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Sharoon Sunny
This post is a little different from my other posts, and you might find it irksome, or it might even push you to a moment of anger, and therefore, the potential fallout might be that you, my reader, hits that 'unsubscribe’ button.
While I risk that fallout, I still have a few things to state, and you might not be in a place to hear someone preaching to the choir.
So what might I write about that is irksome? Well, this post has to do with the choices we make as parents. I might come across as holier than thou, but that's certainly not the intention.
The last seventeen months have been a test. The pandemic tore open the fabric of life in ways we didn't quite anticipate. Into this very confusing and, at times, debilitating, pandemic-intensive experience was thrown into sharp focus the system's inability to bring the best out of our children. It didn't really matter what Board your child attended (CBSE, ICSCE, IB or State); the jingoism of integrating mainstream education with online or tech-intensive learning began falling apart; it was ripe with problems, concerns and pitfalls. What was once passionate advocacy for tech-driven schooling soon turned to parents, educators and researchers making frantic pleas for in-person education.
In the last seventeen months, the hope is that we've had time to stay home, reconnect and establish new patterns, and that has afforded the opportunity to cut loose from traditional approaches to learning. While we continue to blame the 'system' for not meeting standards, what have we really done for our children?
Several parents have removed their children from school. These choices were either forced or were voluntary. Some of these choices were made either due to difficult financial circumstances or because parents had the wisdom to understand that 'online' was just another grand way of babysitting our kids.
For those of us who continue to 'send' our kids to this mode of schooling, we have yet to realise the shortcomings and deficits our kids have inherited. Let me give you an example:
I recently conducted an experiment with a few children aged between 6 and 10 in my neighbourhood. All of them came from two-income households, and the children attend 'good' English medium schools. I say that because, in this context, English is an important skill to learn, and the home environment coupled with the school environment becomes a significant catalyst in helping children learn a foreign/second language.
I administered a diagnostic test called the DIBELS. Very simply, the test assesses your child's reading capability as per their age. The test is free and can be taken either on-screen or can be printed on paper and administered.
It is designed for a western audience and may not be 100% accurate for the Indian context. However, considering that the children in this group had access to quality English education, the tasks were age-appropriate and within their ability.
I chose to administer the test both ways--on-screen and on paper. First, I asked the children to take the paper test. A few days later, I asked them to return and take the same test, but this time, it was on-screen.
The differences were remarkable, to say the least. The results were of significant importance for children aged eight and below because of what they could do with the paper-based test and the on-screen tests.
With the printed test, they moved their fingers along as they read and made minor errors that one anticipates for their age, but they were confident readers. However, when they took the same test on-screen, their words per minute slowed down, and they had trouble comprehending the words and sentences on the screen. They moved their fingers on the screens as they read, but the tactile experience of paper was suddenly missing leading to a significant drop in their confidence levels.
After the test, I met the parents of these children and asked them what they were doing to help their children read. And here lies the discrepancy.
Children were attending an online program where a large portion of their learning materials was on the screen. When school ended for the day, the parents were combining on-screen and paper-based materials to complete tasks. In some instances, since both parents were busy, this was outsourced to a third party--a tuition teacher.
The tuition teacher in the current circumstances also meets the child online. The tuition teacher, in most instances, was not aware of these different challenges that the child experienced.
The drop in reading rate and the confusion of transitioning between on-screen and off-screen materials were becoming very challenging for these children, and their support systems (parents or tutors) were not equipped to register these cracks that were beginning to form. Remember, this is with children where the school and home environments are largely supportive. If we try using this same experiment with children who don't have similar support systems, the learning loss will predictably be catastrophic.
I will not get into the science of cognition and learning at this point, but it is always helpful to have these scientific contexts in the background to make sense of what I am attempting to say. Children in the age brackets of 5 -8 are still learning to read. Therefore, mastery, along with comprehension as a combined activity, takes time and matures slowly. Without having to state the obvious, reading is the key to success.
In this instance, when a critical skill falls through the cracks because we, as parents, haven't understood the science behind reading, and now, science has varying degrees with online and offline, we need to look at learning from an entirely new perspective.
The question is, have we?
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Writing is a complex process involving working memory and executive functions. I'll dedicate some space to explain the executive function because it is essential to understand.
You already know that the brain in and of itself is an extremely complex organ and consists of several different parts. Executive function is the brain's management system and develops very quickly in early childhood and into the adolescent years and continues to do so into the mid-20s.
