The Innovative Educator Dispels Popular Myths about Learning to Read and Write

"The little learning machines who learn to walk by walking and talk by talking also learn to read by reading and write by writing." Linda Dobson

You know that license plate, “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”? What if the truth was you didn’t need a teacher to learn to read or write? What if in fact you might be able to read and write more effectively without one? There are many young people who are doing just that...learning to read and write without the benefit of schools or teachers.  

Don’t believe it or want to know more? 
Read on.

• How do kids really learn to write, 2.0 - Patricia Zaballos 
• You don't need to teach reading
  Unschooling mom and career advice expert Penelope Trunk shares five reasons why kids can learn to read without school.
• Only Half of Pupils Like to Read
  Standardized testing leads to a dramatic decrease in the joy of reading.
• Parents react with a promise to opt out in this post.
• How to create non readers - Alfie Kohn
  Kohn explains how teachers are killing students motivation to read by relying on coercion and extrinsic inducements..
• Why required reading needs to be removed from our vocabulary - Amy MilsteinA look at how force kills the joy of reading.
• Learning to read without school
  The Innovative Educator (that’s me) shares her experiences about learning to read without school.
• Children Teach Themselves to Read
  Research Psychology Professor and author, Dr. Peter Gray explains how children learn to read naturally without school.
• How I Learned to Read and Write
  Grown unschooler Idzie and author of I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write provides her own story about learning to read and write without school as well as smart insights into ideas such as forced reading often results in a future dislike of reading and how an awful lot of money is wasted in an industry built around teaching people to read even though it doesn't need any "teaching.”
• Mom's Story: When School Left My Child Behind...He Was Finally Able to Learn
  This is the story of a child who school gave up on so his mother took him out. As she was feverishly working to figure out how to find the best way to teach him to read, she discovered all that was necessary, and with her support he could learn to rad naturally.
• How My Children Learned to ReadPam Sorooshian provides wonderful insights about her experience watching three daughters learn to read.
• Growing Without School on Older Readers - The articles below are from the Growing Without School magazine that John Holt founded.  There are articles archived from the magazine that specifically focus on learning to read beginning at age.
• GWS 3: "How to make reading a joy, not a task, for children.
• GWS 44: "Starting to read at 12"; "Understanding When He Needs To"
• GWS 55: "2 Hours of Tutoring"; "Stress of Early School"; "School Hurts Reading"; "Reading at 10"; "Another Older Reader;" "Not Yet Reading at 8."
• GWS 76: "Overcame Difficulty"; "Poor Reader Loves to Read"; "Learning at 10"; Concentrating on Two Things"; "Outside Pressures."
• GWS 77: "Feeling OK About Being An Older Reader"; "Older Readers."
• GWS 91: "Reading at 10 and 11"
• The story of how I learned to read and  write without school
  Grown unschooler Kate Fridkis who writes professionally about being a young woman at Eat the Damn Cake and alternative education at Un-schooled explains how she learned to read, write, and use proper grammar without school or teachers.
• Eye-Opener Changing my perspective on the importance of reading By Pauline Mary Curley
  This article reveals that people who lack interest in reading and writing often see the world in a whole different and meaningful way and that being passionate about the written word may actually close off parts of the world.
• Seth Godin on how schools teach kids to aim low
  In this video Seth Godin explains why the reason many people are not good writers is largely a result of how they were schooled to write.
• http://sandradodd.com/reading
  Sandra Dodd provides a slew of stories about how children learned to read naturally.
• From Joyce Feterol’s, Joyfully Rejoicing site come these gems about learning to read.
• Learning to read
• My 6 yo isn't reading yet
• Reading isn't natural. It needs taught
• Why are there illiterates if reading is natural?
• Phonics is necessary for reading.
• What about reading programs?
• What if there's a reading problem?
• The thought of teens just starting to read gives me chills 

"Schools place emphasis on [early] reading not because it's the best way to learn but because it's the most efficient way to run assembly line learning."  —Joyce Fetteroll

Despite what many of us have been schooled to believe, in many cases learning is a result of the activity of learners; it is not necessarily a result of teaching. When it comes to reading and writing, it will come as naturally as learning to walk and talk provided that it is not forced and the child is given a supportive environment that includes positive experiences with print.  What’s more, for many young people, forcing them to learn to read before they are ready is detrimental to their future ability to read well. In other words, grouping students by date of birth and putting them on the reading assembly line, may very well be the reason some students have trouble reading.  

Want to keep the conversation going? Join others interested in discussing this topic here.

