REQUESTED FEEDBACK _ Houston Workshop 11_15_04

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Texas Reading First Higher Ed Collaborative
November 15, 2004

Re: C.I.R.C.L.E. Susan Landry, Ph.D.
susan.landry@uth.tmc.edu
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Helping Children to Understand and Use the Alphabetic Principle
rollanda O'Conner, Ph.D.
University of California, Riverside

Requested Feedback from Carol Abel, SFA, Feb. 3, 2005
I thoroughly enjoyed the CIRCLE and Alphabetic Principle presentations back in November and appologize for my late response; I am here to share my thoughts since we were requested to do so before the final report in March.

Q = Question
C = Comment or concern
R = Recommendation
A = Agree

Q - How do you know it is specifically your CURRICULUM that caused the increase in reading skills in students participating in your study if the other non-treatment group had "business as usual" and both groups had a number of teachers who were probably not up to date in terms of teacher prep re the current research you wanted them to know? Could not your success just as easily be explained as the result of professional development or instruction on otherwise uninformed teachers? If this is the case, then, a treatment consisting of professional development or education might be in order, rather than selecting a certain curriculum. It's not that I necessarily believe one over the other, but I am noticing this could be an argument you would need to cover for. Perhaps your study might investigate 4 (large) groups:
- treatment group one - business as usual
- treatment group two - prof development
- treatment group three - prof develoment & simple straightforward curriculum
- treatment group four - prof development & complex curriculum
Of course, you would want to disaggregate for veteran (experienced) vs beginner teacher (inexperienced), since there may be very different needs for each of these groups. "Ownership" for both and in particular the veteran teacher might dominate whereas for the beginner, a "security blanket" in the form of a curriculum for reference and a starting point may be most useful that first or second year.

C - We must always remember to consider the 'CONTEXT.' I noticed a few statements that seemed to disregard the significance of this important aspect of anything we do. Or, is it the intent that the "concensus" piece of the three (prof dev, curriculum, concensus) to deal with this?

C - Why the rush to "CATCH UP?" (struggling readers AND ESL students) Isn't it enough that we are 'catching it' and now have some good ideas how to better support? Why not reset the end goals and "get a life?"   In other words, we don't play music to get to the end of it; don't all children deserve to enjoy the ride? Just food for thought on the focus of our attention and the danger of turning kids off while we try to help them "get ahead". Is anyone researching the stress levels of today's rather depressed overweight kids? These are human lives we are talking about--independent individual precious lives of real live human beings who must live them.

Q R - About Intervention - Isn't the MISSING PIECE sitting in high school ready to have children? ...or in our college classrooms? How big a piece of the picture does CULTURE really play and are we prepared to address this?

Q - Is anyone thinking to investigate the impact on EXCESSIVE ATTENTION ON STRUGGLING and any possible CONSEQUENCES on regular and accellerated students? For instance, I can recall learning in one of my "education science" courses at the Univ of Pittsburgh in the early 70's being "explicitly taught" how to determine the correlary of something. At that time, I was surprised it needed to be taught, and as my mind was forced to follow the new step-by-step way of thinking (or non-thinking) to pass the tests that would assess it, my more natural intuititve mind began to shut down as it attempted to adopt the new approach which was intended to facilitate understanding of this complex idea--analogous to what happens when you begin focusing on the stairs as you descend them only to find yourself tripping where otherwise you would not normally think about the steps as you go down--the mere fact that when you think about the deliberate steps you are taking when doing anything seems to upset the more holistic natural automatic way of doing it. Could our interventions have a similar impact on the child who might normally (without explicit intervention) "compensate" for a reading deficiency if we were not to play "brain surgeon" and stimulate the left or right brain according to how we "read" what we "think" is happening in the brains of children we consider to be dyslexic or at risk? In other words, with such young plastic brains, are we helping by molding the brains of young children or are there residual confounding concerns we must consider or at least look for during these interventions "just in case"? (e.g., interfering with a child's natural ability to compensate to adapt and adjust to his environment / is there a certain amount that is helpful after which perhaps it may move in the opposite direction, for instance?)

Q R - I hear very little with regard to VISUAL DISCRIMINATION yet it seems always "assumed" it is somehow being learned with the mastery of the ABC's. Mightn't this become a similar problem for us down the road as did the lack of attention toward auditory discrimination in those early days (now more refined as phonological and phonemic awareness)? Attention to visual detail takes time and attention, too. When it is not explicitly listed, do today's teachers actually recognize and appropriately develop it? And, what impact do spatial and body awareness have on this? How about sensory tactile experiences with objects in the environment, and, of course, writing?

Q - When your audience is SELECTED and PAID, do you end up with the same results as when it is not? If not, then what are the adjustments that need to be made to generalize?

Q R - Did I understand you to say you had a measurement for SOCIAL EMOTIONAL GROWTH? Can you share this intrument with us? Is there an underlying "faith-based" component here? I can imagine any study or idea might be more in line to receive funding when dealing with character education. The Hartwood Curriculum in PA, over a dozen years ago, began a nice idea that you all might consider (infusing books on character dev into regular curriculum), but then again, there are probably a ton of them out there since that time. Sadly, I haven't kept up with this important area but it seemed to offer a way of building character without the forbidden religious component.

