Sophia's Choice: Summer Reading (Lin, Shin & Krashen, 2007)

Sophia’s Choice: Summer Reading

Shu-Yuan Lin, Fay Shin, and Stephen Krashen

Knowledge Quest, volume 4,  (March/April), 2007

 “I really enjoy reading when there are no strings attached, when there is no book report or assignment …. I also like the freedom of choosing any book I wish to read. … I believe that people would read a lot more if they find books they are fascinated by. No pressure of doing well on an assignment, but the pleasure of reading … I know when I find a book I like. I just can’t put it aside. On the other hand, when I am being forced to read, I lose interest instantly.”  Sophia.

Sophia is the teenage daughter in a family of middle class immigrants from Taiwan. The family arrived in the US when Sophia was in grade six; at the time she had only minimal English, the result of private lessons several days per week for two years.

After entering grade eight, Sophia was tested in English reading on the Idaho Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) each year in the fall and in the spring.  At first glance, things don’t look good: As shown in table one, Sophia’s scores actually drop each year. She dropped 29 percentiles during grade 8, 21 percentiles during grade 9, and another 21 percentiles during grade 10. It seems that Sophia was falling behind her classmates each year, a student who was clearly in trouble.

Table 1: Sophia’s Decline During the School Year

acad yr	drop in % ile
gr 8:02-03	29
gr 9:03-04	21
gr 10: 04-05	21

But Sophia was not in trouble. At the start of grade 8, she scored at the 53rd percentile (see table two), a remarkable achievement for someone who had only been in the US for two years.  The ISAT is required from grades 2 to 10, but if students achieve scores at the “proficient” level at grade 10, they need not take the test again. Sophia reached this level.

Since 10^th grade, Sophia has been a member of the National Honor Society. Last year, she was selected as the outstanding junior year debater, even though it was her first year participating in debate.  At the time of this writing, Sophia is in grade 12. She is enrolled, and is doing “A” work in, a college level English class, and achieved a perfect score on the placement examination required for enrollment.

Table 2: Sophia’s Percentile Rankings

acad yr	%ile
gr 8:02-03	53>24
gr 9:03-04	75>54
gr 10: 04-05	68>47

Explaining the Mystery

Table three explains the mystery. It is a re-arrangement of Sophia’s scores to reflect what happened over the summer; each summer, Sophia made substantial gains in reading, making up for what she had lost during the academic year, and then some:

Table 3: Sophia’s Summer Gains

summer	%ile
8-9: (03)	24>75
9-10: (04)	54>68

What did Sophia do over the summer? Did she attend special classes, getting instruction in reading strategies and meta-cognition? Did she work through massive amounts of vocabulary lists? Did she read under a strict regimen, applying grim determination to working through a list of required books, completing book reports and summaries? The answer: None of the above.  All she did was read for pleasure: No book reports, no “related reading activities” and all her reading was self-selected. 

According to her mother, Sophia read an average of about 50 books per summer. Early favorites were the Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High series, and Sophia then moved on the Christy Miller series and other books by Francine Pascal, the author of the Sweet Valley series.  (Sophia informed us that she was “addicted” to the Christy Miller books; it took her only a week to read the entire series “because I just couldn’t put them down.”)

Her choices thus concur with research showing that series books are enormously popular among young readers (Krashen and Ujiie 2005) and with arguments that “narrow reading” is a very efficient way of building language competence, because texts are interesting and comprehensible (Krashen 2004).

This is a startling result, but it is not new.  Sophia’s experience is precisely what was reported by Barbara Heyns in 1975, who showed that the difference in reading development between children from low and middle incomes is because of what happens over the summer: both groups make similar gains during the year, but children from high income families improve over the summer, while those from low-income families either stay the same or get worse.  Over the years, the difference builds up until it becomes very large (Entwhisle, Alexander, and Olson 1997).

What Happens Over the Summer?

What happens over the summer that makes such a difference? Access to books and reading.  Heyns found that those who live closer to libraries read more, and both Hayns and J. Kim (2005) found that children who read more over the summer make more gains in reading. 

Of course, Sophia had an advantage that not all children have: Access to plenty of books.

The public library was the primary source for Sophia’s reading. The library had summer reading program and Sophia joined it. After finishing reading a book, she went back to check out another book. She got small prizes such as stickers as rewards but the real reward was the pleasure Sophia received from reading her self-selected books. (See Krashen, 2003, 2005 for a discussion of the lack of research on rewards for reading, as well as possible dangers.) Sophia even took the city bus with her younger brother to the public library when her mother was too busy with work to take her to the library.

