I received this from a principal in New York City. It was written by one of his teachers.
From a 3rd Grade Teacher
“I love teaching!! It fills my heart when my students make connections and get that light in their eyes when they become excited by what they’ve learned. I have some of the brightest bunch of kids this year. They come to school enthusiastic about the day, prepared to learn something new. They challenge me and my thinking, my pedagogy and I reciprocate. Today I saw some of the light in many of my students completely disappear and it broke my heart.
It’s been a grueling three days of testing. Their anxieties manifested themselves in tears, trips to the bathroom because of nausea and complete shutdown. Their self-confidence was stripped from them today and I felt them questioning their intelligence. I believe my 3rd graders were asked to think in ways that many of them are not developmentally ready for. When I could not decide between ‘a’ or ‘d’ and had to critically think and rethink how I would go about answering the questions being asked, I know that what was given to them today was not fair.
So now I will spend the next few days building my kids back up. Help them to forget the trauma of these past few days and remind them that it’s ok to be a kid and to think the way they do. I cannot find the words to express my disgust for this system and for the people in power who continue to allow this to happen.
We have to STAND UP PEOPLE!! We need to remind those test makers that we teach children, little humans who learn in different ways and who can demonstrate their learning in different ways. We need to change the face of assessment in this country. I’m ready… Are you??! “
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We have to get back to the joy of learning. This is killing the natural curiosity of our students. Let’s get back to the real work….basta!
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Compelling, sad account.
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I experienced the same, and have for the past several years as I always proctor the tests for children with IEPs and 504 plans.
Here is just one anecdotal story:
One young girl that I work with was extremely agitated each of the three days of the test. On the third day she had a complete meltdown. The day following the test, she was still visibly upset and withdrew to the edge of the classroom and sat by herself during a first period math class. This was the opposite of her typical behavior. She usually sits front and center in the classroom, wanting to share her thoughts and show her work.
There is a multiplication fact game that the children always ask to play. I told them that we could play for the last twelve minutes of class if they worked hard during the math lesson for the day. The game allows the kids to be up and out of their seats. There is an element of suspense and surprise that the kids love.
When we started to play, Mary (not her real name), didn’t want to join in and went to the front white board to draw. I didn’t insist that she join us, but glanced over from time to time to see what she was doing. At first she was writing messages that were hard to see, but then she wrote, more than once, in huge letters, “I am Stupid”. Of course she received a great deal of support throughout the day from all of her teachers.
Now, I know that Mary will bounce back with the help and encouragement of her teachers. She will not be permanently damaged. But there is no reason that she should have been made to confront a test that was way above her reading level. She is a child with a reading disability. And, although all of her teachers knew that she would make a valiant effort, which she did, we all knew that she would not be able to read the test and that the test would not show that she had been making progress.
There are those who believe that children should be made to face their weakness rather than encouraged to explore their strengths. They are ignorant about human psychology and they know nothing about how children learn. These people pushing high stakes standardized testing are harming our most vulnerable children.
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Betsy,
“Now, I know that Mary will bounce back with the help and encouragement of her teachers. She will not be permanently damaged.”
I certainly hope so but I wouldn’t bet on her not being “permanently damaged” as it is nearly impossible for her to counter act the real psychical or mental violence that has been thrust upon her by the very processes (assessment) that should be helping her, not condemning her at such a young age. From Wilson in his “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at: http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf:
“Further, to the extent that this invalidity is hidden or denied, they are all involved in a culture of symbolic violence. This is violence related to the meaning of the categorisation event where, firstly, the real source of violation, the state or educational institution that controls the meanings of the categorisations, are disguised, and the authority appears to come from another source, in this case from professional opinion backed by scientific research.
and from “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”
““So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers.
Your “Mary” is a prime example of that
For you to state categorically that “she will not be permanently damaged” is wrong as you have no capabilities to determine that (if you indeed can discern the future you and I need to get to a casino as quickly as possible and start raking in the dough-ha ha). You are only deluding yourself as to the actual harm you contribute to by administering the tests, “going along to get along”. That “going along to get along” is the “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt was describing in her book “Eichmann in Jerusalem” in trying to get a mental handle on just how such evil could occur when all but a few (true psychopaths) were just ordinary folks, including Eichmann, doing their job as told to do by the authorities. Arendt’s “banality of evil” concept describes the ordinary, common, everyday, non-thinking just doing what one is told going about one’s life whereby one can shrug off the ultimate effects of their “little” actions.
