Learning to read by third grade is key to education

Janelle Karney keeps a stack of young-reader books on her nightstand, putting in extra hours most evenings, looking for reading material that will whet her students’ appetite for reading.

Karney is a fourth-grade teacher at Parkview Elementary School in Bellingham. When Karney herself was a fourth-grader, she remembers repeatedly reading short passages from a textbook, and then answering a series of questions to demonstrate reading comprehension. That approach stressed rapid reading — an emphasis that was decades old.

Karney said her father remembers teachers who grouped kids according to their reading speed. The fastest readers got to be in the fox group. The slowest readers were in the turtle group.

Nurture and encourage

In today’s classrooms, teachers are trying to nurture and encourage readers, not drill them.

“I just love that we are going back to really encouraging kids to fall in love with reading,” Karney said.

Karney’s classroom bookshelves are crammed, and more books are piled in big plastic bins labeled in categories. Rick Riordan and Jeff Kinney – two of the most popular authors for younger readers — have their own bins.

Other bins are labeled “new to our library,” “cool nonfiction,” and “We recommend.” That last one is stocked by students themselves: After they finish a book they especially enjoyed, they put it in the recommended bin.

Karney rates the books she herself reads on a one-to-five-star scale, but students don’t always accept her judgments.

“They can disagree with me,” she said. “We have awesome conversations.”

Early instruction key

In Whatcom County and elsewhere around the state, teachers and school administrators are intensifying reading instruction in the early grades, to make sure as many students as possible are ready to have those kinds of conversations by the time they get to fourth grade.

Teachers still teach the ABCs and the letter sounds, just as they did in the days of the one-room schoolhouse. But once students get that foundation, they are encouraged to find things they like to read, and to read on their own.

“No. 1 is finding literature or text that matches their interests,” said Dawn Christiana, a director of teaching and learning in Bellingham School District. “All kids should be reading every day.”

After they have had some time to read on their own, students also get a chance to talk about their reading with teachers and other students.

Remedial help offered

Mark Hall, executive director for teaching and learning in Ferndale School District, said educators are increasingly focused on research indicating that reading ability at the end of third grade is a strong predictor of later success in school. That research has been persuasive enough to get the attention of the Legislature, which has mandated intensive remedial help for students still struggling to read as third grade draws to a close.

In Ferndale, Hall said, the parents of third-grade students whose reading test scores are still below standards in May are urged to enroll their children in a reading-intensive, four-week summer session. That effort got underway in earnest in spring and summer 2015.

The alternative to summer school would be repeating third grade, but Hall said few educators are comfortable with that approach.

“The negative social part of it outweighs the gains,” Hall said.

But he stressed how vital it is for children to be proficient readers by the end of third grade.

In grades kindergarten through 3, much of each day’s effort goes into learning to read, Hall said.

Reading key to success

“In grade 4, we use reading to teach them everything else,” Hall said. “You have to be a reader in order to access all the other content.”

Educators say they are also improving students’ chances of success by bolstering pre-kindergarten programs, with a goal of offering preschool opportunities to every child.

“The easiest way to catch up is not to start behind,” Hall said.

Nooksack Valley School District was among the first in the region to focus on preschool learning, making sure that students in public and private preschools got the training they need to feel ready for kindergarten. That approach is now standard in the educational service district that includes the 35 school districts in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan, Island and Snohomish counties.

In Bellingham, Christiana said the effort to strengthen the connection between preschool and kindergarten has been going on for the past two or three years. As part of that effort, all Bellingham Head Start classes are now held inside public school buildings. And every February, youngsters who are on the waiting list for the federally subsidized Head Start program are offered a few months of free preschool paid for by the Bellingham district.

Preschool training

At the same time, school district personnel have reached out to teachers in private preschools, in an effort to make it more likely that preschool education will be useful to the child on that first day of kindergarten.

Amelia Bacon, an early childhood specialist in the Nooksack Valley district, said kindergarten teachers still have to cope with a wide range of skill levels in their classrooms. Some children already have the rudiments of reading skills. Others enjoy books, but prefer a spectator’s role.

“I notice a lot of kids really expect the adult to do the work, to read to them, to turn the pages,” Bacon said.

Still other youngsters don’t seem familiar with books at all.

Access to books

The first step, Bacon said, is giving children access to books, and letting them choose their own books. Many students seem to prefer non-fiction books, and the publishing industry has noticed. Bacon said a wide variety of science, history and biography books are now available for younger readers.

Teachers are also focusing on keeping up the reading habit even when school’s out.

For generations, teachers have had to deal with the summer slump: Students who don’t touch a book all summer usually show a decline in reading skills when they get back to school in the fall.

Last spring, Bacon said, Everson Elementary School teachers launched a summer reading program.

“Every kid went home in June with about eight books,” Bacon said. “We had all kinds of donations from the community.”

It didn’t stop there. During the summer, teachers made the rounds in a book van, collecting finished books and providing new ones to eager students.

“Kids were so excited about having books,” Bacon said.

Engaging with books

That’s the kind of engagement with reading that teachers now strive for, said Joyce Mihalovich, a Nooksack Elementary School first-grade teacher.

Mihalovich, who has been teaching for more than 20 years, said students need more than old-fashioned instruction in letter sounds, important as that is. She’s convinced that a key part of the teaching process is emotional: the bond between student and teacher, and the child’s feeling that school is a place to try one’s best without fear of failure.

“Kids will shut down if I’m not authentic about caring about them,” Mihalovich said. “If I become that one safe person for that child … it makes a difference.”

She also stresses the importance of giving students time to read on their own, without interruption, for 10 to 30 minutes even in early grades, with time to talk about what they read.

Mihalovich knows that in every classroom, some students have more than their share of obstacles to learning because of poverty, family problems, or language barriers. That doesn’t change her attitude.

“As a teacher there is no excuse for me,” Mihalovich said. “There’s no excuse for me to say, ‘Oh, this child won’t be able to learn.’ … We go to bat for the kids and we don’t give up on them.”

Challenging students

As they develop their reading proficiency, Mihalovich said students need a reading list that includes easy books, “just right” books, and books that are challenging for them to read.

“I feel very confident that almost all children are readers when they have the right environment for learning,” she said.

Ferndale’s Hall said parents should be aware that learning to read is a challenge for any child, and it takes effort and practice.

“Reading is not a natural process,” Hall said. “We’re wired for speaking, but we’re not wired for reading.”

This story was originally published November 28, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Learning to read by third grade is key to education."