Replies2

Directions: There are two classmate’s discussion board below. You are REQUIRED to respond to both classmates post with 200 words or more, demonstrate course-related knowledge, and contain a minimum of 1 citation in current APA format to support assertions. Saying “you agree” or “I agree” is unacceptable. Number each post so I will know which one you are addressing.

Classmate 1: The term dyslexia is used a lot these days in the classroom, on television, and in everyday situations. Hurford, D., Hurford, J., Head, K., Keiper, M., Nitcher, S., & Renner, L., (2016) suggests that dyslexia effects 20% of children, and is the most common and widely spread disability in the U.S. As it pertains to reading, the authors contend that dyslexia is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition difficulties, and can lead to greater issues such as low self-esteem, depression, and post- traumatic stress, are more likely to abuse substances, be victims of parental physical abuse, and drop out of school.

The “Science of Reading” is a term used to prevent reading failure, and to give educators an understanding through scientific evidence. Hurford et al (2016) reveal how reading scientists have discovered through reading acquisition and assessment the failure how to help struggling dyslexia students become competent readers. This knowledge includes phonology, phonics, orthography, fluency vocabulary, comprehension, letter sounds, and other areas. Also, an expanded understanding of the principles of scientific evidence will enable educators to take advantage of the converging evidence that research now provides about learning to read (Lyon & Chhabra, 2004). With that, landmark scientific evidence must become a fundamental part of teaching, and teachers should ask hard questions about the reading programs and instructional methods they use such as: Does the program comprehensively cover each of the evidence-based skills that students need to read proficiently? Has the program or approach been proven scientifically to work with students like mine? How can I be sure? (Walsh, Glaser, & Wilcox 2006).

Today’s effort is directed by a branch of the National Institute for Child Health and Development (NICHD), which views the nation’s reading problem as a significant public health crisis. According to the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 38 percent of all fourth graders still read below a basic level, a figure that has improved only slightly in the last 25 years. The NICHD study is dedicated to answering three basic questions: 1.) How do children learn to read? 2.) Why do some children have difficulty learning to read? 3.) How can reading difficulties be prevented and ameliorated? The findings of the National Reading Panel were so conclusive and clear that they became the foundation for federal legislation. From a historical perspective, under the Clinton administration, the NICHD research findings formed the basis of the National Reading Excellence Act of 1998, a small program that promoted research-based methods but contained no follow-up monitoring. Replacing it were the Reading First (RF) and Early Reading First (ERF) initiatives, heralded as the academic cornerstones of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).

In a study of seminal work, Moats (1999) discovered that most education schools required aspiring teachers to take more than one reading course. One of the major challenges of the study was to consider the complete package of reading courses offered at an institution, not passing or failing single courses. For example, a course might cover two of the five components of good reading instruction, while another course covers the remaining three. On the other hand, an elementary education program might use the content of two, three, or four courses to deliver the full spectrum of good reading instruction. Direct instruction by a teacher is portrayed as outmoded—or worse, harmful to students (Walsh et al 2006). Aspiring teachers learn that good teachers create an environment of “collaborative processes,” where children discover the tools of reading themselves. This notion of child-centered discovery is reinforced by a pervasive ambiguity about the teacher’s role. The teacher is commonly described as supporter, helper, encourager, facilitator, and collaborator without clear direction about how to teach children how to read. This fails to appreciate that direct instruction is one of the necessary features of daily instruction. Aspiring teachers are never asked to demonstrate their ability to teach this type of instruction (Lyon & Chhabra 2004).

With this accumulation of evidence, many education groups, states, and school districts have made dramatic changes in their positions and practices regarding reading instruction. Since 1995, the nation’s second largest teacher’s union, the American Federation of Teachers, has consistently urged its 1.3 million members to embrace the science, with a 1999 handbook for teachers entitled Reading IS Rocket Science (Moats 1999). Several states, notably Florida, California and Texas, were quick to approve large-scale professional development programs that focused on the science of reading as well as adopting reading curricula that reflected the scientific findings. In all, it is hopeful from this data that higher education institutions are preparing teachers better using scientific information.

