Evidence-based teaching methods for helping students who are at risk for school failure or who have disabilities.
The UK incarnation of the Reading Reform Foundation provides a glimpse into some of the thinking supporting systematic and synthetic phonics. Here’s clip from it’s home page:
You are entering fascinating territory as these are very exciting times regarding the debate on how best to teach beginning reading in English-speaking countries. English is taught in many countries as an additional language and so people across the world are following this debate with great interest.
Michael F. Shaughnessy has published responses by Reid Lyon, one of the architects of Reading First, to questions about the “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report” by Beth Gamse and colleagues. Here’s a link to his comments. They are wide-ranging and detailed.
Continue reading ‘Lyon on RF impact study’
The US Institute for Education Sciences released an important report about the effects of Reading First program at the end of April. In the report, “Reading First Impact Study: Interim Report,” Beth C. Gamse and colleagues describe the methods and findings of a study mandated by law to examine the effects of the RF program on instruction in classrooms and outcomes for children attending those schools where it it is implemented.
For those of us who think RF methods represent an improvement over garden-variety reading instruction, the results are disappointing. Although teachers were found to be devoting more time to phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension, students were not experiencing significant improvements in their reading outcomes.
Here’s the executive summary from the report.
Continue reading ‘Weak impact for RF’
One of the folks at the Access Center wrote to me a while ago to promote its Web presence. There are some free resources available, and some readers might find them instructive.
The Access Center: Improving Outcomes for All Students k-8 (www.k8accesscenter.org), [is] a federally funded national technical assistance center. I am taking this time to introduce you to our free resources. Our resources focus on core content areas - language arts, math, and science - as well as on instructional and learning strategies to provide students with disabilities access to rigorous academic content. We have a series of professional development modules and information briefs that are available on our Web site as well as on a CD-ROM, if requested.
Don Hirsch published an editorial in Education Week that tells it true. We need, he argues, to place a greater emphasis on what and how we teach during children’s early school years. Of course, he champions his recommendation for adopting a clear curriculum during the early years, too. But, the big idea is that the primary and elementary grades are very important if students are to be able to excel in high school and college.
Continue reading ‘Hirsch hits homer’
The Division for Research of the Council for Exceptional Children (DR-CEC) awarded Michael Coyne, of the University of Connecticut, its 2008 award for distinguished achievement in research about special education. This prestigious award recognizes Professor Coyne’s substantial contribution to understanding individuals with disabilities and the provision of services to those individuals. According DR-CEC,
Continue reading ‘Coyne receives early career award’
Former “reading czar” G. Reid Lyon has responded to questions posed by Michael F. Shaughnessy about the U.S. Reading First program. As those who have been paying attention know, the federal foray into guiding schools to use scientifically based reading instruction ran into rocky allegations of malfeasance, allegations that at least one reporter has questioned strongly. Mr. Lyon describes his disagreement with some of those allegations, and you can read why he does.
Continue reading ‘Lyon on Reading First’
Over on EdBizBuzz, one of the Ed Week blogs, Marc Dean Millot has reprinted a letter from Bob Slavin in response to the recently published analysis of Reading First by Sol Stern. Professor Slavin lists a set of concerns that Mr. Stern omitted from his analysis. Read it here.
Please remember that I am a member of the Reading First federal advisory committee. I am not, however, speaking for the committee, my fellow panelists, nor the US Department of Education here.
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