1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,040 This is the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy John today. 2 00:00:06,040 --> 00:00:11,840 I am not so genial as I always am. This is a recording. I've tried a couple of recordings. 3 00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:19,040 I've got a little impassioned. Some people would say I was ranting. Here's the thing. 4 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:25,240 If you're impassioned about children reading, what about the children? Some people call 5 00:00:25,240 --> 00:00:29,680 you impassioned if they're for what you're saying. If they're against what you're saying, 6 00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:37,080 some people would call you ranting. So am I ranting? Where is this impassioned? I don't know, 7 00:00:37,080 --> 00:00:43,240 but I'm a little peoed about this part in the Salty Language. And why that is, it's because 8 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:51,720 the Minnesota State Legislature passed a law called the Read Act, which is forcing me to lie 9 00:00:51,720 --> 00:01:00,240 to my students. It says right there in the law, you must lie to your students. You think I'm just 10 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:07,320 using hyperbole, don't you? And my students, by the way, I work in a teacher preparation program 11 00:01:07,320 --> 00:01:13,560 here at Minnesota State University. I teach literacy methods, and I am now required to 12 00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:20,880 lie to my students. And I'm going to just explain some of the lies today. One of the standards, 13 00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:30,400 which I must now teach with fidelity, says this, students must know phonological and phonemic 14 00:01:30,400 --> 00:01:36,960 awareness, including, and I'm going to go through A, B, and C. The first one, they must know the 15 00:01:36,960 --> 00:01:44,040 phonemes that make up the English language. That's what I must teach them. And my students must 16 00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:52,240 know these. The phonemes that make up the English language. Now, a phoneme is the smallest unit 17 00:01:52,240 --> 00:02:00,040 of sound. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, units of sound. In all world languages, 18 00:02:00,040 --> 00:02:11,200 there's about 220. And my students must know the 44 phonemes. And I ask unto you, why is this 19 00:02:11,200 --> 00:02:20,440 important that students know all of these? How many of you know all 44 phonemes? How many practicing 20 00:02:20,440 --> 00:02:27,640 teachers know the 44 phonemes that make up the English language? Yet I must teach my students 21 00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:35,240 this, they must know that. And I'm lying to them if I tell them that this is important. And it's 22 00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:43,920 not. The second lie is part B. My students must know, and I must teach them the ways in which 23 00:02:43,920 --> 00:02:51,960 reading achievement is related to phonological and phonemic awareness, comma, including the ability 24 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:59,200 to recognize word boundaries, to rhyme, and to blend segment, substitute, and delete sounds in words. 25 00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:07,320 Okay. All well and good. These are things related to phonemic awareness. And the way reading 26 00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:14,560 achievement is related to phonological and phonemic awareness related to reading achievement, 27 00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:24,320 related to reading achievement. First, how do you define reading achievement? Is it reading 28 00:03:24,320 --> 00:03:31,840 test taking? The ability to read a paragraph and fill the correct bubble? Or is it related to 29 00:03:31,840 --> 00:03:39,280 creating meaning, reading achievement? Or is it related to create meaning with print and use 30 00:03:39,280 --> 00:03:47,720 this use reading in a real life setting to create products and solve problems? Is the ability to 31 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:56,720 use reading in the real world or to use reading in the school world? I pause it and I tell my 32 00:03:56,720 --> 00:04:03,520 students we're not getting students ready to exist in a school environment. Rather, we are 33 00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:10,200 preparing them to exist in a global environment where they must interact with a variety of people 34 00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:18,840 and use literacy for real purposes to solve real world problems. That's what reading achievement 35 00:04:18,840 --> 00:04:28,440 is. Not to score well on your little snapshot on your one size snapshot, demonstrating their 36 00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:36,480 ability to perform literacy tricks on an achievement test. Rather, reading achievement is the ability 37 00:04:36,480 --> 00:04:43,840 to create meaning with print and not to extract your meaning but to create meaning with, to 38 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:51,760 analyze, to evaluate, sometimes to criticize, to synthesize what they read. That's reading 39 00:04:51,760 --> 00:04:59,880 achievement and not performing like a stinking train seal. By the way, am I ranty now or am I 40 00:04:59,880 --> 00:05:09,000 passionate? All