Richard L. Allington and Patricia M. Cunningham present a lot of information in this opening chapter about the struggles that schools currently face and the need for a system wide overhaul. They share reflection on many of the factors that might contribute to the struggles readers and writers face. From there they move on to discussing some of the failed initiatives schools are using now to eradicate literacy problems and plans for future improvement including the policies that influence the chance for change.
While reading this chapter the word that kept appearing and reappearing both explicitly and implicitly was change. There is a paragraph very early in the chapter that illustrates this word and its importance beautifully. Allington and Cunningham (2007) share ideals about education paired with examples of the current state of public schools. For example, "We need schools that help children exceed their destiny-schools where all children are successful, not just the lucky ones who find schooling easy" (p. 2). For schools to be a place of success for all children, change is needed.
A current policy in schools to deal with struggling readers and writers is retention. Students who are retained typically receive more of the same type of instruction and support and thus they become even older underachievers. The authors advocate for retention policies to be one of the first things to change in order to bring success to students. Rather then providing a repeat of the same instructional program, research suggests "that increasing the intensity of instruction works far better than either retention or social promotion alone" (p.10). Clearly, something needs to change.
My school deals with a lot of ELL students who may move to the country in the middle of the year and often struggle with reading and writing. Instead of the typical policy of retaining them, my school typically promotes the students and provides them with additional support in learning English to support their reading development. If the students repeated a grade again and received all of their instruction in the general education setting then it is unlikely that any success would be reached.
To make all of these changes possible the authors put a lot of control in the hands of the teachers and the power that they bring to the classroom. Unfortunately now many schools put more of their reform focus on factors outside of the teacher instead of "developing the instructional expertise of teachers" (p. 16). This phrase, and its implications, has the power to change schools internally, without a need for significant funding or changes in policy.
Literacy teachers need to be provided with a rich library of leveled informational and narrative texts, as well as instruction in how to use these texts to teach students the skills and strategies they need to become readers. It is also critical that teachers have knowledge of students, how they learn best, and their prior knowledge both from the classroom and external experiences. Teachers who are equipped with resources and knowledge create classrooms where students can learn and become successful students.
My classroom is complete with a leveled library of resources for me to use during guided instruction and for the students to access when they are reading independently. Upon hiring I was also given support in assessing students' reading levels using running records and the various components of the workshop model which my school district utilizes. I know that without these resources and instructional support it would be a greater challenge to be an effective teacher.
Finally,
a sentence that I believe sums up the authors’ message in this chapter is that
schools need to support “children so that all students achieve levels of
academic performance historically attained by only a few” (p.22). A problem
with the current way our schools are often constructed is that there is a
cluster of high achieving students and a larger group of students who under
achieve throughout their careers as students. Something needs to change and
teachers need to be trained and supported in a way that the outcome is more
optimistic for the majority of students.
Chapter 2: The Stories
of Schools Where All Children Become Readers and Writers
This
chapter profiles a specific low-income school that has undergone a reform
effort to help meet the needs of struggling learners. From there the authors
explore specific restructuring efforts that have taken place in elementary
schools across the country to make access to strong literacy instruction the
norm, not the exception. Finally they describe the common features of the
reform efforts that are the most effective. All throughout the chapter is woven
the idea of reform and making
substantial changes.
For
each of the anecdotes shared there was always a program in place that was
deemed to be ineffective and then something new was introduced with the goal of
improving that program. The original program in one southeastern U.S. school
relied heavily on a basal reader, reading groups, and a pullout remedial
program. After observing other schools, the profiled district chose to adapt a
few models to find something that was a “multimethod, multilevel instruction”
(p.26). They combined self-selected independent reading, shared reading,
working with words, and writing to help reach students in heterogeneous groupings
with a classroom teacher and additional teacher floating between groups.
Not only did these changes result
in a rise in students reading on grade level, but teachers also became the
focus of professional development initiatives. The program was a reform that
“largely resulted from reconsidering how to use the available funds to enhance
classroom instruction to better benefit children” (p.29). The same resources
and budget were used in a new way so that a different, and better serving,
result was achieved.
Each of these reforms had a few
features in common and one that I found to be particularly necessary is more
time actually spent reading and writing. “Actual
reading and writing activities” (p.44)
should encompass a majority of the literacy block and in many schools this
is not the case. Each of the reform models or programs puts an emphasis on
supported and independent work in reading and writing. The authors, and
highlighted programs, also advocated for infusing reading writing throughout
the school day in content areas such as science and social studies. The
Coalition of Essential Schools goes a step further and actually integrates the
curriculum areas so there is no time explicitly designated for reading and
writing but rather they are a part of the entire school day (p. 41).
In my classroom students answer open ended questions during science and social studies lessons. These integrated assignments require students to use their reading skills to chunk and synthesize a nonfiction text and then write about it in response to a prompt. Recently in a unit on pioneers students were asked to write about a struggle that a pioneer family might have faced and why they made the journey west anyway. This was an authentic writing experience that was embedded in curriculum.
The authors introduce a variety of
models that schools may choose to adopt, but they advocate their adoption with
a specific caveat. “Unless the reform
model is designed to enhance the instructional expertise of classroom teachers,
there is little reason to expect the reform to produce substantive impacts on
achievement over the longer term” (p.30). Throughout the process of reform
it is critical that teachers are supported through professional development and
other opportunities for continued learning in order to change classroom
instructional practices. Each of the programs have very specific components and
assessment tools, and teachers must be aware of these things in order to best
support student learning. Many of the programs even provide specific trainings
for teachers and support in implementing them.
Allington, R., & Cunningham, P. (2007). Schools that work: Where all children read and write (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
