Teaching kids who can't read

[Are_grits_groceries]

I taught 7th grade Life Science for several years. When I received my class lists I would look up reading scores. I wanted to know where these kids stood in that area. I found this to be of better use to me than IQ or other measurements. Invariably, I found many with reading levels in 1st through 4th grades. This never failed to distress me. Obviously the books we would use were going to be useless in some ways.

I began to develop my own lesson plans which were based on the scientific concepts they were supposed to be learning. I had worked with a reading teacher to make these lessons function in another way. They were also structured using formats that helped them read and learn to read.

I didn't ignore the books. I didn't want the students to feel that they were too dumb to use them. I also wanted them to become more comfortable using books. If you can't read, a book can be terrifying. It is a real world reminder of what you can't do.

I talked to each class at the beginning about the science books and books in general. I told them were were going to use the books with other material and not as the only source for our class.

While discussing books, I asked them if they were comfortable using them. Many were not and not just because they couldn't read. A lot of them had been humiliated in a class when they were asked to read in front of others. That would really help make someone view reading positively. NOT!

I told them I learned to read with comic books. Somebody read them to me and I began to follow along and then read. Nobody required you to use books to start with. I told them it was very hard for me for a while. The books we had were used as a source to look up items. We did go through some areas and use some of the exercises. It was the best that I could do.

I wish I had the time and talent to make science modules based on comic books. They would have science characters and superheroes to demonstrate the concepts. I am not talking about "Richie Rich" types. I am talking about Justice League and such that would have both female and male parts. The skills and 'weapons' would be scientific concepts and items. Maybe I should try to do one now instead of playing hidden object games as my brain melts.

I believe this would keep the kids from becoming bored to tears. I was bored to tears by the way a lot of things were taught in textbooks. It didn't come alive and was stale and boring. It probably sounds stupid.

So that is what I tried. I don't know if my way worked any better than any other methods used. If even one kid benefitted from it then it was worth it. It seemed to make them less discouraged which gave me hope. Hope is all I had to give back to them to help in the world they were entering.

sigh......

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Wonderful idea. And good for you for...

working with what you have and helping them learn. And giving them hope. Well done...

[TBF]

2. My brother wasn't interested in reading -

so my mom bought car magazines and read those with him. Anything to get him interested.

Later in about 6th grade he was identified as gifted.

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I told my kids (and their parents) to read what they found interesting.

The words and grammar were the same and got the concepts across.

[malaise]

3. Lovely post

Many years ago we were in charge of the youth wing of our community football club. We decided that since the kids were giving up their time to play for the community team, we'd introduce extra lessons in math and English for them.
These kids were between 11-14. One of them called me aside after day two and told me that he could not read because his Primary school was only interested in his football talent since he could kick with both feet.
We had him tested and he was not dyslexic so I decided to start him over as if he was six years old. I used regular books, books on football and comics. Never had I seen someone who really wanted to learn to read.

To cut a long story short, he was reading well in less than two years. He and his family migrated to England where he went to a community college and he is now gainfully employed.

He visits us whenever he's on the island - what's amazing to me is that from he could read, he stopped watching TV and loves reading books.

The system fails a lot of our children.

[Nay]

5. The major problem you had was that kids were actually making it to 7th grade without

being able to read. Are we, as a society, unable to process how fundamentally evil this is?

Yes, I realize there is social promotion, etc., but if so many kids can't read at that grade level, then no amount of 7th grade teaching will ever bring them up to speed. IMO, there is something functionally wrong with a school that promotes kids who cannot read; it's part of the whole effort to destroy public schools, I realize, but when, oh, when, are we as a society going to stop screwing over our kids for some broken ideology?

Learning science should be the last thing they should work on. And never mind that a whole class should not have to be beholden to kids who, through little fault of their own, cannot read a text on the subject. It can't be good for that child to go through 7 grades, for god's sake, and feel stupid the whole time! No one can tell me that being held back a grade or being put in a special class in first grade is more humiliating than being age 13 and unable to read!

