Date sent: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 00:26:09 -0800
From: LindaP (Texas)
Subject: New Zealand import 11 7 90

Loop members: Interesting article- too bad the writer didn't do just a
TAD more research on reading instruction :)


>Subject: New Zealand import 11 7 90
>
>November 7, 1990
> 
>New Zealand Import: An Effective,But Costly,
>Way To Teach Reading
> By
>Debra Viadero
>UPPER ARLINGTON, OHIO--At the beginning of this school year, Sean, a 1st
>grader in a
>special program here for struggling readers, could recognize only four words:
>"I," "a,"
>"no," and his own name.
>But on a recent day last month, as a group of teachers at Barrington
>Elementary School sat
>behind a one-way mirror and watched, the 7-year-old's difficulties with the
>printed word
>were barely noticeable.
>"There are four trains in Uncle Buncle's house," the child read aloud, moving
>his fingers
>along the page as he spoke. Working quickly during the next 25 minutes, he
>would read
>three more books with equal ease, learn to spell the word "on" using magnetic
>letters, write
>a sentence with the help of his teacher, cut it into pieces and reassemble
>it, and read
>another, slightly more difficult book.
>Every aspect of this scene--the boy's rapid progress, the fast-paced,
>one-on-one lesson,
>even the observers behind the mirror--is characteristic of an increasingly
>popular program
>known as Reading Recovery.
>Imported to the United States from New Zealand in 1984, the program is
>intended to be an
>academic lifeline for 1st graders like Sean who are having trouble learning
>to read.
>Since its debut in this nation, the program has been adopted by school
>districts in 22
>states. And researchers have compiled data on more than 15,000 children who
>have passed
>through it.
>The teaching method has managed to draw praise both from advocates of a
>phonics-based
>approach to the teaching of reading and those who believe children should be
>taught by
>reading texts--two camps that normally are bitterly at odds with one another.
>And, according to studies performed in this country so far, Reading Recovery
>appears to
>work.
>But, for all its success and popularity, the program has a practical
>shortcoming: its
>relatively high cost.
>Working in weekly after-school and inservice sessions, teachers must train
>for a full year
>to learn how to use it. They work one-on-one with no more than five students
>a day. And
>the "teacher leaders" who train Reading Recovery instructors must put in a
>year of
>full-time study at a university.
>The initial investment is substantial, say school administrators who have
>considered
>adopting the program. And experts say that kind of expense, juxtaposed with
>the
>enormous popularity of the program, promises to make Reading Recovery one of
>the most
>closely scrutinized reading programs in the nation in coming years.
>"The popularity of this program is so great," said Jeanne S. Chall, a
>prominent reading
>researcher who serves as an adviser to current evaluations of the program,
>"that it could
>have a real effect on getting help to children early."
>The architect of the Reading Recovery program is Marie M. Clay, a New Zealand
>child
>psychologist. Using an observation glass similar to the one through which
>teachers
>watched Sean, Ms. Clay and other researchers set out more than 20 years ago
>to identify
>the characteristics of both good readers and good reading instruction.
>>From the very beginning, they observed that poor readers lack several basic
>strategies
>already possessed by children who become proficient readers. They may not
>know, for
>example, that a sentence should be read from left to right. Or they might not
>think to look at
>pictures for clues to the meaning of the accompanying text or to reread words
>that did not
>sound right to them.
>"Sometimes children do not realize what they read needs to make sense," said
>Joetta
>Beaver, an Upper Arlington teacher who trains Reading Recovery instructors in
>six Ohio
>districts.
>Helping a child acquire those skills, a process known as "teaching for
>strategies," is the
>job of the Reading Recovery teacher. The goal is to enable the child to read
>independently
>after 16 to 20 weeks of daily, half-hour lessons.
>The program helps children acquire the skills of a good reader, in part, both
>by using real
>literature and by teaching children phonics--the relationships of letters and
>sounds.
>"It's the only program that takes both orientations and philosophies and
>weaves it into
>one," said Carol A. Lyons, assistant professor of education and theory at
>Ohio State
>University, which has become the hub of Reading Recovery activity in this
>country.
>Ms. Lyons and other proponents of the method caution, however, against
>categorizing
>Reading Recovery as a remedial program. While Reading Recovery students
>typically
>represent the "bottom 20 percent" of readers in their grade levels, the
>program seeks to
>teach them at an accelerated rate, rather than providing them with
>compensatory help.
>Studies conducted since 1984 by researchers at Ohio State suggest that, while
>Reading
>Recovery did not work for all children, students who successfully completed
>the program
>could read material three levels above a similar group of children who
>received other
>compensatory help. Ninety percent of the former Reading Recovery students
>also met or
>exceeded the average range of reading ability for children in their regular
>classrooms.
>Moreover, several years later--without any additional help in
>reading--students who had
>completed Reading Recovery were still reading at levels above those of
>children who had
>been placed in other remedial programs, and on par with children of average
>ability in their
>own classes.
>"I've had 3rd-grade teachers say to me, 'I had no idea so-and-so was in
>Reading
>Recovery,"' said Ms. Beaver of the Upper Arlington district .
>Those kinds of results are what attracted Ms. Beaver's school system to the
>program. So
>impressed were school officials with the program's track record in nearby
>Columbus that
>they agreed to pay Ms. Beaver's tuition for Ohio State's Reading Recovery
>program after
>the district failed to be accepted into a state program that would have
>subsidized those
>costs.
>"This is a community that prizes literacy," said Homer Mincy, superintendent
>of the
>affluent suburban district. "Yet, in spite of the fact that we had ongoing
>battles on the best
>way to teach reading, and had ar 1 reading program and a reading specialist
>at every
>elementary school, we still had people who could not read."