right, phonological and phonemic awareness, how that's correlated with reading 41 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:15,280 achievement. And let's look at phonemic awareness but reading achievement. As any student in a 42 00:05:15,280 --> 00:05:24,560 ninth grade statistics class can tell you, correlation does not infer causation. If things 43 00:05:24,560 --> 00:05:34,120 are correlated, that does not mean that one thing causes the other thing to occur. Of phonemic 44 00:05:34,120 --> 00:05:44,480 awareness, that does not cause reading achievement to occur. At level of phonemic awareness could be 45 00:05:44,480 --> 00:05:51,320 the result of something. In this case, it's the result of being exposed to books and print and good 46 00:05:51,320 --> 00:05:58,240 conversation before entering preschool in kindergarten. It's an effect of that. High 47 00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:06,240 exposure, so it's the high exposure to reading that's related to reading achievement, not 48 00:06:06,240 --> 00:06:15,120 phonemic or phonological awareness. It's a co-relation, not a causal relation. And this is 49 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:22,600 not to say that these things are not important. Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are 50 00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:30,080 important components at the emergent level in preschool and kindergarten. But to present them 51 00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:37,600 as causal variables would be lying to my students. And I must lie. And by the way, am I ranty now 52 00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:44,120 or am I passionate? I always have to check. Am I ranty or am I passionate? I guess it depends 53 00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:51,320 on your point of view, doesn't it? All right. The next part, reading achievement is related to 54 00:06:51,320 --> 00:06:58,680 the ability to recognize word boundaries to rhyme. Yes, yes, yes, maybe some of this is, it's 55 00:06:58,680 --> 00:07:05,760 important. No one is arguing with some of these things are important. But word boundaries is where 56 00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:14,840 one word starts and another stops. Yes, this is concepts of print and this is basic stuff in preschool 57 00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:23,400 and kindergarten. And rhyming, yes, rhymes have always been an important part of pre-K literacy 58 00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:29,760 instruction. It enables you to develop phonemic awareness, hearing similar sounds and words. And 59 00:07:29,760 --> 00:07:37,120 this helps students begin to recognize phonograms and other word parts. And it's important at the 60 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:44,920 preschool and kindergarten level. But of course, not grades one and beyond. And is it related to 61 00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:53,160 reading achievement? Does it cause reading achievement? That, my friends, is a bit of a 62 00:07:53,160 --> 00:08:02,760 stretch. Yes, there's, is there a strong causal relationship between recognizing word boundaries 63 00:08:02,760 --> 00:08:14,840 and rhyming and later reading achievement? That is questionable. And does separating word boundaries 64 00:08:14,840 --> 00:08:22,000 and rhyming, does that produce better results than say reading lots of books, reading, talking, 65 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:28,640 and writing? Is that direct and straight? Is that better than those things? Now let's look at 66 00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:35,720 blending, segmenting, substituting, and deleting word parts. This has to do with sounds and again, 67 00:08:35,720 --> 00:08:43,080 this is phonemic awareness. Is there a strong causal relationship between blending, segmenting, 68 00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:51,720 substituting, and deleting word sounds and later reading achievement? Does the former lead to the 69 00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:59,120 latter? Does it cause it? And is it more effective than simply a bunch of reading, a bunch of writing, 70 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:08,840 a bunch of talking about good books? No, there's no causal relationship that has been established. 71 00:09:08,840 --> 00:09:17,520 But yet, the state of Minnesota requires me to lie. The read act that was enacted in May says, 72 00:09:17,520 --> 00:09:24,600 Dr. Andy Johnson, you must lie to your students at Minnesota State University. And being the good 73 00:09:24,600 --> 00:09:35,920 estate employee that I am, I do. I lie to them. But I tell them it's a lie. Students, today I'm 74 00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:42,960 going to lie to you. Here it is. And then I tell my students why it's a lie. And I point to the 75 00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:49,560 research that shows it's a lie, a variety of research studies, not just one. And then I point 76 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:58,400 to the state senators and representatives who voted for the lie. And then I show the experience of 77 00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:06,800 these lawmakers who are really lie makers. I show how much experience in teaching, reading that 78 00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:17,640 they've had, or reading