References

Hurford, D. P, Hurford, J. D., Head, K. L., Keiper, M. M., Nitcher, S. P., Renner, L. P., (2016). The dyslexia dilemma: A history of ignorance, complacency and resistance in colleges of education. Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders. 2(3) 26. doi: 10.4172-1786.100034.

Lyon, G., & Chhabra, V. (2004). What Research Says About Reading. Educational Research, 61 (6).

Walsh, K., Glaser, D., & Wilcox, D. (2006). What education schools aren’t teaching about reading. National Quality on Teacher Quality.

Moats, Louisa C. (1999). Reading is rocket science: What expert teachers should know and be able to do. American Federation of Teachers: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/rocketsci.pdf

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel, Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Classmate 2: The Science of Reading is a body of knowledge gathered through scientific research relevant to skilled reading. It includes research from cognitive science and neuroscience concerning the acquisition of reading skills, the assessment of and interventions for poor readers, and the causes of reading difficulties (Hurford, Hurford, Head, Keiper, Nitcher, & Renner, 2016; Sidenberg, 2013). The Science of Reading has shown that reading does not come naturally; it requires a significant level of cognitive effort. The acquisition of language begins in infancy as the mind accumulates and interprets acoustic information that will develop naturally into speech. As the ability to speak advances, a child’s vocabulary increases, and language is acquired (Hurford et al., 2016). Speech is a God-given neurological process used to communicate language. Writing is another method used for communication, but written language does not happen naturally. The written form of communication involves using symbols to communicate meaning. People created letters in an alphabet to represent sounds or phonemes of the English language. A code was created using 26 letters to represent the sounds of the English spoken language. Writing involves a logical pattern of symbols to convey meaning. Learning to read involves learning the code, decoding the written combination of sounds, and synthesizing the sounds into words and complete thoughts. Research conducted to assess the relationship between speaking, writing, and reading has shown that learning to read requires direct, systematic instruction not required for the acquisition of language (Hurford et al., 2016).

Understanding the science behind how the brain decodes written communication and how the acquisition of reading skills takes place can assist with the development of evidence-based practices for teaching reading and creating interventions to help students with reading impairments. English is a difficult language to learn because it is not transparent; it does not have a symbol for each sound. It is necessary to teach children the alphabet and the sounds represented by each letter. Once the sounds have been decoded, the child must be taught to synthesize the sounds in order to read a word. Many children fail to discover the relationship between the sounds they learned as an infant and the written letters resulting in poor reading skills (Hurford et al., 2016). Research supports the teaching of phonics as a valuable practice for improving reading outcomes. Accompanying the teaching of phonics must be explicit training on how to comprehend the material. Teaching comprehension involves a deliberate effort to increase reading fluency as well as increasing a child’s vocabulary. Using scientific methods to teach reading fluency will aid in comprehension; therefore, teachers must be trained in the Science of Reading in order to increase reading outcomes.

The training provided to pre-service teachers must be explicit, specialized, and include the mechanic of the science of reading (Hurford et al., 2016). The difficulty lies in persuading those entrenched in higher education positions about what is true. Examining reading from a scientific perspective is difficult; no one can see neural processes. Therefore, the experiences of the professor, an observable event, my appear more reliable than the research data encompassed by the science of reading (Seidenberg, 2013). Institutions of higher learning can better prepare pre-service teachers by teaching the importance of research and developing research skills in their students. The schools can also provide explicit training on how the brain learns to read and provide opportunities for practical training. Also, curricula can be developed or chosen that encourages the use of evidence-based practices for the teaching of reading.

References

Hurford D. P., Hurford J. D., Head K. L., Keiper, M. M., Nitcher, S. P., Renner, L. P. (2016). The dyslexia dilemma: A history of ignorance, complacency and resistance in colleges of education. Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders, 2(3). doi: 10.4172/2472-1786.100034

Seidenberg M. S. (2013). The science of reading and its educational implications. Language learning and development: the official journal of the Society for Language Development, 9(4), 331-360. doi: 10.1080/15475441.2013.812017