How the Brain Learns to Read

by David A. Sousa

  9. Saying words aloud and spelling. Words from the story become the word bank to be used throughout the week. Students say the words aloud to ultimately master their meaning, pronunciation, and spelling. This activity includes 10 to 12 words from the story that students must be able to read fluently, spell, and use correctly in meaningful sentences.

  10. Checking the partner. When students complete the activities listed above, their partners initial a student assessment form indicating that they have completed and achieved the task. The teacher gives the student teams the daily expectations about the number of activities to be completed. However, the teams can proceed at their own rate and complete the activities earlier if they wish, creating additional time for writing and for independent reading of other books on the same theme. Because the scores of individual students also become the team’s score, the partners have a vested interest in making sure all students correctly finish their work.

  11. Making meaningful sentences. The students carefully select five or more words from the story. They discuss their meanings and use these words to write meaningful sentences that denote the definitions and give a clear picture of the word’s meaning.

  12. Taking tests. After three class periods, the teacher gives the students a comprehension test on the story. It includes asking them to write meaningful sentences for each vocabulary word and to read the word list aloud to the teacher. Students are not permitted to help one another on these tests because the test scores and evaluations of the story-related writing are the major components of students’ weekly team scores. These weekly tests provide teachers a progressive view of the students’ listening, speaking, reading, and writing performance.

  13. Direct instruction in reading comprehension. Throughout the lesson cycle, the teacher provides direct instruction in reading comprehension skills such as identifying main ideas, drawing conclusions, and comparing and contrasting. The students practice these skills in their teams and take quizzes on them individually (without the help of their teammates) to contribute to their team scores.

  14. Writing workshops. These workshops consist of a series of mini-lessons on the writing process. First, the teacher gives step-by-step explanations and ideas for completing a writing assignment. Then the students work closely with their peers and with the teacher through the phases of prewriting, writing, revising, and editing.

  15. Independent reading. The teacher asks students to read a book of their choice for at least 20 minutes each evening. Parents are encouraged to discuss the reading with their children and to initial forms indicating that the children have read for the minimum time. The students earn points for their team if they submit a completed form each week. Additional points can be earned by completing a book report every two weeks.

  The students who were part of the BCIRC program in the second and third grades performed significantly better on tests of Spanish and English reading than comparison students. Second graders taught primarily in Spanish scored significantly higher on a Spanish writing scale and somewhat higher on the reading scale than comparison students. Third-grade students who had been in the program for two years were more likely than the comparison group to meet the criteria necessary for exiting the bilingual program in language and reading. Although there have been no subsequent controlled studies on BCIRC, numerous schools with high proportions of ELLs continue to use the program. Their anecdotal evaluations show it remains an effective method.

  Monitoring Reading Progress

  Just as with native English-speaking students, the ELLs’ progress in reading will vary from student to student because of a number of factors. These include age, level of reading proficiency in their native language, size of their English mental lexicon, and developmental problems that may affect their ability to read. Consequently, these students’ progress in reading should be monitored periodically. Studies reveal that measures of phonological processing, knowledge of letters, and word and text reading were valid for determining which ELLs may need additional support in reading (Geva & Yaghoub-Zadeh 2006). Further, those ELL students who received early intervention in the primary grades learned to read at rates comparable to native English speakers (Lesaux & Siegel, 2003). Assessing the ELL students’ progress can be challenging, but most studies show this is necessary to ensure the student is on the right path for English language and reading acquisition (Durán, 2008; Sousa, 2011b).

  My purpose in this chapter was to present the latest research on the effectiveness of strategies that educators use for teaching reading. In the past few decades, methods for teaching reading have become highly politicized. Given the wide variation in the cognitive abilities of children and their environments as well as the complexities involved in learning to read, it is clear that no one approach will be successful for all children. Some preschool children will have had such rich exposure to spoken language and print that they are already mastering the alphabetic principle and are prepared for enriched reading experiences as early as kindergarten. Others can be so language deprived that instruction will need to focus mainly on developing phonemic awareness. And, of course, there are all the possible variations in between.

  Faced with this heterogeneous mix, teachers of reading still need sound guidance, not rhetoric, regarding research-based methods for teaching beginning reading. It seems clear that the latest review of scientific research on reading leads us to the following three conclusions. For most children,

  • mastering the alphabetic principle is essential to learning how to read successfully;

  • instructional techniques that explicitly teach this principle are more effective than those that do not; and

  • the reading teacher remains the most critical component of any reading program.

  These conclusions are even more important when applied to children who are at risk for having difficulty learning to read. This is not to deny that literature-based activities that supplement phonics instruction can help to ensure the application of the alphabetic principle to enriched readings. Such activities can make reading meaningful and enjoyable.

