Once again we find an online blog using and interpreting the Nation’s Report Card incorrectly.  This time we have, Dr. Marion Blank, a world-renowned psychologist and expert on the development of literacy and language in children, saying that the Nation’s Report Card shows “37 percent to 40 percent of fourth graders to be reading “below basic levels.”
 
No, Dr. Blank.  Please reread the Nation’s Report Card again.  The problem is much worse than how you describe it. 
 
What the Nation’s Report Card actually shows is that in 2017 only 37% of fourth grade students, 36% of eighth graders, and 37% of twelfth graders scored proficient or above in reading (National Center Education Statistics, 2017).  To be labeled proficient, the student must be able to read at or above grade level. Read the fine print very carefully.  Be careful in reading these statistics because many, like Dr. Blank, believe that the Nation’s Report Card says only 37% cannot read; that is not what the statistics show.  What it says is that only 37% of fourth graders across the nation were able to read at a fourth-grade level.  That is less than half. 
 
The eighth grade statistics were even worse — only 36% could read at the eighth-grade level and only 37% could read at grade level by the time they reached twelfth grade.  That means that over half of fourth graders, eight graders, and even half of twelfth graders could not read at their respective grade level when tested.  We must learn how to read statistics correctly, especially those who claim to be experts.  Yes, we all make mistakes, but the children and teens who are suffering across the nation right now from reading failure cannot afford any more mistakes.  The children and teens across the United States and around the world, need the people in power to correct their mistakes and start using methods that work.

Also see my post of 1/2/2018.  

For a student to comprehend a story or text while reading, the student must have word knowledge. The student must be able to decode and encode the word’s letter sounds, and the student must know the word’s meaning (Perfetti & Joseph, 2013).  Without word meaning and understanding, there is no comprehension.  The student must also understand the word’s phonological form, not just the definition of what the word means (Safura & Perfetti, 2017).  The student must be able to recognize the word’s written form (how the letters are shaped) and recognize the letter sounds used to pronounce the word. 

Decoding and encoding skills are essential to comprehension.  Many students today are being told that they have comprehension problems, when in fact they have decoding and encoding problems.  If you are teaching from a memorized word list, you are not teaching decoding and encoding.  Students can never become effective readers as long as we rely on whole language or “look say” teaching methods.  We have the ability to teach students to read and it’s past time that we do so (see my blog post posts from 6/5/17 and 2/5/17). 

True reading comprehension means understanding the meanings of words and then being able to integrate and use those word meanings to understand a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire text.  Safura and Perfetti (2017) call this process the “word-to-text integration process.” 

• First, learning to recognize and pronounce the word. 
• Then, learning the meaning of the word, and finally, integrating that meaning into the overall understanding of the sentence being read and its association with other sentences in the text. 
• Then, and only then, do you have comprehension. 

Reading and comprehension strategies taught in the classroom can never be effective unless we also teach identifying letter sounds (encoding and decoding) and word meanings (Landi et al. 2013).  Neurobiological studies in reading show that comprehension is intertwined with single-word reading, comprehension of a written text, as well as listening comprehension (Landi et al., 2013).  Yes, vocabulary and definitions of words are essential to effective reading and successful comprehension (see my blog post from 5/10/18).  Classroom instruction should begin with: 

(1) phonemic awareness, teaching letter sounds.  Students must learn effective decoding and encoding skills.  Memorization does not work. 
(2) The second step is teaching vocabulary and word meanings.  Teachers must take the meanings of single words and then
(3) teach the meaning of that word(s) in a sentence.  Students learn the definitions of the word, and then how to use the word in a sentence (see my blog post of 2/14/18). 

Then finally, children need to know how to put the sentences together and connect the word meanings and sentences into a total text.  This is much more effective than simply reading a story and answering questions.  For example, how often do you stop a student and ask if they know the meaning of a word in a story?  No, students just keep on reading, ignoring the fact that they have no idea what they are reading.  I worked with a group of students once who could read very well, but then, when I ask what they had read, they had no idea.  How often do you ask if the student knows the meaning of a word in a test question? 

A parent brought a school paper to me once, and said, “She failed this.”  I turned to the student and began asking what different words meant on the page, especially from the questions.  The child did not know any of the words.  She could not read or pronounce the words, nor did she know the words' meanings. How can we expect students to comprehend if we have not taught them the meaning, definition and usage, of the words we are giving them?  Don’t just assume that the student knows what you are talking about.  Ask! Find out, what the student understands.  If students do not know the meanings of words, they cannot comprehend. 

Once students have moved from words and sentences to full text passages and stories, then students must be taught (4) to evaluate what they are reading while they are reading.  Students should be taught to ask questions in their head as they read:  What is this story about?  Who is the main character?  It’s like reading a mystery story and asking: Who did it?  A list of questions at the end of a story will not teach this type of internal mental evaluation.  Sometimes students must be encouraged to stop and look up the meaning of a word and then reread a passage instead of just continuing.  Training the brain to monitor what you’re reading as you’re reading is a learned skill, and if we will follow these four simple steps in teaching reading comprehension, we can improve the way students read and comprehend.

Phonemic awareness means being able to identify letter sounds.  Phonological awareness stresses helping children learn to work with letter sounds.  The National Reading Panel (2000) emphasized that phonemic awareness is essential if you want to teach students to read.  Memorization, “look say,” or whole language techniques do not work (see my blog posts from 6/5/17 and 2/5/17). 

Phonological awareness includes learning to break words down into syllables, to identify combined phoneme sounds, to identify words with similar and dissimilar sounds, to blend or split segmented sounds, and to manipulate sounds by changing letters in words and thereby creating new words.  I use word games to teach phonological awareness (see my blog post from 1/27/18 for a more complete description of phonemic and phonological awareness).  All of my reading programs include word games to help children understand and identify vowel sounds in words.  Word games are just another approach for teaching phonemic and phonological awareness to the students.  My word games include vowel-clustered flash cards, letter tiles for spelling, complete the sentence games, and add a letter/take away a letter type games to enhance reading ability.

One of my most successful and popular word games is called Match the Sound.   This game is played with word walls at a bulletin board, or on a table, or even on the floor.  Match the Sound is simply another teaching method used to strengthen phonemic and phonological awareness.  Where some children learn best by practicing words in a puppet play, other children respond best to the game approach.  We absolutely never include competition in our word games, and we do not offer extrinsic prizes or rewards.  We play the game as a team, and we play the game for the fun and enjoyment of playing a game together. We work together; there are no winners or losers. 

At my Reading Orienteering Club after-school program, we turned the bulletin boards into word walls.  The children would take turns reading a word out loud and then matching the word to its vowel sound on the word wall.  This was just another approach for helping children learn how to practice letter sounds, read new words, and spell. Again, the words were always presented in vowel clusters and correct manuscript style writing and formation of letters was emphasized. This helped the children to identify the different vowel sounds and to be able to read what they had written.  The 4-steps (see my blog post from 2/14/18 for a description of the 4-step procedure) help them learn each new word.  The children were not told that they had missed the word; instead, children were told that the word was tricky.  As a team, they then used the 4-steps to capture the word and learn the new word.  Correct manuscript handwriting style was also encouraged (see my blog post from 4/12/18 for the importance of handwriting when teaching reading).