Your example is one of millions in this season of testing, but what you have written does point to what millions of educators are doing: Attempting to rationalize, justify the unjustifiable violence done to the most innocent in society, the children through the educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing.
Betsy,
This is not meant as an “attack” on you. Please do not take it that way.
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You are correct, in part, when you say that I do not know that she won’t be permanently damaged. However, I do know her background, her character, and her spirit, if you will. This child is smart, stubborn, and resilient. I believe that she will be OK.
There are other children who will not fare as well. They have already decided that school is not for them and that they might as well give up before they even begin. There are too many being lost to this madness.
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And I know you will do your best to help her “keep her spirit relilient”!!
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Every. Single. Day. It’s not just on testing days. It’s every day before that when we are basically forced to ‘prepare’ them for the test by giving them long, dull reading passages followed by pointlessly convoluted multiple choice questions that Bill Gates himself would have trouble answering correctly.
The light goes out in their eyes. They want to put on a play. They want to write their own stories. They want to paint a map of the world and learn how to write computer code. They are nine years old.
But if the principal walks in and we are doing any of these things, we will get marked down on our evaluations.
Admin’s evaluation is based on student test scores, so she in turn wants to make sure teachers are doing everything they can for the entire 7 hour day to increase those test scores. Admin waits in our classroom with the lights off when we are at recess and if we walk in 2 minutes late, we are marked down for wasting time at recess (by the time we pick students up from lunch and walk to recess, they have 10 minutes to play at the very most).
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If you tell a class of 8 year olds that there is a ticking time bomb in the school that will go off in April and that they have to spend from September to April reading boring, technical, bomb dismantling manuals, then the 7 hours spent actually diffusing the bomb doesn’t begin to paint the picture.
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As sad as these comments are, they aren’t enough. Before anyone fires back, here’s what I mean. These stories verify what teachers already know. These tests and excessive assessment do nothing to enrich, enhance, or evaluate what students learn. They are designed more for statiticians and program directors and educational product development than teachers. Teachers use a variety of formal and informal assessments to guide instruction, and that is how it should be. But that isn’t how it is. I have been teaching 30 plus years and have witnessed the gradual takeover of my classroom by legislative mandates, reform fads ( not educationally tested, researched, or proven in any way), and poorly designed district policies. I have asked administrators and fellow teachers to resist or push back or resist what we know to be counter-productive for learning. Yes, we need to do something about what ails education now, but legislatures don’t listen. They get wined and dined by marketers, advertisers and corporate bigwigs, and do not know what benefits classrooms and students. I urge teachers always to do what’s in our students’ best interests. We are the primary ones who should be trusted and relied upon to act in their best interests. There’s more to be said.
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Stating the obvious…but it makes me so sad to hear this…This is so wrong. Wacko.
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Interesting analysis of the opt-outers. Recall we were told they were “affluent”
Not so. The biggest group are middle class.
“An examination of opt-out rates in the Lower Hudson Valley suggests that the anti-testing movement is being pushed almost exclusively by middle class families.”
“Districts with a high test participation rate fell into one of two categories — they are either home to a large number of adults with advanced degrees and high household income, or where more than half the students are categorized by the state as “economically disadvantaged.”
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2015/04/18/test-refusal-pushed-middle-class-families/25995541/
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There is nothing worse than seeing a child’s spirit crushed when he loses his natural joy and curiosity about the world. What’s left is emptiness, sadness, and anger – at himself and others.
Yes, you can see the light go out in his eyes.
But you have to look there to see it.
Has anyone ever seen the reformers actually looking into the eyes of children in our public schools?
Do you think Michelle Rhee looked into the eyes of her students when she was taping their mouths shut?
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“taping their mouths shut”?!? That actually happened? If so, how is it she was not incarcerated?
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With masking tape. Harrowing! And a very good question, why was she allowed to become one of the people shaping education reform?http://nyceducator.com/2014/04/rhees-two-takes-on-her-taping-incident_17.html
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http://nyceducator.com/2014/04/rhees-two-takes-on-her-taping-incident_17.html
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/08/13/VI2010081305444.html
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http://nyceducator.com/2014/04/rhees-two-takes-on-her-taping-incident_17.html
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Thank you all.