All modern learning comes from being able to refer to, be comfortable with, and enjoy the written word. No other subject (except basic math) should be taught to students as a subject until they can read competently enough to understand a grade level text in the subject. There is no point otherwise. It just makes them feel stupid. Students who are having trouble learning to read should be assigned a tutor and have intensive help until reading 'clicks.' It will click, if enough help is provided. Children who are unable to learn to read after intensive help should not be in a regular classroom -- parents and teachers can come together and decide what, if anything, may help such a child, but it does not do the child any good at all to continue in a classroom or a grade where she/he cannot do the work.

I salute you for your efforts, Grits. I am sure some kids will never forget how you truly tried to help them.

[LWolf]

15. It's simply not that simple.

Retention simply doesn't work for most. There's plenty of data out there. That's why social promotion happens.

What is needed, and doesn't exist, is an alternative to the "either/or" of retention or social promotion. Something that offers struggling students the help and time they need without retention. Something that is fully funded.

Of course, you could DRASTICALLY reduce the number of students who don't learn to read early by doing some, or all, of these things:

1. Reduce poverty, and poverty stresses, on ALL families.

2. Lower class sizes to the 15-1 research tells us is optimal, and keep schools small and community oriented, too.

3. Fully fund abundant support staff for tutoring and special programming, with nothing more than a teacher recommendation needed; no formal identification of disability, etc.. Just recognize kids who aren't making it for ANY reason and support them.

4. A major cultural shift, perhaps promoted through all the media the nation is addicted to, promoting literacy and intellectualism as cultural values.

5. Parenting classes focused on how to foster brain development, socialize, build language skills, etc. for all prospective parents, and for all parents from birth through pre-school and beyond.

5A. Fully fund programming at every school site that encourages parents to be involved with their child's learning, and how to do so constructively. I've done this at very small levels; one thing that helps is to offer dinner. More parents show up when you feed the family that night.

6. Universal developmentally appropriate pre-school.

7. Single-track year-round schools that offer more frequent, shorter breaks, greatly reducing the loss of progress over breaks and greatly reducing student and staff burnout.

[Nay]

29. I didn't mean to imply it's that simple; books have been written on the subject, at least 5 on

each of the subjects you listed. My main point is that it is simply evil to allow children to pass through school without ensuring that they learn to read. I agree with all your points, but in this society, which I consider a basically evil one because it refuses to do anything sensible or reasonable unless there is big money in it for some already-rich person, you will never see one of your points addressed except at a very local level and under the radar. With the very harmful and ideological NCLB, you will never see anything like your list done anywhere.

Except at expensive private schools, of course, which are exempt from the predations visited upon the regular populace.

[LWolf]

30. All true.

If a critical mass began to stand up, to fight, for our schools, we'd see positive change. Instead, so many are way too eager to buy into the bashing that feeds the corporate deform and destruction of public education.

[Fumesucker]

6. I found this at a used book store long ago, my daughter and I went through it one summer

http://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-History-Universe-Volumes-1-7/dp/0385265204/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1386765576&sr=1-1&keywords=cartoon+history+of+the+universe

[FSogol]

21. Beat me to it. Gonick has also written histories of chemistry, physics, claculus, statistics, etc.

[barbtries]

7. do it!

even for those of us who read well, a textbook is often so dry and boring that it is hard to read let alone remember what you read.

[kelliekat44]

8. I learned to read using comic books when I was a kid for Lulu & Slugo to the Classics.

By the time I was in high school I knew a lot of info just from those comic books...including Shakespeare and history. I was a student contestant on "Scotts HiQ" and answered two questions no one else could answer just from info I read in two comic books. And who can forget School House Rock?

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. I loved Classic Comics.

I read many of those classics when I was older. The comics made them interesting and piqued my curiosity.

[Bucky]

9. Used to be you could explain hands-on lessons to kids who couldn't read or write.

Now, of course, ironically named "smart phones" have destroyed the attention spans of kids so that they can neither read nor pay attention to an explanation.

[Are_grits_groceries]

10. This was before all of that.

In addition, I explained GIGO to them.
I told them they better not trust everything they read on the internet. If they didn't know how to read and comprehend, anybody could fool them at any moment.

[Neoma]

17. If they're on a smart phone, that probably indicates literacy though. In one form or another.

Even if it's grammatically incorrect, they're still doing what our ancestors couldn't.

[Are_grits_groceries]

18. I don't think using a smart phone indicates true literacy.

They know enough about how to do everything possible with those devices. However, I don't think they spend too much time engaging in activities that really proves they are literate.

