Open Court
Hearing from Teachers—Emergent Reading

Tamika's teacher stated that the child was having trouble learning just three letter words and had lots of trouble sounding out words. (I think they only read words in that class.) So today I pulled a chair up alongside her and listened to her read "What's the Time Grandma Wolf!" This child had no idea about making meaning, stopping for long periods at words she couldn't sound out, sounding out stuff in unrecognizable speech and going right on. So I had to stop her after one page, and let her in on the secrets of joining the literacy club. I read her the story, and she loved it. I read it with her as she pointed out the words. I read it with her again, letting her chime in on certain parts by herself. And then I turned her loose on the book, helping her to think about what made sense, about skipping and returning, about using the pictures and most of all about how most authors don't use made-up words, and that if she did sound out a word and it didin't sound right, she probably needed to figure it out again using the pictures, prediction and her brain to tell her if she was on the right track.

So she read the book several times more, getting better with using meaning as she went. (I found the time to work with her because the other kindergarten teacher took both classes for recess, songs, and restroom.) Anyway, this child can read! She learns easily and joyfully. She learned that book today and can learn another tomorrow. And I was so incensed by the spec ed teacher's remark when I said I hated this scripted summerschool curriculum. She said she hated it too because it was too "whole language," meaning the magazines, the only good thing about it. I told her I was a whole language teacher, and that Tamika was only trying to say some words (or nonwords) instead of attending to meaning. That child has been in school for four years, three of which were phonicated by Open Court, and she has never learned the joy of getting meaning from texts.

I think tomorrow, in casual conversation, I'll mention to the spec ed teacher that if four years of phonics hasn't worked for this child, perhaps a whole language approach will. Then I will let Tamika read that book to her—but perhaps I'll wait a few days, for when the spec ed teacher strolled through our reading area, Tamika immediately reverted back to word calling, miscueing every other word, and forgetting about meaning.

NCLB has certainly been good for Tamika. Entering her fifth year of schooling, she'll finally get to call herself a second grader. The writing is on the wall for what she will be called at age 20. Probably a plaintiff.

I have often wondered how some of our Open Court schools get such good test scores, but then so far, only 3rd grade has been tested for AYP and most of our elementarys are K-5. The numbers might look different if retention rates and test scores for fourth and fifth graders are added.

Response:  Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad. Their scores are good because they keep kids like Tamika in the non-tested grades. I'm proud of you for standing up for her and for what you believe. Tell that special ed teacher she might try writing with kids, getting them to tell their stories, if she wants them to go anywhere. There's only so much time you can spend on phonication—even the NRP says so.

Response:  What are they doing for this girl? She clearly needs intervention. OC is a good program for most students...but it is not the end-all...magic bullet.

Response:  This child is not in my summerschool class nor in my home school. What I did was make some time to sit with her, see what she was doing with texts, and then I gave her a few strategies to use that will help her to be a better reader—how to know if the reading does not make sense, how to skip and return when sounding out doesn't work, and how to substitute a word that makes sense in order to keep on reading for meaning. Plus I supported her meaning making by reading the story to her first, then with her, then let her read on her own. She still made lots of miscues but this time was able to self-correct many of them. Before that, she either shut down, or said something nonsensical and kept going.

We only have one week left. I don't know that there is much that I can do given time constraints and distance. I may talk with the mom and give suggestions.

What I find disturbing is that many of the Open Court teachers in our district seem to think that if a child can't read the words then the only way to fix the problem is to practice lots of decoding with isolated words or nonsense words. I see very little reading aloud to kids. I see very few or no books brought to the summerschool classrooms as it seems that most of the teachers feel the magazines and six books that come with the summer program are enough.

Response:  To summarize, some of the things I would do are: 1) check the stuent's phonemic awareness, 2) make sure the student has automaticity in sound/spelling correspondence and decoding (single and multisyllable words) 3) check for understanding/reading comprehension, expecially in the area of word meaning, 3) teach skills and strategies as necessay, and 4) provide instruction and practice in areas of weakness.

Please understand that the above discription is not all inclusive. It is just a general list of some of the things I would do. It isn't representative of everything I would think about or do to help a student with the issues you described.

Response:  Well if I had this student to work with each day, I would start her reading books like the one I gave her, "What's the Time Grandma Wolf!".  There was no vocabulary in there that this child did not understand other than the word "crept."  I would read it with her telling her the words when necessary, and helping her to see the sound/spelling correspondences as we read.  I would support her with the reading in anyway I could until she could read the book effortlessly.  I would make the learning act as easy as possible so she would be most likely to succeed and find the reading joyful.  Then I'd get her another delightful book to read that had just a few more challenges than the one she could already read.  Using a gradual release of responsibility model, I would continue to "help" her as needed, but gradually putting more and more responsibility on her to figure out, decode, or problematize the text. 

The more this child reads and is helped to figure out unknown words the better she will become.  The more she reads the more she will be able to understand phonic relationships, as I would be sitting there next to her, noting the kinds of miscues she was making, and teaching her what to pay attention to so she wouldn't make the same kind of miscue later. 

I would have her writing everyday, using the sounds she already knows to write whatever she can think, and I would help her phonemic awareness during the writing process, helping her to segment the sounds and relate sound to symbol as she wrote a meaniful text that was important to her.  This is when she'd get practice in hearing (phonemic awareness), and writing (phonics), one and multisyllable words.

Presently, this child seems to think that reading is something very hard to do, doesn't always make sense, and is something she can't do.  She needs to learn that reading is a meaning making process and that when meaning breaks down, this a a red light clue that something is not right, and she must apply some of the many strategies for figuring out the words, of which decoding is only one.

Response:  I teach in Detroit where we have been using Open Court for 2 years. I teach 5th grade so I have been asked to wait until those kids who began first grade with OC have reached 5th grade before I make up my mind about the program. 

As for test scores—we test in 4th and 5th grade. Our scores went down this past year.  We had been what in Michigan termed a "Golden Apple" school for raising test scores and received a $50,000 award to go with the honor. But that was two years before Open Court came to our school.

Response:  As you know, I like Open Court, but I have to say that asking you to "wait until those kids who began first grade with OC have reached 5th grade" is a terrible statement. It's like saying "we've given up on the children in your classroom and any other child that hasn't had OC."  Good grief.

Response:  I agree. The message though was that our district had not gone about implementing Open Court the way it should have. We implemented it in all grades K-6 at the same time. Supposedly we should have implemented it one year at a time starting with K or 1st. It has been extremely difficult and a real turn off to reading for the fourth and fifth grades I am familiar with. And, as you know, I really hate Open Court.
 
Response:  Have you ever asked to visit these schools?

Response:  They are all over my city. I have visited first grade classrooms. I teach summer school with many of these teachers and children, as our summer schools have to be in the air-conditioned buildings and students come from various elementaries.

There is a child in the class next to mine that has had Open Court for 3 of her last four school years. She is reading on a mid first grade level. All she knows is sounding out. She doesn't use context or meaning to help herself. When she sounds out words incorrectly she screeches to a stand still or says something unintelligible and continues to read. She might get to start 2nd grade in her fifth year of school. I expect that as a 10/11 year old third grader, she might pass the test or will be labeled as learning disabled. Open Court hasn't helped her so far.

July 2004