kitchen table math, the sequel: Mary Damer on masked deficits & poor spelling in high-performing students

Monday, December 15, 2008

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

12 comments:

r. r. vlorbik said...

mary damer not only doesn't know
the difference between the words
"predominant" and "predominate",
she doesn't even know where to get
an *editor* that knows it.

so maybe she's not in such
a good position to lecture us
"we learned to read by reading"
types. i'm just saying.

Unknown said...

So we're supposed to listen to you instead? When you can't even be bothered to check a dictionary before posting a criticism for all the world to see? Predominate is officially an alternate form of predominant. Both are correct. See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predominate. Also, capital letters at the beginning of sentences are still the norm in English. After reading her words and then your post, I have no doubt who's in a better position to lecture whom.

Linda Seebach said...

@Cat:
There is no "officially" when it comes to determining whether a word is correct. We're not speaking French, and beholden to the Academy.

Some dictionaries are far more permissive than others, so checking one tells you nothing useful about whether a usage is contested, or how far a word choice once regarded as ignorant has moved toward general acceptance, or is still being rejected by careful writers. Why would you want to risk being thought ignorant by using a possibly disfavored substitution?

"Dominate" is a verb; "dominant" is the related adjective. Since both exist, they are not interchangeable.

And while we're at it, "alternate" does not mean the same thing as "alternative," which is what you meant to say.

Unknown said...

Point taken on the absence of an Academy. Since there is no "official" disfavor of the use of "predominate", I stand by my defense of Mary Damer's use of the word. Careful writers should also check the definition of "alternate" before being critical of someone else's use of it. One meaning of the adjective "alternate" is "constituting an alternative" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alternate). As for being thought ignorant, I'm far more concerned with people who would ignore arguments in the extremely important "reading wars" just because they favor one accepted word over another accepted word. Shall we get back to the substance of the post now?

Crimson Wife said...

I was one of those "natural" readers who figured out how to decode on my own long before I started kindergarten. By the time I entered a progressive private school, I was already reading chapter books & my teacher never bothered giving me any kind of formal reading instruction. So the first time I encountered the phonics rules was as an adult homeschooling my own DD.

It was a bit odd for me to see them all written out because I *KNEW* them but had never really given them any conscious thought. But I definitely think there's value in explicitly teaching them even if many kids can figure them out on their own like I apparently did.

Catherine Johnson said...

oops -- that's my fault! (late to the party)

I'm going to correct the spelling.

Catherine Johnson said...

Hi V!

I think Mary D. would cut you some slack, seeing as how you're teaching math to the masses (or attempting to), not balanced literacy to 5 year olds!

Catherine Johnson said...

OK, I had no idea "predominate" is also correct.

I give up.

Catherine Johnson said...

I was one of those "natural" readers who figured out how to decode on my own long before I started kindergarten.

I'm very curious about this - I was one, too. I "taught myself to read."

I think McGuinness is going to have something to say about this - but possibly not about the kids who seem to teach themselves to read.

What are those children doing?

Catherine Johnson said...

Reading her book is a revelation because I'm finding out how little I know.

I didn't know - not really - what phonemes were.

I didn't know - not really - that written language is a code.

I didn't know that "letters don't make sounds."

When I encountered McGuinness' first assertion that one should teach from sound to letter instead of letter to sound, I didn't know what that meant, either.

I feel like an autistic savant.

Somehow, I "picked it up."

I know very little about language and not too much about reading, either.

Learning all of these things at this late date is incredible.

(Grammar next.)

Crimson Wife said...

I can't remember a time before I could read so I have no idea how I learned to decode on my own. I asked my mom one time about it, and she said that she didn't know either.

One day when I was 3, I apparently simply picked up a book and started reading it aloud. At first, my mom thought I was simply reciting it from memory but then I got tripped up by the word "mattresses". She then tested me on a book that I hadn't ever seen before and I could read that too.

Catherine Johnson said...

Right - that's what my mom says, except I was quite a bit older.

I think I started reading the summer before 1st grade.

I should ask my mom whether they did any phonics instruction in Kindergarten (which was a half day program).

I tend to think they didn't.

It's possible that I had enough implicit phonics instruction that I pieced it together through "statistical learning" (not sure that's the right phrase ---)

I think that happened with C.

I believe the school was using balanced literacy with him. Sometime in the middle of the school year - or perhaps towards the spring - the teacher told us that C. was at risk for dyslexia because he had such poor handwriting. (She was correct about this; very poor handwriting is associated with dyslexia.)

I was aghast, though Ed dismissed the possibility out of hand.

To me, it was obvious that we had two children with autism so how could our third child escape unscathed?

I started reading about reading; that may have been the moment I picked up a copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons at Barnes & Noble. (Or it may not: it's possible I spotted Engelmann when I was thinking about Jimmy & Andrew ...)

A few short weeks later, C. suddenly started to read. It was 'overnight'; that's the way it seemed.

One day he wasn't reading, the next day he was.

He was miles ahead of most of his classmates when he entered 1st grade.

Straight Talk About Reading said that around 10% of children (I think) start reading on their own in the wake of explicit instruction in phonics.

I doubt C. had much explicit instruction in phonics, but he probably has some, and he has and extremely good memory - 'good' meaning quick.