The Concord Public Schools are experimenting with a new way to teach reading. NHPR?s Dan Gorenstein has more.
Nationally known educator Ellin Keane?s approach to reading doesn?t focus on the mechanics of reading like identifying and pronouncing letters. Her method emphasizes comprehension remembering and understanding the material. Concord Public Schools Superintendent Chris Rath.
1:46 we all teach reading comprehension, this is simply a way of giving it a structure we haven?t given it before.
Keene is drawing from a body of research that says effective readers employ seven strategies to help them understand the written word. Strategies like asking questions about the text, or relating the text to your own prior knowledge. Keane says her approach is meant to mirror the natural comprehension process that that most people learn over the years. She says students benefit from learning these skills consciously.
4:10 I think what you get they begin to see themselves as intellectually capable for the first time, and that is extraordinarily exciting to see. What comes from that is greater motivation. Greater motivation for learning. Greater engagement. More effort, learning across the curriculum. We are seeing all kinds of fall-out in a really positive way.
Beaver Meadow 5th grade teacher Charles Dodson that?s what is different about Keene?s approach, it teaches children to think about how they think.
1:06 Which is sort of an abstract and advanced concept but we are finding that kids can grab onto that. I know that the teachers taught the children about meta-cognition and schema and the first graders are running around talking about meta-cognition and schema.
As a teacher Renae Stockton wants students to be expressive, ask questions and create a classroom environment where it was safe to make mistakes. She believes the reading comprehension curriculum helps her achieve just that. The difficulty is time.
1:20 The way Ellin Keane says it works best is that if the child is able to choose the book they want to read. The problem that creates for me as a second year teacher is that I haven?t even begun to scratch the surface of all the great books, and I am worried about how I will help a child to understand a book I haven?t read. Another thing that worries me is that being able to conference with each child individually, that is going to take much more time
Concord school officials say they will conduct limited experiments with the approach and are not sure whether they will introduce it on a large scale. For NHPR News, I?m DG