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I think the general public is going to have to speak up. But do they really know (or sadly, care) about what is going on? I mean, we as teachers are in the trenches. I’ve emailed my congressmen. I’m not confident that’s enough. I want to do more. I just don’t know what to do!
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Melany,
Join the Network for Public Education.
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There’s absolutely no reason that testing should have this effect on a third grader, except if teachers like you have been creating such pressure.
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Have you had children or taught children? These kids internalize a lot more than you realize. As a third grader, this kind of experience would have devastated me. I struggled with self esteem as it was. When I was in second grade, I loved to draw. My teacher told my mom that I “took too long” to draw pictures (I was very detail oriented). I don’t remember what she did, but by the end of the year, the teacher was complaining to my mom that I rushed through artwork. I never liked drawing again.
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You are trying to reason with a troll.
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I know. Sometimes, I can’t help it.
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You need to internalize the message – it’s all the teachers’ fault.
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I see a picture, in my minds eye, of teachers stretching out their arms to cover the heads of their students as a storm rages overhead. the storm bares such weight upon their shoulders that their backs are bent, but still they hold their arms out to stop the storm from inundating their classrooms.
I wish I were an artist so that I could paint the picture that I see in my minds eye.
You have no idea what you are talking about WT.
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Betsy Marshall: I applaud your restraint in the face of an obvious provocation.
Your comments remind me that Mother Teresa was surely thinking of teachers (among others) when she said:
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
Most krazy props from your local neighborhood KrazyTA.
😎
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WT
Why don’t you crawl back under your bridge and stick to threatening billy goats.
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Ah. New Reformer tactic. Kids and parents reacting to the negative aspects of high stakes testing, must be the teacher’s fault. Now that’s original.
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Sorry, I stick by what I said. No one has given the slightest reason to doubt it.
If you take a normal 3rd grade student (and I have children myself, all in public schools), and one day give them a test without telling them bogus things about it being “high stakes” (there are zero stakes for the child), there is absolutely no reason that the kid will experience “nausea,” “trauma,” etc.
The most that the child will experience is confusion if the topic is unfamiliar or too difficult, but no normal child would find confusion such a panic-inducing thing. Children experience confusion every single day when they are exposed to new material in math, science, etc., that they don’t yet understand. It’s a normal part of education from the kid’s perspective.
Nor is there any reason children would panic just because it’s a “test” — if they are given regular quizzes and tests where they are simply told “no pressure, just do your best, and if you don’t know something, that’s OK,” then the state testing day will just be another day, another quiz.
The ONLY reason that a child would experience the panic and trauma described above is if the teachers have been basically threatening the child, “Get the right answers on this test or else!”
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There are other reasons while kids might experience panic and trauma apart from the type of overt threatening that you describe (which I’m sure does happen). Test prep is by far the biggest factor. The kids know what it is, and that it goes on forever, and that it must be pretty important if it pushes aside the real curriculum for months and months. Test prep doesn’t de-sensitize and calm a lot of kids and teachers; it whips them into a state of agitation. And on test day, you get kids breaking down.
Eliminating test prep would eliminate almost all of the testing-day meltdowns, regardless of the difficulty of the test.
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So you’re suggesting the students don’t know from other sources (parents, media, etc.) how important these tests are, and further that they can’t tell from the required endless test prep that the tests are important.
Surely, you are being argumentative for the fun of it. As waves and waves of parents continue to oppose these tests, you may wish to re-evaluate your narrow thinking on the subject.
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Sorry, I don’t follow that. If the test prep is just instructions on how to think about a test’s questions, and how to bubble in answers, and how to use the process of elimination, and that kind of stuff, it would only LESSEN any anxiety that children might feel on seeing something unfamiliar. It would no longer be unfamiliar.
Again, the ONLY conceivable reason for children to feel such anxiety is because the adults in the school system (teachers, principals) have not only been doing test prep, but have been wrongly telling children that the tests are way more consequential than they actually are.
I consider it a form of emotional abuse for teachers and principals to do this to children, and then to claim that their opposition to testing is because children are inherently nauseated by a test. No, they are not. Children are nauseated by the test only because you spent months terrifying them beforehand.
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I would agree that parents and teachers should all do their best to reduce the anxiety surrounding these tests.
On the other hand, consider that one way to make people anxious is to tell them over and over that there’s nothing to worry about.
