Here we go again and again and again!

I hesitate to write a new post because I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I'm afraid it can't be helped. As long as the education system continues to use the same methods to teach reading I will continue to sing the same song. Now I know you're asking yourself what set her off this time? It is unfortunately, the same thing that has been setting me off for the last 16 years.



I have just started with a new student who is 16 years old, and attends grade 11 at a local private school. Now one would think that the education would be better in a private school, if for no other reason than the parents are paying for it, but unfortunately, one would be wrong in that assumption. The results of his "Word Attack Skills Test" clearly indicated that he had absolutely no knowledge of how words are constructed. After the test I showed him the first "Word Pattern" card that I use to teach all my students. The pattern was _ o _ which demonstrates how an "o" would sound when placed between two consonants. When I asked him what the "o" would say in that postion he couldn't tell me and he had no idea how to figure it out.

Is there any wonder why a country like Canada, where we are about a spoiled as people can be, has an iliiteracy rate of 45%? That means that almost half of this country cannot read well enough to function day to day. Please tell me how anyone can justify that! DO NOT TRY TO TELL ME THAT MOST OF THAT FIGURE REPRESENTS ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE students because that is not what my 16 years of experience tells me. That 45% represents every day people who have attended school and worked as hard as they could, and yet they still cannot read or write successfully. Did you know that when a student enters the first year of university he/she has to write an english placement exam because the professors cannot be sure that the student will be able to read or write at the required level? These are young men and women who were born here and educated here.

Do you have any idea what it is like to be a teenager (which is tough enough ) and to be told that your reading level is below grade? Thankfully this is a very bright young man who has already recognized that he is struggling and just wants to find a solution to his problem. When I spoke with his mother she told me that he was excited and anxious to get started. He's got a great attitude which is going to allow him to progress quickly.

This young man is also dealing with idiocy that was foisted upon him when he was young. At the age of 5 it was determined that he had a weak eye and the doctors had him wear a patch over his strong eye so it would force his weak eye to work harder. The problem with the prescription was they patched his dominant eye. To explain further; as you know we are all born either right- handed or left- handed, but what you may not know is we also have a dominant eye which is usually the same side as the hand. This is because the larger side of our brain determines our dominance. In his case because his dominant eye (right) was patched his dominance was switched and his left eye became the dominant one.

There are many complications which can arise when someone's dominance has been switched. Having a dominant side helps us to define which is right and which is left, if the dominance is changed it can be difficult to tell left from right. It can also create problems in reading left to right across the page. When dominance is switched the brain tends to react by deciding that direction is not important so left to right or right to left is all the same. These can be the kids who flip "was" and "saw" "b" and "d" etc. The brain sees the difference in the letters, it just doesn't recognize the importance of the direction. These are also the kids who are told they have a "learning disability" and are treated as if there is something dreadfully wrong with them. The system needs to be able to recognize the difference between intelligence and programming (or in this case mis-programming). Remember reading is all about perception. If the perception is changed the abiltiy to read is changed, but the intelligence doesn't change.

So what more can I say! I'm also anxious to get started teaching my new student. I'm anxious for him to discover how wonderful the english language is and how easy it is to read when he is taught in the manner his brain wants to process information. I'm anxious to help him succeed in his ability to read and write. I'm anxious for him to learn the history of the english language and how the spelling of a word does make sense if you know the origin of the word. I'm anxious for a whole new world to open up for him and I'm grateful that I can be a part of that process of discovery.

Doing Their Best

Just when you thought it was safe to come back to the blogosphere, I'm back! It's been a few weeks since I posted anything. I was occupied with an unrelated issue, which unfortunately, has been resolved unsatisfactorily.

Did you watch the Olympics the last few weeks? I certainly enjoyed watching the athletes do their best for their countries. I don't know about you, but I've been going through a bit of a with-drawl the last couple of days. For two weeks there was something worth watching on T.V. Now we're back to the same old drivel.

Speaking of doing your best, wouldn't it be nice if the education system encouraged our kids to do their best? Even better it would be nice if they would equip the chidren with the tools they need. Now you have to know that I'm leading to another anecdote.

During my hiatus from the blogosphere I started working with a new student. She's 15 years old and in grade 10. The sad thing is she's barely reading above a grade 7 level. She's lovely and intelligent and she was beginning to get extremely frustrated with her inability to succeed when writing a test. In fact that's why she was referred to me. She was told that her struggle was "test anxiety". Text anxiety my great aunt Fanny, how are you supposed to successfully write a test on a grade 10 level when you're reading at a grade 7 level?

Her results quickly revealed that the reading method used to teach her was (yep you guessed it) Whole Language. When reading the words on the test she was fine until she came to a word she had never seen before. When that happened she was completely stymied. She couldn't even try to figure out the word, in fact it never ocurred to her to try. She would just pass on word after word until she came to one she recognized. When I told her the results of her test she was disappointed, but when I explained why and that we could improve her reading she cheered up.

Through the perceptual tests we also discovered that she is dealing with scotopic sensitivity which makes it difficult to read black print on a white page. When I placed a coloured overlay on the page it was much easier for her to see it. She also has cross dominance which may or may not be affecting her ability to read a page left to right.

We've only had two sessions to date, but I can tell that her reading is going to improve quickly. But now I'm back to the same old question. How was she allowed to get in this predicament in the first place? Why does the education system insist that it's psychologically harmful to fail a student, but refuse to see the psychological damage caused by continually passing a student from grade to grade when they haven't acquired the skills needed to pass?

Before I finish my latest diatribe I want to talk about one more pet peeve. This is for anyone who has attempted to teach a child to read. Please stop telling students to look for words inside words. It does not work and in fact makes it more diffecult to read. For example one of my students was trying to decode the word "moped". Now you would think that it would be a pretty easy thing to do, but his first response was to say "mop" because he had been taught to look for words inside words. Instead of using the "word pattern" to decode the word he fell back on the method he had been taught by the education system. It's been my experience that using this method causes more frustration than anything else. It all goes back to the same thing I've been saying over and over,which is you can't read successfully if you don't look at every letter on the page in the order it is written on the page.

Well it's now 1:30 in the morning and I've run out of things to say for now. But you know I'll have much more to say next time.