The assignment and over dependence on Lexile levels has turned teachers into gatekeepers instead of educators, turning students away from reading for enjoyment. (Pennington, 2013) The Kentucky MAP test is given at the beginning and end of each school year to assess student growth in several subjects. One of these subjects is reading level. Once children reach a certain literacy level they are given a Lexile score to coincide with how literate the MAP test shows them to be. These levels coincide with “grade levels” and are meant to show at what “grade level” each student is reading at. (Handsfield et al. 2012) Students are then told to read books +/-50 of their Lexile and are prohibited, by some educators, to read anything outside (generally
In the essay titled “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading” written by John Holt and published in Reading for writers in 2013, Mr. Holt discusses why most children aren’t interested in reading. Mr. Holt spent fourteen years as an elementary school teacher. He believed classroom activities destroy a student’s learning ability. Mr. Holt never let his students say what they thought about a book. He wanted his students to look up every word they didn’t know. People can learn difficult words without looking them up in the dictionary.
On October 10th, 2017 at Springhurst Elementary School, I conducted a “Reading Interest Survey” and the “Elementary Reading Attitude Survey.” These surveys were conducted on a 1st grade student, Jax, to determine what his feelings are towards reading in different settings, what genres he prefers to read, and interests. It was found that Jax doesn’t mind reading, but prefers a few different topics. This was evident through his raw score of 30 on recreational reading, and a raw score of 31 on academic reading.
Stuart Rojstaczer talks about how higher education in the United States has decreased substantially these days. High grades are very common among college students when they should not be that high. Schools are handing out easy A’s to those who do not deserve them, decreasing the quality of education. Even more astonishing is the fact that students are spending less time studying and more time drinking and partying, students are consuming more alcohol than ever and degrade in a really fast way. Also Stuart Rojstaczer talk about that in private schools grades are much higher than in public schools, but virtually everyone was experiencing grade inflation. In addition to that one more scientific evidence is high GPA of American students, because
In the op-ed, “Grade Inflation Gone Wild,” Stuart Rojstaczer addresses the concern of grade inflation and its effects on students. Rojstaczer uses several different methods to prove his point of view to the reader. Rojstaczer links grade inflation to the sinking quality of education, as well as the rise of college alcoholics. While this op-ed does a satisfactory job appealing to the reader on a person-person basis, many of Rojstaczer’s main claims do not hold any scholarly evidence. This analysis over “Grade Inflation Gone Wild” will discuss whether Rojstaczer has written this editorial solely to convince readers of his opinion, or does Rojstaczer present a credible claim in higher education’s grade inflation.
The book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher is the ugly truth of the policies adopted in the school system to prioritized test taking strategies for the most part of the day and killing the enjoyment of students reading. The author points out that students’ reading has shifted negatively and the reading percentage has decreased. Students hate to read and classic novels are slowly vanishing from classrooms. The findings to Gallagher’s discoveries are research based and heartbreaking as the movement of standardized testing has been reinforced in most states. There are too many standards to teach and teachers are held accountable for students testing performance. Therefore, educators are forced to do test preps where students are provided with facts to be memorized and lack of comprehension. The author emphasized that students are no longer able to choose a book for the enjoyment of reading. Students’ interests are no longer taken into consideration. Students are reading less and less at school to make time for test prep. Gallagher says that as an educator and parent young
The English Honor Society appeals to me in many ways due to the presented opportunity of meeting new people, helping others while advancing my skills in the English language, and reviewing the subject of English Language Arts altogether. I am very intrigued by many of the mentioned ‘activities’ during the introduction meeting. I enjoy watching plays and musicals that relate to both historical and modern literature; they help to give different interpretations of the main themes and ideas found throughout it and also aid the audience to understand and comprehend ambiguous details. I love children and would be ecstatic to respond to their letters to ‘Santa’ as an ‘elf’. I also want to refine my skills that are English-related (such as writing
The topic for today’s reading was, Interpreting the Language Assessment. In one of the assigned readings, Interpreting the Behavioral Language Assessment, emphasized that the purpose of the behavioral assessment is to provide the tester with enough information to design an individualized language intervention program for a specific child. Therefore, to establish an effective intervention program for particular child the tester must identify the most appropriate starting point for initial training. The tester should review each skill in relation to the entire set of skills identified in the assessment. It is usually best to focus on the development of a few key language areas at one time, even though the child may have weaknesses in several of the areas reviewed by the assessment. Also, it is important that the tester not simply pick the areas with the lowest scores and recommend training begin in those areas, because is very important to ensure that the instructor is able to observe the learner acquiring skills relatively short period of time, in order to maintain his motivation to continue conducting language training activities. Only a few areas are selected for the initial intervention, and the focus of the intervention will be continuously changed as the student acquires new skills. Finally, the language intervention program develops the child’s skills such that he could score at least a five on each of the areas of the assessment. This score of five in a specific area may indicate that a particular skill area may not require as intensive intervention as those skills with a lower score. Furthermore, for the second reading, The Benefits of Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behavior for Children with Autism, stated t...
