Literacy in the US

Open Ended

What do you still read on a regular basis that is

-printed on paper

-is unrelated to school

A lovely aphorism holds that education isn’t the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

But too often, neither are pails filled nor fires lit.

A lovely aphorism holds that education isn’t the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

But too often, neither are pails filled nor fires lit.

Lighting the fire

Filling the bucket

Types of education

Learning how to find the meaning of any word

Learning how to research facts and dates

Lighting the fire

Learning meaning of a many words as possible

​Memorizing facts and dates

Filling the bucket

Types of education

Doing = Learning = Doing

Multiple Choice

How do we get kids to do more reading?

• let them read classics thats everybody likes

• let them read very easy book

• let them read about subjects that they are interested in

Some statistics

One of the most bearish statistics for the future of the United States is this: Two-thirds of fourth graders in the United States are not proficient in reading.

Reading may be the most important skill we can give children. It’s the pilot light of that fire.

Multiple Choice

How many percent of the 8th grader are not proficient in reading?

• 25%

• 33%

• 50%

• 67%

Yet we fail to ignite that pilot light, so today some one in five adults in the United States struggles with basic literacy, and after more than 25 years of campaigns and fads, American children are still struggling to read. Eighth graders today are actually a hair worse at reading than their counterparts were in 1998.

Multiple Choice

"after more than 25 years of campaigns and fads"

• failures

• something temporarily in fashion

• fraud

• money

Multiple Choice

The number of students at or above the required level has ... since 1992.

• increased slightly

• decreased slightly

• remained the same

• increased dramatically

Multiple Choice

Hispanic kids are ... proficient at reading than black kids.

• less

• more

• equally proficient as

Multiple Choice

White kids are ... proficient at reading when compared to Asian kids.

• less

• more

• equally

Multiple Choice

Asian kids have .... done better than white kids on reading proficiency.

• never

• always

• sometimes

Multiple Choice

White kids have become __ proficient at reading over the last 30 years?

• more

• less

Draw

Circle the states that are doing worst.

Phonics

There is growing evidence from neuroscience and careful experiments that the United States has adopted reading strategies that just don’t work very well and that we haven’t relied enough on a simple starting point — helping kids learn to sound out words with phonics.

​The spelling structures for some alphabetic languages, such as Spanish, Russian and German, are comparatively orthographically transparent, or orthographically shallow, because there is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and the letter patterns that represent them. English spelling is more complex, a deep orthography, partly because it attempts to represent the 40+ phonemes of the spoken language with an alphabet composed of only 26 letters (and no accent marks or diacritics). As a result, two letters are often used together to represent distinct sounds, referred to as digraphs. For example, t and h placed side by side to represent either /θ/ as in math or /ð/ as in father. (Wikipedia, 'Phonics')

• ​English spelling has hardly changed since the 16th century.

• It reflects 15th century pronunciation.

• But pronunciation has changed!

​The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100–1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years. Even in the late 17th century, with the publication of the first French dictionary by the Académie française, there were attempts to reform French orthography.

Multiple Choice

If everybody wrote how they spoke, communication would be...

• easier

• harder

• the same

Multiple Choice

If everybody wrote how they spoke, reading older texts would be...

• easier

• harder

• the same

Latin alphabet

​Latin alphabet

​Greek alphabet