A Culture of Family Literacy
Leads to School Success
Jon Reyhner, BME 210, Week 1
1
Dr. Stephen Krashen,
who has done so
much good work on
teaching ESL and
bilingual education,
summarizes the
research on reading.
In short, students
who read more, read
better and do better
in school.
http://www.sdkrashen.com
2
3
There’s no such thing as a
kid who hates reading.
There are kids who love
reading, and kids who are
reading the wrong books.
—James Patterson,
Best Selling Author
4
The Importance
of Motivation
Indian agent and teacher Albert H. Kneale
(1950) remembered monotonous lessons at
the turn of the century boarding school
where he worked in Oklahoma: “Few of the
pupils had any desire to learn to read, for
there was nothing to read in their homes…”
5
Trend in Average Reading Scores
The Reading
First Provisions
of the No Child
Left Behind
(NCLB) Act of
2001 tended to
emphasize
phonics and
despite billions of
dollars spent,
reading scores
have not
increased much
for, Native
American,
Hispanic & Black
students.
U.S.A.
Today
8/30/2006
Groups
that read
better
have
higher
incomes
on
average.
7
The Effects of Poverty on Children’s
Ability to Read (4th Grade)
Not Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch
Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch
8
9
Significantly different from 2000.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments.
10
Significantly different from 2000.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments.
11
Significantly different from 2000.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments.
12
Significantly different from 2000.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments.
13
Cecelia Fire Thunder
Addressing the NIEA in 2005
in Denver, Cecelia Fire
Thunder, President of the Oglala Sioux,
spoke about how in her youth, her reading
specialists were the National Geographic
and Readers Digest magazines to which her
parents subscribed. She got to practice her
reading with them after her parents got
through with them.
14
Lori Arviso Alvord, MD
Dr. Alvord, the first Navajo woman
surgeon and now an Associate Dean
at Dartmouth Medical School, is an example
of academic success for Indian students. Dr.
Alvord’s road to becoming a doctor was not
easy. In her 1999 autobiography The Scalpel
and the Silver Bear she writes,
15
Resilience & Persistence
“I made good grades in high school, but I
had received a very marginal education. I
had a few good teachers, but teachers were
difficult to recruit to our schools and they
often didn’t stay long. Funding was
inadequate. I spent many hours in
classrooms where, I now see, very little was
being taught.” She was encouraged by a
friend to apply to Dartmouth.
16
The Importance of Reading
Dr. Alvord’s education in Crownpoint Public
Schools left her “totally unprepared for the physical
and life sciences. After receiving the only D of my
entire life in calculus, I retreated from the sciences
altogether.”
What saved her was her “strong reading
background.” She writes, “I read my way through
the tiny local library and the vans that came to our
community from the Books on Wheels program,”
encouraged by her parents “to read and dream.”
She could even get out of chores by reading.
17
Evans, et al. (2010) found that “Children growing
up in homes with many books get 3 years more
schooling than children from bookless homes,
independent of their parents’ education, occupation,
and class. This is as great an advantage as having
university educated rather than unschooled parents, and
twice the advantage of having a professional rather than
an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in
poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism,
capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China.
Data are from representative national samples in 27
nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multilevel linear and probit models with multiple imputation of
missing data.
18
19
The Importance of Libraries
Students in high achieving schools:
Get to visit school libraries more often
Are more likely to be able to take books home
Are more likely to have silent reading time in
school
Are more likely to be able to make independent
visits to the school library
Middle income youth own more than twice as many
books and visit libraries more than twice as often as low
income youth.
20
Schools in California have less library
books and spend less on books per
student and have fewer librarians than the
national average. Community libraries in
California are under severe financial strain
and some are closing. However, politicians
tend to blame California’s low reading test
scores on how reading is being taught.
21
Documentary Filmmaker Michael Moore
writes, “For kids who are exposed to books at
home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who
come from environments where people don’t
read, the loss of a library is a tragedy that might
keep them from every discovering the joys of
read—or gathering the kind of information that will
decide their lot in life.
