It’s both the classroom adage and intellectual absolute: By third grade, a kid is no longer learning to read.
He’s reading to learn.
Or, he should be.
However, that’s not always the case in West Virginia, as far as the most recent national assessments go – and that’s why David Roach took the story to the state Board of Education two weeks ago.
Roach is the state’s Superintendent of Schools and he unveiled a new literacy campaign. “Ready, Read, Write West Virginia,” designed to engineer a new happy ending to the above.
Make that, a happy new beginning, the superintendent said.
The pathway of the program wraps in parents and other caregivers. It goes from teachers to the school principal.
While there are professional benchmarks and other classroom aspirations factored in, the program, at its core, Roach said, is as simple as picking up a book at home, and reading it out loud, to your kid.
Do that, he said, and you’re making a connection. You’re making a fun, positive memory.
Then, after the reading is done, talk about the story with your child. Ask the, “Then what happened?” question.
Or the, “Why do you think the character did that?” question.
Talking about it means thinking about it, he said, and thinking about it means building upon the narrative.
While learning about situations and circumstances, and the ways we might act, or react, to what happens next.
If you can, the superintendent suggested, take your kid to the actual place – the city or the state park or the sports arena – you’re actually reading about in the story.
After all, he said, seeing a physical place that before had existed in your imagination, only makes it more real.
What was also real, though not in a positive way, were those reading scores released in October by the U.S. Department of Education.
Fourth-grade reading scores, as chronicled in the report card, averaged out to 205 in West Virginia, opposed to 216 nationally in that assessment.
Eighth-grade reading scores came in at 249 for West Virginia, and 259 elsewhere.
All scores were at all-time lows, which educators said can be traced in part to the pandemic and the call to shutter schools – while shifting to total remote learning – at the height of the contagion in 2020.
A website and other digital materials for “Ready, Read, Write West Virginia” will hit next month for the new year.
In the meantime, Roach is already releasing one-minute primers on the program, which can be viewed on the state Department of Education’s website at https://wvde.us/.
State Board of Education President Paul Hardesty is already a fan.
“We have to change what we’re doing if we want to see different results,” he said.
“I appreciate this renewed focus on literacy and effective teaching strategies that are rooted in us getting back to the basics of proven methods,” he continued.
“We will keep this issue in front of us as a board to ensure we are working collectively and with urgency to increase literacy among our students.”
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