Often one of the biggest obstacles to overcome in children with literacy problems is their own lack of belief in themselves as meaning-makers.
When dealing with children with literacy problems, you must always focus
on the following considerations:
– How well does
the child negotiate meaning in literacy
– How effective
is the child in employing the four cueing strategies
– How does the
context lend itself to effective literacy in terms of:
Overall exposure to literacy
The materials used
The instruction provided
The feedback given about the importance of literacy
The feedback given about the child's literacy performance
The opportunities for authentic literacy
– How empowered
is the child regarding his literacy abilities
The level of empowerment that a child holds is very important and if the child is disempowered regarding literacy, then you must empower him/her before you will be successful.
Based upon my experience, the following are important points for addressing empowerment.
ORGANIZING POINTS FOR EMPOWERMENT
1. Empowerment may be considered to have two
major components:
– An Affective component (what the child believes
about
his/her abilities)
– A Behavioral component (what the child does
to sustain
his/her affective beliefs)
2. To empower an individual with literacy problems,
you must have a
dual focus:
– Make him/her believe in their capacities as an effective
meaning-maker (Attitudinal)
– Help him/her turn those positive beliefs into action
(Performance)
3. When empowering your students, you have
to consider at least
two major
facets of your focus:
– You must plan to make an impact through your own
direct actions
– You must determine how to make an impact in modifying
the other primary contexts of importance:
Classroom
Home
4. There are a number of variables that should
be considered when
you go about
the task of empowering the children with literacy
problems.
Although these should be considered as synergistic
and holistic,
we can discuss them by artificially dividing them
into seven
basic variables of empowerment pedagogy:
A.
Avoid Localizing problems in the child
– It is essential that you don't fall prey to the concept of
localizing the problems observed within the child him/herself.
– This is often done with literacy problems and it results in an
insidious cycle for the child
* Diagnosed with the label "dyslexia"
– The problem, however, is that this label is a poor one due to
a number of factors:
* There is a lack of widely accepted diagnostic definition
* The definitions employed are vague
* Behaviors are not specific to nor discriminating of
intrinsic literacy learning problems.
* The overt behavior – literacy difficulty – is identified
and the assumption is made that it is due to a problem
intrinsic to the child. So you have the
"hammer problem"
* There is a lack of explicitness of diagnostic indices
* The objective is more to label than gain a detailed
understanding of complexity
– This then results in problems dealing with the practical aspects
of literacy:
* Tends to provide a "no-fault" label
* No data available to deal with contextual complexity
So there are no additional considerations
* Bias toward medical explanations
* Shifts responsibilities for change/interventions
to
"others"
* Creates discord over time since problems at not
addressed
B.
Adopt Appropriate Attitudes and Expectations
– As previously discussed, there is much overlap with all of
these variables regarding empowerment. Certainly, the
overall approach that you take, the attitudes within which
you enter into empowerment pedagogy is essential.
– You must adopt a synergistic perspective of language
proficiency and make their practices fit this belief.
– You must strive to make the
education fit the student,
not the student fit the preconceived education model.
This requires a commitment to the student ADVOCACY.
– You must strive to provide a constancy of purpose for
the provision of quality services for the student to
succeed in all kinds of endeavors over the long term.
This requires a commitment to a TOTAL QUALITY
PHILOSOPHY.
– Overall, the attitude that you have some be three-fold:
* You should have an unconditional positive regard for
your student
* You should have a proactive and intervention-oriented
attitude. You must believe that you can help the child
overcome the problem if you are to be of benefit.
* You should not blame the child for the situation.
But
do take the responsibility to help change the situation.
– As such, you should treat each child as a unique learner and
valued human being.
– These overall attitudes should result in the following
expectations:
* You have the responsibility to help overcome
the problems
* Expect that if you stress reason, support, and kindness
you will have an impact
* Expect that if the student exhibits lack of motivation
or a lack of cooperation that it is likely not a "purposeful
violation" but, rather, a reaction to the disempowerment
he/she perceives.
* Expect and respect a "silent" period during initial
stages
of learning in which students that are learning prefer to
listen actively, taking in ideas and observe literacy at first
* Expect that if you provide good examples and models
you will be effective
* Expect that the environment may need to be modified
also and not just the child
* Expect that change takes time and consistency
– Remember that consistency
and expectations are key
– Frank Smith talks about children "JOINING THE
LITERACY CLUB"
* This is done with a single unqualified reciprocal
act of affiliation
* These children take for granted that they will
become like the more experienced members of
the club; they are the same kind of people.
