Summary of Findings

Summary of Findings

Jack Farrell

Consultant Teacher

jfarrell709@hotmail.com

 

            What follows is a brief overview of the findings about which I report in more detail on my website: www.readfirst.net

 

Major Finding:  Nearly all practices advocated in current teacher training programs are a result of the work of educational research organizations, such as McRel, and are advanced as thoroughly research-based.  The premises upon which these practices are based I have termed forward teaching, which I define as a highly organized system for front-loading prior knowledge, skill sets and subject-specific terminology by means of sophisticated scaffolds with the express purpose of maximizing content acquisition.  This system works, and one need only look at test scores to confirm this fact.  However, there is a disturbing truth embedded within the system which ultimately renders it self-limiting to such a degree that it imperils post-secondary success.  The unacknowledged truth is that students are engaged in very little content area reading and this system of forward teaching is little more than an elaborate set of compensatory strategies for delivering content in the absence of independently mastered, text-based learning.  Modern classrooms, specifically upper-elementary, middle school and high school, look remarkably homogeneous.  Walk into any of these classrooms and you are likely to observe some or all of the following:

 

  1. An agenda on the board, the more specific and detailed the better.
  2. A warm-up activity, either a review of previously learned concepts, or an anticipatory set for the day’s learning.
  3. A review/preview period, focusing on what was learned yesterday and what will be learned today.  Often the homework from the previous night is discussed.
  4. A brief period of explicit, direct instruction, the focus of the day’s lesson.
  5. A brief period wherein the teacher models the learning.
  6. A question and answer session, wherein the teacher checks for understanding or a group activity where students share what they have learned or tutor each other.
  7. A session of guided practice where the students solve problems or work with the new concept, sometimes independently, but more often with a partner.
  8. A homework assignment of independent practice with the new learning.

 

            What is readily apparent in observing such classrooms is the high degree of teacher talk and student talk.  As a ratio, talk may exceed reading and writing by a ratio of 9 to 1.  The only reading students are likely to do are bullets on power point slides or problems demonstrated on a white board.  The expectation for student reading in textbooks is exceptionally low.  Teachers have largely given up on modern textbooks and are convinced the teacher can explain anything in a livelier and more engaging way than the text.  Even in classrooms where teachers regularly assign textbook reading, students are confident that anything the teacher values he will announce.  Students as early as the 4th grade recognize that they only need concern themselves with what a teacher says.  A subset of very disengaged students knows that the teacher will conduct a thorough review prior to the test and they need only pay attention to that.

            There is a vast cross-section of students, whose skill levels fall somewhere in the middle, who can read, but don’t, and who successfully navigate modern coursework with satisfactory “B’s” and “C’s” in the absence of nearly all independent reading of content area text.

            While this student tests well because he has mastered the content, his utter inability to navigate complex ideas rendered in expository prose seriously jeopardizes his chances for success in post-secondary education with its heavy reliance on text-based learning.  How will he fare as a college freshman when he is asked to read and master 200 pages of Modern European history, or 150 pages of sociology, anthropology or astronomy?  What will he do when he discovers that the professor may lecture on some or none of this reading, but still test on it with hour-long essay questions he must write into a blue book?  Either the university or community college must lower its expectations or secondary schools must become college preparatory in more than name only.

 

Major Solution:  Teachers need to return students to the ancient core of the academic life, reading and writing.  They need to begin teaching backwards, which I define as a systematic attempt to turn all students into text-based learners, wherein the writer of the text becomes the primary teacher, the relationship between writer and reader is sacred and communication is largely silent and contemplative, and the silent reading and re-reading of complex content area text is at the center of all lessons.  In such a classroom, the modern lesson plan is turned on its head.  Students begin with independent practice and, through multiple readings, if necessary, gain as much understanding as possible prior to teacher intervention. Knowledge is withheld by the teacher and back-loaded as necessary only for those students who need it.  All modern scaffolds are available to the teacher in such a classroom, but are used in targeted fashion only for those students who need them and only for as long as they need them.  Teachers in such a classroom are continually testing for independence by removing scaffolds and the explicit goal is to support students in becoming independent masters of content-area text.  An observer in a classroom where the instructor is teaching backwards may witness some or all of the following:

 

  1. Class begins with students engaging, silently and independently, the day’s learning via text.  Even mathematics is language-based and much teacher talk explaining steps to the solution of a problem can be rendered as text.
  2. Students will often re-read text to gain maximum understanding and may highlight sections of the text and make marginal notes.
  3. Teachers will check for understanding by displaying the text and asking for students to share insight.
  4. The architecture of the text may be as important in a language arts or social science class as the meaning of the text and students will grow in proficiency discussing how a text means what it means.
  5. Students will often write in response to a text and share their writing with partners or with the class.
  6. Teachers will routinely withhold information until they are convinced students can go no further on their own, and then will add information incrementally.
  7. Scaffolds, including alternative intelligences, as in visual and kinesthetic, will be offered to students only after they have gone as far as they can with the text and then only for as long as they need them.  In a teaching backwards classroom, learning from text is not a learning style.  It is at the center of the academic mission and all students must be proficient at it.