“Jonathan Kozol...has observed that school
libraries ‘remain the clearest window to a world
of noncommercial satisfactions and enticements
that most children in poor neighborhoods will ever
22
know.’”
Significantly different from 2000.
SOURCE: National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1992–2000 Reading Assessments.
23
A Navajo elder told NAU Professor Dr.
Yazzie, “You are asking questions
about the reasons that we are moving
out of our language, I know the reason. The
television is robbing our children of
language…Our children should not sit around
the television.” She continues, “The use of the
native tongue is like therapy, specific native
words express love and caring. Knowing the
language presents one with a strong selfidentity, a culture with which to identify, and a
sense of wellness.”
24
Who is Raising the Children?
A Navajo elder told Dr. McCauley,
“television has ruined us. A long time ago, they
used to say, don’t do anything negative or say
anything negative in front of children. It doesn’t
take that long for a child to catch onto things like
this. Therefore a mother and a father shouldn’t
use harsh words in front of the children…. These
days…they see movies with people having sex in
them and they’re watching. In these movies they
shoot each other…. Movies are being watched
every day, but there is nothing good in it.”
25
The National
Reading Panel’s
2000 report found
that there was
“common
agreement that
fluency develops
from reading
practice.” However
it placed its
greatest emphasis
on teaching
phonics.
27
In contrast to the National Reading Panel’s
Report, the 2001 Reading and the Native American
Learner Research Report concluded: “current
research suggests that the relatively low level of
academic success among American Indian elementary and secondary school
students, as a group, is largely the result of
discontinuities between the cultures and language of
these students’ homes and the communities and the
language and culture of mainstream classrooms.
American Indian students also tend to perceive
academic success as offering few extrinsic rewards, and they are likely to view
learning much of what is necessary to succeed academically (such as the
standard language and the standard behavior practices of the school) as
detrimental to their own language, culture, and identity.”
28
Reverend S.D. Hinman after visiting Indian
schools reported in 1869 “it is a wonder to me
how readily they learn to read our language;
little fellows will read correctly page after page
of their school books, and be able to spell every
word, and yet not comprehend the meaning of a
single sentence” and he complained about the
“monotony and necessary sameness of the
school-room duty.”
Hopi Edmund Nequatewa who attended
this school in the late 1890s related that “I
could read all right, but many times I really
won’t understand what I was reading about.”29
Luther Standing Bear in his 1928 book My
People the Sioux complained that his students
did better than the students of white teachers
who got all their knowledge from books “but
outside of that, they knew nothing.” He felt that
“The Indian children should have been taught
how to translate the Sioux tongue into English
properly; but the English teachers only taught
them the English language, like a bunch of
parrots. While they could read all the words
placed before them, they did not know the
proper use of them; their meaning was a
30
puzzle.”
Phonics not a Panacea
An evaluation of reading achievement
around the world found that time spent in
voluntary reading was a strong predictor of
reading achievement along with reading in class,
reading material in the school, having a
classroom library, borrowing more books from
libraries, comprehension instruction, number of
books per student in the school library, and
emphasis on literature. Phonics, which NCLB’s
Reading First emphasizes, was far down on the
31
list (#41).
The Importance of Background Knowledge
and Context
Mary had a little lamb.
Its fleece was white as snow.
Mary had a little lamb.
She spilled mint jelly on her dress.
Mary had a little lamb.
It was such a difficult delivery that the vet needed a drink.
Mary had four dates and ate three of them.
32
“When children were asked the purpose of reading,
poor readers (i.e., many ethnic minority children) were
left with the understanding that reading was decoding
and vocalizing the words correctly for the teacher. In
contrast, middle-class children learned that reading was
garnering information.”
“In my district, fourth graders who can already
read long and short vowel sounds within the context of
their readings are required to spend time with
worksheets categorizing these sounds.”
“In these basals [that her school used], each story
seems to exist in its own vacuum, unconnected to the
common history and humanity of the many groups within
the American and global culture.” (Fayden, 2005). 33
The National Reading Panel and
NCLB’s Reading First ignored what Sylvia
Ashton Warner learned in teaching Māori
students in New Zealand that:
First words must have an intense meaning
[for the child].
