Literacy Blogs

Blast from the Past: I’m taking Independence Day weekend off but thought this previously released blog entry would be a good reminder of some of the great vocabulary resources that are available online. Teachers, parents and kids can benefit from these—even during the summer months. Okay, the National Reading Panel found that vocabulary instruction improved reading achievement, especially for older readers. And, research has been showing a clear, substantial empirical link—especially for older kids—between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension (both within reading and readability research) for almost a century. The National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth found an even bigger impact of vocabulary teaching with children who ...

This week I spoke to the research and curriculum directors from the Council of Great Cities Schools. They held their meeting in Chicago. The topic they were focused on was interventions for older readers. Catherine Snow and I sounded off on the first day, and Jim Kemple of RMDC presented a recent federal study of such interventions on day two.   The big topic of discussion was the implementation of interventions. One thing that stands out from recent experiences with trying to implement research-based practices is how often these practices fail to work once adopted in the classroom. There are lots of ...

I wonder if you have seen the various editorials that have been appearing about Reading First recent weeks? These are reactions to the Reading First impact study and Congressional efforts to defund Reading First that I wrote about in this space recently. The Boston Globe came out for reauthorization of Reading First, as did USA Today. In a deft unsigned editorial, USA Today called for continuation of funding for Reading First, albeit with some needed reforms. Their position: “let’s keep funding a good program even as we try to improve upon it” was their very reasonable position. They paid attention to reports by ...

Two very interesting reports came across my desk yesterday--within minutes of each other.   The first one was an Education Week story that said the House Appropriations committee intended to kill off Reading First. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/07/16/43budget_web.h27.html?print=1 This is no surprise since Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., is the chair of that committee and he has shown a strong penchant for using his power for political reasons with little regard for educational needs. He has been anti-Reading First for a long time (mainly, I suspect, because it was proposed by a Republican), and the unfortunate management problems along with the recent interim report (see my earlier ...

I was talking with Dick Anderson today. For those who do not know, Dick is an outstanding scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was the director of the Center for Reading during the years when the best research on reading was coming from there. His comprehension research is great. Dick is not anti-Reading First in my opinion, but I think it is fair to say he isn’t exactly a big Reading First fan. He isn’t against phonics, but tends to think Reading First makes too much of phonics. He feels the same about fluency and phonemic awareness (and, ...

A recent research report said Reading First failed to improve students’ reading scores. I was disappointed given the hard work of so many teachers, but the study was far from perfect. The Department of Education was more efficient in getting Reading First underway in the schools than it was in getting the study off the ground, so they couldn’t carry out a nationwide randomized controlled trial. Unfortunately, the study only looked at reading comprehension scores and not at performance in any of the underlying skills that support comprehension (so you can’t tell whether the program impacted those skills or not). Far more ...

Although I have designed instructional programs for teaching reading to older students who lag in learning, I have never tried to design a beginning reading intervention for such students. My AMP program skips phonics and phonological awareness not because I don't think these are critically important reading skills, but because most students in middle school and high school won't lag seriously in these skills. (I didn't say no older students struggle in these areas. A small percentage, maybe 1 in 7 of struggling secondary school readers, still will need help with alphabetics. But even low middle school readers usually can read ...