Also consider that in some districts, the tests actually are quite consequential.
Also consider that many if not most kids have an understanding that, ceteris paribus, it’s better to do well on a test than to do poorly, and many kids internalize that understanding and apply pressure on themselves.
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Steve, children in 3rd grade aren’t following media debates over NCLB, and the average parent is most certainly not putting stress on a 3rd grader about the state test (most parents are oblivious to it, and at most would say “do your best”). The only place that 3rd graders are getting pressure is from the school personnel themselves.
So maybe school personnel should think twice about what they’re doing — just teach well without test prep (which everyone says doesn’t work very well anyway, so why do it?), and let the chips fall where they may, and then we won’t see so many stories about 3rd graders getting nervous from all the pressure put on them by teachers.
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You know how you can tell if a person is not an educator and is probably part of the education privatization movement?
They make blanket statements about ALL children and they pretend to know causation for something but have no data to back it up.
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We’re talking about 3rd graders, not high schoolers stressing out about college and the SAT.
If you know any real-world children, it just takes a little common sense to know that 3rd graders take their cues from adults on something like “test anxiety.” So maybe the adults should stop stressing the kids out and then professing such outrage over the stress that they themselves have created.
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WT, I have a grandson in 3rd grade. He opted out. I am proud of him. He aces all tests. But he saw no point in this one.
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There is NO OTHER COUNTRY that requires 3rd graders to take national/state achievement tests–except for US of A, W(easel) T(roll).
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Ken…you’re supposed to be a professional, but you reduce your arguments to name calling. I don’t agree with WT either, but I can understand why people not in education would believe that test anxiety in kids originates in adults. I know people in education who believe that. Why would you undermine your position by calling someone a weasel, for the crime of having a different perspective?
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Ken…you’re supposed to be a professional, but you reduce your arguments to name calling. I don’t agree with WT either, but I can understand why people not in education would believe that test anxiety in kids originates in adults. I know people in education who believe that. Why would you undermine your position by calling someone a weasel, for the crime of having a different perspective?
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Huskie,
Maybe this is the first time you post comment or quite new here. The poster has a history of trolling by anonymizing oneself with a fictitious email account( and possibly other infomation, too). But h/she is able to have space here despite a high risk of being thrown into a spam dumpster, thanks to the generosity of Dr.Ravitch. The poster sees his merit in here embarrassing oneself as a sandbag by making a silly strawman.
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Ken is the actual troll here. I made the quite sensible, and so far impossible to refute, point that 3rd graders are nervous only to the extent that teachers are making them nervous. A test is not a spider or a snake, something to which humans have an instinctive reaction whether or not they’ve explicitly been taught. If 3rd graders are so terribly nervous about a test, the only possibility is that they are taking their cues from teachers and principals. So maybe teachers and principals should think twice about inculcating so much fear in children, and then having the chutzpah to say that they’re upset about the fear they’ve created.
In response, Ken’s only point is to 1) engage in namecalling, and 2) make the point that no other nation tests 3rd graders, which even if true, has absolutely nothing to do with the point that I made.
Moral: when people whine about someone being a troll, it’s usually because they are unable to think of a rational response, let alone an actual refutation.
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WT:
Get over it. No matter what silly excuse you make, you are only finding yourself that you are whistling in the dark. You are the one who is indeed unable “to think of a rational response, let alone an actual refutation,” because you are simply wasting time making a straw-man out of your mind, ending up receiving a bunch of responses that refute your baseless, fallacious, groundless argument.
Taking swipe at me doesn’t give you anything, since most of your postings contradict with your pet theory on ‘moral.’ You’ve been seen in this blog for a while proving yourself who you are by making a bunch of fallacious, unscientific attribution in the issues you have a beef.
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Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware.
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I’m actually more worried about the crushing indifference I see in my HS students than I am the nausea and anxiety. At least when students and parents feel sick and scared they’re actually feeling something. Most of my students shrug, answer the easy questions, guess without trying at the more difficult questions, and ask, with glossed over eyes, if they can put their head down when they’re done.
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Reblogged this on VAS Blog and commented:
So insane.
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Here is a similar story which I told the Pittsburgh School Board as part of my testimony at their public hearing yesterday (April 20). I implored them, collectively and individually, to add their voices to those of the brave school leaders speaking out against the testing tyranny.