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iPad Literacy Program Increases Reading & Writing Ability

Footsteps2Brilliance (F2B) is an impressive educational game platform that supports students in prek - 3rd grade in learning to read and write. Their Academic Language Program for Students (ALPS) teaches young children the 1,000 key words they will need to develop a powerful reading and writing vocabulary through animated ebooks and games. There is a back end management system tracks mastery of each child's vocabulary and comprehension development as well as standards-based concepts.  The program was developed in response to the landmark Hart-Risley study on language development that shows that an underprivileged child enters school with 25% of the vocabulary they need to succeed academically.  This program helps to rectify this situation by creating a language rich environment for all children.  

There are several features that I particularly like. First, I love that the books are interactive. With F2B books literally come to life.  Each story page has animated characters that students can interact with to act out what is written on the page.  I also like that the child can have the choice of  reading the book or having the book read to him or her.  Additionally, a child can choose to read the book, and just have words they are unsure of read to them. Reading comprehension is assessed in a fun and natural way with interactive games that rewards children as they develop their comprehension skills.  Student's reading ability is tracked in a backend system that provides meaningful information to the child's teacher or parent.  With a tool like this assessing student progress, there should no longer be a need for outdated, standardized bubbletests.  Finally, I love that the program provides children with the ability to write and illustrate their own books.  

Research-based success
Reading comprehension of Calistoga preschoolers increased from 58.5 percent to 76.4 percent, with Footsteps 2 Brilliance. You can read more about what happened at the school here and in this newspaper article. Read the data behind the study here.


See for yourself
The three videos below provide great insight into how this program works. The first video shows a five-year-old girl using the program. The second brings us into it's use in the classroom and the last video is a story featured on NBC with the teacher and the parent of a student who used F2B for learning.

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Research Supporting the Benefits of Technology In Reading and Writing

Despite the fact that we’re well into the 21st century innovative educators often still have to make a case for using the tools of the world inside school. This post was written for those looking to justify their decision to use technology to support readers and writers.  Below you will find a compilation of research that outlines the benefits of technology in supporting readers and writers.


Effects of Computer Versus Paper Administration of a State-Mandated Writing Assessment
This article reports that open-ended Language Arts items that require students to generate responses using paper and pencil severely underestimate the achievement of students accustomed to writing using a computer. The article concludes by recommending that state testing programs that employ open-ended items in Language Arts provide students with the option of composing responses on paper or on computer. -Read the results of the study here.

Using Technology to Improve the Literacy Skills of Students with Disabilities
Summary of best practices in using technology to improve the literacy skills of students receiving special education services.  Topics include common literacy problems, suggestions for including assessment info into IEP development, and tools to enhance literacy skills of students with disabilities.  

Writing, Technology and Teens
This Pew Internet report indicates that teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them. I caution readers of this report to note that results in this report have much to do with that fact that few schools value real-world writing for authentic audiences as “real writing” and often don’t empower students to use tech ubiquitously for writing as writers in the real-world have access to.

iPads Make Better Readers, Writers
In a research paper titled “Unlocking Literacy with iPad,” Ohio English teacher James Harmon found that state-compiled statistics indicate that those students with iPad access in the year leading up to the Ohio Graduation Test had a 6-percent greater chance of passing the test’s reading portion than those without, and an 8-percent greater chance of passing the writing portion.

Writing Next Report
This report identifies 11 elements of current writing instruction found to be effective for helping
4th- to 12th-grade students learn to write well and to use writing as a tool for learning. The report is missing attention to 21st century writing skills such as writing for authentic audiences and creating work that is not only text-based.  There is also little attention to global connection and collaboration which is generally seen my this report as something that age and location, rather than passion-driven, and age agnostic. 
Leaders Share How Tech Has Helped Students Learn
Leaders share how they have witnessed technology has enriched literacy classrooms with students who are more engaged, excited, and better behaved and teachers are more alive and motivated.  
The Role of Technology in Primary Grades Writing Instruction
Students showed an increase in both the quality of writing and the number of words and sentences produced. Student and teacher attitudes were favorable regarding the use of a computer for composition.

Computer Use Helps Students to Develop Better Writing Skills
Study indicating that students who practiced composing on word processors were able to write better compositions afterwards.

How has writing for a world wide audience changed the way you write?
Teacher captures students insights into the importance of writing for the world rather than for a grade in school such as: 

“Now I always write as if I’m talking to a large audience, even in school.”“It makes me keep in mind that anyone and everyone is able to see it so I do not want to say something I may regret or something that may be inappropriate.”“It makes me think that I can accomplish great things.”

Student Test Scores Improved in an English Literature Course through the Use of Supportive Devices
This study investigated whether a technology-rich environment used in an English Literature classroom would make an impact on students’ passing rate on their state-mandated reading test.

iPads Credited with Reading Gains
During the four weeks of instruction, the reading comprehension of the Calistoga preschoolers increased from 58.5 percent to 76.4 percent, said Eugene Narciso, COO of Footsteps 2 Brilliance™, which offered the interactive reading and vocabulary iPad program.
Read more about the program here and in this newspaper article. Read the data behind the study here.