It also helps us pay attention, organise, plan, and prioritise, thereby providing the impetus to start a task and sustain the needed focus on seeing it through to completion. In regulating emotions, the executive function also helps us understand different points of view and provides self-monitoring.
In order to accomplish all these tasks, we need to use our working memory. Working memory is like the cache on a computer, sort of an interceptor between the CPU and the RAM. It helps retain new information to use it in some way before sending it away into long-term memory.
As adults, it might seem that there’s no 'big' deal to how children operate in their environments. It should be a seamless progression that just happens; remember, it is never that straightforward. Some children do have impairments that lead to certain types of difficulties. Suppose a child exhibits problems with executive function; in that case, you will notice there is also difficulty focusing, following directions, and handling emotions, among other things.
In this post, I'll discuss how writing might be a place of great strife for children with executive function disorders. If you've missed my previous posts on reading, then you can click on the link here.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
Written expression requires several skills to come together. The first on that list is reading comprehension. More about that here.
The second on the list is transcription. For effective transcription, children need to cover the skills of spellings and handwriting. There are several ways in which children struggle with transcription, such as awkward or illegible handwriting. Others might be able to write legibly but will have difficulty spellings words and will not perform without support.
The third on this list is sentence construction. While this is a challenge even for a good writer, children with writing difficulties struggle with using the correct sentence structure. They have trouble distinguishing between nouns and verbs, complete and run-on sentences, statements and questions.
The fourth on the list is genre and content knowledge. Again, the lack of adequate training can cause a child with no difficulties to perform poorly in this area. However, it becomes more complicated for a child with writing specific difficulties because one needs to distinguish between different types of writing, such as narrative and argumentative.
Content knowledge requires that the writer supply the right information based on the assigned task and choose the appropriate vocabulary to enhance the written work.
Finally, the process of revising, editing and proofreading requires the use of the executive functions, especially since it requires a fair amount of focus.
As you can see, writing requires shifting among tasks that include generating ideas, thinking of words and word meaning, organising good sentences, planning, and self-monitoring—all of them require executive functions.
Challenges with any of the basic language or motor skills or in the executive functions required to combine reading comprehension, transcription, and various necessary subskills to write will result in problems in written expression if your child experiences writing difficulty.
So what should you do as a parent to help your child succeed in writing? You can read that in my next week's blog.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit abetterword.substack.com
If your child has entered preschool, then it's a moment of great celebration since it is the first fledgeling step towards what eventually will become formal education. Pre-school is also when children, with the assistance of their teachers, build foundational academic skills. While the joys of discovery are many during this beautiful time, some challenges might go unnoticed since we, as parents, tend not to register certain early signs of learning difficulties.
The post today discusses briefly the challenges teachers or parents might encounter when their child exhibits reading delays. You may not register them as reading delays, and perhaps they are not, but being aware is essential.
Source: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
It remains in the teacher's hands to let the parent(s) know whether or not a child is at-risk for academic success. Teachers are an integral part of identifying early learning difficulties because they observe the first signs, making it very important that teachers have either the sensitivity or the training to recognise the problem.
Several studies have shown that teachers can help identify reading difficulties early on if they have the necessary training. They also help provide early support and thereby prevent the need for intensive intervention. The case for training or sensitisation in early-childhood education to identify learning difficulties should be addressed more forcefully through changes in policies that govern early-childhood and educators and parents' mindsets.
In my interactions with teachers, I have often found that teachers are not specifically aware of what constitutes pre-reading skills (phonological skills, orthographic and letter knowledge, word reading ability, vocabulary, and syntactic ability). Teachers are most often disconnected from essential theoretical knowledge, which becomes problematic because then, a teachers' analysis of a learner's problem stems from a personal and simple qualitative assessment. Research indicates that the most common rationale for identifying as an at-risk student with regards to reading is problems in, for example, letter knowledge and identifying letter sounds. However, assessment should involve several skill areas related to developing reading skills. These include phonological skills, orthographic and letter knowledge, word reading ability, vocabulary, and syntactic ability (Bailey and Drummond 2006; Davis et al. 2007).
If standardised, research-based assessments help identify a reading-related problem, then teachers should be aware of what research instruments are being used in the evaluation of reading difficulties. Along with a battery of tests, teachers' knowledge, based on the observation of a student, will strengthen the assessment. Bailey et al., (2001) state that literacy checklist, teacher evaluations can become more systematised and also lead to a higher identification rate of at-risk students.