Sophia is also part of a family that supports education and encourages her to read. Summer reading, encouraged by her mother, had been a regular part of Sophia’s life for years.  Sophia had been a pleasure reader in Mandarin before she and her family moved to the United States, and lived in a print-rich environment in Taiwan. After arriving in the US, however, she had no access to new books in Mandarin, and had to learn to read in English to continue her pleasure reading habit. She profited, thus, from “de facto bilingual education,” a good background in her first language, and her case confirms that the pleasure reading habit transfers across languages (Kim and Cho, 2005).

Sophia’s case is a good example of using resources from public libraries. The summer reading program at the public library not only motivated Sophia to read, but the wide variety of reading books also attracted her to visit again and again.  Not all children are so lucky, but the situation can be improved. More and better public libraries are, of course, part of the solution, especially for children who have no other sources of books.

Summer reading programs, those that emphasize lots of interesting reading and gentle encouragement, have also been shown to be extremely effective. Shin (2001) reported that her sixth graders grew a spectacular 1.3 years on the Nelson-Denny reading comprehension test, from grade level 4.0 to grade 5.4, and equaled comparisons (six months’ gain) in a traditional program in vocabulary growth after only 5 and a half weeks in a program that included two hours of free reading each day and regular trips to the school library.

The Effect of  “School Work” on Reading

Rather than just work on improving book access during the summer, however, in order to allow all children to improve as Sophia did, we must ask what happens during the school year. It appears that much of what happens works against reading development.

Sophia’s mother provides insight into the situation: During the school year, Sophia is so busy with “school work” that she has hardly any free time to read. Sophia’s mother, in fact, joked that it might be a good idea to keep her daughter at home during the school year in order to increase her improvement on standardized tests of reading.

Works Cited

Entwhistle, Doris, Alexander, Karl, and Olsen, Linda. 1997. Children, Schools, and Inequality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Heyns, Barbara. 1975.  Summer Learning and the Effect of School. New York: Academic Press.

Kim, Jimmy. 2003. “Summer reading and the ethnic achievement gap,” Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk 9, no. 2:169-188.

Kim, Hae Young and Cho, Kyung Sook. 2005.  “The influence of first language reading on second language reading and second language acquisition,” International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 1, no. 4: 13-16.

Krashen, Stephen. 1996. Under Attack: The Case Against Bilingual Education. Culver City: Language Education Associates.

Krashen, Stephen. 2003. The (lack of) experimental evidence supporting the use of accelerated reader, “Journal of Children’s Literature 29, no.2: 9, 16-30.

Krashen, Stephen. 2005. “Accelerated reader: Evidence still lacking,”  Knowledge Quest 33 no. 3: 48-49.

Krashen, Stephen, and Ujiie, Joanne. 2005. “Junk food is bad for you, but junk reading is good for you,” International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 1 no.3: 5-12.

Shin, Fay. 2001. “Motivating students with Goosebumps and other popular books,” CSLA

       Journal (California School Library Association) 25 no. 1: 15-19.

Does Intensive Decoding Instruction Contribute to Reading Comprehension? (2009)

Does Intensive Decoding Instruction Contribute to Reading Comprehension?
Stephen Krashen
Knowledge Quest 37 (4): 72-74, 2009

In the recent Reading First Impact Final Report, children participating in Reading First classrooms did better than comparisons on a test of decoding given in grade one. Reading First children did not, however, do better on tests of reading comprehension in grades one, two, and three, despite considerable extra instructional time (Gamse, Jacob, Horst, Boulay, and Unlu, 2008).

Not mentioned in the Final Report is that we have seen this pattern before: Children following an intensive, decoding-based curriculum do better on tests of decoding (pronouncing words out-loud) when compared to regular students but do not better on measures of reading comprehension.

Evidence from The National Reading Panel

The pattern of success at decoding and failure at comprehension as a result of intensive phonics instruction was present in the foundation document for Reading First, the report of the National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000).

The reading panel claimed, on the basis of their review of the research, that intensive systematic phonics was superior to less intensive approaches, but as Garan (2001) has noted, this superiority was present only on tests of decoding, specifically tests on which children pronounce lists of words presented out of context. Children trained with intensive phonics did not do significantly better on tests in which they had to understand what they read: For tests of reading comprehension given after grade 1, the impact of intensive systematic phonics was small and statistically insignificant. [For tests given in grades 2 through 6, the effect size in favor of intensive phonics was substantial: .49 for "decoding regular words" (17 studies) .52 for "decoding irregular words" (13 studies), but it was only .12 for "comprehending texts" (11 studies).]