Assessments should guide instruction and material selection. Any likely manner, assessments should measure student progress, as well as help, identify deficiencies in reading (Afflerback, 2012). One important indicator of reading deficiencies is spelling. Morris (2014), advocated the importance of administering a spelling assessment in order to have a better understanding of a student’s reading abilities. My school uses the Words Their Way spelling inventory to assess students’ reading abilities at the beginning of the year and throughout the reading year.
...ed by most, and how dyslexia can cause problems with reading comprehension. It also discussed ways that we can mitigate these problems for dyslexic people, but these skills can and should be used by all learners. Reading comprehension is a perishable skill, one that if you don’t work on increasing your reading ability by building your vocabulary, learn to read effectively, or using the correct reading strategies for the type of reading material being studied will diminish. Even with the largest vocabulary, if the words are not understood literacy cannot be achieved. Literacy is the key to comprehensive reading. It also gave some of the tools for reading and understanding different types of literature and how to get the important information out of each one. Edmund Burk said “To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting” (Gallagher, 2003, p. 11).
Teachers have not always believed that they are reading teachers. For example, a social studies teacher or math teacher may only focused on their discipline, not necessarily spending time on teaching reading. The common core standards have all teachers building knowledge through content-rich non-fiction material in all classes. This is not to add or be a distr...
The data set used for this assignment was the grades.sav data file. The variables used were gender, GPA, total, and final. GPA and final were used in the histogram scales, along with skewness, kurtosis values, and scatter plot. This assignment included a sample size of (N) 105.
This Field-Based Literacy Professional Investigation will examine how low socio-economic status (SES) influences students’ reading performance and how low SES students can succeed with the increased demands of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This topic chosen was influenced by an interview I conducted with a reading specialist. I met with a reading specialist at Armor Elementary School (Hamburg School District) to learn more about the current key issues in education. During the interview, she noted that students of low SES have typically always struggled with reading. This is a trend that she has consistently noticed throughout her career. Students of low SES are now not only challenged with reading, but with the increased demands of the CCSS. Therefore, this topic is very relevant to the curriculum changes transpiring in education. The reading specialist I interviewed, felt that struggling readers are now falling even further behind because of the increased rigor of the CCSS.
Education is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of any human society. Without it human beings could not have been at the current point of time where we all know tremendously about life and the universe. We are now better off than we were. However, it is clear that there is still huge variety of phenomena waiting for our discovery. The most important objective of education is to help human beings pursue their burning desires to learn and reach their potential. In that way we progress. Therefore, it is vital to help or at least not hinder education to fulfill its goals.
Susan B. Neuman, a renowned faculty member at the Center for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement at the University of Michigan, states that the single biggest barrier to literacy development in the United States and beyond is access to books and educational material. “If we can solve the problem of access, we will be well on the road to realizing educational parity – a goal which has eluded the country for generations” (Book Trust, n.d.). Although this is a factor in the scheme of illiteracy, it is not necessarily the most important one. Research...
It is a “reading world” we live in and students should be guaranteed every opportunity to succeed in this information driven society. Children today are overwhelmed with more reading material than ever before on billboard, television, the Internet and at school, causing reading to become a relevant and essential need in the life of every child (Lumpkin 1972). Being able to read has become the core of our information driven society. Yet, reading difficulties continue to plague the foundation of our education system creating a problem that only seems to be escalating. Hasselbring affirms that reading difficulties are a serious concern to our nation’s students claiming that, “as many as 20 percent of 17 year olds... [are] functionally illiterate and 44 percent of all high school students…[are] described as semi-illiterate”(2004). This is a harsh reality to face – a reality that stems from difficulties developed at the elementary level where reading complications arise and usually go unchecked. These reading difficulties are carri...