  When children receive instruction in phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle and learn to apply that knowledge to decoding words, they are likely to succeed at learning to read. But once they fall behind, they almost never catch up. A longitudinal study of more than 17,000 students in the Chicago Public Schools showed that only 45 percent of third-grade students who were reading below grade level graduated high school in 5 years (Lesnick, Goerge, Smithgall, & Gwynne, 2010). However, 60 percent of third-grade students who read at grade-level and 80 percent who read above grade level graduated high school. Consequently, the sooner that parents and teachers can recognize children with reading problems, the better.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION/REFLECTION

  • How do I teach vocabulary and linguistic knowledge?

  • What strategies help students read with comprehension?

  • How can I develop critical reading skills in older students?

  • What considerations are important when teaching reading to English language learners (ELLs)?

  What’s Coming?

  We now know that many reading difficulties can be overcome with early diagnosis and systematic intervention. Just how to go about determining whether a child has a reading problem is the topic of the next chapter.

  5

  Recognizing Reading Problems

  To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

  —Victor Hugo (1802–1885), Les Misérables

  THE READING GAP

  Recent NAEP Assessments

  About one student in three has reading problems. The 2011 and 2012 reports from the National Assessment of Educational Progress on reading described the reading achievement of students in the fourth and eighth grades. They included comparisons between NAEP reading performance of students in 2012 and the performance of their counterparts in previous assessments. Reading performance is reported in tw
o ways: (1) average scale scores and (2) achievement levels. The average scale score reflects the overall reading performance of a particular group, using a scale of 0 to 500 to provide information about student performance for all three grades. Achievement levels describe what students should know and be able to do at each of three levels, Basic, Proficient, and Advanced.

  National Scale Scores

  Figure 5.1 shows the average reading scale scores for the two grades tested during 2012.

  Despite the efforts of the No Child Left Behind Act and other initiatives, you can see that little progress has been made in improving the average reading scale scores over the past decade. The fourth-grade average score increased slightly from 2003 to 2007, but has not changed since. The eighth-grade scores showed a slight increase over this time period but dropped in 2012.

  Achievement Levels for Fourth Grade

  NAEP (2011) gives the following specific definitions of the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced achievement levels in reading for Grade 4:

  • Basic: Fourth-grade students at the Basic level should demonstrate an understanding of the overall meaning of what they read. When reading text appropriate for fourth graders, they should be able to make obvious connections between the text and their own experiences and extend the ideas in the text by making simple inferences.

  • Proficient: Fourth-grade students at the Proficient level should be able to demonstrate an overall understanding of the text, providing inferential as well as literal information. When reading text appropriate to fourth grade, they should be able to extend the ideas in the text by making inferences, drawing conclusions, and making connections to their own experiences. The connection between the text and what the student infers should be clear.

  Figure 5.1 This chart shows the average NAEP reading scale scores for Grades 4 and 8 from 2003 to 2011 (NAEP, 2011, 2012).

  • Advanced: Fourth-grade students at the Advanced level should be able to generalize about topics in the reading selection and demonstrate an awareness of how authors compose and use literary devices. When reading text appropriate to fourth grade, they should be able to judge text critically and, in general, to give thorough answers that indicate careful thought.

  The fourth-grade results by reading achievement level are displayed in Table 5.1. They show that one-third of these students continue to perform below Basic achievement levels. Unfortunately, the percentages in the At Proficient and Advanced achievement levels have not changed. The report also noted that although females scored slightly higher than males, the difference was not significant (NAEP, 2011).

  Clearly, little progress is being made toward significantly increasing the number of elementary students who become Proficient readers, despite the large amounts of resources and time devoted to teaching reading. If school districts are to meet the expectations and deadlines regarding reading that are set forth in federal and state regulations as well as in the Common Core State Standards, educators must reexamine how and when they are identifying students with reading problems, and what steps they are taking to help these at-risk students.

  Table 5.1 Percentage of Fourth-Grade Students by Reading Achievement Level

  SOURCE: NAEP (2011).

  Achievement for Black and Hispanic Students

  Of continuing concern is the consistently low achievement levels for Black (Figure 5.2) and Hispanic (Figure 5.3) students over the last decade when compared to White students. There were no significant changes in fourth-grade average scores for Black and Hispanic students from 2009 to 2011, although the 2011 scores were slightly higher for eighth-grade students than in 2009. In 2011, Hispanic students scored slightly higher on average than Black students. This persistent poor performance of minority students in reading cannot be explained solely by specific cognizant impairments, such as dyslexia. After all, the White student population also includes children with reading problems, yet their average scores remain higher. Furthermore, there is little scientific evidence that Black and Hispanic children are at a substantially greater risk for developmental dyslexia than these testing results would suggest. The size of the reading gap and the number of students involved suggests that this problem has roots in at least three separate but related areas: inadequate reading instruction, social and cultural conditions, and physical causes.

