Catching Readers Before They Fall

This summer an educational topic that has been occupying a lot of my thoughts has to do with me as a parent and educator than with my own students. All the details could be a separate post (or multiple posts on their own), but here's a brief explanation. There are some concerns about my daughter's academic progress; however, I have noticed a lot of growth for her last year. She is a June birthday, so as a kindergartener she was one of the youngest in her class, but luckily my school has a track for two years of first grade (one year, which my daughter did last year, is a smaller setting of around 12 students before the academic first grade year). This was definitely a good decision for her. Her teachers also commented on her progress throughout the year.

Yet, looking into adding special education services was mentioned. Therein came my biggest conflict. I am not opposed to the concept of special education, but the only option available at my school is pull-out scripted programs that are a stark contrast to what I believe is best for students. I have concerns that missing a significant portion of the day would leave my daughter confused when she is in her class because of all of the gaps in her day. In the long run I do not feel a high sense of security that scripted pull-out would help move her closer to grade level expectations. To the contrary, I worry that it could move her further and further away. As long as I am noticing her making progress, I am very hesitant to have her receive scripted pull-out special education services. Instead, I am going to make sure that I leave work earlier this year to spend time with A providing additional support as opposed to always trying to spend time with her when she is already exhausted and ready for bed.

Since this has been on my mind a lot I have been ever-increasingly more interested in primary literacy so that I can provide further support for her at home. Pat Johnson and Katie Keier's new book Catching Readers Before They Fall: Supporting Readers Who Struggle, K-4 was an excellent place to start. Though it is written for K-4 teachers, I found my thoughts alternating between wanting to help my daughter and thinking of my 6th-8th graders who still struggle with reading. The book provided me with many great ideas to think about, as well as resources for further exploration. In particular, I want to read more of Marie Clay's work. Part way through reading the book I went on-line and was ready to spend a lot of money on a lot of Clay's books even though I have been trying to limit my non-necessary spending. However, then I thought about utilizing library resources. My university library had plenty of Clay resources (more posts on those later).

Here are some take away points/favorite ideas from Catching Readers:

• The authors comments strengthened my personal literacy beliefs, including the power of licensed teachers who value on-going professional development, the need to recognize ways to support students in developing efficient reading processing systems that focus on meaning if they have not already done so, and the importance of teachers really knowing their students and focusing very closely on what they can do and what teachers should do to help move them forward.
• I was especially excited for Chapter 4 - Beyond "Sounding It Out". Since aside from my daughter, my experience is with adolescents, helping students who still struggle with decoding words has always been a challenge for me. I feel much more confident with comprehension support. (The authors talk about how they do not like the term decoding, but I can't think of another word to accurately express my thoughts.) Over the years I have picked up some considerations about this, but I wanted to know more. Their emphasis on focusing on meaning and the three different sources of information (what I am familiar with being termed cueing systems) complemented my literacy philosophy and helped strengthen my perspective for this important piece to reading. I loved their strategy poster example on page 65, and I plan on making one to talk about with my daughter. 
• Another chapter that I was thrilled to see was Chapter 11 - Sharing Information with Families, formatted as a Q&A of common questions that parents asked. What I loved about this section is that not only do they include the question and example answer, but then they follow that up with further background information for teachers on why they would answer that way. Many of these related to questions that I have and others helped me see other ways that I can explain to parents what I do in my own classroom, even though I teach older students, because their literacy philosophy so closely aligns to my own. 

Overall, I loved this book from different lenses - as a parent, a 6th-8th grade teacher, and as an aspiring literacy leader, helping me to expand my understandings to a wider age range. Most of my main points were from my parent/teacher perspective; however, when thinking about it as a resource in a literacy leader role, it is an excellent introductory text because it mentioned a lot of foundational ideas, such as literacy philosophy, zone of proximal development, and gradual release of responsibility. Yesterday, I was excited to see that the authors have started a blog. As soon as I click to publish this post, I will be adding their site to my blog roll. I am excited to continue learning with them.

Now, I am planning on continuing to read more books as I am able to, balancing between prep for my students, spending time with my family, finishing up my homework/assigned reading, and my professional development reading for fun. I know that I will not be able to read all the books that I want to as quickly as I would like to, but I will thoroughly enjoy any chance I get. With earlier literacy the books I will be reading in the near future are Marie Clay's books, Jennifer Jacobson's No More I'm Done (another new Stenhouse book that focuses on writing), and some other books that I found at my university library when finding all of the Clay books.