Why is MN so obsessed with reception reading?

[skiphopskidaddle]

It's a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn't matter if Johnny is on red and Amy is on lilac as (a) different schools go at different paces and (b) children develop different skills in different order.

I can't quite believe the number of reception reading threads I've seen this week along the lines of "what colour book is yours on?". I'm going over to the behaviour/development board now to check for obsessive posting about when children learn to walk. Cos it doesn't matter either, in general.

We only had one teacher in the whole school ...and a headteacher who also taught full time.

magdalene teachers have to show they are doing their job and the only way the powers that be can do that is by creating silly targets for children instead of letting us teach (and I mean that in the very broadest sense) they want pieces of paper to show we are doing as they say.

SATs at Y2 are fine in their post 2005 format, magdalene - you'll get no complaints from most teachers, apart from that they don't tell us anything we didn't already know before. The teacher assessment completed in Y2 is the exactly the same as in any other year - except that the result is reported. That's it, the only difference.

Don't get me started on Y6 SATs though - completely different kettle of fish.

magdalene: my mum is 64 and apparently came home from school on her first day thoroughly disgusted as all they did was play whereas she wanted to do some real work. She finds it most amusing that it has all come full circle (and actively encourages her grandchildren to make the most of playing in school!)

"When I grow up I want to be a vet and help sick animals or a teacher."

That made me laugh, mrz. Teachers went to the vets, everyone else used the NHS, eh?

Perhaps I knew they wouldn't be able to get an appointment for after school

Project Follow Through (the largest educational study ever done) came about because it was found that the positive effects of the Headstart program for disadvantaged 4 year olds washed out by 3rd grade.

Various programmes were compared to see which ones produced better basic skills, cognitive skills ("higher order thinking") and affective gains (self-esteem).

When Follow Through started, the expected result was that the ?child-centred?, play-based programmes would prove the most successful. However Direct Instruction performed better than all other programs in reading, arithmetic, spelling, and language and also showed the highest improvement in self-esteem.

Zig Engelmann said,

?... This outcome was apparently so obnoxious to the educational-political community that the official report on Follow Through did not refer to individual sponsors, but the aggregate performance of all sponsors...

The pathetic arguments that were used to discredit the notion of using data to rank individual sponsors was that "there was more variation within sponsors than there was across sponsors." This was not true. The only site we had that performed at the level of the other sponsors was Grand Rapids, a site that we officially dropped years earlier because it got a new director who did not implement the program.

... From the beginning, Follow Through had been billed as a horserace between sponsors to determine who would win. Not only weren't we recognized as the winner; we were not permitted to participate in the National Diffusion Network.?

Mathanxiety provides a link to one of the papers written by ?child-centred? advocates which attempts to discredit Direct Instruction by misrepresenting the facts.

I have read some of the subsequent papers written by Ernest House, lead author of the paper that Mathanxiety put forward, where he attempts to discredit all evidence-based education research.

This tactic is commonly used by the advocates of education philosophies that have been proven, by evidence-based research, to be ineffective. The only research they accept is their own non-evidence based research, ie, I saw what I wanted to see and my friend agrees so what I believe must be true.

Magdalene

Yes, this thread does keep running because it is so important. Our children?s education is dominated by fads and personal philosophies, many of which have been proven to be ineffective, while the strategies that have been proven, by evidence based research, to be most effective are ignored.

You say, ?What is clear to me is that children who are older 6/7 have more of an attention span than when they are 4/5. Seems like common sense to start later.?

The problem with this idea is that, firstly, attention, concentration, focus and memory are learnt skills, ie, they get better with practice.

If children are never required to pay attention, they will not develop long attention spans. Requiring a 4 year old to pay attention for 20 minutes per day is enormously beneficial in helping that child develop their ability to pay attention.

Secondly, the age that children are first taught to read is less important than whether they are taught effectively or taught with the mishmash of multiple strategies confuse and befuddle many children.