If you have research to add, please share a link and description in the comments section.

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Tool assesses student work more meaningfully with peer review

In traditional writing classrooms students write and teachers grade their work.  Usually the work isn’t written for an authentic audience but rather what I call the audience of one (the teacher) or perhaps some (classmates).  When we push students to do work that is not worth publishing and has no audience in mind, we are teaching them some bad lessons.  

1. What you have to say is not important enough for anyone but the teacher to read.


2. You are not good enough to have your work published.


3. Audience is not important.


4. Writing is not a tool to connect you with others who share your passions and interests.


5. What the teacher believes about your work is all that matters.

And, let’s face it.  If a secondary teacher has 180 students how much time are they really able to devote to student work?  One way to help this process is by using rubrics which is something I did in my practice as a literacy coach and library media specialist.  Students would self assess, then have two peers assess and turn that in with their papers.  This encourages students to take ownership of their work and have conversations with others about it as well.  

Today there is a cool product that helps automate this process. SWoRD is a free web-based, peer review system that was developed to help teachers organize writing assignments in a way that uses peer review as its backbone.  Students learn a lot from giving their peers feedback, and they learn a lot from getting feedback from multiple peers. SWoRD makes peer review so easy that teachers have the opportunity to assign writing without adding teacher work because the time restraints of teacher reviewing and paper grading is greatly minimized. Instead of assessing student work, teachers can be working with students to develop and grow their work.  SWoRD has a number of novel features over the standard peer review approach to make students take the task seriously and to simplify the teacher’s life. Once a teacher signs up for an account and creates a class w/ assignments it is ready for students to sign up for their accounts and join your class. Students then submit their papers and SWoRD automatically assigns them for review to their peers. As part of the assignment set-up the teacher provides the students with reviewing rubrics. They use this combination of comments and ratings to anonymously evaluate and offer useful advice in revising the paper. This valuable exercise gets student actively involved in thinking about (and articulating) what makes their writing “good.” What is also powerful about SWoRD is that work can not only be shared with peers, but the teacher can set it up so work can also be shared with mentors, family and others whose feedback could be valuable.  

Will students take these peer review tasks seriously? SWoRD not only takes into account if they actually completed the reviewing tasks but it also gives students the opportunity to respond to the reviews through back-evaluation. Students as authors respond to the reviews and provide a helpfulness rating that figures into the reviewer’s reviewing grade.

Once reviewing and back-evaluation are completed SWoRD automatically grades the papers and reviews based on a number of features.  First, SWoRD examines and weighs each reviewer's evaluations through its own unique algorithm. This is used for grading each review activity. Also, this measure is used for computing each writer's writing quality. It helps writers from being penalized by unqualified reviewers.

The teacher determines the % value (typically, Task= 20%, Writing= 40% and Reviewing= 40%) of the following grading categories: task grade (what percentage of assigned reviews and back evaluations were done), writing grade and reviewing grade to determine the overall grade.

The Writing Grade is basically an average of what the reviewers rated a paper, with some minor adjustments. First, the system calculates the reviewing accuracy of each of the reviewers. Rather than an equally weighted average across reviewers, the system weights higher accuracy reviewers more. So, if one of the reviewers is either flipping coins or is very confused about how to do the reviewing, that reviewer's ratings make up a smaller portion. Second, the system does curving----what matters is how well the student wrote relative to others in the class. The teacher determines the curve (what the average grade will be). Third, if the teacher also grade a draft, those ratings are included in the paper grade, but the teacher determines how much their ratings count relative to student ratings. Finally, if a draft was submitted a little bit late (during what SWoRD calls a “grace period”), the student will be docked a few points (also determined by the teacher).

The Reviewing Grade is basically an average across drafts of the following two pieces: the accuracy grade and the helpfulness grade (minus any penalties for submitting reviews during the grace period). The accuracy grade is the degree to which the student rated papers on every reviewing dimension in the same quality order as the average rating given by other reviewers to those same papers. If they loved papers that others hated or if they hated papers that others loved, then their accuracy score goes down. This accuracy number is curved, so what matters is how accurate they are relative to the accuracy of other reviewers. The helpfulness grade is the extent to which authors thought their review comments were generally helpful. The first step is to normalize each author's ratings (some authors might be cranky across the board or overly nice across the board). Then the average rating they got across reviews is calculated. Then the system looks at how helpful reviews were relative to others in the class?

In short, SWoRD does a lot of behind the scenes work that allows teachers to focus on teaching and students to focus on writing.  The final writing is also more likely to writing that is ready for publishing to a real audience because it has been thoughtfully vetted by the writer and his peers.  

SWoRD is a free, educational tool that is available to teachers worldwide. To sign up for an account you can visit: http://sword.lrdc.pitt.edu/sword.  For more information you can visit https://sites.google.com/site/swordlrdc. 

