As a teacher I have always been concerned with the fact that many children pass through the school system and leave unable to read. I have wondered why this is so: is there something wrong with them mentally, have their parents not been stressing the importance of education or have we as teachers been unable to teach them to read? From my own experience, I have discounted mental problems in the majority of cases and I think parents' attitude contributes towards literacy/illiteracy. However, although many teachers do make the attempt, there are also many who are unable to cater to the decoding, fluency, comprehension etc. needs of the struggling readers in their classes.
This is where we, as reading specialists can attempt to make a difference. Hopefully, by the time this course is completed, we would have gained knowledge and strategies to motivate and assist struggling readers, as well as teachers.
I also firmly believe that reading specialists need to be placed firstly in the primary schools. As Lyon (2003) declares “failure to develop basic reading skills by the age nine predicts a lifetime of illiteracy.” If we wait until students enter the secondary school to make a reading intervention, it may well be too late. They will have already experienced reading failure and be demotivated to learn. Lubliner (2004) concurs when she asserts that “when children enter the upper grades unable to read proficiently, their academic performance rapidly spirals downward.”
I have serious concerns about the teaching of reading within the primary school myself. I realize that many teachers like me (before I started the course) were not very good at teaching reading. Teachers on a daily basis use the strategy where they read first and the students read after them. Very little is done to teach sight words and very few concrete materials are used. I am a bit concerned about the phonics that is taught at first year and second year, these programmes cost a lot of money and yet they are not used to their maximum potential.
ReplyDeleteI also firmly believe as you do that all schools within the primary school system should have at least one reading specialist who will be responsible for training teachers within the school and to help them prepare and monitor reading programmes for every level of the school. Many teachers must be held responsible and must be accountable for the students that they teach. Students must acquire the required set of skills at a particular level before they can be moved through the system if these skills are not acquired teachers must be able to answer with evidence why the student cannot read.
Curriculum support must also be made available from the district level. Supervision in its current form is not equipped with the necessary skills to gauge what is happening in schools when it comes to reading. The system has to be reengineered in order for our schools to successfully provide the services to students
I believe Dayah, that some teachers are unable to teach reading because they simply do not know how to do it. I base this judgement on the responses I received after I had conducted a one-day reading workshop at my school.
ReplyDeleteI observed that phonics and sight word recognition were emphasized at the Infant level but, as the children progressed into the higher classes, many teachers focused on comprehension while phonics and sight word recognition were neglected. Also, vocabulary consisted of teaching general terms and not the specialized and technical vocabularies.
I agree that as reading specialists we will be in a better position to recommend best practices in order to help teachers help the children to read and to develop a love for reading. When teachers conduct proper reading diagnosis of each child then, they will be in a better position to use appropriate intervention strategies to help the students become proficient readers. According to Snow, Burns & Griffin (1998), “Excellent instruction is the best intervention for students who demonstrate problems learning to read.”
Denise Sooknanan-Maraj
I agree with Denise's comment. Some teachers may just not posses the "know how" when it comes to helping our struggling readers.
ReplyDeleteWhen I began teaching many of the things that i can now employ in my classroom were unfamiliar to me. I knew that my students needed more than "chalk & talk" and rote reading. This is why I decided to become a reading specialist; so I can make a difference in their lives.