* This expectation of success does not guarantee
learning...but it makes it possible
* However, the expectation of failure almost
always produces that effect.
* Advantages of The Literacy club:
- They see what written language does
the numerous ways that written language
makes sense in our world is demonstrated
to children by "people like them" who
are members of the club
- Children are admitted as junior members
– No high initial expectations
– Errors are expected and welcomed
– They are not labeled
- Members help newcomers become experts
- Children are quickly admitted to the full
range of club activities as these activities
make sense to them and are useful.
- Children learn to identify themselves as
members of the literacy club
– They see themselves as readers/writers
- All of the learning takes place without risk.
– No formal tests
– No expectation that one person be as
good as another
C.
Create a Context for Empowerment
– Provide an environment in which students are encouraged
to take risks with learning. This typically requires
Cooperative rather than Competitive learning strategies
and appropriate scaffolded support
* Empowerment depends on the child having self-esteem
and a sense of community with other literacy users
* When children feel good about themselves and recognize
they are valued members of the group, it is easier
for them to learn to read and write because they don't
have the affective barriers in place that may impact
on their acquisition and use of literacy.
* Especially, students gain confidence in their ability
as learners when there is an absence of academic
competition.
– Use instructional methodologies which are active and
which focus on learning by doing and require higher
level thinking processes.
* Reflection
* Imagery
* Reasoning
– Develop non-verbal ways in which students can
demonstrate their knowledge.
– Arrange the environment so that all students can
actively participate and contribute to the success of
the class regardless of level of performance or
competence.
– Encourage high levels of interaction among students
and utilize experiences familiar to the students as
part of the curriculum.
– Create a Comprehensive Language-Learning Environment
* Input must contain some language already known
to students and some language not yet acquired.
* The knowledge to be acquired is acquired with
the assistance of context and modeling/demonstration
/mediation as scaffolds.
* The instruction must focus on meaning and not on
form, and must be interesting to students.
– Create an environment of anticipatory excitement for
literacy as a meaning-making system and its significance
as language and communication. Examples with my
own child:
* Linking books with rewards
* Using books for times of comfort and
reflection at times
* Use books to actively explore your world
* Tease their interests and then link the stories with
books and stories
Indian in the cupboard
Fanciful stories of adventure
* Use books for various discussions
Tommy and the mythology/fairy tale example
* Employ frequent literacy events by all family
members
* Create special memories linked to books
Christmas books and memories with Tommy
* Keep a list of books read and comment on them
* Acknowledge and discuss his discovery process
in literacy
"Daddy likes books better than cartoons"
"You mean you can read with your mind?"
"I have written about you in a book"
* "Publish" his products or otherwise make them
visually accessible (refrigerator)
D.
Avoid Pedagogical "traps"
– Specifically for reading,
work to prevent the
condition that Frank Smith refers to as
TUNNEL VISION.
* Not a permanent state
* Occurs when the brain is overloaded
with visual information
* Reading nonsense causes tunnel vision
because nonsense is not predictable.
* This condition is common when learning to read
* this condition can be aggravated if the print that
the beginner is expected to read is not very predictable.
Causes of TUNNEL VISION:
* Trying to read something that is nonsense to you.
If something is not predictable it can cause tunnel
vision
* Lack of relevant knowledge. If there is a lack of
nonvisual data.....it must be acquired
* Reluctance to use nonvisual information
Risk is necessary
You must be willing to make a mistake
Errors are normal and expected
Anxiety can get in the way
* Poor reading habits
If you read too slowly
If you are reluctant to push ahead
If you strive to get every word
Often deliberately taught
Overcoming Tunnel Vision
* ensure that what children are expected to
read makes sense to them
* provide the necessary prior knowledge
that will help them
* Reassurance must be the basis of
"remedial" instruction
* Break bad habits -- especially slow reading
* Breaking down reading into "component
skills" makes learning to read more difficult
because it makes nonsense out of what should
be sense.
– Don't engage in "Round Robin Reading" due to the
primary disadvantages of this practice of calling on students
to read orally one after another.
