The Reading Instruction Show

How much talking do you think young children would do if we corrected them after every utterance? What if we insisted that they pronounce every word perfectly and used only correct grammar as they were learning to speak? What if we assigned children their speaking topics and then corrected and evaluated their speaking instead of responding to their ideas? What do you think would happen? Well I can...

all language processes are connected (reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking). Each language enhances students’ ability to use the others. Thus, one of way to help children to become more fluent in their reading is to help them become more fluent writers. This podcast describes the 5-step writing process and strategies for generating ideas for writing topics

A teacher’s or tutors number one job is to help children fall in love with books. Once this is done 98 % of reading instruction is complete. However, to do this, you must have good books for them to read. What’s a good book? A good book is any book that a student enjoys and wants to read. This podcast describes 8 simpley ideas for helping children fall in love with books.

So how do we go about the business of teaching children to read? We don’t. Instead, we create the conditions whereby children can learn to read and develop their reading skills. As I said in the last chapter, children learn to read and write in the same way that they learned to listen and speak, and that is, by being immersed in the language and by having adults around who responded to them in app...

Learning to read is not an isolated process. Four language processes work together to enhance the development of each individual element: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Listening and reading are the receptive processes (taking in information), and speaking and writing are the productive processes (giving out information). We might also include a fifth language process: thinking (langua...

In this podcast I describe some strategies and conditions that might facilitate culturally responsive teaching. Again, I will stress that these strategies and conditions by themselves do not constitute culturally responsive teaching. Instead, these can be used to address parts of the three interconnecting elements.

Zaretta Hammond defined culturally responsive teaching as . . “An educator’s ability to recognize students’ cultural displays of learning and meaning making and respond positively and constructively with teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the student knows to new concepts and content in order to promote effective information processing. All the while, the educ...

Gloria Ladson-Billings (2014) describes culturally responsive teaching as consisting of three interacting and interconnected elements (a) learning that focuses on students’ intellectual growth, (b) cultural competence and inclusion, and (c) critical or sociopolitical consciousness. Neither of these by themselves can be said to be culturally response teaching. It is the interaction of these three t...

I used to think that CRT was a bunch of teaching strategies. Similar to cooperative learning, these strategies would have specific directions for their implementation. And if I just learned these strategies and attached them to my educating machine, then I would be a culturally responsive teacher. And I could teach my teacher candidate students to attach these strategies to their future educating...

Values clarification is a strategy designed to help students identify, examine, and clarify their own values (Johnson, 2006). In the past, there has some have mischaracterized of values clarification activities as trying to tell students that there is no such thing as right or wrong (see the definition of morality in the last chapter). This is not the case. Instead, these types of activities provi...

To be fully teacher, one must be fully present. Being fully teacher means being fully human. It is about being in relationship. It is about caring. It is about feeling. It is about keeping children from disappearing.

Defining and understanding exactly what reading is, is an important part of teaching reading. This podcast defines reading by describing four essential elements: 1. Reading is the practice of using text to create meaning. 2. Reading is a constantly developing skill . 3. Reading integrates visual and non-visual information . 4. Reading is the act of linking one idea to another .

There are three types of activities that can be used to advance students’ moral reasoning: moral dilemmas, values clarification activities, analyzing levels and stages. This podcast addresses moral dilemmas.

Carol Gilligan (1998) contended that Kohlberg’s research excluded and devalued women’s ways of moral reasoning. His theories on moral development were put forth by a male, in a male dominant society, using only male subjects and thus, were biased in favor of men. She had a point. Using extensive interviews with girls ages 6 to 18, she postulated that women have differing moral reasoning tendencies...

We are failing our struggling readers because we are force-feeding them all the standardized reading slop, administered in the same way, and in the same sequence as every other human being subjected to the same for-profit, one-size-fits-all, standardized reading instruction program. Struggling readers are not standardized entities. Neither should their reading interventions. Depending on students’...

Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) research was not focused on behaviors, but in the subjects’ reasoning behind their behaviors. From this he developed his theory of moral development. This theory describes six stages of moral reasoning at three different levels. I. Pre-Conventional Level Stage 1 - Punishment . Stage 2 - Rewards. II. Conventional Level Stage 3 - Social Approval . Stage 4 - The Law . III. Po...

We can and we must include moral development as part of our curriculums. But how?

The Danielson Framework is an example of a filter that is commonly used to evaluate preservice and practicing teachers. The Danielson Group describes this as a framework for professional practice. Here “good teaching” is comprised of four domains: (a) planning and preparation, (b) the classroom environment, (c) instruction, and (d) professional responsibilities. The four domains are broken into 22...

The terms “ teacher professionalism ” and “ professional dispositions ” are often used when assessing preservice and practicing teachers. But what is “teacher professionalism”? What dispositions are the “correct” ones for teachers? And who gets to decide these things? Dispositions or Mind Control Most teacher preparation programs address and assess three elements: knowledge, skills, and dispositio...

Josey was a 3rd grade student. Before our first session, I listened to her read passages at Lexile level 330 (approximately 1.9 grade level). She read 50 WPM with 97% accuracy. Seven weeks later, after 14 sessions, she read passages at Lexile level 440 (approximately 2.5 grade level). Here she read 74 WPM with 98% accuracy. Our work focused specifically on two deficit areas: reading fluency and wo...

Currently, 2.4 million students are classified as having a learning disability and are receiving special education services. Up to 80% of these students (approximately 1,920,000) have some sort of reading disability. Approximately 3% to 5% of all students have a severe reading disability. In segregated special education settings, the general learning outcomes are lower than inclusive classrooms an...

Erik. As teachers we tend to remember our failures. One of mine occurred in 1983, my first year of teaching. I was a 2nd grade teacher at Greenwood Elementary School and Erik was my student. I failed him miserably. I still remember him. He was a happy little guy in the fall. But as the year went along, he became less happy. He began to slump in his desk. He seemed to draw into himself. 36 years la...

There is an insidious way of silencing those who are not in lockstep with the majority in organizations and academic institutions. It is called soft bullying and microaggression. These are sometimes used to mute and muzzle minority views and dissenting voices. The results is that the divergent ideas, conflicting views, and disagreements that are essential for the health and evolution of any organi...

In our current educational system, standardized tests are used to assess the quality of the student-products as they move along the 13-year conveyor belt within the education factories commonly referred to as schools. Students who have test scores that fall below a certain percentile ranking are thought to have a disability. Additional standardized tests are then given by standardized testing expe...

It cannot be assumed at any level that people understand democratic process or know the particulars of proper meeting protocol. In this podcast we examine and describe these two elements based on Roberts Rules of Order (RRO).