I'm back! I took a hiatus from writing because I went back to work after my first maternity leave and discovered that teaching full time and parenting a toddler, while pregnant with baby #2, zapped all of my energy. Instead of blogging in the evenings, I napped. Now, baby #2 is seven weeks old and I blog while he naps. As I write this, both the baby and the cat are asleep on me.io,lop0-----
Since I'm going to get political while writing this post, please note that any opinions I express are mine, and not necessarily those of my school or school board.
If you're the parent of a school-aged child in Ontario, you have likely heard that there's a new language curriculum for grades 1-8. Here are some things you should know about it.
It's supposed to roll out this September.
The new curriculum was released in June 2023, and teachers are meant to start teaching it in September 2023, aka right now! This curriculum requires many teachers to completely revamp how they're teaching literacy, and neither the Ministry of Education nor many school boards have provided any training. Also, many schools don't have resources that match the new curriculum. So, if it seems like nothing has changed at your child's school, cut the educators some slack - they likely need a bit more time to prepare.
Even though it was released by the Conservative government, it's actually a good thing.
Given all of the damage that the Conservatives have done to the public education system in Ontario, it would be logical to assume that there's something wrong with this new curriculum. Fortunately, this isn't the case at all; this new curriculum is a much-needed change from the old one. The Ministry of Education developed the new curriculum in response to the Right to Read inquiry report, which was published in 2022 by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. This report found that the old curriculum was failing to teach many students how to read proficiently because it didn't use evidence-based approaches. The OHRC asserts that learning to read is a human right, and made recommendations to the Ministry of Education, which created the new curriculum.
It's not just phonics!
One of the main changes from the old curriculum to this one is the emphasis on structured literacy. Structured literacy involves using evidence-based methods to systematically and explicitly teach students foundational literacy skills. In a kindergarten or primary classroom that follows structured literacy, your child will be learning phonics (i.e. learning the sounds of letters and combinations of letters). Sometimes, structured literacy is criticized because people believe that it focuses only on letter sounds, and not on "real" reading, but this is far from the truth. In a structured literacy classroom, your child will be learning a variety of literacy skills.
Phonemic awareness: This consists of blending sounds to make words, eg. m + o + m = "mom" and segmenting words into their individual sounds. It's often abbreviated as PA.
Vocabulary: Teachers introduce new vocabulary words before students read a text. They deliberately choose words to be taught and review these words frequently.
Handwriting: Your child will learn to print or write in cursive using correct letter formation. (This post explains more about why this is so important.)
Sentence structure: Your child will learn how to write cohesive and grammatically correct sentences, as well as how to use the structure of a sentence to help comprehend a text.
Written composition: Writing is complicated! Children need to know how to plan and organize their writing, do research, get their ideas on paper, and edit and revise their work.
Morphology: In the older grades, children learn vocabulary and spelling by studying prefixes, suffixes, and root words.
If this sounds rather "old school," it is! But it's far from boring. My grade one students last year cheered for our daily phonics, phonemic awareness, and spelling program, and loved practicing printing.
Stay tuned for my next post, when I'll tell you more about these changes.
Do you know a kid who hates reading?
I taught grade six for several years, and every class had a few kids who almost had to be forced to read. I've taught kids who would hold a book open but just stare at the ceiling, who would act out in order to get out of reading, and who insisted that all books are dumb.
Some of these kids are reluctant readers because they struggle with reading and find it frustrating. If your child hates reading because they can't decode the actual words, there isn't any book series that'll get them to like reading; they need systematic instruction.
Other kids, however, are capable readers but are bored by the books that they get from their parents and teachers. If you know that your reluctant reader can read, but just doesn't want to, here is a series that may pique their interest: And Then It Happened.
This is a series of books by Canadian authors Michael and Laura Wade. There are now 14 books in the series. Michael did a school visit at one school I worked at. After reading book one aloud to my class, the kids eagerly checked the other books out of the school library. Many bought copies to have signed by the author at his visit. He's hilarious in person, too, and had the kids and staff in stitches.
