Why Does He Want to Hurt Kindergartners?

Wood anemone, a childhood favourite. 

Why Does He Want to Hurt Kindergartners?

Two groups that are strong advocates in early childhood education

(Defending the Early Years and the Alliance for Childhood),

released a report called Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose (seehttp://deyproject.org/2015/01/13/our-new-report-reading-instruction-in-kindergarten-little-to-gain-and-much-to-lose/). They claim there is no research base

for the importance of learning to read in kindergarten

(so that its inclusion in the Common Core as a goal for K is potentially harmful).   

I think they are wrong about the research here, but wanted to seek out your reaction.

Does research suggest that learning to read, especially as indicated in the Common Core,

is associated with long-term positive or negative effects? 

Great question. This is one that I’ve been thinking about since I was 5-years-old (no, really).

My mom asked my kindergarten teacher if she should do anything with me to help

and the teacher discouraged any efforts in that regard. At the time, the “experts” believed that any early academic learning was damaging to children—to their academic futures and to their psyches.

When I became a first-grade teacher, we were still holding back on such teaching,

at least during the first-semester of grade one. We didn't want to cause the mental disabilities, academic failure, and vision problems predicted by the anti-teaching types. 

These days we are doing a great job of protecting poverty children and minority children

from this kind of damage. Of course, many of us middle-class white parents are risking our own kids. It is not uncommon these days for suburban kids to enter first-grade,

and even kindergarten, knowing how to read.

As I’ve written before, I taught both of my kids to read before they entered school.

There are not now, and there never have been data showing any damage to kids

from early language or literacy learning—despite the overheated claims of the G. Stanley Halls, Arnold Gessells, Hans Furths and David Elkinds (and many others).

Let me first admit that if you seek studies that randomly assign kids

either to kindergarten literacy instruction and no kindergarten literacy instruction

and then follow those kids through high school or something… there are no such studies

and I very much doubt that there will be. 

Given how strong the evidence is on the immediate benefits of early literacy instruction

I don’t think a scholar could get ethics board approval to conduct such a study.

That it wouldn’t be ethical to withhold such teaching for research purposes should give pause.

If it isn’t ethical to do it for research, should it be ethical to do so for philosophical reasons? Yikes.

What we do have is a lot of data showing that literacy instruction improves the literacy skills

of the kids who receive that instruction in preschool and kindergarten, and another body of research showing that early literacy skills predict later reading and academic achievement

(and, of course, there is another literature showing the connections between academic success

and later economic success). There are studies showing that the most literate kids

are the ones who are emotionally strongest

and there is even research on Head Start programs showing that as we have improved

the early literacy skills in those programs, emotional abilities have improved as well.

And, as for the claim that early teaching makes no difference,

I wonder why our fourth-graders are performing at the highest levels ever according to NAEP?

The studies showing the immediate benefits to literacy and language functioning from kindergarten instruction are summarized in the National Early Literacy Panel Report which is available on line.

And here are some of studies showing the long-term benefits of early literacy achievement:

Early reading performance is predictive of later school success (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Duncan, Dowsett, Claessens, Magnuson, et al., 2007; Juel, 1988; Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson, 2001; Smart, Prior, Sansor, & Oberkind, 2005). This means that young children’s reading performances tend to be pretty stable: kindergarten literacy development is predictive of 1^stgrade performance; 1^st grade predicts achievement in various upper grades

and the performance at each of these levels is predictive of later levels.

If a youngster is behind in reading in grade 3, then he/she would likely still be behind in high school, which can have a serious and deleterious impact on content learning (science, history,

literature, math), high school graduation rates, and economic viability

(the students’ college and career readiness). 

The research seems clear to me: teach kids reading early and then build on those early reading skills as they progress through school. Don’t expect early skills alone to transfer to higher later skills;

you have to teach students more literacy as they move up the grades

(something that has not always happened).

Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E., (1997). Early reading acquisition and the relation to reading experience and ability ten years later. Developmental Psychology, 33, 934-945.

Duncan, G. J., Dowsett, C. J., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A. C., et al. (2007).

School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1428-1446.

Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of 54 children

from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 437-447.

Smart, D., Prior, M., Sansor, A., & Oberkind, F. (2005). Children with reading difficulties:

A six year follow-up from early primary to secondary school. 

Australia Journal of Learning Difficulties, 10, 63-75.

