading shard a profile on the conversation stating:
"According to 2002, President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education as many as two-fifths of the children in special education "are there because they weren't taught to read." Moreover, research has found that if teachers would use the above five research-backed approaches to teaching reading, the current rate of reading failure could drop from around 20 to 30 percent to just 2 to 10 percent. This shows the urgent need for teacher prep programs to incorporate these five components into their preparation for elementary school teachers."



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Pamela Perrino
Professional Relations Coordinator and Power to the Profession Advocate
Ohio AEYC
Warren OH
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

Hi Pam,
This takes us a bit beyond the original discussion but I encourage you to look further than the ​NCTQ report and the National Reading Panel Report, both of which are quite dated and have been discredited by multiple research studies and professional education organizations for their methodological flaws. Here's one example from the International Literacy Association: https://literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2014/06/25/response-to-nctq's-2014-teacher-education-report- . Unfortunately, these sources are often still quoted by the reading=phonics crowd, to the detriment of teacher understanding about literacy instruction that promises real learning.

------------------------------
Sherry Sanden
Illinois State University
Normal IL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-26-2019 12:55 PM
From: Pamela Perrino
Subject: Teaching Reading

This is such an important question. I just left a data walk in our local community looking at the data that shows in our local community our rates have not significantly increased and in Ohio after ten years of the third-grade reading guarantee progress has been flat according to the <g data-gr-id="671" id="671" class="gr_ gr_671 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_hide Style multiReplace replaceWithoutSep">https://earlychildhood.ehe.osu.edu/files/2019/03/Third-Grade-Reading-Whitepaper_032019_WEB2-1.pdf .</g>

https://www.nctq.org/blog/The-Science-of-Teaching-Reading shard a profile on the conversation stating:
"According to 2002, President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education as many as two-fifths of the children in special education "are there because they weren't taught to read." Moreover, research has found that if teachers would use the above five research-backed approaches to teaching reading, the current rate of reading failure could drop from around 20 to 30 percent to just 2 to 10 percent. This shows the urgent need for teacher prep programs to incorporate these five components into their preparation for elementary school teachers."

What I wonder and worry about is how is this data being compared to the child's social and emotional resiliency skills and who is collecting the data to support teachers who are courageous enough to say reading techniques may not be enough if we have not met the child and family's social/emotional and basic needs. It is hard to learn to read when you are not ready.  We seem to be in a race to push down strategies that are not always developmentally appropriate for young children to increase test scores later on, but the data does not support the approach.

Thank you for having the courage to question and advocate for your students. If you do not who will.
Pam

------------------------------
Pamela Perrino
Professional Relations Coordinator and Power to the Profession Advocate
Ohio AEYC
Warren OH

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

I totally respect all that you are doing.  It sounds like a very individualized instruction response to reading.

As a Debbie Miller "Happy Reading!"  nerd I am wondering how they are able to show their understandings about their reading?  Also, do you have ALL the parents on board at HOME?  Very important as a sort of flipped classroom; let Parents know where their child's reading is going and for them to support with home structures for studying, responding, practicing vocabulary etc. in a safe structured environment as best as possible.  Home support in work at home aka homework,  makes all the difference in the WORLD!  *&: ) As they become little experts in their particular interests so to does the family.  I*t is exciting.  Responses should be open ended based on their choices of how to present their knowledge etc. this involves, science, social studies, math etc...as they build their projects/presentations.

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Germaine Jackson
Round Rock TX
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

In my experience, many parents try to "help" their kindergarten children learn to read by using workbooks and flashcards. We try to educate parents instead, to spend quality time reading to their children and to give the children meaningful reasons to read and write (help write a shopping list and then read the list and help find the items in the store, thank you card to grandma, etc.). Parents beg for homework. We suggest that parents give the children relaxed time to play, take a bath and hear a bedtime story. Once children discover the magic of writing they love to write stories and create books all on their own. We encourage parents to spend quality time talking and having fun with their child, not to force their child to do academic work at home. We send home detailed newsletters discussing what the children are learning and discovering in school and encourage continued exploration at home. We talk about social-emotional development, problem solving skills, developing resilience, and gaining a love for learning.  It is a real uphill battle since parents are worried that their child will not be at the top of the class in first grade.

