Hi! This came through on the PEN NewsBlast today - interesting reading! If you think back to our definitions of reading, you can see that we view literacy in a much more multi-dimensional way than many of the programs depicted here. Note the phrase I highlighted mid-description - would you agree in general? For your school?
IN QUEST FOR SPEED, BOOKS ARE LOST ON CHILDREN Your fourth-grader is galloping through Lois Lowry's utopian novel "The Giver," and you marvel at her reading speed. Stop marveling. Most likely she has little idea what the book actually means. In many classrooms around the country, teachers are emphasizing, and periodically testing, students' reading fluency, the current buzzword in reading instruction. The problem is that speed isn't the only element to fluency, educators said. Key elements are also accuracy and expressiveness, writes Valerie Strauss. It is a complicated process teaching students to recognize enough words and read at a consistent rate so they can spend their time concentrating on meaning rather than decoding, educators said. And when tackling a book such as "The Giver," one that deals with a boy's discovery that his utopian world comes at the expense of the stifling of intellectual and emotional freedom, meaning is critical. ***A combination of politics, insufficient teacher development and an inherent difficulty in capturing all aspects of fluency have led to questionable instruction practices, according to Richard Allington.*** Many students are asked by teachers to reread the same passages over and over -- often with constant interruptions from the teacher. And some struggling readers are given books -- including textbooks -- that are above their reading level and soon become a source of frustration. As a result, some kids are motivated to read only to beat a test clock. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102300928.html Take care, Bill _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