“Until last Tuesday, I would have introduced myself also as a Pittsburgh Public School middle-school teacher. On Tuesday, for nearly half of the day, my title changed to Test Administrator, as did that of almost all of my colleagues in our schools. In that capacity, my role, and that of my colleagues, practically reversed itself. Instead of being the nurturing adults who work to inspire thoughtful and thought-provoking conversation, inquiry, focused reading, and spirited interchanges of ideas and information which spur curiosity and real intellectual growth, we now are enforcers. Of rules we did not participate in creating. Of an atmosphere which is antithetical to the teaching/learning communities we have worked, with our children, to create.
“What does this do to our children?
“I invite you to take with you this image, which I cannot get out of my head, and which is one that compels me to stand before you today.
“Two years ago I was teaching a class of middle-school students who were significantly below grade level in reading. Among them was an eighth-grade young-woman-in-development whom I had taught other subjects for the two previous years. That year I had watched her develop from a child who hid behind books and papers, or with her head on desks and tables, into a student who was becoming confident enough to try those academic challenges which she’d assumed would always be beyond her. She was reading aloud with her peers, participating in discussions and written responses to her reading, and, especially, joyfully finding her voice as a writer. She was approaching the coming of high school with a growing confidence, and almost with joy. Then, one day, she took one of those standardized tests. One that would give her immediate feedback. I watched her at the computer. In slow motion it all comes back to me. Daily. She stood up, stumbled to her desk, crawled under it, banged her head on the floor over and over again, crying, “I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid. I’m so stupid . . .” The numbers that came up on the screen had become her self-image. And they were wrong.”
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Kudos to this 3rd grade teacher for understanding his/her students’ developmental levels and to the supportive principal.
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THE EASY WAY TO REFORM EDUCATION
By Robert V. Rose, M.D. (retired[email: rovarose@aol.com]
Historically, many authorities on the subject of literacy instruction have stressed the importance of adequate practice in printing alphabet letters. Marcus Quintinianus (a first-century Roman rhetorician) has been quoted as writing, that with regard to becoming literate, “Too slow a hand impedes the mind.”
In 1912, Maria Montessori wrote, in effect, that teaching young children to print letters is
easy, that it is easy to teach children to read after they have practiced printing alphabet letters, but that it is difficult to teach children to read if they have not practiced writing them.1 Marilyn Jager Adams noted that prior to the onset of the twentieth century the “spelling drill” was the principal means of inducing literacy for several millennia.1
More recently, several published authors have called attention to the dearth of research on the possible link between printing practice and the acquisition of literacy in young children, but objective studies of the relationship are still lacking.2,3,4
This author has made the assumption that emphasis on practicing printing alphabet
letters increases the fluency with which children can print them. It was therefore decided to examine the relationship between fluency at printing the alphabet in preliterate children, and their subsequent success in learning to read well.
This method suffers the disadvantage of requiring children to be able to recite the
alphabet in order to print the different letters both legibly and at a rate sufficient to demonstrate that they have practiced enough to have become “printing fluent.” However, it was considered superior to other methods of assessing fluency in printing alphabet letters in young children. Such children have limited attention spans. It was therefore decided to measure the number of alphabet letters children write during a timed twenty-second interval, and multiply that number by three in order to obtain a “letters-per-minute,” or “LPM,” value for each child.
During the early months of 2002, five first-grade teachers were enlisted from teacher-related Internet listservs, to do a cooperative study of the relationship between fluency in writing the alphabet, and concomitant reading skill.
The printing rate of each child was listed by teachers submitting classroom data, and each was matched by the subjective teacher assessment of the child’s relative reading skill. The assessments were A, B, C, D and E, to designate “excellent”, “above average”, “average”, “below average” and “possible reading problem”, respectively.
A total of 94 children in five first-grade classrooms were studied. When the letter grades
were converted to numbers (4, 3, 2, 1, 0), “average relative reading ability” could be determined for subgroups of students, defined as printing at different rates.
Among the sixteen children who printed faster than 40 LPM, the average reading score
was 3.6. Among the 33 children who printed from 30 to 39 LPM, the average was 2.9. For the 26 children writing at 20-29 LPM, it was 2.3. For the 21 children who wrote more slowly than 20 LPM, it was 1.6.