R - How about finding ways to get GRANDMA & GRANDPA involved in the retirement home down the street?

Q - Did I hear you say that introducing "b" and "d" five weeks apart reduces REVERSALS 70%? How about drawing them? And speaking of writing (fine motor control) and spatial orientation, I recall it being easier to teach letters with vertical or horizontal strokes first since they were easier for young hands to produce; any research being done on this order of presenting the alphabet to kids?

A - RE: TEEM - I applaud all of your efforts to get everyone on the same page--makes tons of sense and our president seemed to recognize this PROBLEM of DUPLICATION, also, in his Inagural speech last night.

C - You mentioned ideal responses to kids (RESPONSE CONTINGENCY) and I couldn't agree more but again, have we considered the CONTEXT within which these children live? In other words, can we mess them up by giving them special attention at school when they might go home to a different environment (context) where quite the opposite occurs? Now before you say....dah....why do you think we are doing this....and, we want to improve kids' lives.......might we consider the possible negative impact on kids who may begin to prefer the teacher to his or her parent(s) not to mention the parent who may begin to resent the teacher? In other words, mightn't a key part of this kind of intervention begin with the home and if so, are we prepared to make it a complete intervention or would we chance jeopardizing that home environment with piecemeal interventions that might do more harm than good (an example might be the negative way whole language was "misimplemented" or misunderstood which, on occassion, may have done more harm than good where teachers tried to adopt such ideas with only half the information....another example, invented spelling without some accountability). I guess I am always seeing a lack of appreciation for the "context" in which our "interventions" occur--contexts have roots that are there for a reason. We ask our students to build from the ground up--to engage in learner-centered teaching--to attach learning to PK or what the student knows and recognizes to be true and relevant........do we do this when we intervene...when we go into schools to support and supervise our student teachers? or, are we creating pockets of nice ideas in cyberspace with no grounding, no root system to support its growth? Just questions to be asked / pondered.   Back to what brought this on--reacting "warmly to signals"--I'm sure kids are resilient and their brains quite plastic and they are as capable as any of adapting and adjusting to the different contexts/environments requested of them, but I would still feel better if we considered and used these terms (context) when manipulating children's lives.

Q - You mentioned a "clear idea of READINESS" but then did not expand on this. Could we hear more on this?

Q - How is the VALIDATION on DIBELS coming along? It seems last I heard, comprehension was not yet established. How about the language assessment piece?

A - Would love to learn more about the article on instruction's marginal impact on GOOD CAREFUL READERS (Vaughn? Coyne 2003?)

C - RE OUR FOCUS - You said: "....but for our low-skilled children...the ones we worry about the most..." (trying to avoid passive resistance)   Q = What about the high achievers being bored or other-directed while they wait and are used to help out? Why is our nation not concerned with this potential huge loss, as well? BOTH are of critical importance and we mustn't lose sight of one while we attempt to "catch up" the other.

R - I think anyone making RECOMENDATIONS for CLASSROOM TEACHERS ought to have spent (or consult with one who has spent) a minimum of 3 years in the classroom at that grade level first.   In other words, it is much easier to be a reading specialist (recalling from my earlier days in the classroom) than to work with a classroom full of kindergarten-aged children (which I also did for many many years). Classroom teachers wear many hats and have many children and parents in their charge day in and day out, not to mention all the other duties assigned to them....special ed ideas are great, but implementation in classrooms is never the same as they might be in small groups or individually as is the experience of many of these specialists who recommend (insist on) them. If we scare too many good teachers away, who will teach our children? Let's better appreciate the hard job they already have while we find more things for them to be doing.

R - MY VISION - In addition to all of these exciting new ideas being tried and tested, I would like to see a mentor program developed for our BRAND NEW TEACHERS--one which gives them a small easy classroom of children to begin their first year with plus access to a college professor or veteran teacher (and a simple low paycheck plus the beginning of a loan forgiveness program)--a situation that would insure success for both new teacher and students in their care. Give the veteran teachers more freedom and tougher students (and a paycheck to match). I would like to see teacher hours modified so they would have time to get their own children off to school first and be home when they arrive back (using student teachers and aids to cover classroom times when children enter and leave late). I would also like to see mornings in classrooms devoted to supporting strugglers and "at risk" kids and focusing on basics. Then afternoons could be devoted to the whole language constructivist experimentations that would engage and challenge all kids as they learn to work together while strugglers and at risk kids could enjoy some extra time during these exciting center experiences.

A - Enjoyed the sharing of the "POCKET CHILDREN". It would be nice to share little pockets of delightful ideas every time we meet.

.......hope these are helpful.......

HEC was a Fed'l Govt grant to monitor TX Rdg First Initiatives
Now funded entirely by TX Rdg First Initiatives
FOCUS :
concentrate on K-3 and
P Dev for Spec Ed K-12