A Culture of Family Literacy Leads to School Success

A Culture of Family Literacy Leads to School Success
Jon Reyhner, BME 210, Week 1

Dr. Stephen Krashen, who has done so much good work on teaching ESL and bilingual education, summarizes the research on reading. In short, students who read more, read better and do better in school.

There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading
There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading. There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books. —James Patterson, Best Selling Author

The Importance of Motivation
Indian agent and teacher Albert H. Kneale (1950) remembered monotonous lessons at the turn of the century boarding school where he worked in Oklahoma: “Few of the pupils had any desire to learn to read, for there was nothing to read in their homes…”

Trend in Average Reading Scores
The Reading First Provisions of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 tended to emphasize phonics and despite billions of dollars spent, reading scores have not increased much for, Native American, Hispanic & Black students.

U.S.A. Today 8/30/2006 Groups that read better have higher incomes on average.

The Effects of Poverty on Children’s Ability to Read (4th Grade)
Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments. Significantly different from 2000.

Cecelia Fire Thunder Addressing the NIEA in 2005
in Denver, Cecelia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Sioux, spoke about how in her youth, her reading specialists were the National Geographic and Readers Digest magazines to which her parents subscribed. She got to practice her reading with them after her parents got through with them.

Lori Arviso Alvord, MD Dr. Alvord, the first Navajo woman
surgeon and now an Associate Dean at Dartmouth Medical School, is an example of academic success for Indian students. Dr. Alvord’s road to becoming a doctor was not easy. In her 1999 autobiography The Scalpel and the Silver Bear she writes,

Resilience & Persistence
“I made good grades in high school, but I had received a very marginal education. I had a few good teachers, but teachers were difficult to recruit to our schools and they often didn’t stay long. Funding was inadequate. I spent many hours in classrooms where, I now see, very little was being taught.” She was encouraged by a friend to apply to Dartmouth.

The Importance of Reading
Dr. Alvord’s education in Crownpoint Public Schools left her “totally unprepared for the physical and life sciences. After receiving the only D of my entire life in calculus, I retreated from the sciences altogether.” What saved her was her “strong reading background.” She writes, “I read my way through the tiny local library and the vans that came to our community from the Books on Wheels program,” encouraged by her parents “to read and dream.” She could even get out of chores by reading.

Evans, et al. (2010) found that “Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China. Data are from representative national samples in 27 nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multi-level linear and probit models with multiple imputation of missing data.

The Importance of Libraries
Students in high achieving schools: Get to visit school libraries more often Are more likely to be able to take books home Are more likely to have silent reading time in school Are more likely to be able to make independent visits to the school library Middle income youth own more than twice as many books and visit libraries more than twice as often as low income youth.

Schools in California have less library books and spend less on books per student and have fewer librarians than the national average. Community libraries in California are under severe financial strain and some are closing. However, politicians tend to blame California’s low reading test scores on how reading is being taught.

Documentary Filmmaker Michael Moore writes, “For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don’t read, the loss of a library is a tragedy that might keep them from every discovering the joys of read—or gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life. “Jonathan Kozol...has observed that school libraries ‘remain the clearest window to a world of noncommercial satisfactions and enticements that most children in poor neighborhoods will ever know.’”

SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments. Significantly different from 2000.

A Navajo elder told NAU Professor Dr.
Yazzie, “You are asking questions about the reasons that we are moving out of our language, I know the reason. The television is robbing our children of language…Our children should not sit around the television.” She continues, “The use of the native tongue is like therapy, specific native words express love and caring. Knowing the language presents one with a strong self-identity, a culture with which to identify, and a sense of wellness.”

Who is Raising the Children?
A Navajo elder told Dr. McCauley, “television has ruined us. A long time ago, they used to say, don’t do anything negative or say anything negative in front of children. It doesn’t take that long for a child to catch onto things like this. Therefore a mother and a father shouldn’t use harsh words in front of the children…. These days…they see movies with people having sex in them and they’re watching. In these movies they shoot each other…. Movies are being watched every day, but there is nothing good in it.”

The National Reading Panel’s 2000 report found that there was “common agreement that fluency develops from reading practice.” However it placed its greatest emphasis on teaching phonics.

