Literacy
Literacy is the foundation of success in our professional and personal lives, yet 50 percent of our children are not reaching the minimum reading standard. Language is requisite to relatedness, academic success, and personal wellbeing. And in the 21st century, reading is — for the first time in history — fundamental to our understanding and experience of language.
+ Read More
Approximately 50 percent of the children in public schools in the United States are not reading proficiently. Throughout the past ten years, scores continue to drop, specifically among the lowest achieving students. Achieving only 37 percent proficiency in reading scores, eighth graders across the country experience an even more grim trajectory than that of tested fourth graders. (Source)
Furthermore, the most severely impacted are children of color and children with the fewest economic resources. Parents with financial means enroll their children in private schools or supplemental public education with extra-curricular instruction. Many, many children are left behind.
Private tutoring has become a multi-billion dollar industry, and children performing in the top 10th percentile continue to make gains while the rest of the country falls farther behind. Children who are financially advantaged continue to grow with extra help and resources.
"Under the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, more and more public schools are being required to hire private tutors, at the schools' expense, after failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress for two years. Current estimates show that tutoring has grown into a $5–8 billion professional service industry, or as much as $150/year for every elementary and secondary student in the U.S. Globally, recent research suggests significant growth in private tutoring and links its prevalence to national achievement in international comparisons of student attainment (Baker, cited in Ireson, 2004)." (Source)
The fact is that money talks; and kids whose parents have money too often read better than kids whose parents do not.
Reading proficiency and comprehension will determine every single aspect of a child's academic life and, likely, her future career options. Every month that a child is not reading, she is missing the opportunity to develop vocabulary and language skills that will likely never be recouped; as a matter of fact, vocabulary acquisition is likely to be the only area of learning that will not "catch up" to what it might have been, given missed years of language and reading development (McKearn, Mensah, Eadie, Bavin, Bretherton, Cini, & Reilly, 2015).
It is our passion and life's work to re-invent literacy instruction within the public school system that instructs all children using methodology that addresses process before content and catalyzes learning at a fundamental level:
UEHL is creating one single classroom model for all children in the United States for grades K-3 that is rooted in literacy and language, implements methodology that is research-validated, and prepares children for lifetime learning in a manner that is equivalent to private for-pay educational institutions across the country.
References:
McKearn, C., Mensah, F. K., Eadie, P., Bavin, E. L., Bretherton, L., Cini, E., & Reilly, S. (2015). Levers for language growth: Characteristics and predictors of language trajectories between 4 and 7 years. Plos Once, 10(8). e034251. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134251
Additional Resources:
Gordon, E. E., Morgan, R. R., Ponticell, J. A., & O'Malley, C. (2004). Tutoring solutions for No Child Left Behind: Research, practice, and policy implications. National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin, 88(638), 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1177/019263650408863805
How to Teach Reading
Within the education institutions of the United States, there has been a raging debate about the approach to reading instruction for decades; these arguments are commonly referred to as The Reading Wars. Specifically, three different camps have each expressed their allegiance to one particular component that is responsible for successful reading: the phonics camp, the sight word camp, and the whole language camp (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018; Hood, 2019). The casualties of these wars have been hundreds of thousands of our children over the years. Literacy statistics in the United States continue to be dismal.
Given the very clear data from PetScans and FMRI's, as well as field research and longitudinal studies, we know that all three components together are necessary for a comprehensive, top-tier reading methodology (Castles, Rastle, & Nation, 2018).
References:
Castles, A., Rastle, K., & Nation, K. (2018). Ending the reading wars: Reading acquisition from novice to expert. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(1), 5-51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618772271
Hood, M. (2019, September 10). What the new reading wars get wrong: Advocates for phonics and whole language don’t agree on what “reading” means. Education Week. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/09/11/what-the-new-reading-wars-get-wrong.html
Phonics
The reading wars are alive and well. Still, most educators and researchers have come to a meeting of the minds when it comes to the importance of a strong phonics foundation for successful reading. Decoding words requires the ability to perceive individual sounds within words as well as knowledge of the letter sounds. While training in phonemic awareness is essential to successful reading, it is not the only necessary skill. Moreover, the quality of phonics instruction matters: not all phonics instruction is created equal.
Letter/Pattern Imagery
In order to make phonics instruction meaningful to the process of reading, one must also possess the ability to image letters (hold letters in one's visual memory). Moreover, imaging letter patterns (words) is essential to sight word recognition and spelling. The second component to literacy instruction is therefore related to teaching students to image letters: our reading program includes a specific approach known as “symbol imagery” to address this aspect of instruction.
Language
Finally, integral to reading success is language. Developing vocabulary and context, which aids in decoding, is foundational to making meaning of both written and spoken words. According to vast amounts of scholarly research, imagery plays a key role in understanding and processing language. Research supports the idea that human beings possess a language coding system that connects words and concepts with images.
Reading Comprehension
UEHL promotes Montessori programs and principles as well as the Visualizing and Verbalizing Program to support vocabulary and language acquisition and the development of higher order thinking skills.
We support classrooms that provide rich imagery and sensory experiences, leading children to move from a concrete, foundational understanding of the environment to an abstract, flexible, and deep connection to the natural world and its processes.