* It provides students with an inaccurate view of reading
* Typically never read aloud before a group before
we have prepared
* Typically never read aloud before a group that
follows along
* The practice stresses reading every single word
with accuracy
* It can potentially cause faulty reading habits
instead of effective reading strategies.
- Read at different rates, stop at different
points focusing on only 3 or 4 words at
a time
- Poor habit for reader and those reading along
- May come to associate frustration and
nonsense with reading due to the slow and
halting strategy that reduces meaning-making
- It can cause unnecessary subvocalization
Those who follow along silently may
subvocalize to "keep pace"
- This reduces speed of reading rate and harms
comprehension
* It can work against all students developing to
their full potential
* We tend to correct mistakes that children make
while reading aloud before they have an
opportunity to correct themselves – this is
especially true of struggling readers.
* Doesn't allow them to monitor themselves,
paying attention to meaning and self-correcting
when meaning is interrupted.
* It consumes valuable classroom time that could
be spent on other meaningful activities
* Reduces actual words/texts that children read
over time since it is slower than silent reading
* It can be a source of anxiety and embarrassment
for students
- Often seen as the basis for problems with
non-standardized dialects
* It can hamper comprehension
– Don't engage in pedagogical or assessment techniques or
strategies that create Decontextualization.
* This is a state created when you focus on a skill or
behavior that is normally employed within an
authentic meaning-making operation but you require
its use, or teach (and even practice) it:
- in isolation
- without experiential variables as scaffolds
- devoid of meaning
- teach it directly
- often employ a predetermined sequence
* When a skill or behavior is decontextualized,
control of how much practice or exercise the child
needs is determined by the teacher not the situation.
* Consequently, real application of the behavior or
skill to new, authentic and meaningful contexts
rarely occurs.
* There are a number of documented academic
problems due to decontextualization
- The state of Semilingualism is primarily due
to decontextualization
* it is a result of the complex interaction
between the social context of mainstream
schools and the language differences that
semilingual students bring with them to
the educational environment.
* It is a state of educational existence
and NOT an intrinsic language or
cognitive condition.
* Research has demonstrated that the
academic, language, and cognitive
problems reported in children from
lower socieconomic levels who speak a
minority language are primarily due to
the way that the mainstream schools are
designed and how they function.
- Many literacy difficulties are due to decontextualization
* Children from poverty
* Bottom-up approaches (phonics)
* Any system that can't employ the cueing systems
* When learning is decontextualized and when you are
already struggling because you are using less proficient
Meaning-making abilities, then it is hard to acquire skills
and knowledge since it is filtered through instructional
"nonsense".
* The lack of success of children in such situations is due
to the school's failure to provide sufficient meaningful
instruction on top of the school focus on prescriptive
(and non-complementary) notions of what learning,
academic skill, and competence are in the classroom.
* Holdaway's Distinction between "strategies"
and
"skills" is instructive here.
E.
Employ Contextualization
– We must attend more carefully to the contextual variables
– The "something else" should have prominence
– We have to move away from a reliance on inauthentic
and invalid ways of testing meaning making proficiency
– You have to advocate and utilize more authentic, functional,
and meaningful ways to teach academic skills like literacy
– Remember Ken Goodman's ideas about whole
language (1986:8):
Literacy is easier to learn when:
It's real and natural
It's whole
It's sensible
It's interesting
It's relevant
It belongs to the learner
It's part of a real event
It has social utility
It has purpose for the learner
The learner chooses to learn it
It's accessible to the learner
The learner has the power to use it
– Employ the power of a Holistic Perspective to learning
* Someone reads aloud to the students daily.
* Students engaged in reading/writing for real purposes
* Students talk about their reading and writing
processes as a natural part of activities.
* There is lots of talk about plans, observations,
and things of interest.
* There are all kinds of print materials available.
* There are always projects or thematic units used.
* The focus is on whole texts, stories, conversations,
phenomena that occur naturally and normally in life.
* There is a value placed on the language, interests,
and experiences students bring to school.
* The learners have choices.
* Communities are part of the curriculum.
* The curriculum is learner-centered.
* Writing activities should be conducted everyday.
– In this regard, a distinct made by Don Holdaway and by
Regie Routman should be considered here -- the difference
between the teaching of Skills and Strategies.