First words must be already part of the
dynamic life [of the child].
First books must be made of the stuff of
the child himself, whatever and wherever the
child. (Teacher, 1963)
34
Sylvia Ashton-Warner taught Māori students in
New Zealand and wrote about her experiences in her
1963 book Teacher. She maintained that the words that
her students used to begin learning to read and write
should have deep emotional meaning to her students
and come from their experiences/lives.
Linda Skinner (Choctaw) in her chapter “Teaching
Through Traditions” in Swisher & Tippeconnic's 1999
book Next Steps: Research and Practice to Advance
Indian Education writes that Teacher gave her “valuable
insights from her experiences in recognizing and meeting
the need for cultural relevance with her Maori students in
New Zealand. I believe every educator and parent should
read this book.”
35
Language Experience
LE is an approach to teaching reading that
connects reading to real-life experiences of the
students.
Students do an activity with their teacher and
then talk about it with the teacher who writes
down what they say on a chart or chalk board.
What is written down becomes the material for
the reading lesson.
36
It is long past
time to remember
what Luther Standing
Bear declared in 1933
about young Indians
needing to be “doubly
educated” so that they
learn “to appreciate
both their traditional
life and modern life.”
37
Polingaysi Qoyawayma in the 1930s
was told by her supervisors to use
a canned curriculum to teach only
in English, but she wrote in her 1964
autobiography No Turning Back,
“What do these white-man stories
mean to a Hopi child? What is a ‘choo-choo’ to
these little ones who have never seen a train? No! I
will not begin with the outside world of which they
have no knowledge. I shall begin with the familiar.
The everyday things. The things of home and
family.”
38
“Immediately, she began putting her theory
into practice. Instead of cramming Little Red
Riding Hood into the uncomprehending brains of
her small students, she substituted familiar Hopi
legends, songs, and stories.”
She taught her students a traditional action
song and the English words to it, which they sang
together. The children loved it. She also used
these songs and stories to teach writing.
But Hopi parents objected, we send out
children “to school to learn the white man’s way,
not Hopi. They can learn the Hopi way at home.”
39
The Dick and Jane
Readers were very popular
in the 1950s. They used a
“whole word” or “look-say”
approach that taught
vocabulary as sight words
rather than having the
student sound them out.
They were based on
scientific research about how
many times a word had to be
repeated for the student to
learn the word. All the
characters were white and
middle class.
40
Books used in Indian schools in
the 1960s and before usually reflected
an all-white middle class culture that
had no relation to Indian life. University
of New Mexico Professor Joseph Suina
from Cochiti Pueblo described how
reading the “Dick and Jane” reading textbooks effected
him:
“The Dick and Jane reading series in the primary
grades presented me with pictures of a home with a
pitched roof, straight walls, and sidewalks. I could not
identify with these from my Pueblo world. However, it
was clear I didn’t have these things and what I did have
did not measure up.”
41
“The Dick and Jane reading series in the primary
grades presented me with pictures of a home with a
pitched roof, straight walls, and sidewalks. I could not
identify with these from my Pueblo world. However, it
was clear I didn’t have these things and what I did
have did not measure up. At night, long after
grandmother went to sleep, I would lay awake staring
at our crooked adobe walls casting uneven shadows
from the light of the fireplace.”
42
“The walls were no longer just right for me. My life was
no longer just right. I was ashamed of being who I was
and I wanted to change right then and there.
Somehow it became so important to have straight
walls, clean hair and teeth, and a spotted dog to chase
after. I even became critical and hateful toward my
bony, fleabag of a dog. I loved the familiar and cozy
surroundings of my grandmother’s house but now I
imagined it could be a heck of a lot better if only I had
a white man’s house with a bed, a nice couch, and a
clock. In school books, all the child characters ever did
was run around chasing their dog or a kite. They were
always happy.”