The main advantage in starting formal instruction at a younger age is for disadvantaged children. As Zig Engelmann says, time is the enemy of disadvantaged children. They start further behind and they need more repetitions to learn. Delaying the start of formal instruction creates a time lapse that disadvantaged children can never overcome.

The reason for government-funded pre-school programmes like Headstart in the USA is to try and get disadvantaged children to the same level as advantaged children so when they start formal schooling, the playing field is level.

However, what has been proven is that child-centred, play-based early education programmes do little to nothing for these kids, while formal instruction does bridge the gap. (see my previous post).

I don?t believe parents are more competitive these days. I think that parents are worried and confused by the lack of progress their children are making.

If I could go back in time, knowing then what I know now, I would have taught my son synthetic phonics starting when he was 3 and when he started school, I would have made sure that every other parent knew exactly what reading level my son was on and why.

I would have made sure in subsequent years, as my son?s reading continued to outstrip his classmates who were receiving a mishmash of ineffective strategies, what his reading and spelling levels were and why in the hope that they would realise that the problem was with the teaching and the teaching programme, not with the child.

Project Follow Through was designed initially as a service project, an enhancement of Headstart, a continuation into the elementary years from the early years Headstart programme. It was hastily converted into a research programme when the House of Congress didn't fund it sufficiently to run as a service project, in 1967 or 68.

Egbert ('Some thoughts about Follow Through thirteen years later', 1981) described the planning stage of Project Follow Through as 'a time of haste and confusion'. The planners, who were from Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and from Headstart, were not satisfied as to the ultimate form the aims of the project assumed, with one group not happy that it wasn't going to be a true, massive 60s style experiment with potential to change the world and one group unhappy that it wasn't going to be a true service initiative.

The sponsors of the various programmes that were to be studied were for the most part extremely vague about their different experiments, how their programmes were to be implemented, what their programmes would measure -- a mish mash of ambiguous and vague ideas that were not too well thought out or never field tested anywhere. There was less than a year from the selection of models to the implementation of the programme, with administrators constantly looking over their shoulders at the members of Congress and worrying about funding cuts. Not many hard questions were asked of the sponsors. It was in this context that the classification of models was accomplished and the programme got under way. In short, it was a mess.

a mish mash of ambiguous and vague ideas that were not too well thought out or never field tested anywhere.
..that just about explains what generally goes on in schools.

What would 'field testing' look like?

Is it a rigorous, randomised, longitudinal research project or is it reporting the results of a programme being used in a number of settings?

ymeyer - I am enjoying the way this thread is developing. Very interesting stuff! Yes, attention skills get better with practice and they need to be taught. I am just saying that at the ages of 4-5, children do not concentrate in the same way that 6/7 year olds can concentrate. I am seeing that first hand with my own child. As the years go by, she is more focused. She is nearly 6 and started reception at 4 years and 3 months. The difference is huge! She is still more interested in friendships, going to the park and playing with toys than learning to read though. OH NO! IT must mean she's destined for a non academic life!!! All the evidence regarding children from disadvantaged families suggests they need love, emotional security and time to play (all the things that are lacking at home). Have a look at the open eye campaign online with the video 'Too much, too soon'. It has a wealth of evidence to support this.
Parents are more competitive because they see children as an extension of themselves and a reflection of their parenting skills. I can't comment on teaching and teachers because I think a lot of the fault lies with the government, the national curriculum and all the endless targets - they are not raising standards for children. If teachers just taught as they saw fit, they wouldn't be all this 'mishmash'. Also if schools didn't have to take on the role of the parent so much they could bloody get on with being teachers. How is your son's reading now? At 3 they need to be developing social skills andgetting used to being at nursery...For god's sake they have only been on the planet for 3 years - they have plenty of t ime to learn to read !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ymeyer -- as well as the problems noted above wrt Follow Through, it bears mentioning that the cohort studied in the massive experiment/project were children from Kindergarten to Third Grade or First Grade to Third Grade, so aged 5/6 to 8/9, therefore older than the average Reception student at the outset of whatever approach they were exposed to in the study.