Evidence from Direct Instruction

The same pattern is present in research on "Direct Instruction" (DI). Direct Instruction's approach to teaching reading is based on training children in phonemic awareness, followed by drills on phonics. DI maintains that students need to know how to sound out words before they can actually read with understanding.

On "decoding" tests (e.g. the WRAT, Wide Range Achievement Test), DI children do quite well, but their scores are clearly much lower on tests of reading comprehension (e.g. the MAT, Metropolitan Achievement Test, which also includes vocabulary).

This is true when DI children are tested in grade three (Becker et. al. 1981) and in grades four, five and six (summarized in Becker and Gersten, 1982, who note that while Direct Instruction children scored at national norms on decoding skills, they only scored between the 25th and 35th percentiles in reading comprehension).

Other follow-up studies show that when DI children are tested in the upper grades on standardized tests that include reading comprehension, the results are extremely modest (grades three, four and five; Meyer, Gersten and Gutkin 1984; grade nine (Meyer, 1984; Gersten, Darch and Gleason, 1988; Gersten, Keating, and Becker, 1988; summarized in Adams and Engelmann, 1996, p. 94). The average score in grade nine for DI students is only at about the 34th percentile.

The Clackmannanshire study

The Clackmannanshire study, done in Scotland, has been cited frequently as a victory for systematic phonics instruction. In first grade (primary 1), two different ways of teaching phonics were compared, and the lessons lasted for 16 weeks. A total of 177 children who received the winning approach, synthetic ("first and fast") phonics, were followed up to grade 7 (Johnson and Watson, 2005). The comparison group, the one that did not get synthetic phonics but had a different method of learning phonics, was not followed up.

In grade 7, the children were found to be unusually good at pronouncing lists of words presented in isolation, 3.6 years ahead of norms. But they weren't nearly as impressive on tests of reading comprehension, scoring only three months above the expected level.

The children's superior ability to read words out of context did not translate into better reading comprehension ability. In fact, the children were farther above norms in reading comprehension in grade 2 than in grade 7.

Is Decoding Proficiency Part of Learning to Read?

The results of these studies suggest that a high level of proficiency in decoding is not a preliminary step in learning to read. One could argue, however, that intensive decoding practice is only the first step, necessary but not sufficient, and it needs to be followed by a great deal of practice in applying the principles learned.

Heavy Skills Instruction not Necessary

If instruction in decoding is necessary as a first step, the results of other studies indicate that heavy, systematic phonics instruction of the kind supplied by Reading First is not necessary. These studies show that children who have been given the opportunity to do a great deal of interesting, comprehensible reading and have less decoding instruction perform as well as or better than children in decoding-emphasis classes on decoding tests, and typically score higher on tests that test what really counts in reading: comprehension (Morrow, O'Conner and Smith, 1990, Eldridge, 1991; Klesius, Griffith, and Zielonka, 1991). There are also many attested cases of children who learned to read on their own with little or no explicit decoding instruction and who appear to be able to decode quite well (e.g. Goodman and Goodman, 1982, McQuillan, 1998).

In summary: Those who receive only intensive instruction in decoding do not do well on tests of reading comprehension, but those who learn to read by reading, by understanding what is on page, do well on tests of both decoding and reading comprehension.

Result, not Cause

This conclusion is consistent with the views of Frank Smith (2004) and Kenneth Goodman (see Flurkey and Xu, 2003) who have maintained that our ability to decode complex words is the result of reading, not the cause.

This position does not exclude the teaching of "basic" phonics (Krashen, 2004; Garan, 2004). A small amount of consciously learned knowledge of the rules of phonics can help in the beginning stages to make texts comprehensible, but there are severe limits on how much phonics can be learned and applied because of the complexity of many of the rules (Smith, 2004).

The Reading First Final Report thus confirms the common-sense view that the path to reading proficiency is not through worksheets but through books and stories.