[Neoma]

19. And how many people text? That's my point.

Plus the internet is on your phone and a hell of a lot of people read from that to get information.

[Are_grits_groceries]

22. I don't think texting is a sign of literacy at all.

A lot of people have cell phones even at young ages. If they can't read or have poor reading skills, texting isn't going to help that.

To me it's like using calculators. Kids can use them, but they need solid grounding in numbers and how to use them.

Kids need a solid grounding in reading, spelling, grammar, etc. if they do, they know how to switch from a texting dialect back to using the proper forms. If they don't, they have no idea what they are doing wrong.

I am on Twitter a lot. Using only 140 characters means learning how to abbreviate and using only enough to be understood? Spelling and grammar are out the window. However, when I write a tweet, I am very well aware of every change I make that is not the correct way to use the English language. A lot of people don't.

[Neoma]

25. Yeah, most smart phones don't have the 140 character rule. That's a wimpy phone and twitter rule.

If they're stringing words together in their head from looking at something, they're still doing something our ancestors couldn't do. It's a different type of writing that people absolutely hate, but it's still reading and writing and it shouldn't be tossed aside so quickly because it's something that can be shaped and molded into proper reading/grammar/spelling. I think the approach should be writing how they usually do it, and showing the other ways you say the same thing.

I didn't learn grammar from a teacher, I went on message boards and people simply corrected me here and there. The same process can be easily be taught in classrooms, but teachers don't generally correlate what they usually read/write into what the proper way is. They go straight to the, "This is how you do it" without comparing and contrasting to how they already write. I think that makes things harder.

[surrealAmerican]

12. I like your comic book idea.

It could be a good way to engage the middle-schoolers, even the ones who aren't having trouble reading traditional textbooks. So many of the texts my kids used in school were very poorly written. Thankfully, their teachers mostly acknowledged this, and didn't base all their lessons around those books.

[Are_grits_groceries]

24. I was in the middle of a lesson one time and I just stopped dead.

I rolled my eyes and told the class that the subject was fine but the lesson was boring me to tears. If I was bored, they couldn't be too far behind.

The looks on their faces was priceless. We went freestyle and talked about the subject and most of them listened.

The kids never relaxed completely in my classes because they thought I was crazy.

[Half-Century Man]

13. Japanese Manga is why I learned to Speak Japanese

Self taught, I've been at it for 12 years now.
I can read Hirogana and Katakana, still working out Kanji though. With having to learn 1945 characters to be literate, It takes some effort.

[niyad]

14. thank you for trying to help those students. would guess that many of them still appreciate your

efforts on their behalf.

why not get to work on creating science comic books? what a wonderful idea (and, who knows, yours might just be even better than the one mentioned in this thread). you would be performing a great service.

[rurallib]

16. We have been mentoring for a while

We started with one boy in 4th grade who could barely read. I tried comics, cartoons anything I could think of.
I started reading through comics.

One day we were talking and he mention and he liked the dumb criminal shows. The next day i was at a book store and happened to walk by 'The Darwin Awards". So I bought a copy. It was like a miracle . Withing 2 weeks he was reading them on his own. I had to edit what he picked, but it was amazing.

He is now in 11th grade, averaging B+, in 3 school plays, won an award at state speech contest, taking AP classes. He has a future and is excited.

I will never forget the night I was asked to join the family for his school conference. The teacher told them he was getting a solid A (his first). He had literally the biggest grin I have ever seen.

Thanks go out to those funny, funny Darwin Awards.

[frazzled]

28. That's quite a success story!

There is no gratification greater than helping a child to learn. And no greater gift to society at large.

Thanks to the OP and to you for your work in helping kids learn.

[FSogol]

20. Check out Larry Gonick. He's written a whole series of "Cartoon Histories" of various scientific

disciplines such as chemistry, physics, etc.

His World and Us Histories are great too.

http://www.larrygonick.com/

[Are_grits_groceries]

23. Thanks.

I like his work. It's still too long and on a higher level that is needed in lower grades. Using that technique to make booklets on much smaller subjects would be fine.

[Mopar151]

27. The whole idea that facts are Legos

And may be readily assembled, after being stuffed randomly into the brain, with no further adjustment or instruction - is as preposterous as trying to teach hungry children - anythinng.