In contrast to the National Reading Panel’s
Report, the 2001 Reading and the Native American Learner Research Report concluded: “current research suggests that the relatively low level of academic success among American Indian elementary and secondary school students, as a group, is largely the result of discontinuities between the cultures and language of these students’ homes and the communities and the language and culture of mainstream classrooms. American Indian students also tend to perceive academic success as offering few extrinsic rewards, and they are likely to view learning much of what is necessary to succeed academically (such as the standard language and the standard behavior practices of the school) as detrimental to their own language, culture, and identity.”

Reverend S.D. Hinman after visiting Indian schools reported in 1869 “it is a wonder to me how readily they learn to read our language; little fellows will read correctly page after page of their school books, and be able to spell every word, and yet not comprehend the meaning of a single sentence” and he complained about the “monotony and necessary sameness of the school-room duty.” Hopi Edmund Nequatewa who attended this school in the late 1890s related that “I could read all right, but many times I really won’t understand what I was reading about.”

Luther Standing Bear in his 1928 book My People the Sioux complained that his students did better than the students of white teachers who got all their knowledge from books “but outside of that, they knew nothing.” He felt that “The Indian children should have been taught how to translate the Sioux tongue into English properly; but the English teachers only taught them the English language, like a bunch of parrots. While they could read all the words placed before them, they did not know the proper use of them; their meaning was a puzzle.”

Phonics not a Panacea An evaluation of reading achievement around the world found that time spent in voluntary reading was a strong predictor of reading achievement along with reading in class, reading material in the school, having a classroom library, borrowing more books from libraries, comprehension instruction, number of books per student in the school library, and emphasis on literature. Phonics, which NCLB’s Reading First emphasizes, was far down on the list (#41).

The Importance of Background Knowledge
and Context Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. Mary had a little lamb. She spilled mint jelly on her dress. It was such a difficult delivery that the vet needed a drink. Mary had four dates and ate three of them.

“When children were asked the purpose of reading, poor readers (i. e
“When children were asked the purpose of reading, poor readers (i.e., many ethnic minority children) were left with the understanding that reading was decoding and vocalizing the words correctly for the teacher. In contrast, middle-class children learned that reading was garnering information.” “In my district, fourth graders who can already read long and short vowel sounds within the context of their readings are required to spend time with worksheets categorizing these sounds.” “In these basals [that her school used], each story seems to exist in its own vacuum, unconnected to the common history and humanity of the many groups within the American and global culture.” (Fayden, 2005).

The National Reading Panel and NCLB’s Reading First ignored what Sylvia Ashton Warner learned in teaching Māori students in New Zealand that: First words must have an intense meaning [for the child]. First words must be already part of the dynamic life [of the child]. First books must be made of the stuff of the child himself, whatever and wherever the child. (Teacher, 1963)

Sylvia Ashton-Warner taught Māori students in New Zealand and wrote about her experiences in her 1963 book Teacher. She maintained that the words that her students used to begin learning to read and write should have deep emotional meaning to her students and come from their experiences/lives. Linda Skinner (Choctaw) in her chapter “Teaching Through Traditions” in Swisher & Tippeconnic's 1999 book Next Steps: Research and Practice to Advance Indian Education writes that Teacher gave her “valuable insights from her experiences in recognizing and meeting the need for cultural relevance with her Maori students in New Zealand. I believe every educator and parent should read this book.”

Language Experience LE is an approach to teaching reading that connects reading to real-life experiences of the students. Students do an activity with their teacher and then talk about it with the teacher who writes down what they say on a chart or chalk board. What is written down becomes the material for the reading lesson.

It is long past time to remember what Luther Standing Bear declared in 1933 about young Indians needing to be “doubly educated” so that they learn “to appreciate both their traditional life and modern life.”

Polingaysi Qoyawayma in the 1930s
was told by her supervisors to use a canned curriculum to teach only in English, but she wrote in her 1964 autobiography No Turning Back, “What do these white-man stories mean to a Hopi child? What is a ‘choo-choo’ to these little ones who have never seen a train? No! I will not begin with the outside world of which they have no knowledge. I shall begin with the familiar. The everyday things. The things of home and family.”

“Immediately, she began putting her theory into practice
“Immediately, she began putting her theory into practice. Instead of cramming Little Red Riding Hood into the uncomprehending brains of her small students, she substituted familiar Hopi legends, songs, and stories.” She taught her students a traditional action song and the English words to it, which they sang together. The children loved it. She also used these songs and stories to teach writing. But Hopi parents objected, we send out children “to school to learn the white man’s way, not Hopi. They can learn the Hopi way at home.”