References
Adams, Gary and Siegfried Engelmann (1996). Research on Direct Instruction: 25 Years Beyond DISTAR. Seattle: Educational Achievement Systems.
Becker, Wesley and Russell Gersten (1982). Follow-up of Follow-Through: The later effects of the direct instruction model on children in fifth and sixth grades. American Educational Research Journal 19, no. 1 (Spring), 75-92.
Eldridge, Lloyd (1991). An experiment with a modified whole language approach in first-grade classrooms. Reading Research and Instruction 30, no. 3, 21-38.
Flurkey, Alan and Jingguo Xu, Eds. (2003). On the Revolution in Reading: The Selected Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Gamse, B., R. Jacob, R., M. Horst, B. Boulay, and F. Unlu (2008). Reading First Impact Study Final Report (NCEE 2009-4038). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
Garan, Elaine. (2001). Beyond the smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading Panel report on phonics. Phi Delta Kappan 82, no. 7 (March), 500-506.
Garan, Elaine. (2004). In Defense of Our Children. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
Gersten, Russell, Thomas Keating and Wesley Becker (1988). Continued impact of the Direct Instruction model: Longitudinal studies of Follow Through students. Education and Treatment of Children 11: 318- 327.
Goodman, Kenneth and Yetta Goodman. (1982). Spelling ability of a self Taught reader. In Language and Literacy: The Selected Writings of Kenneth S. Goodman, vol. 2. ed. F. Gollasch. London: Routledge, pp. 135-142.
Johnson, Rhona and Joyce Watson (2005). The Effects of Synthetic Phonics Teaching on Reading and Spelling Attainment. Scottish Government Publications. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/sptrs-00.asp
Morrow, Lesley, Ellen O'Conner, and Jeffrey Smith (1990). Effects of a story reading program and literacy development of at-risk kindergarten children. Journal of Reading Behavior 22, 250-275.
Klesius, Janell, Priscilla Griffith, and Paula Zielonkia, (1991). A whole language and traditional instruction comparison: Overall effectiveness and development of the alphabetic principle. Reading Research and Instruction 30, 47-61.
Krashen, Stephen. (2004). Basic Phonics. TexTESOL III Newsletter, November 2004, 2-4. Available at http://www.sdkrashen.com.
McQuillan, Jeff. (1998). Is learning to read without formal instruction common? Journal of Reading Education 33, no. 4 (Fall), 15-17.
Meyer, Linda. (1984). Long-term academic effects of the Direct Instruction project Follow Through. The Elementary School Journal 84, no.4, 380-394.
Meyer, Linda., Russell Gersten, and Joan Gutkin (1983). Direct Instruction: A Project Follow Through Success Story in an Inner-City school. The Elementary School Journal 84, no. 2, 241-252.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching children to read: an evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups (NIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Smith, Frank. (2004). Understanding Reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Sixth Edition. 

Race to the top meditation class

Cut off from good nutrition, health care, libraries much more serious than cut off from the web.

Being cut off from good nutrition, health care and quality libraries is much more serious than being cut off from the web.

Sent to the NY Times, June 17.

Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiñas agrees that all public schools should have high-speed internet access ("Our Schools, Cut Off From the Web," June 17). I do too, but there is another task that is of much higher priority: Making sure that all American children are protected from the impact of poverty.  

Twenty-three percent of American children now live in poverty, the second highest among 34 economically advanced countries. In comparison, Finland has less than 5.3% child poverty. Poverty means poor nutrition, hunger, inadequate health care and little access to books; all of these have a profound negative impact on school achievement.

Next-generation broadband and high-speed wireless are of little help when children are hungry or ill. Being "cut off" from good nutrition, health care and quality libraries is much more serious than being cut off from the web.

Stephen Krashen

Professor Emeritus

University of Southern California

Levels of child poverty: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (2012), ‘Measuring Child Poverty: New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich countries’, Innocenti Report Card 10, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence.

Poverty means poor nutrition, hunger, inadequate health care, impact on school achievement. Berliner, D. 2009. Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential.

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/opinion/our-schools-cut-off-from-the-web.html?_r=0

Value-added fever in Ohio

Ohio is enthusiastically pushing value-added measures on a website called "State Impact."  The most recent post is "Grading the Teachers: 'Most Effective' Teachers Say High Scores Happen By Focusing on the Kids" (featured on ASCD Smart (sic) Brief): http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2013/06/16/grading-the-teachers-most-effective-value-added-teachers-say-high-scores-happen-by-focusing-on-the-kids/).  This is only the most recent in a series of posts in praise of value-added.

I posted this comment:

Not mentioned is the fact that a number of studies have shown that rating teachers using test score gains does not give consistent results. Different tests produce different ratings, and the same teacher’s ratings can vary from year to year, sometimes quite a bit

Sources:
Different tests produce different ratings: Papay, J. 2010. Different tests, different answers: The stability of teacher value-added estimates across outcome measures. American Educational Research Journal 47,2.

Vary from year to year: Sass, T. 2008. The stability of value-added measures of teacher quality and implications for teacher compensation policy. Washington DC: CALDER. (National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research.)
Kane, T. and Staiger, D. 2009. Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation. NBER Working Paper No. 14607 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14....