Learning Matters: Education Tips from Indiana University

Learning Matters: Education tips from Indiana University

NOTE: Learning Matters for November contains items about effective reading instruction for struggling older elementary students and the use of sorrow as a teachable moment.

Hope for struggling, older elementary readers

Little if any reading instruction is available to poor readers in the late elementary and middle school grades, though solid reading skills are crucial to a student's success in school and the workforce. More attention and teacher training is geared toward the younger grades. As a result, poor readers in the older grades typically get effective help only if their parents can afford tutors. Older students become harder to help because of their years of failure and exposure to inappropriate reading materials and teachers who lack the special training to address their needs.

An Indiana University reading expert has found, however, that intensive, individualized reading instruction that addresses a variety of reading skills and strategies can help these older students make significant gains. Genevieve Williamson, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the IU School of Education, studied the effect of two intensive, balanced reading intervention programs on 20 students who were entering grades four through eight. The programs are considered balanced because they address several reading skills, such as reading fluency and comprehension. The students were all at least two grade levels behind in reading ability. After five weeks in the program, student gains in word attack and reading fluency were equivalent to approximately half a school year.

"The results provide support for the value of individualized, intensive reading instruction as an essential complement to an inclusive education," Williamson wrote in the winter issue of Learning Disability Quarterly. "It also confirms that students who enter the upper-elementary grades with significant delays in learning to read are still amenable to reading instruction."

These intensive intervention programs are more suitable for after-school or summer programs and would become additional costs for schools. Williamson said students who can't read are more likely to drop out of school, be involved in the criminal justice system and be unemployed.

"We need to decide whether we want to invest now or later. It is a matter of whether as a community we feel it is a public responsibility to educate students, or if only families with money learn to read," she said.

Sorrow's role in the classroom

Sorrow, like a rock in a shoe, catches students' attention and can be transformed into "teachable moments," said Indiana University art education Assistant Professor Marjorie Manifold.

"We can't protect kids from it," Manifold said. "They hear it. It's all around them. The end result of trying to protect the kids is it explodes."

Teachers are accustomed to turning positive aesthetic experiences -- those spontaneous "Oh, wow" happenings that make kids stop and think -- into teachable moments, but Manifold said there is a general reluctance to do the same with negative experiences. She speaks frequently about this topic, the subject of an article that she published recently in the International Journal of Arts Education. Sad and troubling issues, such as news of natural disasters or a parent serving in Iraq, touch classrooms every day.

"Most teachers who I've spoken with feel like they need the permission and the time to deal with it," she said.

Manifold said aesthetic experiences, whether good or bad, and learning go hand in hand because they involve the same four elements, regardless of how subtle:

* Something sensual, such as unusual color or sound that stops you in your tracks. * An emotional response. * A need for intellectual processing of the experience in order to make sense of the situation. "Children think about their parents' divorce, for example, or the death of a pet, or having been bullied on the playground, and it stops them from being able to process anything else. We see that blank look and think, 'They're daydreaming,'" Manifold said. "But they're really thinking about the bullying incident or some other sorrow." * A life change, such as when a child finally figures out an effective strategy for dealing with the bully.

The struggles and challenges of one student, such as the death of a pet, a house fire or suffering from the cruelty of a fellow student, can be turned into mini-lessons whereby all students learn how to empathize. Or, Manifold said, teachers can talk with students privately. She said tapping negative aesthetic experiences can be more easily accomplished in art classes because of the immediate and expressive nature of artwork. Acknowledging the distracting nature of sorrow is an alternative to ignoring it.

"If you see someone struggling out of pain, it's counterproductive to say, 'Work harder on your lessons,'" she said.