>"This is a program that does seem to produce the most success over the
>longest period of
>time," he added.
>Now, with five years as a Reading Recovery teacher-trainer under her belt,
>Ms. Beaver
>works with teachers from six districts and one private school. Her salary is
>paid in part by
>the state.
>"What I find so exciting about Reading Recovery is the impact it has on both
>the teacher
>and the district," Ms. Beaver said, noting that regular classroom teachers in
>her schools
>have incorporated aspects of the program into their own work.
>The teachers observing Sean's progress last month were among some of Ms.
>Beaver's
>charges. They included Ohio teachers learning to use the program as well as
>teachers from
>Kentucky and Iowa who had come to Ohio State for the yearlong training
>program for
>teacher leaders.
>As the group watched Sean work, Ms. Beaver fired off questions at the
>teachers.
>"What do you think his strengths are?" she asked as the boy neared the end of
>his lesson.
>"Can you give me some evidence of that?"
>These "behind the glass" sessions are the key to sharpening a teacher's
>"minute by
>minute" teaching strategies, according to proponents of the method. They say
>such
>observation helps teachers learn to recognize children's subtle miscues and
>act on them
>immediately.
>"You really have to learn to be an astute observer," said Donna Jacobs, who
>had come
>from Fort Knox, Ky., to participate in the Ohio State program.
>After the session, the observers met with Sean's teacher and Ms. Beaver to
>discuss the
>lesson. Other aspects of the training program for Reading Recovery teachers
>include
>individual coaching sessions with Ms. Beaver and weekly inservice sessions.
>"You just really cannot change a teacher's way of thinking without a yearlong
>program,"
>Ms. Beaver said. "Sometimes people say, 'I tried Reading Recovery and it
>doesn't work,'
>but they haven't had the extensive training."
>For the children, the program begins with a diagnostic survey intended to
>gauge their
>letter-recognition capabilities, comprehension abilities, and writing skills.
>Sean, for
>example, could associate only two letters with their respective sounds--the
>"b" sound and
>the "t" sound--when he began the program.
>Teachers tutor students individually for two weeks, "roaming around the
>known," in Ms.
>Clay's terminology, to observe and get a feel for students' abilities.
>They introduce a story composed mostly of words students know. A new book is
>then
>introduced each day, with the students rereading previously learned material.
>Such
>rereading, supporters of the program said, refines word-recognition and
>comprehension
>skills and enhances students' confidence.
>"We start with a child's strengths and move from there," Ms. Beaver said.
>"We're not
>looking at the deficit in what they know."
>"Right away, a child's self-esteem is being nurtured and fostered," she said.
>The new books introduced each day are carefully chosen from a supply of 100
>or more
>short stories of increasing levels of difficulty. While some of the books
>have been
>specifically developed for the Reading Recovery program, others may be
>children's trade
>books, such as the well-known "Spot" series by Eric Hill.
>Students also enhance their reading fluency by writing a one- or two-sentence
>message
>each day. The messages are then cut up and reconstructed by the children.
>Some experts question whether the highly structured program developed by Ms.
>Clay is
>something entirely new. While praising Reading Recovery in her new book,
>Beginning to
>Read, the researcher Marilyn Jager Adams notes the program contains elements
>of other
>research-based, remedial programs long in use in the United States.
>Others maintain that the difference between Reading Recovery and other
>programs is that
>no other method has taken those elements and combined them in quite the same
>way.
>"It's certainly not like any remedial-reading program we've ever had in the
>United States
>before," said Yetta Goodman, a professor of education at the University of
>Arizona who
>has observed Reading Recovery programs and written extensively on
>early-childhood
>education.
>No one argues, however, that Reading Recovery is not getting attention.
>In addition to the favorable review in Ms. Adams's book, which was published
>this year,
>the program was cited as "exemplary" in a federal study released last January
>by the
>Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. It was also
>adopted recently
>by the National Diffusion Network, a federally sponsored program that
>disseminates
>research and provides technical assistance on proven educational programs.
>And the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awardearchers at
>Ohio State
>nearly $750,000 to continue studying the program.
>Proponents of the method say all the attention has a simple reason: Reading
>Recovery
>gets good results.
>"One district will get the program and another district will observe it and
>say, 'I can't
>believe how effective this program is,"' said Ms. Lyons.
>In Upper Arlington, Ms. Beaver said, between 84 and 89 percent of the 109
>children who
>participated in the program during its first two years of operation in the
>district have
>completed it successfully and no longer require special help with reading. A
>portion of that
>number, she speculated, are children who might otherwise have been labeled
>learning-disabled and placed in a special-education program or held back
>another year.
>That kind of success has held the program in good stead with school officials
>here.
>Although voters in the community have twice turned down tax levies for the
>schools, the
>Reading Recovery program has survived unscathed.
>This has occurred, noted the district's assistant superintendent, John
>Sonedecker, despite
>the program's initial cost. According to figures provided by local school
>officials, the
>program costs roughly $2,000 per student above the district's average
>per-pupil cost of
>$6,000. School districts elsewhere in the country have reported spending
>similar amounts
>on the program.
>The cost has been a cause for concern among some experts and school
>superintendents
>from less affluent districts that have considered adopting the program.
>"What's important now is to find out what in the method works and also
>finding out
>whether a shorter process would also work," said Ms. Chall, who is a
>professor of
>education and director of the Harvard Reading Laboratory. "At some point, we
>are also
>going to have to find out if it works for groups as well as for individuals."
>But Upper Arlington officials and other proponents of the program maintain
>that, already,
>the return is well worth the investment.
>"For every child who can't read," said Ms. Beaver, "you have to wonder how
>much society
>will have to eventually spend on that one individual."