It is important to remember that while research sheds light on possible ways to detect reading delays, all readers do not display the same kind of reading behaviour. So what do some of these impediments look like in early childhood?
Some instances include:
Lack of phonemic and phonological awareness:
Phonemic awareness includes learning to map sounds to letters. Difficulties become apparent when the child cannot distinguish between the sounds say, ' B' and 'G', for example. This could lead to a problem in 'recoding' or 'decoding'. To decode, the child should have the ability to sound out words by sound-letter correspondence and blend sounds so that written text can be recognised and interpreted.
Phonological awareness includes "understanding the concept of sounds and syllables making up words, and words making up sentences. It is the ability to process speech sound information so that one can: identify and generate rhyming words; identify individual sounds; break words into component sounds and syllables; blend sounds together; count syllables, words and sounds; read nonwords; delete syllables and sounds; and substitute sounds." (https://www.slhunterspeechworks.com/Conditions/Reading-Difficulties/Phonological-Awareness).
Not having phonological awareness leads to a slow rate when reading, leading to an impairment in reading fluency, comprehension, inference etc.
You could, for instance, give your child "exception" words like "yacht." Suppose your child is unable to read new words accurately that do not follow the regular mappings between letters and sounds, in that case, there might be a problem that is sometimes referred to as poor sight word reading or poor visual word recognition.
In other cases, there might be accurate phonological recoding and visual word recognition, but there is a struggle to read words fluently.
There is yet another set of problems, where the reader has intact phonological recoding, visual word recognition and reading fluency, but cannot comprehend the passage that was read.
Some ways to test any of these issues, as a parent or a teacher, based on age, could be by:
using alphabet cards for letter-sound recognition,
getting children to read nonwords like YIT,
asking children to read word lists or sentences as quickly as they can,
getting children to answer questions about the meanings of paragraphs they read
If you find that there are certain roadblocks, it is always best to consult with a trained and certified assessor who can then help you understand the specific problem.
The reason it becomes urgent to understand if there is a deficit, is because reading is a taught skill that unfolds over a period of time and requires cognitive abilities, such as memory, attention, and language skills etc., and the longer one waits, the further the solution or intervention gets.
Dennis and Victoria Molfese, PhD, identify writing, alphabetic knowledge, rapid naming tasks and phonological processing as critical skills to build. According to these two psychologists, "explicit testing of these skills, combined with carefully monitoring their acquisition, can help pinpoint preschool- and kindergarten-age kids who simply aren't up to speed yet, as well as kids who suffer from bona fide reading disabilities."
In 1985, Dennis and Victoria developed a method to spot babies at risk of developing reading disabilities at birth with an accuracy of 80%. Today, the same couple have improved their previous research to predict reading disabilities with a stunning 99% accuracy.
While the research to understand reading difficulties is growing at a steady pace, the concurrent implementations in schools have been slow. If you spend time and keep track, you will notice wonderful things about your child. The key though is to be aware during observation so you can catch a problem early and find a way to work around it.
References:
Bailey, A. L., Cano, L., Fischer, D., Freeman, S., Jacobs, J., Heritage, M., et al. (2001). The LDC manual: A guide to using the Literacy Development Checklist (Rev. ed.). Los Angeles: University of California Regents.
To read more about Dennis and Victoria Molfese's studies, visit: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/04/reading-problems
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit abetterword.substack.com
As the years go by, my encounter with people who don't read keeps climbing.
No. This isn't an arbitrary attribution I am pulling out of thin air.
As an English teacher, I get to meet people from all walks of life, and inevitably, these encounters lead to a conversation about books, and eventually, it veers in the direction of how much or how little one is reading. At the end of these conversations, what I find is always an excuse for not reading or reading sporadically. If it's a child, the parents always say, "She is more interested in the phone than a book." If it's an adult, the adult will say, "I can't find the time to do it after a hectic day."
Reading is one of the bedrocks to good living. If you are not reading, then you aren't going to have an easy road ahead. If you think about it for a moment, you'll understand why. Reading brings focus into your life; it narrows the focus down, zones everything else out and relaxes you while you are at it. It enables you to look at something closely for as long as you chose to read it. You begin to build your little fortress of knowledge, and if you keep at it, then what you know will always be significantly larger than what a less-read person will know.