43
“As for me, all I seemed to do at home was go back
and forth with buckets of water and cut up sticks for a
lousy fire. ‘Didn’t the teacher say that drinking coffee
would stunt my growth?’ ‘Why couldn’t I have nice
tall glasses of milk so I could have strong bones and
white teeth like those kids in the books?’ ‘Did my
grandmother really care about my well-being?”
The “Whole Word” Method of teaching reading found
in the “Dick and Jane” readers has been discredited
(except for sight words). Whole Language was
popular for a time in the 1980s and 1990s and now a
phonics emphasis is being promoted by the No Child
44
Left Behind Act of 2001.
Newbery Award
winner and teacher
Ann Nolan Clark
wrote, “What a book
says must be
interesting to the child
who reads it or listens
to it read to him. The
story must be vital to
him. He must be able
to live it as the pages
turn. It must enrich
the world he knows
and lead him into a
wider, larger
unfamiliar world.”
45
Clark’s 1941
Caldecott Medal
book In My
Mother’s House
illustrated by Velino
Herrera was written
for her third grade
Tesuque Pueblo
students.
46
Whole Language
Whole Language Principles:
1.Content comes from student's own
language and experience
2.Listening, speaking, reading and writing
are taught together
3.Active learning strategies are used
4.Read for pleasure
47
Contents of Whole Language Programs
1. Writing language experience stories
2. Using familiar language
3. Reading strategy instruction (Phonics, etc.)
4. Reading to students
5. Silent reading for enjoyment (SSR, DEAR, etc.)
6. Sharing writing and literature
7. Writing every day
8. Oral language practice
9. Speak, read and write for authentic (real)
purposes
Adapted from Sandra Fox's "The Whole Language Approach" in J. Reyhner (Ed.),
Teaching American Indian Students, 1992
48
Why American English
Can Be So Difficult
The bandage was wound around the wound.
The farm was used to produce produce.
The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
Since there is no time like the present, he decided it was time to
present the present.
A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
49
What is a Ghoti?
Author George Bernard Shaw wrote a London
Times article when he was campaigning for
spelling reform. He gave the following example:
If gh is pronounced f as in enough
If o is pronounced i as in women
If ti is pronounced sh as in motion
Then the correct way to spell fish should be ghoti
50
Except for the few students who enter
kindergarten already knowing how to read,
schools need a strong program of beginning
reading instruction that teaches the alphabet,
promotes phonemic awareness, promotes the
application of phonic rules that have broad utility
and that fit the students’ dialect of English, and
teaches high frequency sight words that don’t
follow common phonic rules. Teachers need to
make sure through language experience or other
instruction that the words students are asked to
read/decode are in their oral vocabulary.
51
Filmmaker Michael Moore writes, “My dislike of
school started somewhere around the second month of
first grade. My parents—and God Bless Them Forever
for doing this—had taught me to read and write by the
time I was four. So when I entered St. John's Elementary
school, I had to sit and feign interest while the other kids,
like robots, sang, ‘A-B-C-D-E-F-G... Now I know my
ABCs, tell me what you think of me!’ Every time I heard
that line, I wanted to scream out, ‘Here’s what I think of
you—quit singing that damn song!…’ I was bored
beyond belief.”
—In Stupid White Men and Other Sorry
Excuses for the State of the Nation!, 2001
52
Advice To Parents
1. Family members need to get involved in reading to
their preschool children and by their actions
demonstrate to their children that they embrace
literacy as an important part of life.
2. Students need frequent opportunities, in and out of
school, to read interesting books reflecting their own
experiential/cultural background as well as classic
works of children’s literature. It is critical that the
process of teaching of reading does not take the joy
out of reading by making reading instruction a matter
of completing worksheets and decoding stories that
the students cannot relate to or find boring.
53
Dr. Sandra Fox
Oglala Sioux educator Dr.
Sandra Fox in her Creating
Sacred Places for Students
curriculum asserts that “reading
to children is the single most
important activity that parents
can provide to help their
children succeed in school.” For
teachers, she recommends:
54
 Use reading materials that relate to children’s
lives, to help them understand that literature is
experience written down and that it is
interesting to read.