And it is worth noting that the final scores brought the children tested only to somewhere between the 40th and 50th percentiles on Mathematics, Reading, Language and Spelling. 50% + of children in the US scored better than even those exposed to DI in the study. Bonnie Gossen paper provides the bar chart and figures. (Gossen is a big fan of DI and Engelmann.) The same paper hints in a letter quoted that the process of selecting programmes for the project was neither scientific nor even civilised.

mathanxiety - yeah, you go girl! Still can't believe my DD was at school at 4.3 years!

@mathanxiety,

Can you tell me what you would consider to be satisfactory field trials?

I don't think mathanxiety answers questions

A satisfactory field trial or pilot test for a programme in Follow Through would streamline questions that were to be asked in a particular programme, methods to be used in the implementation of the programme, possibly help outline aims, and tweak the programme to eliminate variables that could cloud the eventual results, in order to clear the ground as much as possible before embarking on the quantitative research part of a project. It would be conducted using a cohort similar to the cohort envisioned for the project, but a much smaller group would be involved. So the answer is 'neither one of your choices' from above. It would involve analysis of reports from randomised settings used in the field testing though.

Current Education thread entitled 'Phonics -- Grrrrr' Apparently a 4 yo boy is having difficulties with phonics. Looks interesting.

or you could try tutoring 3 & 4 year olds

or learning the words in books

Thanks, mathanxiety.

Who carries out the field tests? Is it the programme developers or the project directors?
Who monitors the field testing?

Are you saying that none of the Follow Through programmes were properly field tested?

What do you think would have happened if they had been?

I am very interested in establishing what standards you require before you can accept that any particular 'programme'or methodology has any merit. As observed much earlier in this thread, most educational initiatives are of the 'suck it and see' variety.

The problem with Mathaxiety's criticism of Project Follow are twofold;

Firstly, the results of Follow Through have been confirmed by the wealth of evidence-based subsequently funded by the (US) NICHD. While faults can be found in any evidence-based research studies, when multiple evidence-based studies from different sources all reach the same conclusion, the proof is considered overwhelming.

Secondly, while faults can be found in any evidence-based research study that inform us that direct, explicit, intensive and systematic teacher-directed instruction is more effective than child-centred, play-based programmes, there is no evidence-based research that informs us that play-based programmes are more beneficial.

There are a wealth of anecdotes and opinions that support play-based programmes, but not one jot of evidence.

B-t-w, There are Youtube clips of Zig Engelmann teaching 4 year olds during Project Follow Through for anyone interested in 'seeing is believing'.

I would also like to know what Mathaxiety considers to be an adequately designed research trial?

Some time ago Mathanxiety posed this question:
mathanxiety Thu 10-Feb-11 02:54:30

I think there are many questions remaining to be answered by research into neuro-biology, including optimal age to begin teaching reading.

I asked her how she imagined a neurobiologist would approach this. Still waiting...

Just watched a couple of those videos on youtube. Although the children can 'read' the words, they are not using any expression or giving any clue that they understand what they are reading. Is this the aim of the programme - to teach reading mechanically in the beginning. (I'm not being facetious - just interested.)

Emotional Intelligence is a theory that is rooted in the importnce of play, early interaction and exploration of the world.

stoatsrevenge,

When anyone is in the process of learning anything new, their first efforts are laboured, hesitant and ?mechanical?. A child who is learning to read by decoding and blending will sound just as ?mechanical? as the child who is learning to read by guessing and memorising.

The overwhelming evidence-based research informs us that mastery of ?reading? (decoding x comprehension) requires fast, fluent decoding.