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Stop and Listen to the Children

By Jacob Gutnicki

They say I gotta learn

But nobody's here to teach me.
If they can't understand it, how can they reach me?
I guess they can't,
I guess they won't,
I guess they front,
That's why I know my life is out of luck, fool!

Coolio, Gangster's Paradise

Many students often feel that they are misunderstood; viewed as a misfit. To be clear, it does not start out this way. Children entering kindergarten are usually enthusiastic about going to school regardless of their socioeconomic stratosphere. Unfortunately, over time our failure to understand their passions and struggles can result in students becoming despondent and feeling that their life is indeed out of luck. Luckily, both our children and students often drop hints. With this in mind, I will share with you a few anecdotes that depict hints in action.

Anecdote 1- Several weeks ago, I hosted the 3rd day of our High School Macintosh Certification Program. Students from East NY, Brownsville, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach, and the Rockaways were in attendance. Throughout the day various conversations were taking place. Topics included the best web sites for student research, running batch installations, software tools for cloning computers, and other topics. At one point of the day, several students asked me for a copy of the troubleshooting guide dispersed at the last session.

Anecdote 2- I have a nightly ritual during which I ask my son what he did during the school day. On one particular Thursday night this routine was a bit different. My son stated, “Daddy I think you should ask me what I did in school today.” Naturally, I asked him the question. He responded that he watched a video that discussed Earth Day. I then asked him, “Who is the president of the United States?” He told me that it was Abraham Lincoln and told me Abraham Lincoln built the first transcontinental railroad. I asked him, “So who is Obama?” He said, “Barack Obama he is also the president. He is a nice guy.”

Anecdote 3- A few weeks ago, I was watching my younger son play with toys at a playgroup. I noted to my wife, "Isn’t it interesting that he is choosing to play with the toy refrigerator and stack it with play food?"

Anecdote 4- My son has been playing Timez Attack (software that helps children learn multiplication) for the past few months. He also frequently visits the Big Brainz web site to investigate if the company is releasing any new versions of the software program. Naturally, he became very excited when he discovered that the web site was promoting a new screen entitled “Ruins”. However, there was no download available to update the software. With this in mind, I had a brief discussion with him during which I suggested that he write an e-mail to the company asking how to download the new screen. Needless to say, he was very excited and could not wait to compose the e-mail.

What does it all mean? These four anecdotes are very different, yet they are the same. All of the stories describe brief interactions with children. More importantly, each of these stories represents a chance to learn what motivates your child or student. In the second story my son discussed in great detail about Lincoln’s contribution to the railroad system. This turn of events is motivated by my son’s interest in trains. Similarly, my other son’s choice of toys speaks to what motivates him. Likewise, the conversations that took place with the High School students provided a glimpse of what motivates our youthful teenagers.

Finally, my son’s experience with Timez Attack shows how important it is that we listen to our children with an open mind. At first I did not understand what my son was referring to. Subsequently, I asked him to show me “the new feature” he was mentioning. He then logged on to his computer and showed me the “Ruins” screen. It then occurred to me that I should have him write an e-mail asking the company about the new feature. With this in mind, as parents and educators it behooves us to capitalize on their interests and use it as a springboard to motivate them to learn. So… Stop and listen to the children.

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Innovative and Personalized Idea for Student Writing

Walk Score touts itself as a site that ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the largest 40 U.S. cities to help you find a walkable place to live and that alone is pretty cool, but for innovative educators in these large cities, this site provides a fantastic and FREE resource to inspire writers. Educators with students in large cities can have their students type in their address and students will instantly receive a map indicating neighborhood parks, schools, restaurants, stores, libraries, bookstores and more that are in walking distance. Students get a score of their neighborhoods walkability rating which is based on a metric measuring a number of items identified as those that make a neighborhood walkable such as does the neighborhood have a center?

Walkable neighborhoods have things like a discernible center, whether it's a shopping district, a main street, or a public space. Walkable neighborhoods have plenty of public places to gather and play. The Walk Score site analyzes these factors and provides a map breakdown neighborhood hotspots, attractions, features, parks, and more. Innovative educators immediately can see lessons that can be developed based on each student’s particular neighbor. An obvious lesson a literacy teacher might think of is that students can use the walkability map to inspire story ideas about a personal experience they had in various places in the neighborhood. A social studies teacher may have students investigate the history of the neighborhood investigating what exists there today verses in the past and how and why the neighborhood transformed and/or stayed the same. Students can learn about economics by exploring density. A walkable neighborhood is compact enough for local businesses to flourish and for public transportation to run frequently. A math teacher might have all students plot their walkability scores in an excel spreadsheet to chart the most and least walkable neighborhood while coordinating with the social studies and/or literacy teacher to investigate the factors that lead to their results.

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