Economics, Reading Intervention, and the Stevenson Program
Recent Article from Spring 2010 – Installment 2: Some Practical Points Some public school systems have suffered much more than others from our national economic problems. However, two things are clear: no school system is in better financial condition than it was two or three years ago; and even the ones who had relatively few […]
PAL Materials Add Special Touch
The Stevenson Program is much more imaginative than your standard phonics instruction, but our lessons still need to center on reading text, spelling words and learning vocabulary. Although some games and activities are suggested in our manuals, PAL (Partners in Associational Learning) provides even more activities with a hands-on emphasis. If you are not familiar […]
The Third Grade Reading Guarantee – A Few Suggestions
Ohio will institute a policy for the 2013-2014 school year that requires third grade students to be reading at a predetermined level on the Ohio Achievement Assessments in order to be promoted. There are exceptions and options, but the idea is fairly straightforward. There is a large body of evidence that children who are not […]
Huge Issues, Strange Logic and Common Sense – an editorial
As usual, educational policy makers are hard at work trying to solve our biggest educational problems with big concepts. In recent years we have all heard phrases like “No Child Left Behind,” “Race to the Top,” “Research-based Reading Instruction,” “Common Core Standards,” and many more. Every one of these phrases is associated with one big […]
Dangerous Rumor About Phonics
At two different workshops last spring, we heard a teacher say that research has shown that if a child does not learn to read using phonics by the end of third grade, they won’t be able to learn by phonics. We do not believe this is true, and it could be a dangerous idea if […]
Common Core State Standards and the Stevenson Program
A national movement has been underway for several years now with a with a perfectly reasonable goal: to develop common core educational standards that will apply nationally, rather than have fifty different sets of standards from each state to which educators and publishers must adjust. These are intended to be minimum standards, not complete specifications […]
Common Core Standards and the Struggling Reader
In the Spring of 2013, we wrote an article about some of the teaching issues that arise when struggling readers encounter the Common Core Standards. Of course, we are not the only ones to have concerns in this area, and this topic is undoubtedly going to be an ongoing subject of discussion. Education Week recently published a multi-part report entitled, “Diverse […]
Learning Problems, Teaching Problems
Struggling readers come in many varieties, but we can safely say that they have one thing in common: they don’t easily learn to read in the same way as other students. However, we want the struggling readers to cover the same material as the other students. We want these students included or mainstreamed as much […]
New Laws – ESSA Takes Over for NCLB
Do you know your ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act)? Or do you not even want to know what the latest from Washington is? Either way, some important educational practices are going to change. ESSA replaces NCLB (No Child Left Behind). The changes will probably happen slowly, but the policy makers have decided that the current […]