Mary Damer on Twitter

Multi-Tier

I've added a link on the sidebar, too, under "Direct Instruction."

I wouldn’t wish this “rich” schooling on any child from poverty.

Mary Damer on affluent suburban schools:

I agree about the combination of explicit instruction and high quality music lessons, field trips that don't eat into the already too short school time, and I would add foreign language or Latin instruction) enriching an explicit curriculum for students from poverty. With a higher proportion of effective explicit instruction in the early grades for children from poverty, the proportion of explicit instruction needed in higher grades would diminish after basic foundational skills were mastered.

As I read your comment, I have to chuckle, because I keep remembering an office mate of mine in an ed school who couldn't believe that I disagreed with his writing that poor children should have access to the same rich constructivist education that children had in the affluent suburb in which I was living. I tried to explain to him that affluent Midwestern districts had become so constructivist that at times more than a hundred parents were attending school board meetings because they wanted their children to learn "stuff" and stop wasting so much of their time in group-project oriented learning. The district’s experiential science and math, journaling, and silent reading had led to a dramatic decline in rigor and many parents were upset. Tutoring in the suburbs exploded exponentially as a more acceptable way to deal with what Milt Rosenberg in Chicago called the "dumbing down" of suburban education. It was incomprehensible to my office mate that I was sending my daughter to a blue-collar Catholic high school forty minutes away, given that I was a Unitarian, in order to get her a curriculum and teachers who expected grammatically correct writing, still assigned classic books, and had students still memorizing key information in content areas. I wasn’t surprised when my daughter went to Harvard and found that almost all of the Midwestern students were Asian and had parents who recognized the limitations of their American schools. Those parents described years of evenings teaching what hadn’t been taught during the day. I was disappointed to find out that my best attempts to get a “rich” education weren’t enough and that the science, math and classics that kids from prep schools and the best eastern schools had put them years ahead of her as a frosh at Harvard. In humanities, it’s much easier to catch up, but science and math – her science major entry switched quickly with that reality.

Once rigorous education diminished so dramatically during the surge of constructivism in the mid 80's in Midwestern suburbs, that when you discuss education for the "rich" you have to recognize you are talking almost exclusively about east coast education for the rich (and some west coast private schools). In the Midwest, as the exposure to great literature disappeared, it was replaced by making toothpick bridges, middle school popsicle stick castles, dropping eggs from spoons without breaking them, endless journal writing, and charting rollercoaster movement at amusement parks (after 2 kids and many neighbors having that experience anyone, anyone who thinks it's not a waste for anyone but the most scientifically minded students has their eyes closed to reality.) The bridges, castles, dropped eggs and roller coaster watching heralded the new creativity, rigor, and development of critical thinking skills. For the most part, what I observe in classrooms today reveals that affluent suburban education in 2009 remains essentially the same as that back then. The other day sitting in a typical affluent middle school, I observed a teacher reading to students, followed by students journaling, followed by cutting out and pasting faces on paper with students then finding synonyms in the books they were reading to write next to the pasted faces. Finally the two-hour language arts block was finished. I wouldn’t wish this “rich” schooling on any child from poverty.

When I volunteered for the Obama campaign, it was interesting to be around so many 20-year-olds and hear them discuss how “cheated” they felt about their education. Many of these kids went to fine universities and came from “affluent” backgrounds attending schools in affluent suburbs. But they knew that should they be cornered by the Leno show, all the core knowledge that they didn’t know would be exposed. A few were surprised that we “older folks” so readily could add two-digit numbers without a calculator and preferred to do that when there were only a few numbers. Others painfully discussed how their lack of phonics learning to read made law school almost impossible when the “big” words flooded so much of the text. An older volunteer who works at the local branch of a prestigious national firm confided to me that they assume that all of their new young hires need remedial writing classes and they provide them. As affluent suburbs (at least in the Midwest) attempted to design stimulating, creative, experiential classes focused on developing critical thinking, they left the road and many students in the dust.

Posted by: Mary Damer | October 22, 2009 5:05 PM

ktm reactions are here

Mary Damer at Bridging Differences

Must walk the dogs before daylight is gone - will read Mary's comments when I return.

are we having fun yet? discipline in a constructivist classroom

Mary Damer & Elaine McEwan on the other problem with constructivism:

Research supports the underlying thesis of our problem-solving process: the heart of successful behavior management is good instruction. Effective teaching becomes an even more essential variable for managing student behavior when one or more of the following conditions is present: (a) a student has a particularly chaotic home environment, (b) a student’s learning problems are extensive and complex, or (c) a student’s behavior is especially impulsive.