Here’s an anecdote. When I was younger, by that I mean, when I was a wee child, I was surrounded by people who always read. They were informed, and articulate people and their conversations were often punctuated with beautiful quotes, and their ideas were expressed in the most exquisite of ways. They did it so well that I wanted to become like the adults who surrounded me. Little did I know then that reading and modelling good reading had entered my life in a way for which I'd be thankful for the rest of my life.
My father gave me Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace when I was twelve. Reading it then meant acknowledging my father's desire to share his love for reading. How could I possibly let him down? I tried very hard to understand the book. I attempted to get past the first few pages, but in the end, gave up since thematically it was beyond my understanding. The book sat on the shelf. Thick, voluminous and distinct, it seemed to challenge me with every passing year. In its own way, the book was mocking me for believing I wasn't yet ready to deal with the weight of it.
Just by the simple fact that it sat on a bookshelf at an accessible height, one summer, when I was all of seventeen, I picked up the mammoth and read it. Bolkonsky and Natasha altered me in a way I cannot explain. I reread the book years later after my son was born, and the book managed to alter my perspectives yet again. With utmost certainty, I will tell you that when I reread it in my 50th year, it will alter my life in some unimaginable way, again. War and Peace continues to taunt me as it sits on my bookshelf.
Reading as a skill has dropped. Several people 'read' because they want to keep up with their peers. The most interesting conversation I had recently was with a CXO of a fairly large multinational company.
As a writing coach, one of the questions I ask my clients is simply this: "What have you read in the last two months?"
Most senior managers will rattle off their reading list. Most, if not all, are pretty impressive. The next question is, "Can you summarise them for me?"
Here is where I find, even the most accomplished senior executive often falters.
One doesn't need to be a senior executive to be good at summarising, but you will notice that summarisation is an art and a science. If you understand how to summarise, then you can take that skill into any aspect of your life.
Summarisation is somewhat of a final step, but what about the first step--comprehension?
If you think back on your competitive exams (think GRE, GMAT, CAT), you'll remember how important it was to score well on that section called reading comprehension. It isn't without reason that that component figures on advanced placement tests.
Not many people do well on that test. At least not without repetitive help or drills.
Now, going back to the anecdote on the senior executive: the said person was not able to summarise a single book on that list. There were books where the person was not able to recall the author's name even. I think that is somewhat problematic. Don't you?
Successful people (you can define success the way you want to) leaders or not, read extensively. Steve Jobs said, "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while."
Essentially, to be creative and innovative, you need to have diverse "dots" of knowledge. These diverse dots of knowledge do not appear via divine intervention. One needs to go after it, and most often than not, it happens when you read. Innovation is about connecting these dots in a way that hasn't been done before.
Reading gives people the knowledge or the dots that they need to come up with new ideas and approaches. It tells you when to be at War and when to be at Peace.
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If you are looking for something to read, here's the latest Financial Times list:
https://businessbook.live.ft.com/page/1582794/longlist-us?saveConsentPreferences=success
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit abetterword.substack.com
Why are some writers more interesting to read than others?
Why is one piece of writing easy to understand and another on the same subject difficult?
The most important thing about any kind of writing is often forgotten.
It must be enjoyable.
It must be interesting.
If it's not, it's forgotten.
The reader will simply shut it out of his or her mind and walk away.
However, if a writer makes for interesting reading, then, the reader will make a concerted effort to understand.
So if the writer, manages to stir the imagination, and arouse emotions, then the reader will remember that piece of writing forever.
Yet we continue to read boring, trite, brittle pieces of writing from different kinds of writers on similar topics. They are absolutely uninspiring.
Not every writer is worth his salt!
But, remember, some writers do rouse you to action.
In my previous post, I wrote about ToM, and the importance of knowing what is called “mental state language.” Building linguistic competence to understand “false belief tasks” become extremely crucial for the development of a syntax that builds strong ToM in young children. In very simple terms, does your child understand the meaning of words about the mind, like "think," or "believe" or "know"?
In neurotypical children this ability develops between the ages 3 and 5. The understanding of ToM becomes particularly important for children who are autistic or have hearing impairments.
The best place to see language come alive is in good children’s literature. Children’s books cleverly place a multitude of factors at the forefront of learning including language acquisition, humour, emotional intelligence and a host of other related elements.
If you would like to learn more about ToM, please visit the nature website. Here is a list of narrative fiction that promotes ToM.
Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins
In Rosie’s Walk, the story of the perpetually evil, hen-hunting fox, who is on a mission to find devious ways to devour the hen, is thwarted by angry bees. Interspersed with humour and plot twists, the book works well for children with limited attention spans.
Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
In this story, a lion, a gorilla, a giraffe and other zoo animals follow a zookeeper who is making his nightly rounds saying goodnight to his zoo friends. What the zookeeper does not know is that the gorilla now has the keys and is opening the cage doors of all the animals. In the end, as the zookeeper makes his way home, all the animals follow him to his bed.
A Hat for Minerva Louise (Minerva Series)
In all of Minerva Louise’s stories, the funny chicken finds no satisfaction because she cannot understand the human world. Written very simply and illustrated with brilliance, these stories are bound to make even the most reluctant reader pay attention.
Good News Bad News by Jeff Mack
The perfect book to balance the good and bad perspectives about life. The rabbit, forever an optimist only sees the bright side while the rat, forever a pessimist cannot help but see only the negatives. In the end, the rat’s perspective rubs off on the rabbit, and the rabbit begins to cry. The rat, realising he’s turned his friend into a sad person, decides to turn his perspective around, and just as he does, the sun begins to shine.
You Are (NOT) Small by Anna Kang and Christopher Weyant (Illustrator)
A brilliant story about point of view. It is cute. It is funny and the best of all, it helps children understand that there is always a point of view that is different when viewed from the other side.
If you have young children in your families or if you are an educator, get down to understanding ToM and learn more about books that promote this essential skill. Until the next post, keep reading.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit abetterword.substack.com
Every once in awhile, you will come across something beautiful, poignant and articulate, that your heart will begin to bleed for it. The 'something' in my case is always a good piece of writing.
I read Maria Popova's Brainpickings, like most of her ardent followers—religiously. Her writing is the kind that makes my heart bleed. She pores over books and introduces her readers to truly exquisite pieces of writing. In one of her editions, Popova introduces her readers to This Is a Poem That Heals Fish by Jean-Pierre Simeón. Posed as answers to Arthur's quest to cure his pet fish of boredom, the book journey's through serious philosophical questions about life and relationships.
Arthur begins his quest by asking people he knows to explain to him what a poem means. My favourite is when Mahummoud answers the question: A poem is when you hear the heartbeat of a stone.
And so the poem continues until Arthur has gathered all the responses he possibly could:
A poem
is when you have the sky in your mouth.
It is hot like fresh bread,
when you eat it,
a little is always left over.
A poem
is when you hear
the heartbeat of a stone,
when words beat their wings.
It is a song sung in a cage.
A poem
is words turned upside down
and suddenly!
the world is new.
Such is the miracle of poetry. You will never return the same person once you've encountered a poem that alters you.
But for this alteration to occur, if you chose for it to be so, then you cannot eliminate one quintessential element—reading.
I coach aspiring writers, both young and old. But the refrain that I often hear when I ask them what they've been reading lately, most often is, "I don't read." 90% of my participants state they don't like to read or don't have the time for it.
What's the problem with that?
Think about it this way: for people to take what you say seriously, you will have to show you can walk the talk. Think of an artist who's never been to a gallery or looked at another painting. Or even for that matter, a doctor who's never practised on his patients. How will you trust the credibility of these individuals?
Will their work be taken seriously at all?
So why should a writer be any different? If a writer does not read, then not only is he not credible, but his writing will also be lacklustre.
Although the benefits of reading are universally acknowledged, very few people actively engage in reading quality literature. With the trashy news items and instant information available on the Internet, reading is slowly becoming like the dinosaurs--extinct.
When you read, you will find an infinite number of ways in which writers create a kaleidoscope with words.
Rich.
Supple.
Urgent.
Lyrical.
Reading fires the imagination. Imagination, in turn, helps us navigate the complex worlds we live in. In a world riddled with complexity, reading helps us understand the area known as the Theory of Mind.
Theory of Mind is "the human capacity to comprehend that other people hold beliefs and desires and that these may differ from one's own beliefs and desires." Complex human relationships characterize our world, and understanding others' mental states is a crucial skill that enables us to navigate this complexity that characterizes human societies.
ToM, as it's called, is activated when people read literary fiction. What is literary fiction? What are the best in-depth narratives to read?
Well, that will be the update in the next letter. Until then, carry on camping!
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit abetterword.substack.com