Snow, C. E., Tabors, P. O., & Dickinson, D. K. (2001). Language development in the preschool years.

In D. K. Dickinson & P. O. Tabors (Eds.), Beginning literacy with language:

Young children learning at home and school (pp. 1–26). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

(preschool literacy and language predicts 7^th grade performance)

Shanahan on Literacy http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/

You can TCR specialist and language dictionaries that are spontaneously accessed.

I can Turbo Charge Read a novel 6-7 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

I can TCR an instructional/academic book around 20 times faster and remember what I’ve read.

Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube 

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

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Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

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www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com       just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”

Informational Text and Young Children

Pansies are large and violets are small.

Informational Text and Young Children

So the woman who runs my local children’s book store told me that more and more parents

of young children are asking for “non-fiction beginning readers”

because “that’s what Common Core wants.” Really? In kindergarten and first grade?

Aren’t beginning readers supposed to develop their decoding and word recognition

by reading simple stories (the ones populated by talking pigs). 

I’ve seen “easy” nonfiction books that are full of difficult multisyllable words and proper names.  

The publishers have made the books (supposedly) appropriate for beginning readers 

by reducing the number of words in the sentences (until the point they are almost incomprehensible), putting fewer words on a page and enlarging the font.  

The result is a dumbing-down of the content.

I agree that teachers should be reading more nonfiction to young children but is the interpretation that Common Core wants young readers to be reading more nonfiction on their own correct?

The short answer is that Common Core says nothing about kids’ personal choices

and how they spend their out-of-school time. The standards do set educational goals—that is,

they establish what it is that schools need to ensure students know and can do.

These standards require that kids have the skills to read informational text effectively

(which are somewhat different than the skills needed to read literary text).

I assume the anecdote reveals a parent who wants to help her child do well at school.

What a great parent. She might not understand, very clearly, what the standards require—

the standards also require that students learn how to read literature effectively, too—

but she recognizes that schools need help and isn’t going to leave her kid’s success to chance. 

Good for her.

I have no doubt that the practice will help. But, let’s remember there are more reasons for reading than just to do better in school. I’m pleased about this parent, but I might be even more excited

if she had said, “I want some non-fiction texts for my child because he’s interested in spiders.”

Your letter expresses concern that Common Core is transforming home reading practices.

There are other observers who fear that it is imposing reading experiences

that are not “developmentally appropriate” for young children

(your letter might have been prompted by that, too).

Those claims are Loony-tunes (with apologies to Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck).

It's great that the standards are encouraging young readers to take on informational texts.

Nell Duke reported that first graders had the opportunity to read such texts at school

only about 3.6 minutes per day (and she even included the bulletin boards)

—that’s less than 11 hours per year!

This gap is even more important given the large percentage of youngsters (Correls, 2011),

who are dying to read about snakes, horses, dinosaurs, rocket ships, skeletons, submarines, pirates, etc. (I get to see that these days with my grandkids and nephews,

and I used to see it with the first-graders that I taught in my own classrooms).

What you say about beginning level texts is often true, sad to say.

Too often the content is dumbed down… but that is no less true for stories.

Let’s be honest, beginning reading texts have rarely merited praise for their literary quality

(Dr. Seuss being one of the rare exceptions that proves the rule). The limits on children’s decoding skills definitely limits what can be put into the texts for young readers, but this is true for all texts, 

not just informational ones. Teachers rarely read non-fiction texts to kids,

and they rarely make such texts available to children to read on their own.

However, these practices seem to be changing. Even the National Association of Educators

of Young Children—a group focused heavily on the learning of preschool children (ages/grades

not covered by CCSS) are encouraging the promotion of informational text even with younger kids. 

http://www.naeyc.org/books/so_much_more_than_the_abcs/excerpt

Kids definitely can learn from talking pigs, but they can learn from pigs (and dinosaurs)

that don't talk. In fact, many of them prefer it that way.

Shanahan on Literacy http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/

 Introduction to Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube 

How to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Emotions when Turbo Charged Reading YouTube

Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?

www.facebook.com/mreenhunt

www.pinterest.com/mreenhunt

Perhaps you’d like to check out my sister blogs:

www.innermindworking.blogspot.com         gives many ways for you to work with the stresses of life

www.ourinnerminds.blogspot.com               which takes advantage of the experience and expertise of others.

www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com         just for fun.

To quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”