During this current school year, a number of kindergarten teachers have submitted series of similar studies on their classrooms to the k1writing listserv, accessible at
http://www.yahoogroups.com. By the end of February 2004, a total of five teachers had submitted serial data on a total of 106 kindergarten students, including data for the month of February.
The relative reading skills of the kindergartners were ranked according to a three-level
system: “reading better than grade level”, “doing well at grade level” and “lagging behind
expectations”. In the opinions of their teachers, six children were already reading at secondgrade level or above.
Statistical analysis of the correlation again yielded similar results. Among the eighteen
children who printed the alphabet faster than 40 LPM, 72% were “above grade level,” and only one was “lagging.” Among the eighteen children who wrote more slowly than 20 LPM, none was above grade level in reading skill, and half of them were “lagging” in this regard.
A tabulation of these findings is revealing. It is informative to look down the column of
LPM figures for these 106 children, and observe the correlations. These data are presented in Table One.
The correlation between reading skill and fluency at printing alphabet letters in
kindergarten and first-grade is readily apparent. This correlation was known to each of the experienced [kindergarten] teachers participating in this study even before the study was done. The experiment, then, was designed to answer the question as to whether this correlation is one of causation, or merely coincident with some other unidentified factor.
The kindergarten teachers involved have each been able to achieve a level of printing
fluency that is considerably above what is generally achieved by American kindergarten
students. The printing rates of their kindergarten children are comparable to the rates of the firstgrade students in the original study, whose teachers had NOT been previously monitoring printing rate. If the cause of the correlation were in the opposite direction, and it is having learned to read which drives printing fluency, then one would expect the correlation to weaken in classrooms where printing fluency has been intentionally contrived. However, we here see the correlation has persisted intact.
This year, each of the kindergarten teachers has been making a dedicated effort to induce objectively measurable printing fluency in the students as the school year progresses. Each of the five kindergarten teachers has emphatically proclaimed that this practice is found to be immensely helpful in turning young children into readers.
A number of the classrooms have high percentages of poverty and minority children, and none of the children could read at the beginning of the kindergarten school year. It was found that printing fluency, which we arbitrarily defined as 40 LPM or faster, is achieved at different times by different children, and that such fluency is an excellent indicator of when children will learn to read, as well as indicating which children have become successful at reading at any particular point in time.
It was also observed that printing fluency gradually improves in almost all cases with
continued practice writing the alphabet letters. Failure to cooperate during the time allocated by teachers for dedicated printing practice seems to be the main limiting factor in the development of printing skill.
None-the-less, our data suggest that fluency in writing the letters of the alphabet is a
reasonable goal for all normal children by the end of first-grade.
But it appears that printing fluency does not at all correlate with reading ability much
beyond the first-grade level. One teacher submitted data on 54 fourth-graders, demonstrating no difference at all in the median alphabet-printing rates between children who had been formally identified as reading below grade level, and the other students.5
It is also apparent that printing skill is by no means a necessary prerequisite for literacy.
Many children learn to read before they are fluent at printing alphabet letters. On the other hand, virtually all children who lag in reading skill in K-1 are dysfluent printers. That this lack of skill is remediable through continued dedicated practice, extended over time, appears to be of fundamental importance.
If the attainment of fluent ability to print alphabet letters in the earliest grades generally
assures early success in reading, this fact challenges some current theoretical conceptions regarding the nature of reading disabilities.
Our evidence suggests both that printing fluency confers the ability to name random
letters more rapidly than 40 per minute,6 and that the ability to phonetically write words fluently, possible only after the attainment of fluency in printing letters, confers phonemic awareness.
Adams wrote, “It has been shown that the act of writing newly learned words results in a
significant strengthening of their perceptual integrity in recognition. This is surely a factor underlying the documented advantages of programs that emphasize writing and spelling activities.”7
Montessori also considered practice writing alphabet letters to be crucial, and wrote, “We shall soon see that the child, on hearing the word, or on thinking of a word he already knows, will see, in his mind’s eye, all the letters, necessary to compose the word, arrange themselves. He will reproduce this vision with a facility most surprising to us.”7
And Ken Goodman in his book, What’s Whole About Whole Language, wrote “Children learn the alphabetic principle through writing”. And without understanding the alphabetic principle, literacy isn’t possible.
