By Aleksandra Sidorova
More book titles than ever before were challenged last year — 4,240, according to the American Library Association’s report. Besides restricting thinking, taking books off shelves can also influence how well students learn to read.
“The only way to improve and to learn how to read is to learn those skills and at the same time, practice those skills,” said Yong Yu, a professor in SUNY Plattsburgh’s teaching department who specializes in literacy. “If you don’t give (children) a book to read, it’s not going to happen.”
In the three decades that the National Assessment of Educational Progress had been administering reading tests to fourth, eighth and 12th graders, not once was the average score considered to be “proficient” in reading — between having “basic” and “advanced” skills. A third of fourth graders who were tested in 2022 didn’t even meet the “basic” benchmark.
Yu said these scores aren’t good representations of how well children are reading because the NAEP’s tests focus on comprehension, which isn’t all reading is. These results also tend to fluctuate year to year.
“The results of the assessment itself are not 100% valid in terms of assessing students’ literacy skills in every area, but it is a data point nonetheless,” Yu said. “I think people should be really careful before they interpret, what does this mean?”
By reviewing research, the National Reading Panel in 2011 identified five pillars to literacy: phonemic awareness, the knowledge that sounds have corresponding representations in text; phonics, the ability to identify the relationship between sounds and their written counterparts; fluency, the skill to read quickly and expressively while understanding the meaning; vocabulary; and comprehension.
Even as the field’s research evolves, teachers can be stuck in the past, heavily influenced by their own learning experiences as well as the training they received at the start of their careers.
“There should never be a law dictating how teachers should teach because that has never been one of the intents or fundamental beliefs of the founding fathers,” Yu said. “You can provide support and professional development to teachers, helping them keep up with the advancement of research findings in their related area, but you shouldn’t dictate how they teach.”
A key component of improving reading skills is practice. Yu explained that early on, teachers usually incorporate three kinds of texts: controlled vocabulary texts, decodable texts and leveled or predictable texts.
Controlled vocabulary texts are simple to read, especially for beginners, but they are designed to include a limited list of words. In classrooms, they can also encourage children to guess words from the vocabulary they already have instead of sounding them out or reading letter by letter.
Decodable texts make use of words with similar spelling and sound patterns, such as Dr. Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat,” but besides stringing words a child is unlikely to encounter in the real world, too much repetition can prevent them from learning other sounds the letter combinations can represent.
“As soon as children are getting automatic at recognizing ‘at,’ don’t use those books anymore,” Yu said. “Provide authentic children’s picture books: Simple books, still one sentence per page, but it’s not a repeated pattern.”
Predictable texts follow sentences with repetitive patterns, and they usually feature illustrations. These types of books should be used only occasionally, Yu said. With too much exposure to predictable texts, the child can stop reading and instead rely on the picture to complete the sentence.
Besides having unique drawbacks, all three text types have a problem in common — they don’t sound natural.
Additionally, the stories these artificially engineered texts tell could become boring. When teachers transition to reading authentic texts with their students, they are advised to include a variety of styles, genres, perspectives and cultural and linguistic aspects to engage their students.
“People don’t think this is necessary,” Yu said. “They think this is all about political correctness.”
The books challenged the most depict experiences of LGBTQ+ people or people of color, according to the American Library Association’s report.
The right book can foster a lifelong love for reading in children. In turn, the more children want to read, the better they are at it. Yu said she advises her students to group books not by how hard they are to read, but by topic.
“Whatever children want to read, there is always something for them, or if they don’t know what to read, you can always help them,” Yu said. “I think that’s a formula that has the potential to engage children in reading.”