* Skills: The behaviors taught directly, often in a
predetermined sequence and then
practiced in isolation. The teacher
controls how much practice or exercise
the student needs. Application to new and
meaningful context rarely occurs.
* Strategies: The behaviors are taught in a broader
context because the learner demonstrates a
need for specific skills in the instructional/
learning setting.
* The real difference between skills and strategies
teaching (according to Holdaway) is that strategy
teaching concerns the presence of self-direction
on the part of the learner, skills teaching does not.
* A skill cannot be considered a strategy until the
learner can use it purposefully and independently.
* The learner must know how and when to apply
the skill; that is what elevates the skill to the
strategy level.
* Working on the targeted behaviors in context so
that the learner is developing strategies is what
the literacy exercises should be focused upon.
– Teach strategies as the need arises
* This is when a "teachable moment embedded
within the context" occurs -- it is also an
example of grounding the activity in a true
narrative representation.
* This teaching/mediation of the strategies as
the
need arises must be done consistently.
* Example from Routman:
Jason: "When Jamaica...." (Silence,
looks at teacher)
Teacher: Skip that word and read to the
end of the sentence
Jason: "When Jamaica....at the park, no
one was there."
Teacher: What would make sense? Where
is she?
Jason: "When Jamaica arrived
in the park,
there was no one there. It was
almost super time, but she still had a
few.....
Teacher: Keep going.
Jason: ....to play.
Teacher: It's the end of the day. Is it super
time? Does that make sense?
Think about what would make sense.
Jason: "It was almost supper time, but she still
had a few minutes to play."
Teacher: Good for you. I like the way you
looked at how the word began
and put in what made sense.
– As a teacher/mediator, you can evaluate yourself on your
performance in teaching strategies and not skills.
Ask yourself:
* Is your language fostering meaning-based
strategies and independence when a student
can't read a word, or are you relying only on,
"look at the letters" and "What sounds do the
letters make?"
* Are you using engaging books with predictable
text that support the reader, or are your texts
dull and sequentially based for skills?
* Are you guiding students to apply strategies, or
are you teaching for mastery of skills?
* Are you giving students sufficient wait time and
encouragement to figure out words and meanings
on their own, or are you quick to supply the answer?
* Do other students know it is the reader's job to
do the work and that they need to give the reader
quiet wait time, or do students call out words?
* After students have one-to-one matching and
some confidence as readers, are you introducing
students to unfamiliar text to note what strategies
they have under control, or are students reading
only books they have already heard?
* Are you asking important questions that follow
naturally from the text and encourage more than
one possibility, or are you looking for only one
"right" answer?
* Is vocabulary taught in context during and after
reading, or are you introducing words in isolation
before reading?
* Are follow-up activities leading to further
enjoyment and engagement with the text or are
they merely keeping students busy while others
are in group?
F.
Provide Appropriate Feedback/Interactions
– Milieu must induce self-confidence and lower anxiety.
– Do talk a bit about the child's difficulties and stress
that you can assist him/her and that together, you
can succeed.
– Provide positive descriptive feedback that is "on target"
and genuine
– Feedback must be immediate.
– It is important to conduct a reading (or writing) conference
with the child. This enables you to understand the needs of
the child from his/her perspective. It also lets the child start
reflecting on the process and start verbalizing his/her fears.
Sample questions after the child reads silently:
* What would you like to tell me about what you read?
* Do you have any confusions about what you've read?
* What have you been wondering about as you read this?
* How did you decide to read this?
* What kinds of things have you been wrestling with
as you read this? How have you solved the problem(s)?
* If you had the chance to talk with this author, what
would you talk with him/her about?
– Make him a CO-WORKER
– Provide lots of demonstrations via Think Alouds
– Begin with "Roaming around the Known".
* Go over what the child knows
* Don't introduce any new items of learning at first
* Go over what he knows in different ways until
your ingenuity runs out and until he is moving
fluently around this personal corpus of responses.
* It helps you focus on the child and reinforces
him and forces you to stop teaching from
preconceived ideas.
– Figuring out an Unknown Word
* Class demonstration using silent reading:
- This can be demonstrated to the whole class
or in small groups
- Have the group read a page silently.
- After the reading, ask, "Did anyone have trouble
with a word while reading?"
