Third graders enjoy learning about science and history, which enables them to enjoy reading, and understand what they read, a Tennessee teacher tells Natalie Wexler in The Atlantic.
Deloris Fowler has taught elementary school inPutnam County, Tennessee for 28 years. Dissatisfied with students’ reading comprehension, the district piloted Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) in 2016, writes Wexler.
A teacher would spend two to three weeks on each topic, reading aloud about it to the entire class and leading class discussions based on questions provided in a teacher’s guide. Students would also have simpler books to read on their own.
At first, she had serious doubts about the new curriculum. CKLA didn’t explicitly teach comprehension skills, and it covered topics that seemed far too sophisticated for third graders, like the Vikings, ancient Rome, and astronomy.
. . . But Fowler found that her third graders were not only able to understand the material; they also loved it.
In their independent reading time, they asked for books about the topics they’d studied. Students’ writing improved: They had more to say.
Fordham’s Dale Chu is raising a daughter who’s starting kindergarten reading at the fourth-grade level, he writes. He’s built her language comprehension by “chatting with her on all sorts of topics and exposing her to a bounty of experiences outside of school to build her background knowledge, which is the whole ballgame when it comes to being literate.”
Some parents can do that for their children. Others rely on schools. “Low-income children of color often attend schools that fall short in building content knowledge, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, a failure from which they rarely fully recover,” writes Chu.
He cites Emily Hanford’s new radio documentary, What the Words Say, which focuses on children who struggle with reading. “Children of color are far less likely to get the help they need,” Hanford reports. Teachers often believe children will learn to read easily, if their parents read to them and have books at home. It’s easy for some, but not for all.