If Carla, the fourth grader who was constantly in your office last year poses no problem in fifth grade, chances are that her teacher this year is more skillful. If you observe Carla, you are likely to see her current teacher employing teaching methods that reflect the most valid research practices. Whenever you have a teacher on your staff who is complaining that a student who posed no problems last year is now a noncompliant rule-breaker, take a close look at that teacher’s instructional methods. You may find important clues to the student’s sudden misbehavior in the quality of the teacher’s instruction.

Instructional practices derived from specific curriculum designs can also directly affect student behavior. Many of the constructivist curricular innovations of the past 10 years that were created to develop hands-on cooperative learning, and student-centered environments often produced unintended results for children who are distractible, impulsive, or less motivated toward school.

Consider the following observation notes based on a classroom observation of two sixth graders in a math class. [NOTE: the two 6th graders she mentions here are the two children having behavior problems, and for whom the behaviorists have been called in]

The students are seated five to a table. They are manipulating small blocks into patterns in order to invent a method of multiplying fractions. Only two students in the class appear to have understood the concept. Other students in the class seem confused and frustrated. The teacher is unable to assist the students who are having difficulty and still monitor the other students. The instant she pauses to provide assistance to one table of students, a craps game begins on the other side of the room with several students exchanging pennies for the blocks they are now flicking across a finish line. One of the two referred students is walking around the classroom, seemingly to avoid the assigned task; the other unmanageable student has lined up his blocks like a train.

The frustration and lack of structure engendered by this activity have created multiple, predictable triggers to unmanageable behavior. No behavior intervention plan will succeed in a classroom where the assigned task is as frustrating as this one is, and the activities are as unstructured as these activities are.

Managing Unmanageable Students: Practical Solutions for Administrators
by Elaine K. McEwan & Mary Damer
p 13-14

note: "the last 10 years"

The book was published in 2000.

Twenty years of hands-on collaborative group learning.

A friend of mine was saying the other day that the hottest major in the college where she teaches is Communications.

I wonder if those two facts are related in any way.


CNN: 10 most popular majors
Niki Hayes on classroom discipline

Mary Damer on masked deficits & poor spelling in high-performing students

At least 30 - 40% of readers who have learned to read with balanced literacy or whole language will learn the code for themselves through natural reading and a bit of haphazard phonics thrown in, but that doesn't always mean that those students will necessarily be fluent readers. I've been having discussions with young campaign workers in their mid to late 20's, almost all of whom have gone through whole language/balanced literacy. These days I don't mince words anymore and am blunt: "Your generation was screwed." They readily agree. One English professor at OSU told me that she no longer can teach Dickens because the sentences are too long (i.e. readability level too high). If any group of college students were immersed in whole language, it's in Ohio where sight word reading is still the predominant method of instruction and often taught as the "literacy collaborative."

The 20-year olds want to talk about their reading experiences, and those who struggled always start by saying, "I'm not stupid, but........." Basically they fall into four camps.

1. The "I can learn to read naturally" readers (among the lucky 30 - 40% of all students) who broke the code for themselves or had parents who as they read to them did some sounding out as they went along: These adults don't understand what the big deal about reading instruction is because it was so easy to learn to read (unfortunately, this is the group of people that I suspect usually become general education literacy professors.) Because these individuals had no systematic phonics, some of them never learned the more difficult phonetic spelling letter-sound associations and have had to rely on memory for spelling rather than automatically writing an e when a word has that sound as a regular spelling pattern. As an adult, having to rely on visual memory of words leads to poor spelling. Thus for a portion of these folks, their poor spelling as adults reflects the lack of adequate phonemic awareness and phonics instruction.

2. The "I can learn to read naturally" readers (among the lucky 30 - 40% of all students) who broke the code enough to be successful until they hit law school or medical school where the words were so "big." The kids I talk to made it through school often with high grades, but it was painful and remains so. They talk about having to use rulers under the sentences and sounding out loud. When I remark that reading so slowly must make it difficult to comprehend the text, they look at me as if I’m a sage. How did I know that? Everything takes twice as long for them. These were the WL/balanced literacy kids who needed the fluency and advanced word reading (advanced phonics skills) practice when they were younger.

3. Another group of readers we can refer to as the "minimal strugglers" (approx. 30 - 50% of all students) will start to struggle by the middle of first grade in reading if they do not have systematic phonics that is well taught, but their parents of means get them early phonics tutoring. Because of the tutoring, they eventually read at grade level. It's interesting that these individuals still feel like failures in reading because they had to have this additional help. We can't forget that the trauma of failure starts young. In high poverty areas, group 2 can be as large as 50% of the school population and unfortunately, those children usually don't get the outside phonics tutoring and so do not develop grade level reading skills. If they haven't had outside phonics tutoring, these readers will look more like the following group by grade 4 when their test scores start to plummet.

