Reading age.

mariaalice

Had a discussion about this recently.

The majority of the secondary school curriculum is humanities based i.e English/History/Geography/foreigner languages etc.( I am not forgetting about maths and science but leave that aside for the moment )

To do well in such a system students needs a very good standard of English when they enter secondary school.

The school my daughters attended had/has a policy of all students doing two foreign languages in first year, unless the student needed help with English in that case the student did one language and extra English instead. I think that is too late and any student needing help should have been flagged in primary school and should not be entering secondary school with problems in English ( unless they have a properly diagnosed specific learning disability ).

Thus I think in fifth and sixth class of primary school there should be a huge emphases on fluency with the English Language and there should be a stated aim that all students enter secondary school with a reading age commensurate with their numerical age and an expectation that a large amount age enter secondary school with a reading age of 13or above.

Am I being a bit unrealistic

Apologies if my English is not great.

spurious

From what I can make out, for the children who arrive to me at 13 reading at age 7 or 8, the damage has been done before they even got to primary school.

Limited parental vocabulary, babysitting by TV and a lack of imaginative play, all exacerbated by poor attendance at school, when they actually get there.

byhookorbycrook

Reading ages have nothing much to do with speech and language.

rainbowtrout

mariaalice wrote: »

Had a discussion about this recently.

The majority of the secondary school curriculum is humanities based i.e English/History/Geography/foreigner languages etc.( I am not forgetting about maths and science but leave that aside for the moment )

To do well in such a system students needs a very good standard of English when they enter secondary school.

The school my daughters attended had/has a policy of all students doing two foreign languages in first year, unless the student needed help with English in that case the student did one language and extra English instead. I think that is too late and any student needing help should have been flagged in primary school and should not be entering secondary school with problems in English ( unless they have a properly diagnosed specific learning disability ).

Thus I think in fifth and sixth class of primary school there should be a huge emphases on fluency with the English Language and there should be a stated aim that all students enter secondary school with a reading age commensurate with their numerical age and an expectation that a large amount age enter secondary school with a reading age of 13or above.

Am I being a bit unrealistic

Apologies if my English is not great.

Students have access to books in the English language in every subject in secondary school. They have ample access to text in a variety of subject areas. I tend to find the ones who have a poor grasp of English read little or nothing outside school, spend a lot of time playing computer games and watching TV and their parents do nothing to contribute to their literacy levels.


This thread is as daft as your thread on one off housing causing obesity in rural kids.

mariaalice

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Students have access to books in the English language in every subject in secondary school. They have ample access to text in a variety of subject areas. I tend to find the ones who have a poor grasp of English read little or nothing outside school, spend a lot of time playing computer games and watching TV and their parents do nothing to contribute to their literacy levels.


This thread is as daft as your thread on one off housing causing obesity in rural kids.

By all mean tell me my idea is daft, but if you are right then when why bother giving help to students with poor English when they enter secondary school, because according to you its all down to a mixture of new technologies, laziness on the part of the student and poor or disinterested parenting..how exactly is a remedial English classed going to make them less lazy, give them parents who are interested and simultaneously persuade them to cut down on the computer games.

rainbowtrout

mariaalice wrote: »

By all mean tell me my idea is daft, but if you are right then when why bother giving help to students with poor English when they enter secondary school, because according to you its all down to a mixture of new technologies, laziness on the part of the student and poor or disinterested parenting..how exactly is a remedial English classed going to make them less lazy, give them parents who are interested and simultaneously persuade them to cut down on the computer games.

Teachers can only do so much with students during the school day. Children are taught English every day in primary school for 8 years. I know when I was in primary school in the 80s students by and large had a pretty good literacy and numeracy level leaving primary school. Classes were larger, and resource teaching was pretty much non existent. As were diagnoses for ADHD, dyslexia etc. What did happen more though is that parents were more involved in their children's education and children were not glued to TVs and computers and sedentary activities.

Rather than blaming schools straight off for a child's lack of fluency on leaving primary school maybe have a look at what is being done at home to help them. I see student's coming in to me in secondary school and the only books they have ever 'read' are their school books.

mariaalice

tly

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Teachers can only do so much with students during the school day. Children are taught English every day in primary school for 8 years. I know when I was in primary school in the 80s students by and large had a pretty good literacy and numeracy level leaving primary school. Classes were larger, and resource teaching was pretty much non existent. As were diagnoses for ADHD, dyslexia etc. What did happen more though is that parents were more involved in their children's education and children were not glued to TVs and computers and sedentary activities.

Rather than blaming schools straight off for a child's lack of fluency on leaving primary school maybe have a look at what is being done at home to help them. I see student's coming in to me in secondary school and the only books they have ever 'read' are their school books.

I am not blaming teachers at all, I have a sister and a sister in law who are teachers,( got a mixed reaction to my idea ) as I have never been a teacher maybe I am naive but it seems to me that aiming to have the vast majority of students enter secondary school with a reading age equal to their numerical age should not be a huge problem to solve...

For example poor attendance in primary should be tackled by working out average attendance and if any child fall below that it should be protectively tackled imiditly...home work not being done, they should go to a home work club....not reading or not being read to...there should be a reading club after school which the child has to attend and so on. I think little by little you could chip away at the problem and eventually solve it if you had the will ( and a little bit of money )

rainbowtrout

mariaalice wrote: »

For example poor attendance in primary should be tackled by working out average attendance and if any child fall below that it should be protectively tackled imiditly...