 Strengthen and expand
children’s language abilities
by providing them many
opportunities to have new
experiences, to learn new
words, and to practice oral
language in English and in
their Native language.
55
The Literacy Engagement Framework (Jim Cummins, 2011)
56
57
What Parents Can Do to Develop Their Child’s Vocabulary
 Talk with your child often
 Tell your children traditional and other stories
 Have your child use their imagination to make up and
tell you stories
 Have conversations about family and other
photographs
 Listen to your child and answer their questions
 Tell stories about your childhood
 Visit historical sites, museums, art galleries, zoos, and
libraries with your child and talk to them about what
they see.
 Use accountable talk. “Why do you think that is true?”
58
What You Can Do to Help Your Child Learn to Read
Focus your child’s attention on the sounds of spoken
languages through nursery rhymes & songs
Play word games
Make use of stop signs, the McDonald’s arches (M), & other
readily visible objects to familiarize your child with
letters and writing
Make an alphabet book with your child
Take your child to the library every week
Read to your child & talk about books that you’ve read
together
Point out things about books like titles, authors, illustrators, &
where you start on a page to read
59
To Read Well
Our Children Need:




Home Libraries
Classroom Libraries
School Libraries
Community/Public
Libraries
Our children need us to read
to them and encourage
them to read.
60
Avoid
Readicide
And
Writicide
61
Selected References
American Indian literacy & reading links. (2014). Retrieved at
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIE/Lit.html
Alvord, Lori Arviso, & Van Pelt, E. C. (1999). The scalpel and the silver bear. New York:
Bantam.
Ashton Warner, Sylvia. (1964). Teacher. Toronto: Bantam.
Clark, Ann Nolan. (1969). Journey to the people. New York: Viking.
Cummins, Jim. (2011). Putting the Evidence Back into Evidence-based Policies for
Underachieving Students. Language Policy Division, Directorate of Education and
Languages, DGIV, Council of Europe, Strasbourg. www.coe.int/lang
Evans, M. D. R., Kelley, J., Sikora, J, & Treiman, D. J. (2010). Family scholarly culture
and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations. Research in Social
Stratification & Mobility, 28(2), 171-197.
Fayden, Terese, (2005). How children learn: Getting beyond the deficit myth. Boulder,
CO: Paradigm.
Fox, Sandra J. (2000). Creating a sacred place to support young American Indian and
other learners (Vol. 1). Polson, MT: National Indian School Board Association.
Kneale, Albert H. 1950. Indian Agent. Caldwell, ID: Caxton.
Krashen, S. (2004). The power of reading (2nd Ed.). Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited.
Reyhner, Jon. (2014). American Indian literacy & reading links. Retrieved at
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIE/Lit.html
Reyhner, Jon. (2001). Teaching reading to American Indian/Alaska students. Charleston,
62
WV: ERIC/CRESS. http://www.ericdigests.org/2002-3/reading.htm
Selected References Continued
Reyhner, Jon, & Hurtado, D.S. (2008). Reading First, literacy, and American
Indian/Alaska Native students. Journal of American Indian Education, 47(1), 82-95.
http://jaie.asu.edu/v47/47_1_%202008%205%20Reyhner%20_%20Hurtado.pdf
Seaman, P. David, (Ed.). (1993). Born a chief: The nineteenth century Hopi boyhood of
Edmund Nequatewa, as told to Alfred F. Whiting. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Standing Bear, Luther. (1928). My people the Sioux. Edited by E. A. Brininstool. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
St. Charles, J., & Costantino, M. (2000). Reading and the Native American Learner:
Research Report. Olympia, WA: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction,
Office of Indian Education.
Suina, Joseph H. (1988). Epilogue: And then I went to school. In R. Cocking & J. P.
Mestre (Eds.), Linguistic and cultural influence on learning mathematics. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Qöyawayma, Polingaysi. (Elizabeth Q. White) (as told to Vada F. Carlson). (1964). No
turning back: A Hopi Indian woman's struggle to live in two worlds. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press.
63
Promoting ELL
(English
Language
Learner)
parental
involvement
64