Does It Help or Hurt?

I just finished reading an interesting Edutopia post by Nell Duke entitled "What Doesn't Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon."  She focused on five teaching practices that are not proven to help with long term literacy.  Some of them I agreed with without a second thought, for example, banning weekly spelling lists.  I still remember weekly spelling lists with a shudder.  Memorizing words in isolation was always painful for me, and I was a horrible speller until I started writing things I cared about for an audience I respected.

Another literacy practice that drives me nuts is giving students a list of words and telling them to look them up in the dictionary.  I was glad to see this on the abandon list, but I wish she had delved a little further into why this is such a useless exercise.  When is the last time you looked a word up in the dictionary?  I teach a unit on dictionary skills, and I have yet to come across a word that has only one definition.  Many words have widely different definitions depending on the context in which they are used.  Giving a student a list of words and a dictionary is setting that student up for failure.  It's the worst kind of lazy teaching.  That said, I do pre-teach vocabulary, but I usually make a matching game where I've prepared for the lesson by creating age and context appropriate definitions for the students to match with the vocabulary words.  The students will also see those words in the context of their reading and be able to use them in their own writing.  The words are relevant to the task at hand.

Taking away recess as a punishment is also on the list.  My army veteran husband would laugh at this one.  He's a firm believer that punishment should involve MORE physical activity, not less.  You couldn't sit still during class? Do some sit ups.  Still having trouble behaving? Add some push ups.  Duke's article is aimed more at elementary school teachers, but there is no age at which sitting still for six hours is acceptable.  I'm an adult who couldn't last in an office job, because I couldn't sit at a desk all day.  Who am I to judge a kid who can't sit still and be quiet?

I had no hesitations in endorsing Duke's views on abandoning weekly spelling lists, sending students to the dictionary with no context, and taking away recess as a punishment, but the last two literacy practices on the abandon list hit a little closer to home.  Duke called for removing prizes for reading.  I agree with her, and I like how she emphasized spending time talking about reading, rather than just giving unrelated prizes such as stickers.  There is a wealth of research on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation.  In fact, that's what I want to do my research on.  So while I agree that stickers aren't really helpful in fostering life long readers, it's important to give teachers lots of constructive suggestions of what to put in place of those types of prizes to help keep students' momentum going.

The final item on Duke's naughty list was unsupported independent reading.  Again this one gave me some pause, because sometimes kids just need time to READ, but I agree that this only works if students have some key things in place before and after they read.  Students need to know how to pick a good book, and they need people to talk to about the book.  I think it's okay to have programs like DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), but the teachers implementing these programs need to know what the larger reading plan is.

Overall, Duke's article was a quick read that helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on helpful and hurtful literacy practices.