This is already in place. It doesn't stop some parents not sending their children to school.

mariaalice wrote: »

home work not being done, they should go to a home work club....not reading or not being read to...there should be a reading club after school which the child has to attend and so on. I think little by little you could chip away at the problem and eventually solve it if you had the will ( and a little bit of money )

Who do you propose should run all of these homework clubs and reading clubs? Are parents not capable of taking responsibility for making sure their children complete their homework and read at night? Do you think parents should be devoid of all responsibility regarding their children's education?

Miss Lockhart

I agree that this did not seem as big an issue in the 80s, even though class sizes were bigger, diagnoses of learning disabilities were much lower and resource was practically non-existent.

Like others here, I think parental influence and attitudes are a major factor in that change. However, I also think the overloaded primary curriculum has a lot to answer for.

mariaalice

Of course parents are responsible for their children's education, but I am talking about parents who are not good enough/or not able to support their children's education, after all the state provides supports in all sorts of areas where people are not able to provide for themselves.

Anyway as teachers do you think aiming to have the vast majority of children enter secondary school with a reading age equal to their numerical age is

(1) possible and a desirable aim.

Or

(2) unrealistic.

im invisible

couple of questions from someone who has nothing to do with teaching...

what is the average reading age of a say 13 year old? does the 'reading age standard' get adjusted over time?

whiteandlight

mariaalice wrote: »

Of course parents are responsible for their children's education, but I am talking about parents who are not good enough/or not able to support their children's education, after all the state provides supports in all sorts of areas where people are not able to provide for themselves.

Anyway as teachers do you think aiming to have the vast majority of children enter secondary school with a reading age equal to their numerical age is

(1) possible and a desirable aim.

Or

(2) unrealistic.

I think it is a completely unrealistic aim for schools on their own. As has been pointed out to you there are far too many other aspects to this issue including but not limited too:
Digital era including text speak/spell checks
Parental influence
Television
Curriculum trends
Changing teaching techniques including more time consuming teaching methods
Changing student attitudes
And many many more...

byhookorbycrook

As I said already, "reading age" is not the preferred measure of a child's reading ability.It is more useful to use precentiles/standard scores. Some tests used are not standardised to the Irish school population and this must also be taken into account.

MathsManiac

Back to the OP's question, the aim is, by definition, more or less impossible to achieve. It's basically like wanting everybody to be equal to or above the average height of the population.

The definition of reading age is that it's the average reading level of children of that age. Unless all children of that age have exactly the same reading ability, some will have to be lower and some higher. If you succeed in improving the reading ability of one segment of the population, such as the weakest ones, then the meaning of the term "reading age of 13" changes (upwards).

13 is more-or-less the mean chronological age of students entering second-level schools, so expecting the great majority of students to be reading at or above that level is not just "a bit unrealistic", it is effectively impossible.

A more realistic type of policy aim would be, for example, to determine what percentage of the students entering second-level schools have a reading age that is more than two years behind their chronological age, and set a target to reduce that percentage by some specified amount over the next five years.

MathsManiac

im invisible wrote: »

...
what is the average reading age of a say 13 year old?
...

13, by definition.

im invisible wrote: »

does the 'reading age standard' get adjusted over time?

Yes. Reputable testing agencies will "re-norm" their tests periodically. The documentation available from the developer should give details of the population it was normed on (standardised / calibrated on) and when. It's an expensive business, so they can't afford to do it all that often. For example, the Drumcondra Primary Reading test was, according to their website, last normed on a sample of 18,000 Irish pupils in 2006. That one is class-based rather than age-based, and there are separate spring and autumn norms, since it wouldn't be reasonable to give a test to pupils near the start of fourth class and then compare their results to those of students near the end of fourth class).

Also, by the way, the results of the Drumcondra tests are not reported as reading ages, I think, but rather as sten scores and performance bands.

jonseyblub

rainbowtrout wrote: »

This thread is as daft as your thread on one off housing causing obesity in rural kids.

What an awful comment to make. I must remember to pass all potential discussions by you before I start them to make sure they are up to your high standards. .

lily09

Op i can see what you are saying however in my limited experience there are children who are not able to achieve this aim.mchildren with great parental support, extra learning support in class etc that are just unable to match their numerical and reading age. It is a far too simplistic form of measurement to aspire to. Rather a succesful teacher should be enabled to identify that a child is achieving their full potential whatever that may be.

byhookorbycrook

*Sigh* For the last time, reading age is not a measure of language ability. Reading age, funnily enough measures reading,not receptive and expressive language. The Drumcondra reading test scores can be expressed in standard scores, sten scores and percentiles. The other reading test that is standardized to the Irish population is the MICRA-T, this as well as the scoring above will give a reading age.

dambarude

Some of the most articulate children in my class (eight year olds) would struggle reading "Biff went to the shop for sausages".

These children usually have a diagnosed learning difficulty (or should have one), or have next to no support at home. It's extremely difficult to make progress when there is no support at home.

Karpops

mariaalice wrote: »

Of course parents are responsible for their children's education, but I am talking about parents who are not good enough/or not able to support their children's education, after all the state provides supports in all sorts of areas where people are not able to provide for themselves.

Anyway as teachers do you think aiming to have the vast majority of children enter secondary school with a reading age equal to their numerical age is

(1) possible and a desirable aim.

Or

(2) unrealistic.

'not able' to support your child's education? That shouldn't even be in a parent's vocabulary.

im invisible

For some its not, thats the point