research. And here's the biggest lie of all. I am not to mention the state 79 00:10:17,640 --> 00:10:26,000 law says the three queuing systems. And I ask, is this pre-war Germany? Am I to ignore all the 80 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:33,240 research I've read over the last 30 years? Am I to ignore all my own practice teaching, 81 00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:42,320 including tutoring, struggling readers over the last 10 years? Am I to lie to my students and 82 00:10:42,320 --> 00:10:50,560 tell them that they must teach their students to use only a certain amount of information to 83 00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:58,880 recognize words and create meaning with print? If I do this, it's going to impede their ability to 84 00:10:58,880 --> 00:11:08,880 teach reading. It's going to impede their students ability to learn how to read. The sad thing is 85 00:11:08,880 --> 00:11:15,800 you don't know what the three queuing systems are. You don't teach it. It's not a strategy that you 86 00:11:15,800 --> 00:11:25,520 teach. It is merely a recognition that students use our brains use a multitude of data as they're 87 00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:32,040 reading during the reading process to recognize words and create meaning with print. Not just 88 00:11:32,040 --> 00:11:43,320 letter clues, but context clues and grammar and word order clues. That's called context. That's 89 00:11:43,320 --> 00:11:52,760 called syntax, semantics, and phonics, all three of them. That's the biggest lie. I'm to tell my 90 00:11:52,760 --> 00:12:02,120 students not to do this. Now, by the way, I do tell them to do this, but I don't call it the 91 00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:08,920 three queuing systems. I call it neurocognitive systems or interactive systems. To not do this, 92 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:16,160 to not teach this to my students, to not teach them strategies to use to enhance their ability 93 00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:23,040 students of their students to create meaning with print, that would be dishonest. The state of 94 00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:32,000 Minnesota pays me to be an expert in literacy. I am paid to be a literacy expert, and I take my 95 00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:39,680 job very seriously. I get up and I read research every day. I synthesize the research. I write 96 00:12:39,680 --> 00:12:48,240 books and articles because the state of literacy is evolving. It's not static. It's ever evolving. 97 00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:56,600 And those that say reading, it's a proven fact. There is a proven method that just shows naivety 98 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:03,880 and lack of understanding about reading research. It is not a proven state. Everything is in 99 00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:12,600 evolution. And what works best for one student in one situation for one purpose may not work for 100 00:13:12,600 --> 00:13:22,360 other students. To say that phonemic awareness, an important part, but that works for some students, 101 00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:28,920 doesn't mean you should be teaching it in fifth and sixth grade to enable students to comprehend. 102 00:13:28,920 --> 00:13:36,840 That's just kooky talk. Now, the other sad thing is, you know, in Minnesota, 103 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:45,120 science of reading people, you can't make your argument using reason and research. You've lost 104 00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:54,440 the argument you can't make your case in an academic setting. So what do you do? You convince 105 00:13:54,440 --> 00:14:05,240 lawmakers and you bring in a radio hooligan, Emily Hanford, and you pass laws to bully and 106 00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:11,000 threaten those that have a different view than you. To bully and threaten to get your way, 107 00:14:11,000 --> 00:14:20,680 not based on research and reason, but based on your perceptions, your I thinkisms. You don't 108 00:14:20,680 --> 00:14:26,680 realize that the only winners here are the publishing companies, the profiteers, the corporates, 109 00:14:26,680 --> 00:14:36,800 who are making millions, millions off our students and off our taxpayers and at the expense of our 110 00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:43,680 students and our taxpayers. And I say to Heather Edelson, they should name this bill after you. So 111 00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:51,600 five years from now, you take full credit for what you did in sponsoring this bill. I want to 112 00:14:51,600 --> 00:14:58,560 call it the Edelson bill so that in five years we see that students are not any better, they're 113 00:14:58,560 --> 00:15:05,440 probably worse, and the achievement gap, which is really the equity gap, will have widened. Five 114 00:15:05,440 --> 00:15:12,080 years. Minnesota, at one time, I thought you were better than this to threatening people, 115 00:15:12,080 --> 00:15:19,160 but apparently you're not better than this, you're worse than this. And for that, I'm embarrassed 116 00:15:19,160 --> 00:15:26,040 and I'm ashamed of my state legislature. This has been the Reading Instruction Show. I am your 117 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:45,680 host, Dr. Andy Johnson.