- Child raises hand and spells "distributed"
- Teacher writes it on the board
- Teacher tells the student:
"Read the sentence and when you get to that
word put in something that makes sense"
- Student reads "All the drawings and papers
that had been hanging around the room
were taken down and ‘passed out' to the
various artists and writers in the class.
- Teacher complements on his meaningful
substitution and does a quick word analysis
of the word on the board.
* Relating the Known to the unknown
- In context, can show how familiar patterns
and little words the students already know
can be applied to figuring out new words.
- Use a small chalkboard to a sliding mask.
it, sit and, land, stand Out,
shouted, about
* Giving Verbal Support for Structural Words
- When children have problems with words
such as "they", "what", "that", "when" and
others -- especially at the first of the sentence.
- Use word and intonational cueing as a prompt:
"What did they do?"
"What happened?"
"What do you think that is?"
* Other strategies for Unknown words
- Skip the difficult word
Read on to end of sentence or paragraph
Go back to beginning of sentence and try again
- Read on. Reread inserting the beginning sound
of the unknown word
- Substitute a word that makes sense
- Look for a known chunk or small word
Use finger to cover part of the word
- Read the word using only beginning and ending sounds
Read the word without vowels
- Look for picture cues
- Link to prior knowledge
- Predict and anticipate what would come next
- Cross check
"Does it sound right?"
"Does it make sense?"
"Does it look right?"
- Self-correct and self-monitor
- Write words you can't figure out and need to
know on Post-Its.
- Read the passage several times for fluency
and meaning
- Rather than let the child struggle, provide the
word after 5 seconds or so
* Suggesting that the child "sound it out" RARELY helps
and often causes anxiety.
* Strategies for including everyone in your interactions
during groups
* You must create an atmosphere where each child
feels safe to speak. This lies down the foundation
for meaningful discussion
* Competition in the classroom breaks down the
community of readers and writers and negatively
impacts on many students – particularly those
with problems – as we previously discussed, we
must eliminate competition if at all possible.
Interactionally, we should:
- Not put children on the spot and single them
out to give a correct answer
- Instead, use open-ended questions that you
can build upon
- Preface your questions with a group invitation
"Who would like to..." gives them an option
to take responsibility and to take a risk
- must recognize that children develop literacy in
their own unique ways, and teachers must offer
opportunities for them to gain this independence
- Give everyone a chance to participate but do so
in a way that there is no wrong answer:
"Who would like to tell us something you notice?"
- Ask for volunteers
- Receive comments by acknowledging that you
heard them without giving any value judgment
or specific comment. For example, for each
comment simply nod your head and go to another
child. When the children see that all comments
are accepted equally, more will be willing to
take a risk and share their predication.
They learn that you are interested in their ideas,
not in a right answer.
- After you hear all that each has to say, then you
can return to discuss a particular point "recouched"
in a particular way.
G. You
must enable the child to develop a sense of Responsibility
– Providing Encouragement that results in Independence is
important.
– Some prompts that should help the student to think, predict,
sample, confirm, and self-correct:
* Look at the picture to help yourself.
* Get your mouth ready to say it.
* Look at how the word begins.
* Does that make sense?
* Does that sound right? Does it fit?
* Does that look right to you?
* Start that sentence again.
* Skip that word and go on. Now, what do
you think it is?
* Where have you seen that word before?
* Think about a word that you know that has
the same sound in it.
* Put in a word that makes sense and go on.
* Is that right? Check it again.
* If that word was ...... what would you
expect
to see at the beginning? At the end? What
do you see here?
* What can you do to help yourself?
– Marie Clay has designed a program called "Reading
Recovery" that is intended to be used for a small
percentage of children. Several of her overall
suggestions are relevant for a focus on responsibility
* Help them gain confidence by finding a
readable text
* Select several texts that the child can read at
90% or better
* Do this by taking a "running record" even if
only of several lines
* Some suggested ways to do this (gets easier as
you go down the list):
- an easy book
- a simple book about the child's own experiences
- a very simple story that you have read to this pupil
- a simple story that you write for this pupil keeping
to his known vocabulary
- a simple text that he has dictated
* Think about the child's responses
- During the first several sessions find out how
the child responds in a teaching relationship
- Specify this by writing it down
What does he do well?
What strategies does he try?
How does he help himself?
What frustrates him?
What interactions work best?
* Encourage Writing
* Build fluently on the very little he knows