Reading Harder
It’s hard to learn to
read. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, “English has more words than other
comparable world languages”. And, I would add, more quirky irregularities. I
can remember coming across the word pariah in high school and thinking it was a
piranha and that the person was exiled, maybe because they were a vampire.
I also recall a
classroom where a struggling reader was working his way through “A Bad Case of
Stripes”. When he got to the word “contagious” and could not figure out if it
was a soft or hard g, the teacher said “Read Harder”
Reading harder doesn’t make it more comprehensible. It only increases reading and test anxiety.
The lexile levels on the Common Core have being raised to unprecedented levels;
ahead of the developmental capability of some students. (The 6th to
8th grade lexile is now beyond the former 9th to 10th
grade lexile)
The importance of differentiation, scaffolds, and reading support cannot be overemphasized, but with budget cuts, it is the teachers who will now be teaching harder.
The importance of differentiation, scaffolds, and reading support cannot be overemphasized, but with budget cuts, it is the teachers who will now be teaching harder.
posted by Assessment Network @ 3:35 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Telling a student to read harder is the same as simply speaking louder when a student heard you perfectly well the first time. Learning to read is definitely extremely difficult. For some it will come to them easily and for others it will be the biggest struggle they face in school. I don't really remember learning to read myself but I know I didn't struggle because my mom had been reading to me everyday since I was a baby and she helped me along the way. Most lower-class children unfortunately are not read to by their parents at home at all before they begin school. This creates a readiness gap compared to the students who are prepared to learn to read because they have been prepped at home. This gap is nearly impossible to close and it starts as early as kindergarten.
If a student is struggling to read, typically they get frustrated, embarrassed, they develop low self-esteem causing them to get turned off to school and learning. Raising lexile levels is really only going to increase anxiety for both the teachers and students. How can we set our students and teachers up for such failure? Why do we need to put more pressure on reading when there already is so much and when we want children to love reading so they become lifelong readers? I think raising the lexile levels is comical and unsensible. I'm not sure who thinks by raising the levels, students will suddenly be able to learn to read with fewer struggles and advance more quickly. What will this do for students who speak English as a second language or for students with learning disabilities? I worry that this will not only stress students who are struggling readers out even more, but it will throw teachers over the edge because it is like assigning them a task that can't be done, not for every student that is.
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