Reply to It’s Not Just Math and Reading: U.S. History Scores for 8th Graders Plunge

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "It’s Not Just Math and Reading: U.S. History Scores for 8th Graders Plunge"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ironically, NCLB resulted in reallocation of instruction time away from social studies and science, towards reading and math… but those latter scores are down too!![/quote]
If schools improve decoding instruction in K-2, they can shift instructional time to more social studies and science in grades 3+.  Many proponents of the "science of reading" think this approach is preferable.

Want better readers? Spend less time teaching kids to find the main idea, ‘Knowledge Gap’ author Natalie Wexler argues https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/9/16/21108839/want-better-readers-spend-less-time-teaching-kids-to-find-the-main-idea-knowledge-gap-author-natalie

"She builds her case with cognitive science that suggests that once students have learned to sound out words — “decode” — the key to understanding a text is having solid background knowledge on the subject....

'We’ve been looking at that gap as a gap in skills. American elementary schools, and to some extent middle schools, have long approached reading comprehension as though it’s a matter of teaching generally applicable skills, like let’s practice finding the main idea and let’s practice making inferences. The theory is, it doesn’t really matter what content the kids are using to practice those skills; if they just get good at those skills they will be able to apply them eventually to any text that’s put in front of them, whether it’s on a standardized test or in high school.

That approach has been intensified in the last 20 years by the advent of high-stakes reading tests, because it looks like they’re measuring those skills. So teachers, policymakers, reformers have all assumed we should just double down on teaching those skills.

The problem is that, as cognitive scientists have known for decades, the most important factor in reading comprehension is not generally applicable skills like finding the main idea — it’s how much knowledge and vocabulary the reader has relating to the topic. So if we really want to boost reading comprehension, we should be doing the opposite of what we’re doing — especially in schools where test scores are low — which is cutting subjects like social studies and science that could actually increase students’ knowledge of the world and instead spending more time on these reading comprehension skills.'"[/quote]

I have no real idea, but I feel like a lot of knowledge is coded into the vocabulary itself.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics