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There’s no shortage of “solutions” to mend the cracks in our broken education system. Pay disinterested kids to learn. Pay exceptional teachers to stay. Incorporate more technology. Incorporateless technology. Change educator prep programs. Change district administration.
We’ve tried so hard but still fail too many of our students. As educators, we dig deep and find optimism. Despite our fixes’ poor track record, we keep faith that the right combination may yet work.
And it might — but only if it also addresses the silent crisis at the heart of most academic struggles and student apathy: reading.
Only 37 percent of U.S. 12th graders reach our modest reading “proficiency” benchmark, and subsequently most American adults read below a sixth grade level. I am a lifelong educator and former New York City public high school English teacher, so these statistics have faces for me.
Thinking of U.S. students’ stagnant reading levels — they haven’t budged in at least 30 years — pains me, especially since over my 35 years as an educator, I have uncovered straightforward antidotes to literacy struggles.
Put simply, reading instruction needs to start later and continue much, much longer.
We mistakenly equate speedy achievement of literacy milestones with skill.
“My son learned to read his first word at two,” a mom proudly professes. “My kid read a whole book at three,” a dad says, beaming.
These parents should feel great about their kids’ accomplishments, but they should also know that an early start indicates little about future literacy achievement.
When it comes to reading, it isn’t where you start, it’s where you finish. And schools start too early, when a significant portion of kids aren’t developmentally ready to learn crucial reading skills like decoding (converting letters into sounds).
For this reason, in many countries, school, and formal reading instruction, doesn’t begin until age six or seven. This strategy allows more kids to start mid-elementary school with the reading skills they need to succeed and creates a more positive reading culture, with fewer students needing extra support and feeling stigmatized after teachers and parents label them as “behind.”
Delaying reading instruction will get many kids off to a better start, but they have so much further to go. We must continue teaching reading throughout all grades.
Students are never “done” learning to read. In fact, even we adult readers can continue to push our capabilities and grow with advanced texts that take us into unfamiliar subjects.
Related: OPINION: The pandemic will leave struggling readers even further behind
In school, we spiral math instruction; elementary school kids learn how to multiply single-digit numbers one year, double- and triple-digit numbers the next. Later, they multiply with decimals.
In secondary school their understanding of multiplication expands to exponents and solving complex algebraic equations. This continuous revisiting of multiplication gives teachers ample opportunities to support kids who missed mastery in previous years and catch them up.
The same needs to happen with reading. Learn to decode “pulp” in first grade, and we’ll teach you how to sound out “pulchritudinous” in 10th. Decoding instruction should be a standard, if minor, part of English class every year.
Relegating decoding to reading interventions after early elementary school breeds shame in kids who struggle with word pronunciation. Teachers need to create environments where they model the normalcy of struggling with sounding out big words and instruct kids on how to do so successfully, syllable by syllable.
Delaying reading instruction will get many kids off to a better start, but they have so much further to go. We must continue teaching reading throughout all grades.
This practice will get many more students attuned to the first crucial step in comprehension: turning letters into sounds in our brains.
Adolescent reading instruction must also extend far beyond decoding refreshers. Researchers have long asserted that reading isn’t a natural process like speaking, so practice alone will only get a small minority to comprehend complex syntax.
Most students need guidance on how to get from reading the words in a complex text to putting those words together and making meaning out of them. Secondary school teachers should address this by teaching “explicit comprehension strategies.”
That means making sure students have the vocabulary and background knowledge that they need and teaching them to turn words and phrases into images, ideas and experiences in their minds, while picking up authors’ clues so that they can track information continuously and sustain focus as they read.
When writers provide vivid imagery, teachers must guide students to actively engage with it. They must coach students to look for and train their minds to fully imagine the sights, sounds and other sensory imagery in a text; to seek out and enjoy the thoughts and feelings those sensations conjure in their minds.
Next, get them tracking these experiences over time so as to stay with the writer’s ideas. The author used a transition word like “but,” which signals that what comes next will contrast with what came before. The author used a comma or semicolon; there will be a continuation of the thought.
When there’s a pronoun, teach students to connect it back to its antecedent. Advanced reading success will only happen with a concerted effort to give such instruction and ample practice, ideally with plenty of variety and choice in texts.
Related: Four things you need to know about the new reading wars
Giving developing readers more ownership over what they read and letting them pick books and articles that interest them is crucial. One enduring trend throughout my years has been hearing students say they hate reading.
This hatred stems from not comprehending what we teachers assign — not understanding even the best work of art makes it boring — and from rarely reading about topics that are personally relevant and interesting.
Sure, students need to be prepared to read something as dry as a mortgage contract, but English class must also acquaint them with the beauty of well-constructed language and the pleasure of immersing oneself in it.
If we could give our students a love of reading, bolstered by a vast vocabulary, broad background knowledge, proficient decoding skills and instruction on how to navigate complex syntax, American education would change drastically.
Our country, then populated with critical readers, would change too.
Matt Bardin is a tutor and the founder and CEO of Zinc Learning Labs. He is a former New York City public school teacher.
This story about reading instruction was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.
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