This series features the adventures and misadventures of the unnamed narrator and his two best friends. The books don't divulge the age of the kids, but they're old enough to go places on their own but too young to drive. I've had students and tutoring clients as young as eight and as old as fifteen enjoy these books. Each chapter is a stand-alone story, the stories can be read in any order, and each story is fairly short. This is great for kids who find long boos intimidating. The writing isn't the beautiful, poetic prose that I tend to like, but that's not the point. Laura and Michael Wade don't waste words on descriptions, and you won't find much imagery in their stories. What you will find, however, is likely what your reluctant reader is looking for: relatable characters, suspense, and potty humour.
You and your child can enjoy some sample stories on the Wades' website. Yes, the site is called Books for Boys, but the girls in my classes have loved these books too.
What is Scarborough's Reading Rope?
Scarborough's reading rope is a diagram by reading researcher Dr. Hollis Scarborough to demonstrate the different skills involved in skilled reading. The rope is divided into two sections. The top section is for language skills. These skills include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. The bottom section of the rope is for word recognition, which is made up of three separate skills: phonological awareness, decoding, and sight word recognition. Dr. Scarborough explains that children need to be proficient at skills from both the top and bottom sections of the rope in order to become skilled readers.
A similar model to explain this is the Simple View of Reading, coined by researchers Gough and Tumner. They don't claim that reading is simple (quite the contrary) but that there is a simple explanation for what is required for reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension = language comprehension x decoding
RC = LC x D
They wrote this as a multiplication equation for a reason - any number multiplied by 0 is 0. What this means is that children who are excellent at decoding but have poor language skills will struggle with reading. So will children with excellent language skills but poor decoding skills.
How does this help parents help their kids with reading?
What I've found is that most children who struggle with reading have difficulty with the word recognition strand. So many kids have great vocabularies and comprehension skills, but can't figure out the actual words on the page. I help these students by teaching phonics and phonemic awareness; this involves following a systematic program, evaluating the children's progress as I go, and staying abreast of current reading research.
When parents try to help their kids with reading, the most battles seem to come out of working on the word recognition strand. Most parents haven't been trained in how to teach reading. Have you asked your kid to sound out a word and had them dissolve into tears? Or spent hours doing flash cards of sight words and wondering why your child never remembers them? Does practicing reading create too much conflict in your home? This isn't your fault. You're just not a trained reading teacher, which is okay!
Reading books to your child may be an entirely different experience. That same frustrated kid is happy to listen to a story or learn from a nonfiction book.
So here's my advice:
Focus on the bottom of the rope.
Stop doing flash cards, or whatever else is making your child fight you about reading.
Read a variety of books together and talk about what you're reading, focusing on making reading together a fun experience.
If getting your kid to read to you is a struggle, don't fight it. If your child struggles with decoding, talk to their teacher to make sure they're getting the support they need at school. If necessary, get a trained structured literacy tutor if you can afford it. But don't turn reading into a battleground at home.
As a grade one teacher, it's obvious to me which of my students frequently spend time reading with an adult. These kids don't learn letter sounds faster than their peers, nor are they better at blending sounds together. Instead, these are the kids who have huge vocabularies and can tell me about all kinds of science topics. Once these children learn to decode, they hit the ground running.
If you spend half an hour reading to your child every day, you are giving them a reading boost that they can't get from school. I don't have enough time in the school day to spend half an hour one on one with each of my students. When your child snuggles up to listen to you read and talk about what you're reading, they're learning new vocabulary, gaining background information about different topics, getting experience with different literary genres, and practicing the comprehension skills that they've learned in school.
On the flip side, if you spend your reading practice time with your child fighting over flash cards, your child is missing out on all of that background information and vocabulary. Plus, their relationship with reading is probably taking quite a hit, as is their relationship with you.
Once your child gains the decoding skills, they'll have skills from both parts of the reading rope and be set up to become a skilled reader.
