School building closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have hit younger students particularly hard. One of the key functions of schools for early-age students is laying the foundation for the basic reading skills that will be essential for the rest of their lives.
Millions of students across the country are continuing to learn at home as the 2020-21 school year begins. That means 糖心动漫vlog need new tools to keep reading instruction consistent and new philosophies for engaging students at a distance.
Nell Duke, a professor of literacy, language, and culture at the University of Michigan School of Education, has been examining the literature and developing new instructional practices to meet the ever-shifting challenges of the pandemic and its effect on schools. Education Week asked her how teachers should adjust their practices and recalibrate their priorities to ensure students are gaining fundamental reading skills.
What are the biggest difficulties teaching reading with digital tools?
In an asynchronous context, the problem is that there鈥檚 not a direct teacher presence. The teacher presence can only be through artifacts: a worksheet, a set of instructions, a set of books the teacher leads, a video the child can access through community television. The research we have shows what makes a substantial difference in children鈥檚 literacy development almost always is teacher-mediated: The teacher making a certain instructional move, or coaching in a certain way. We just don鈥檛 know how to move the needle substantially for children in early literacy without direct contact and interaction.
A number of PBS kids television programs have been tested in research and have been shown to foster children鈥檚 development. Some computer programs and devices are designed to be able to be used offline, like OneTab from Open Up Resources. They seem to be able to help kids get a little bit better at certain foundational literacy skills tasks. But they don鈥檛 get kids to the point where they鈥檙e meeting grade-level standards in literacy from working on those devices.
The synchronous context, I have a lot more optimism about. There are a lot of research-tested instructional techniques that can be used through videoconferencing. They need to be modified somewhat to make sense for that context, but versions of them are similar enough that they would still work. You can still do phonics instruction by videoconference. You can still listen to children read and use information from that to plan future instruction. You can still work on more phonological awareness. You can still read to them and do an interactive read-aloud. It鈥檚 a little more awkward, it鈥檚 a little clunkier [than in-person instruction].
Will it be possible for teachers to mitigate that awkwardness and clunkiness?
No matter how how hard we try, no matter how much we plan, there鈥檚 no way that teaching online via videoconference is going to be the same as teaching in the classroom. I think that shifting that mindset鈥檚 really helpful because we鈥檙e not constantly disappointing ourselves.
The key is to not take a deficit perspective on remote teaching. It鈥檚 probably not healthy, and it鈥檚 certainly not productive, to constantly focus on what these remote teaching contexts can鈥檛 do.
An analogy that I think might be helpful is keeping in touch with our aunt who lives across the country. We can think about FaceTiming with our aunt: I can see how she鈥檚 feeling, I can see her smile. But there are also some constraints. The line may be choppier. I may see that she has a sink full of dishes and feel bad that I鈥檓 not there to help her. Different media are going to afford us some things and they鈥檙e going to have some limitations. That鈥檚 the mindset we want to bring to teaching remotely.
With phonological awareness instruction, it can be difficult to hear children鈥檚 articulation, which really matters. But what are the affordances? Every child can type a response in the chat box, and then I鈥檓 hearing from every single child, and I鈥檓 seeing their response associated with their name. You can download some videoconference platforms that automatically transcribe the chat, so you can look back and use that as an assessment tool. In just that one case, we see a downside, but we also see some opportunities or affordances.
What will teachers need to unlearn to shift to a digital mindset?
Education tends to have a strong book bias. Depending on the circumstances in a remote context, it may be difficult to get books to kids and get them back from kids. It鈥檚 almost impossible for the teacher to ensure that every kid has a copy of the books that they鈥檙e reading or teaching from. The way to approach that is to broaden our idea about what constitutes a text that would be valuable for young children: online magazines and websites; having students write themselves and read each other鈥檚 texts; even texts that teachers write themselves. I know that sounds like a lot of work, but sometimes it can be faster to write a text ourselves than it is to find exactly the right text for our teaching point. There are of course online books from sites like textproject.org, too.
The absolute No. 1 effective remote teaching strategy would be 鈥渋nteraction.鈥� What a lot of very well-intentioned people have done is to record read-aloud books for kids. But the problem is much of the value educationally in read-alouds lies in the interaction around the book, not in the book itself. Reading a book straight through for kids is not actually getting us what we need educationally. We don鈥檛 have the physical tool of our body to help keep kids engaged, so we even more so need that interaction around the text.
The pandemic has undoubtedly exacerbated inequities for public school students. How can teachers make sure remote learning is working for all students?
Getting information about technological resources and context at home is really important. How often does the internet work? What kind of internet do you have? How many people in the home will be on the internet at the same time? Who might be in the same room with your child when your child is [engaged in] school learning? Getting that information upfront can be really helpful so the teacher can plan accordingly. A follow-up phone call with a child whose internet dropped to hear what that child had to say about the book that they were reading鈥攁 little opportunity for instruction with that child鈥攃ould be a workaround as well.
What should 糖心动漫vlog prioritize given the time constraints of remote learning?
All of these benchmarks in literacy are socially constructed. The way we decide what constitutes 3rd grade reading is some combination of community members and teachers at the state level get together with a bunch of test items and decide what percentage of those test items kids should get right at that age. It would be perfectly legitimate for our society [during COVID-19] to decide that we have a different set of standards, [and] we鈥檙e going to focus on moving every kid forward, but we鈥檙e not going to focus on getting every kid to the socially constructed benchmark that we decided on pre-pandemic. All aspects of literacy development are important. It鈥檚 definitely important for people to continue to read words and spell words. But it鈥檚 also really important for kids to continue to develop in their content knowledge鈥攎ath and science and social studies, which research finds is actually highly related to children鈥檚 long-term reading success.