  Figure 5.2 Since 2003, Black students in Grades 4 and 8 consistently scored below White students. Grade 8 Black students have made some gains in recent years, but the scores of Grade 4 Black students have changed little (NAEP, 2011).

  Figure 5.3 Since 2003, Hispanic students in Grades 4 and 8 consistently scored below White students. The scores of Grade 8 Hispanic students have shown some improvement in recent years, but those of Grade 4 Hispanic students have changed little (NAEP, 2011).

  INADEQUATE READING INSTRUCTION

  Some children have reading problems because they did not get adequate instruction in the skills needed for decoding, such as concepts about the nature of print, recognizing letters, and the alphabetic principle. They may not have had ample opportunities for systematic and focused practice in decoding real words. As a result, they failed to develop a rich mental lexicon, which is essential for promoting fluency and comprehension. To successfully understand a language, children need to develop a rich vocabulary and an appreciation for semantics, and combine that understanding with what they know about the real world. They also need to have a good understanding of the mechanics of language (syntax), and they need to be attuned to the phonology of the language so that they do not confuse similar-sounding words, such as chair and cheer.

  None of these areas can be described as social, cultural, or physical problems that lead to reading difficulties. These deficits are intrinsic not to the child, but to the classroom and to the school system that has not provided the appropriate instructional environment. Schools situated in high-poverty areas are often competing for limited materials and resources. Conscientious but inadequately trained teachers may be using outdated programs and methodologies. This unfortunate combination can be the cause of some children’s reading difficulties. Children in this situation do not have dyslexia. Their problem is that they were simply never taught the skills needed to learn how to read. To be successful in teaching all children, teachers should become extremely knowledgeable about effective strategies as well as diagnostic in their approach to reading instruction.

  Just as we do not expect beginning readers to acquire the alphabetic principle on their own, we cannot expect prospective teachers to independently acquire the knowledge and skills they will need to recognize and implement research-based strategies. They need to be exposed to the latest research on how the brain learns and, specifically, how it learns to read. This information should be presented in their college courses as well as during continuing in-service professional development programs to keep their knowledge base up to date. We will discuss teacher preparation further in Chapter 8.

  SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAUSES OF READING PROBLEMS

  A large number of Black and Hispanic children performing below White children in reading display no signs of specific learning impairments. Clearly, other factors are at work. Multiple studies have identified social conditions that have an impact on the achievement of children in inner-city schools. Limited teacher training, large class sizes, the absence of literature in the home, and poor parental support for schools have all been cited as causes for lack of student progress. Although these conditions cannot be ignored, schools need to focus more on the direct connections between what we are learning about how the brain learns to read and the linguistic barriers interfering with that learning.

  Some researchers believe that these children are performing poorly on reading tests because their home language differs substantially from the language used in reading instruction (Labov, 2003). Others noted that Black children were being immersed in a language dialect that has become known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Residential desegregation has increased the impact of
AAVE, as has the rapidly escalating popularity of hip-hop and rap music. Meanwhile, as Spanish-speaking populations increase, children are faced with learning to read English in school while speaking Spanish at home and in their communities.

  Consequently, some of the causes of poor performance by Black and Hispanic children can be attributed to impediments resulting from linguistic differences. That is, their native dialect or language is different in significant ways from what is being taught in school. They come to school with a mental lexicon whose word representations often do not match what they are trying to decode on the printed page. Learning to read involves determining which words are present in their mental lexicon, what they represent, and whether they can be comprehended in context. This is not a physiological deficit; it is a social and cultural problem. For these children, we should be looking not at what is wrong with them but at how we can alter instruction to make them more successful in learning to read. Such alterations can be made when teachers of reading are properly trained to recognize when a child’s reading problems are the result of linguistic clashes and not a pathology. Furthermore, that training should also help teachers understand how they can use some of the linguistic attributes of AAVE and Spanish to help children pronounce, decode, and understand standard English.

  PHYSICAL CAUSES OF READING PROBLEMS

  As noted earlier, nature long ago crafted sophisticated neural networks in the brain to process spoken language. But decoding written text is a wholly artificial creation that calls upon neural regions designed for other tasks. Because there is no single neural region for reading, numerous brain areas must be recruited to perform the task of decoding artificial symbols into sound. Reading is so complex that any small problem along the way can slow or interrupt the process. It is small wonder that children have more problems with reading than with any other skill we ask them to learn. Difficulties result essentially from either environmental or physical factors, or some combination of both. Environmental factors include limited exposure to language in the preschool years, resulting in little phoneme sensitivity, letter knowledge, print awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Physical factors include speech, hearing, and visual impairments and substandard intellectual capabilities. Any combination of environmental and physical factors makes the diagnosis and treatment more difficult.