While such rhetorical explanations of the value of writing practice have been seen as
nebulous in the past, converging advances in the fields of pattern recognition by artificial
intelligence and of the cerebral physiology involved in visual pattern recognition and
categorization may render them more plausible.
In 2012, Marilyn Jager Adams, the world’s leading authority on early literacy instruction, published ABC Foundations For Young Children, in which she presented newly published proof that most American children finishing first grade still can’t write and name all of the alphabet letters.8
This is a preventable disgrace, and Dr Adams emailed me these comments: “It’s hard to learn to read if you can’t tell one letter from another”, and “It’s strange that now, over 2,000 years after the invention of the alphabet, we still don’t know the best way to teach literacy”.
The best predictor of reading success in rising first-graders is the ability to rapidly name randomly presented alphabet letters, and Rand Nelson, on his blog, has shown that the best way to learn to rapidly name alphabet letters is to learn to handwrite them fluently first.9
And importantly, psychologist Rowe Young Kaple has now published her finding that most American children diagnosed as “learning disabled” actually suffer from a hereditary condition she calls Reverse Position Sensation (RPS) in which children previously considered “clumsy” feel a counter-clockwise motion of the hand as moving in the opposite direction. This often leads to difficulty learning to write (often called “dysgraphia” by teachers) unless the temporarily adopt a “remedial grip” of the pencil, by holding it between second and third fingers, forcing the palm to turn downward. (Many senior citizens are appalled that so many younger folks hold their writing implements in bizarre, abnormal positions).10
It is emphasized that these studies are limited and preliminary, but their results
underscore the pressing need to either confirm or disaffirm their apparent implications.
The author wishes to acknowledge the participation of the classroom teachers who did
and submitted these comparison studies on their students. They are Libby Rhoden, Pasadena, Texas; Sue Fisher, Kailua Kona, Hawaii; Ann Vasconcellos, Homewood, Illinois; Helen Wilder, Middlesboro, Kentucky; Nancy Creech, Eastpointe, Michigan; Ruby Clayton, Indianapolis, Indiana; Alice A. Pickel, Phoenix, Arizona; Lori Jackson, Mission, South Dakota; Lalia Kerr, Nova Scotia; Jennifer Runkle, Ohio.
TABLE ONE
Kindergarten Students Printing Level in Letters Per Minute (LPM)
LPM rate:
> 40 LPM 30-39 LPM 20-29 LPM < 20 LPM
78** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
72** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
66** 39** 33** 27** 24* 18*
60** 39** 33* 27** 24o 18*
60* 39** 33* 27** 24o 18*
57** 39** 33* 27** 24* 18*
54** 39* 33* 27* 21* 18 o
54** 39 o 33 o 27* 21* 15*
51** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15*
51** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27* 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27o 21* 15 o
48** 36** 30** 27o 21* 12*
48* 36* 30* 24** 21* 12 o
48* 36* 30* 24* 21* 12 o
42** 36* 30* 24* 21 o 6 o
42* 36 o 30* 24* 21 o 3 o
42 o 30* 3 o
30*
In the opinion of respective classroom teachers:
KEY: o lagging in reading skill
* on level
** above level in reading
————————————————————————————————————–
References:
1. Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Method, Dover Publications, 2002, pp.266-7.
2. Adams, Marilyn Jager. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print, MIT Press, 1990, p.388.
3. Sofia Vernon and Emilia Ferreiro. “Writing Development: A Neglected Variable in the
Consideration of Phonological Awareness.” Harvard Educational Review 69:4 (1999):
pp.395-415.
4. Groff, Patrick. “Teaching Phonics: Letter-to-phoneme, Phoneme-to-letter, or Both?” Reading and Writing Quarterly 17 (fall, 2001): pp.291-306.
5. Data provided by Marianne Morin, Watkins Glen, New York.
6. Data on kindergarten classroom correlation between letter-naming and printing fluency provided by Sue Fisher, Hawaii.
7. Adams, op. cit., pp 230-231
8. ABC Foundations For Young Children, introduction.
9. URL for the Nelson blog is: http://peterson-handwriting.com/Blog/
10. See URL: http://adderworld.ning.com/forum/topics/abstract-university-of-az
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What the hell does any of this waste of words have to do with the topic of the original post???
Obviously you have never seen children without arms read- I have.
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The single trait shared by all highly successful early grade teachers is that they all stress handwriting practice, and someone should formally study and publish this fact.
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