Reply to New D.C. principal’s termination letter from Dallas

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I honestly do not follow.  If you are illiterate, scientific and historical context isn't going to help you READ that sentence.  Literacy is fundamental.  It is the first step to learning other stuff.  Science and history and music are wasted if you can't read.  [/quote]

Okay, let me try to explain this to you.  I am a literacy teacher. I can teach an illiterate student to read about 90% of words in the English language (sound out words and pronounce them correctly) in less than 1 year.  The first 6 months are spent on learning spelling variations for sounds (phonics), the rest of the year is spent mostly on building fluency--meaning, sounding out words quickly, automatically.

Through this method I can get a kid from Kinder-level reading to 2nd or perhaps even 3rd grade reading level in one year.  But I can't get them any higher than that. Why? They lack the necessary background knowledge and vocabulary to understand 3rd-5th grade level texts.  If they are only given texts about contemporary American kids and their families (like Diary of A Wimpy Kid, etc) they understand.  Give them a 3rd grade passage on another place, time, culture, or an non-fiction text?  Not a clue.  Why does this happen? Daniel Willingham explains it best:

"The mistaken idea that reading is a skill—learn to crack the code, practice comprehension strategies and you can read anything—may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country."  
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-reading-is-not-a-sk.html

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