The Dick and Jane Readers were very popular in the 1950s
The Dick and Jane Readers were very popular in the 1950s. They used a “whole word” or “look-say” approach that taught vocabulary as sight words rather than having the student sound them out. They were based on scientific research about how many times a word had to be repeated for the student to learn the word. All the characters were white and middle class.

Books used in Indian schools in
the 1960s and before usually reflected an all-white middle class culture that had no relation to Indian life. University of New Mexico Professor Joseph Suina from Cochiti Pueblo described how reading the “Dick and Jane” reading textbooks effected him: “The Dick and Jane reading series in the primary grades presented me with pictures of a home with a pitched roof, straight walls, and sidewalks. I could not identify with these from my Pueblo world. However, it was clear I didn’t have these things and what I did have did not measure up.”

“The Dick and Jane reading series in the primary grades presented me with pictures of a home with a pitched roof, straight walls, and sidewalks. I could not identify with these from my Pueblo world. However, it was clear I didn’t have these things and what I did have did not measure up. At night, long after grandmother went to sleep, I would lay awake staring at our crooked adobe walls casting uneven shadows from the light of the fireplace.”

“The walls were no longer just right for me
“The walls were no longer just right for me. My life was no longer just right. I was ashamed of being who I was and I wanted to change right then and there. Somehow it became so important to have straight walls, clean hair and teeth, and a spotted dog to chase after. I even became critical and hateful toward my bony, fleabag of a dog. I loved the familiar and cozy surroundings of my grandmother’s house but now I imagined it could be a heck of a lot better if only I had a white man’s house with a bed, a nice couch, and a clock. In school books, all the child characters ever did was run around chasing their dog or a kite. They were always happy.”

“As for me, all I seemed to do at home was go back and forth with buckets of water and cut up sticks for a lousy fire. ‘Didn’t the teacher say that drinking coffee would stunt my growth?’ ‘Why couldn’t I have nice tall glasses of milk so I could have strong bones and white teeth like those kids in the books?’ ‘Did my grandmother really care about my well-being?” The “Whole Word” Method of teaching reading found in the “Dick and Jane” readers has been discredited (except for sight words). Whole Language was popular for a time in the 1980s and 1990s and now a phonics emphasis is being promoted by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Newbery Award winner and teacher Ann Nolan Clark wrote, “What a book says must be interesting to the child who reads it or listens to it read to him. The story must be vital to him. He must be able to live it as the pages turn. It must enrich the world he knows and lead him into a wider, larger unfamiliar world.”

Clark’s 1941 Caldecott Medal book In My Mother’s House illustrated by Velino Herrera was written for her third grade Tesuque Pueblo students.

Whole Language Whole Language Principles:
Content comes from student's own language and experience Listening, speaking, reading and writing are taught together Active learning strategies are used Read for pleasure

Contents of Whole Language Programs
Writing language experience stories Using familiar language Reading strategy instruction (Phonics, etc.) Reading to students Silent reading for enjoyment (SSR, DEAR, etc.) Sharing writing and literature Writing every day Oral language practice Speak, read and write for authentic (real) purposes Adapted from Sandra Fox's "The Whole Language Approach" in J. Reyhner (Ed.), Teaching American Indian Students, 1992

Why American English Can Be So Difficult
The bandage was wound around the wound. The farm was used to produce produce. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. He could lead if he would get the lead out. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. Since there is no time like the present, he decided it was time to present the present. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. I did not object to the object. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

What is a Ghoti? Author George Bernard Shaw wrote a London Times article when he was campaigning for spelling reform. He gave the following example: If gh is pronounced f as in enough If o is pronounced i as in women If ti is pronounced sh as in motion Then the correct way to spell fish should be ghoti

Except for the few students who enter kindergarten already knowing how to read, schools need a strong program of beginning reading instruction that teaches the alphabet, promotes phonemic awareness, promotes the application of phonic rules that have broad utility and that fit the students’ dialect of English, and teaches high frequency sight words that don’t follow common phonic rules. Teachers need to make sure through language experience or other instruction that the words students are asked to read/decode are in their oral vocabulary.

Filmmaker Michael Moore writes, “My dislike of school started somewhere around the second month of first grade. My parents—and God Bless Them Forever for doing this—had taught me to read and write by the time I was four. So when I entered St. John's Elementary school, I had to sit and feign interest while the other kids, like robots, sang, ‘A-B-C-D-E-F-G... Now I know my ABCs, tell me what you think of me!’ Every time I heard that line, I wanted to scream out, ‘Here’s what I think of you—quit singing that damn song!…’ I was bored beyond belief.” —In Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!, 2001

Advice To Parents Family members need to get involved in reading to their preschool children and by their actions demonstrate to their children that they embrace literacy as an important part of life. 2. Students need frequent opportunities, in and out of school, to read interesting books reflecting their own experiential/cultural background as well as classic works of children’s literature. It is critical that the process of teaching of reading does not take the joy out of reading by making reading instruction a matter of completing worksheets and decoding stories that the students cannot relate to or find boring.

Dr. Sandra Fox Oglala Sioux educator Dr. Sandra Fox in her Creating Sacred Places for Students curriculum asserts that “reading to children is the single most important activity that parents can provide to help their children succeed in school.” For teachers, she recommends:

Use reading materials that relate to children’s lives, to help them understand that literature is experience written down and that it is interesting to read. Strengthen and expand children’s language abilities by providing them many opportunities to have new experiences, to learn new words, and to practice oral language in English and in their Native language.

The Literacy Engagement Framework (Jim Cummins, 2011)

What Parents Can Do to Develop Their Child’s Vocabulary
Talk with your child often Tell your children traditional and other stories Have your child use their imagination to make up and tell you stories Have conversations about family and other photographs Listen to your child and answer their questions Tell stories about your childhood Visit historical sites, museums, art galleries, zoos, and libraries with your child and talk to them about what they see. Use accountable talk. “Why do you think that is true?”

What You Can Do to Help Your Child Learn to Read
Focus your child’s attention on the sounds of spoken languages through nursery rhymes & songs Play word games Make use of stop signs, the McDonald’s arches (M), & other readily visible objects to familiarize your child with letters and writing Make an alphabet book with your child Take your child to the library every week Read to your child & talk about books that you’ve read together Point out things about books like titles, authors, illustrators, & where you start on a page to read

To Read Well Our Children Need:
Home Libraries Classroom Libraries School Libraries Community/Public Libraries Our children need us to read to them and encourage them to read.

Avoid Readicide And Writicide

Selected References American Indian literacy & reading links. (2014). Retrieved at Alvord, Lori Arviso, & Van Pelt, E. C. (1999). The scalpel and the silver bear. New York: Bantam. Ashton Warner, Sylvia. (1964). Teacher. Toronto: Bantam. Clark, Ann Nolan. (1969). Journey to the people. New York: Viking. Cummins, Jim. (2011). Putting the Evidence Back into Evidence-based Policies for Underachieving Students. Language Policy Division, Directorate of Education and Languages, DGIV, Council of Europe, Strasbourg. Evans, M. D. R., Kelley, J., Sikora, J, & Treiman, D. J. (2010). Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations. Research in Social Stratification & Mobility, 28(2), Fayden, Terese, (2005). How children learn: Getting beyond the deficit myth. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Fox, Sandra J. (2000). Creating a sacred place to support young American Indian and other learners (Vol. 1). Polson, MT: National Indian School Board Association. Kneale, Albert H Indian Agent. Caldwell, ID: Caxton. Krashen, S. (2004). The power of reading (2nd Ed.). Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited. Reyhner, Jon. (2014). American Indian literacy & reading links. Retrieved at Reyhner, Jon. (2001). Teaching reading to American Indian/Alaska students. Charleston, WV: ERIC/CRESS.

Selected References Continued
Reyhner, Jon, & Hurtado, D.S. (2008). Reading First, literacy, and American Indian/Alaska Native students. Journal of American Indian Education, 47(1), Seaman, P. David, (Ed.). (1993). Born a chief: The nineteenth century Hopi boyhood of Edmund Nequatewa, as told to Alfred F. Whiting. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Standing Bear, Luther. (1928). My people the Sioux. Edited by E. A. Brininstool. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. St. Charles, J., & Costantino, M. (2000). Reading and the Native American Learner: Research Report. Olympia, WA: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Office of Indian Education. Suina, Joseph H. (1988). Epilogue: And then I went to school. In R. Cocking & J. P. Mestre (Eds.), Linguistic and cultural influence on learning mathematics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Qöyawayma, Polingaysi. (Elizabeth Q. White) (as told to Vada F. Carlson). (1964). No turning back: A Hopi Indian woman's struggle to live in two worlds. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

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