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Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-26-2019 03:20 PM
From: Germaine Jackson
Subject: Teaching Reading

I totally respect all that you are doing.  It sounds like a very individualized instruction response to reading.

As a Debbie Miller "Happy Reading!"  nerd I am wondering how they are able to show their understandings about their reading?  Also, do you have ALL the parents on board at HOME?  Very important as a sort of flipped classroom; let Parents know where their child's reading is going and for them to support with home structures for studying, responding, practicing vocabulary etc. in a safe structured environment as best as possible.  Home support in work at home aka homework,  makes all the difference in the WORLD!  *&: ) As they become little experts in their particular interests so to does the family.  I*t is exciting.  Responses should be open ended based on their choices of how to present their knowledge etc. this involves, science, social studies, math etc...as they build their projects/presentations.

------------------------------
Germaine Jackson
Round Rock TX

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

Dear Sharon,

It sounds as if you are incorporating many principles of effective literacy instruction ("rich Language Arts program," "meaningful, relevant" and "differentiated for each child") for your Kindergarten students.  In response to your request, you may find the following article of interest.  The article (Kaye & Lose, 2019) appears in the March/April 2019 issue of The Reading Teacher and argues for literacy instruction that is based on young children's strengths and sets them on a strategic path toward becoming skilled readers and writers.  Available "open access" https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1768 the article emphasizes literacy teaching and learning that ensures teachers' and children's productive use of time and shared joy.

Yours sincerely,

Mary

------------------------------
Mary K. Lose
Professor, Reading & Language Arts
Oakland University
Rochester, MI USA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 03-25-2019 09:06 AM
From: Sharon Schwartz
Subject: Teaching Reading

The kindergarten classes in our private school have a wonderful, rich Language Arts program which is differentiated for each child. We do not use any type of canned curriculum or workbooks. Instead, the children learn in meaningful, relevant ways and leave kindergarten feeling like real readers and writers. Until now, the benchmark was for children to leave kindergarten with fluent recognition of all upper and lower case letters and the sounds they make, as well as the ability to write stories using invented spelling and basic sight words<g class="gr_ gr_1712 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Style replaceWithoutSep" id="1712" data-gr-id="1712">.We</g> are aware of common core standards, but they are quite mirky in this area. "Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words".
Year after year, about a third of the <g class="gr_ gr_2650 gr-alert gr_gramm gr_inline_cards gr_run_anim Punctuation only-ins replaceWithoutSep" id="2650" data-gr-id="2650">children</g> leave our kindergarten classes reading fluently, a third on the emergent level, and a third not quite ready yet.
We are under increasing pressure from the elementary school administration to push more children to learn to read in Kindergarten. We are looking for articles and research on this subject.
Thank you

------------------------------
Sharon Schwartz
NY
------------------------------

Original Message------

Dear Sharon,

It sounds as if you are incorporating many principles of effective literacy instruction ("rich Language Arts program," "meaningful, relevant" and "differentiated for each child") for your Kindergarten students.  In response to your request, you may find the following article of interest.  The article (Kaye & Lose, 2019) appears in the March/April 2019 issue of The Reading Teacher and argues for literacy instruction that is based on young children's strengths and sets them on a strategic path toward becoming skilled readers and writers.  Available "open access" https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1768 the article emphasizes literacy teaching and learning that ensures teachers' and children's productive use of time and shared joy.

Yours sincerely,

Mary

------------------------------
Mary K. Lose
Professor, Reading & Language Arts
Oakland University
Rochester, MI USA
------------------------------