Being able to decode fluently means that the reader has more ?brainpower? left over to comprehend what they are reading. It also gives the reader the most effective strategy to deal with new words that they haven?t come across before.

On the other hand, readers who rely on memorising and guessing can, in the early years of schooling, appear to be reading fluently and non-mechanically because they have memorised the text.

These are the kids who hit the wall when the demands of the curriculum outstrip their bank of sight memorised words. They can?t attend to meaning because their working memory is overloaded with the task of retrieving sight-memorised words and trying to guess meaning from context which becomes impossible as sentence structure becomes more complicated. They have no strategy to deal with the volume of unfamiliar words that enter the curriculum.

I?m not sure why you are mentioned Emotional Intelligence (EQ), (which is one of those fluffy pop-psychology fads that is not quantifiable or definable) but if you are thinking that an early play-based school experience somehow increases a child?s ?Emotional Intelligence? whereas formal instruction somehow decreases a child?s EQ, then watch what happens to a kid?s ?EQ? in later primary and secondary schooling when they are presented with written work they can?t read or comprehend. These kids are emotionally crushed.

You may be interested in watching the following clips.

SHAME: The Dark Heart of Reading Difficulties from the Children of the Code website

www.childrenofthecode.org/Tour/c3c/index.htm

magdalene,

My son attended a play-based pre-school programme when he was 3 and 4 years old. He started school aged 5 and was taught according to the child-centred, constructivist philosophy if reading taught according to the 'Balanced/3 Searchlights' method which was basically Whole Language with a few letter names thrown in.

In Year 1, he was put into Reading Recovery (the remedial arm of Whole Language), not because his teachers thought he had a problem but because I said I thought he had a problem.

In Years 2 & 3, his teachers still didn't think he had a problem but told me that if I thought there was a problem then he might have a Learning Difficulty. I had him tested for every known LD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, auditory processing, ect, the list was endless and the testing cost a fortune.

The reports said that he was a bright kid but he had zero knowledge of sound/letter correspondences.

In Year 4, I enrolled him at a high fee private boy's school because they said they could remediate his learning.

Years 4 & 5 at the private school were exactly the same as the previous years, child-centred, constructivist, hands-on, discovery learning.

At the end of Year 5, after I stopped listening to the school tell me there was no problem, I found a retired teacher who taught him sound/letter correspondences and blending and segmenting to fluency levels. He had finished Year 5 spelling at Year 2 level (which his teacher did not think was a problem because he was a boy!) and after working wiht his tutor over the summer holidays, he started Year 6 spelling at Year 7 level.

He made 5 year levels progress in spelling in approx. 3 months which was more progress then he had made in the previous 5 years of full-time schooling.

I then changed him to another private school and in Year 8, when I asked why none of his teachers were teaching him how to write an essay (grammar, punctuation, syntax, structure ect), they shrugged and said there was no problem with his written work. On further questioning, one of his teachers admitted that she didn't know how to write an essay and her father did all her written work for her.

So I had to teach him how to write an essay at home.

He has just finished school, received his International Baccalaureate Diploma with a Distinction in History.

He started University today :o
(I'm in Australia, b-t-w)

He has achieved well in school because of the amount of intervention that I was able to provide outside of school. What was not an issue at 3, 4 or even 5, became on-going crisis management which could have been easily avoided if our schools and teachers understood the difference between evidence-based education and fad-du-jour education.

The issue here is that if the school doesn't get the teaching programme right for the first year of formal schooling, chances that they will get it right in subsequesnt years is unlikely. As each year goes by, while the parent is waiting for learning to 'click', the kid falls further and further behind the kids whose parents are teaching them at home.

I was able to (eventually) work out what was wrong with our education system and fill in the gaps for my son at home, but there are lots of kids who are just as able to learn as my son but whose parents are unable to do for their children what I was able to do for mine.

This is not parents being 'competative'. This is parents making sure their kids can read, write and do maths so they can finish school and get jobs.