Choosing a Reading Program
I'm often asked to recommend a reading series or to suggest
what specific characteristics of a program should be
identified. The questions are similar to the following:
"How do we make an appropriate selection which will help
our children become readers?" "Which characteristics make
the selections difficult or appropriate for the children?"
"How do we know that these characteristics make it
difficult, and why?" "Do we need more than one approach at
a grade level?" The answers aren't easy to formulate into a
concise statement; however, they are available to us and
I'll attempt to summarize my criteria in an understandable
manner. First, I will address the needs of the kindergarten
program in order to prepare the children for first grade.
As it turns out, that is all I have space for in the first
MATRIX issue of the year. The second issue will be devoted
to the first grade needs, and the third issue to remedial
concerns.
Does the program teach the prerequisite skills needed for
reading?
Two of the three characteristics which I have found to be
of critical importance for helping a child learn to read
are cited repeatedly by the research. The two so often
cited are that children must learn the sound of letters and
that they must be provided with proper phonemic awareness
training. Marilyn Jager Adams writing in her book Beginning
To Read, clearly identifies the two aforementioned as
crucial to reading success at the end of first grade. She
states that knowledge of and competence with these two
characteristics at the beginning of first grade are the
best indicators of success at the end of first grade.
Furthermore, in the last three years of the Reading
Teacher, the Journal of Educational Psychology, and Reading
Research Quarterly, many articles affirm the importance of
the phonemic awareness training. Phonemic awareness is
defined by many as the ability to hear sounds embedded
within words--how many parts within the words, later to
identify the letters representing these sounds, locate the
sound within the word, and how to make a new word by either
deleting or substituting a letter.
Don't all programs teach these skills?
None of the Basal series specifically teach phonemic
awareness. The phonic programs do introduce and stress the
importance of knowing the sound of the letters, but if the
teachers only do what is suggested, they are not providing
enough reinforcement for the average child. Further, even
the phonic programs do not have a complete program for
phonemic awareness. The kindergarten programs provided by
the Basal series often do not directly teach the sounds of
the letters. Instead they imply and expect the child to
make the transfer. Barbara Bateman, University of Oregon,
has found that the average child needs 1,500 reinforcements
for each of the first eight letters of the alphabet, and
the hard-to-teach children need at least 5,000 - 6,000 for
each of the first eight letters of the alphabet. After the
first eight, the children start to understand the system
and need fewer reinforcements. Gates, a reading expert of
many years ago, stated that geniuses needed tens of
reinforcements to learn the letters. Which Basal or Trade
Book provides this number of reinforcements? If you say,
"none", you're correct! To summarize, they don't teach
phonemic awareness and they don't adequately teach the
sound/symbol relationship to the children with any of the
Basal programs presently sold for kindergarten or first
grade children.
This was one of the reasons for the development of the
Guide to Readiness & Reading. The usual basal will
present a letter and discuss the sound, have worksheet
activities for the children, and then drop this letter as
they go on to others. To be learned properly the letter
must be reinforced several times per day -- intermittent
reinforcement, not massed reinforcement -- completed in a
multisensory, multidisciplinary, and exciting manner.
Children are learners, but they must be taught.
Then what do I need to buy for the kindergarten to prepare
the children for reading?
My answer is that the usual basal materials sold for the
kindergarten program are not needed. Save your money and
spend it on the multisensory materials which are more
appropriate and stimulating for the children, and are less
expensive. One of the goals of ARL is the direct teaching
of the sound/symbol relationship and phonemic awareness
training. Experience of the last 22 years of doing without
the "canned" programs for kindergarten, without the
workbooks, and providing a more natural experience for the
children has resulted in children who are better prepared
to enter a first grade program.
The third characteristic of a reader is the ability to
visualize, revisualize, or imagerize. The first two
characteristics referred to above were knowledge of the
sounds of the letters and phonemic awareness. Reading
experts refer to the third characteristic as the ability to
visualize and/or revisualize. Learning theorists refer to
the same process as the ability to imagerize. Both
disciplines are referring to the same process. The process
can be defined as the ability to see in your mind's eye the
word, person, action, or object being described although it
is not present. With regard to reading, it is the ability
to "picture" a word and what it represents as you read.
Good readers "see" the action as they read. They
vicariously experience the story being told by the author,
and their imagination allows them to follow the story like
a movie or TV program. Comprehension results from this
connection between language expression and visualization.
To enable children to experience this with stories they
read, the teachers must teach the low level skills to the
automatic level. The low level skills needed are the
sound/symbol relationship, phonemic awareness, and a fund
of knowledge built through language experiences.
Children learn to create images of concrete objects when
they are very young. Piaget refers to the process as object
permanence and finds that children of nine to ten months
usually have this ability. They can make an image of mother
when they hear her voice as she is coming to attend to
them. They can gradually build on this and learn the names
of people, objects, and all things which have object
permanence. Research by Kuenne, a Transposition transfer
theorist, found that the earliest a child could transfer an
abstract concept from one situation to another, was when
the child was 6-2. Thus, a child might learn the words
mother, father, run, jump, Sally, Dick, house, etc., but
have considerable trouble with and, but, then, when, is,
etc., for these words do not have concrete referents. Young
children of normal development, who are read to daily by
their parents and provided with an appropriate model which
clearly emphasizes the importance of reading, will learn
some of the "sight" words either as preschoolers or early
in kindergarten. This does not mean they have the necessary
skills to read, or that they do not need the three
prerequisite characteristics emphasized and taught. It
simply means that they have had opportunity and have normal
auditory and visual acuity. Be happy for them, but don't
neglect the prerequisite training which will help them to
realize their full potential.
Does the reading program you are selecting help children
learn to imagerize?
Most do not. The teacher must provide direct instruction to
enable the children to develop this characteristic. If
children are read to daily by their parents from a young
age and if all teachers will read to the children, this
will help. It will help even more if the teacher and/or
parent would take time to emphasize the image represented
by the author. Again, imagery can be taught, but you can't
rely on the basal or the trade books to do it properly.
This is one of the reasons why the ARL program encourages
teachers to use a blindfold. Children who use their
imagination to "see" a picture while making a connection
with a language concept are making cognitive connections
which are powerful links for all subjects.
-Dr. Phil McInnis
McInnis
ARL
2452
Route 364, Penn Yan, New York, 14527, US
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