4. For a final 20 - 30% of readers, learning to read is the most difficult task they will ever have and only well-taught systematic and explicit phonics in the early grades (usually until the student reaches 3rd grade level reading) will get them past a fourth grade reading level as adults. These readers who are always reading way below grade level by fourth grade if they received WL or balanced literacy reading instruction didn't make it as far as the kids I was talking to. They are already filling up the prisons in disproportionate amounts; they are working menial jobs; the brightest are entrepreneurs where they can hide their lack of reading. Out of this group, only 5 - 10% have true dyslexia. The rest have dysteachia.

Thus when you give that nonsense word test to whole language readers, those in the first group and some in the second will be able to meet the test benchmarks although there will usually be some errors for a few letter-sound combinations. Group 3 may do fine with the easier nonsense words and then start to slow down and make more errors as the multi-syllable ones are introduced. Depending on age, group 4 will struggle from the first nonsense word.

Mary Damer

Mary's books:
Reading Instruction for Students Who Are At Risk or Have Disabilities
Managing Unmanageable Children: Practical Solutions for Administrators (coauthor: Elaine McEwan)

Why Johnny Doesn't Like to Read by Elizabeth Brown
Who Needs Phonics?

reading tests explained - Wrightslaw
free reading tests & instructions - Hepplewhite (scroll down)
DIBELS explanation of nonsense word fluency (all DIBELS tests are free)
On Phonics (The Phonics Page)
Phonics Page reading tests (including a test for high school reading)
Don Potter's Education Page (very rich; contains programs long out of print; phonics, reading, lessons, articles, etc.)
Computer Assisted Learning

The 80% Commandment

The relationship between students’ accuracy with schoolwork and their subsequent behavior is described by the 80% Commandment: “Thou shall not expect a student to do a learning task when he or she does not have the skills to complete the task with 80% success. Otherwise, that student will either act out or tune out.” Today’s frustrated students who lack basic skills most often respond by acting out.

Managing Unmanageable Students
Elaine McEwan-Adkins & Mary Damer

Tattoo that to your forehead.


constructivism as masked aggression
the 80% rule

Mary Damer asks Barack Obama a question

One of my heroes. I finally ordered her book last week. (Was holding off only because of cost.)

tour de force, part 2

I mentioned the DI whole language lollapalooza I was dying to quote -- and Ken's got it!

That's Ken, the guy who wrote the first tour de force.

When Phonics Isn't

I'm going to quote the entire passage here, because it may be the single best statement I've ever encountered of what is wrong in "balanced literacy" programs. Author is Mary Damer:

When a district buys a phonics program like Open Court or Hougthon Mifflin and continues to do "4 Blocks" or any other variation of balanced literacy in the early grade classrooms, one can observe for days without seeing a legitimate phonics activity where children are orally connecting letter sounds with graphemes and receiving feedback. The teachers simply avoid those activities in the teachers guides and often do not know how to do them. Often the teachers skip all of the separate decodable reading and instead only select the leveled books that are always suggested in the "so called" phonics programs. I've talked to many people from California who have reported this same thing going on out there. When the The Whole Language Umbrella Organization hosted its conference just before Reading First started and had the lead discussion group titled something like "Surrender and Win" I wondered what would be coming down the corner. I didn't anticipate that the name for "whole language" would simply be replaced by "balanced literacy" and five to ten minutes of unrelated phonics practice or something where letter sounds are mentioned would be touted as a phonics.

When I go observe in districts (often RF schools) which claim to be doing phonics in kindergarten and first grade but where they also admit that they are combining phonics with balanced
literacy what do I see:

1. word sorts (sight word based activity)

2. whisper reading (teacher doesn't hear all of the student errors like the observers sitting behind the students do -- no corrections given)

3. partner reading (partners don't know how or can't correct errors which can number up to 3 or 4 per sentence -- no corrections given)

4. Complete lack of "cold reads." All stories and books are first listened to on tape or read aloud to the children sometimes several times -- sight word approach.

5. Word walls with all words high frequency words that students learn by sight (sight word based activity)

6. Silent reading (still can't show an improvement in reading achievement this way)

7. Lots of discussion and some student writing about what they would like to read (but no direct instruction leading to students having the skills to read what they would like to read.)

8. Teachers having students complete worksheets circling the first sound of pictures (no oral connection between letter sound and grapheme so it's simply a review activity unless the students are unable to do it in which case it's a frustration level activity.)

9. Teachers saying a sound and having children hold up the letter sound on one of five colored cards on their desk. Only problem is that some of the children hold up the card that is the same color held up by the child in front of them....they are matching cards not connecting the letter sound with the grapheme. Some children hold up two cards at the same time. There is usually little error correction as the inaccuracy abounds.

10. Teachers unable to clearly articulate the letter sounds adding schwas (saying /buh/ instead of /b/ or /muh/ instead of /m/ thus forcing children to delete phonemes instead of simply blending phonemes into words.