In 1993-94 assessment of British Columbia children found that 20-25 percent of Grade III students "had difficulty responding independently to formal reading and writing tasks."
When Maureen Somer's six-year-old son, Adam, was not reading by the end of Grade I, she was told not to worry. "They learn when they're ready," said his teacher at South Monaghan Public School, Peterborouogh County, Ont. But at the end of Grade III, in 1991, Adam was no further ahead.
The school had been using the "whole language" approach to reading usd in most Canadian schools today. Children are required to recognize whole words by their shape, with cues such as pictures and story lines to help them. Adam was not the only one in his class whose reading skills were stunted on entering Grade IV. Distressed parents demanded their children be assessed.
The results were shocking. Twelve out of 24 nine-year-olds who had started school together were reading at a Grade II level or below. Some couldn't even spell cat. Over the next two years Somers spent $6,000 to have Adam privately tutored up to grade level.
In 1993-94 assessment of British Columbia children found that 20-25 percent of Grade III students "had difficulty responding independently to formal reading and writing tasks."
Last October the results of an Ontario-wide study of reading and writing skills among Grade III students were released. The test used a scale from level 1 -considered unacceptably low - to level 4. Thirty-nine percent of students could read only at level 1 or 2. In London, Ont., the proportion of children at risk for reading failure nearly doubled from five percent in 1985 to 9.4 percent today.
In January, after 5,300 Grade III children in Alberta failed to meet reading standards, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein announced a specially funded literacy program.
In 1992 the Economic Council of Canada reported that more than 28 percent of 16-to-24-year-olds born in Canada were functionally illiterate.
The report predicted that if trends did not improve, our schools would produce well over one million new functional illiterates by the year 2000.
In 1996 a Statistics Canada report revealed that 48 percent of Canadians aren't literate enough to function effectively at work or at home; half have serious difficulties dealing with any printed materials, and the rest can read only if material is simple and clearly laid out.
Says Ontario reading research specialist Deborah Howes, author of The Lost Generation, a study of Canada's literacy problems. "You will not find one beginning-reading phonics-based program on ministry-approved lists."
According to Howes: "There is absolutely no reason at all why any child should not learn to read by the end of Grade I. There is overwhelming evidence of the success of the beginning-reading phonics programs."
In September 1994 Mary Scime, a leading resource teacher at Mountview School in Hamilton, was given a challenging assignment. Twelve children out of the school's Grade II students could not read. Some of them had already repeated Grade I. Scime's job was to get them reading.
She tried a variety of whole-language approaches; she read to the children, did co-operative writing with them, used pattern books to improve their ability to predict text. Nothing worked. Then in November she began using a more balanced apporach to reading called the Open Court Series for young Scholars.
"Open Court systematically used phonics and spelling patterns, and also used good literature," Scime says. "Three weeks later, it was as if a light went on. The kids realized that they could read." By the end of the year, all the children were reading.
In September 1995 Scime's colleagues decided to use Open Court to teach their Grade I classes. By June, 94 percent of the children finished Grade I at or above grade level. Says Scime, "It was the first time in my 19 years experience that every child was reading by the end of the year."
Maple Leaf elementary school in inner-city Toronto has had similar success. When the North York School Board tested the reading skills of its students four years ago, Maple Leaf was 89th out of 89 schools. Says Elizabeth Sinclair, the school principal: "We had to do something." She chose Open Court. Last year, when North York conducted another test, Maple Leaf came top in the district.
The Open Court series is now being used in 200 of Ontario's 4,300 elementary schools and in a scattering of schools from Manitoba west to British Columbia. Published in the United States, it is unlikely to be approved by Canadian ministries of education. A similar program called Language Patterns, published in Canada, went out of print in 1988. It has not been reissued.
The preference for whole language extends to eachers' colleges. Says Maggie Bruck, at developmental psychologist at McGill University. Faculties of education are tied to the provinces they serve. Where you have a curriculum dedicated to whole language, that's what the teachers' college are going to teach."
Trainee teachers must receive a thorough grounding in phonics-based tuition. Says Odette Bartnicki, vice principal of John XXIII elementary school in Mississauga and a 1997 winner of a provincial Teacher of the Year award: "Some of our younger teachers, as enthusiastic and good as they are, have never been taught anything about phonics."
Parents, too, have a crucial role to play. Jim Anderson, associate professor of language education at the University of British Columbia, advocates reading to children. "Encourage your children to talk about a story, and help them relate it to what's happpening in their own lives."
Nancy Freckleton of Wentworth County, Ont., decided to teach her two sons to read before they entered Grade I. In 1993 she bought Hooked On Phonics and began teaching them. Within six months, they could read.
Above all, parents should find out what's going on in their children's schools. In British Columbia School District 83 (North Okanagan-Shuswap) during the 1992-93 school year, several parents complained to school trustees that their children were not reading well. In response, Dawn Benson, director of instruction for the district, helped organize a public forum. Four hundred parents attended. Their concerns spurred Benson to look for new ways to teach reading.
At Armstrong Elementary, for instance, Grade I teachers now use a phonics program called Companion Reading. If a chld has difficulty, he is grouped with others for extra instruction three times a week. Any still at risk receive individual coaching. Virtually all children who have been at the school since kindergarten read fluently by the end of Grade III.
Don't hesitate to ask searching questions at your child's school: How does it teach reading? Does it start with intensive phonics training? Does it give regular, standardized tests to check the child's precise reading age? In these tests, what proportion of pupils emerge as above or below average?
At the bottom of this page is a simple passage which the average eight-year-old should be able to read. A child of that age who struggles with more than two or three of the words, or appears to be guessing many of them, may have a problem, and it is worth discussing it with his teacher.
"Teachers should expect all children to be reading by the end of Grace I or early into Grade II," says Dawn Benson. "Children who don't are at risk of dropping out of high school. Early reading has to be a priority for teachers.
this special report by Claudia Cornwall, in Reader's Digest May/98- Do you read the Reader's Digest? Get your copy today!
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Diane Swanson, Coyotes in the Crosswalk (Whitecap books). |
