Saturdays with Mem

Using this fine Saturday to wrangle control of the upcoming Social Studies unit - and, because I'm so ADD and always need some sort of auxiliary project to bounce to, revisiting Mem Fox in an attempt to find some strategies to deal with Student E's comprehension/processing issue.

The three cuing systems used to make sense of print:

Knowledge of the world (semantics)
Knowledge of language (syntax)
Knowledge of print (graphophonics)

Semantics, the study of meaning, focuses on the relation between signifiers (e.g. words, phrases, signs and symbols) and their denotata (the actual object, action, etc. the signifiers stand for.) Mem Fox, a proponent of whole-language reading instruction, reminds us that meaning of words, not phonetic breakdown, is paramount in learning to read (and reading to learn). The multisyllabic words "proprietor," "dissenter," "indentured" and "treasonable," for example, are insignificant without useful context. With dynamic writing (sadly rare in basal readers and social studies textbooks), context is laid out so skillfully that kids don't realize they're being given a vocabulary lesson. They learn about indentured servants in the early 1600s - the terms of servitude, types of labor, consequences of overwork. Then we draw a word map that shows the origin of indenture and how it relates to teeth. (Personal note: I learned that my assumption [prior mis-knowledge] was all wrong. The relation to teeth has nothing to do with the image of masters having their servants' lives in their greedy toothsome grips, rather, with the contracts for servitude being written side-by-side, then torn with a jagged edge resembling teeth. Later, the jagged edges would be matched up to verify authenticity of the contract.)

Proficiency with syntax, the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences is formally taught, to some extent, but is largely learned through daily verbal communication – oral communication w/parents and sibs, for instance, or discretionary reading of materials whose topics are of genuine interest to the reader.

I emphasize genuine interest because I believe stronger comprehension skills are developed when there’s an actual desire to learn how to put that engine together, or to find out what happens next in the story. Syntactically speaking, if a reader is interested in what they’re reading about, a reading mistake like “Because farmers in the Middle Colonies grew so much wheat, the region called ‘the breadbasket of the colonies’” is much less likely to happen (reader omitted the word “was” between “region” and “called” – and did not notice that as it was read, the sentence then lacked a predicate.)

Graphophonics refers to the sound relationship between the orthography (symbols) and phonology (sounds) of a language.

Student E is weak in all areas, but semantics is his main weakness, and this in turn feeds his syntax weakness. Unfortunately, understanding of the world at large is the cuing system I have the least control over when it comes to my students. From basic things like cooking and shopping to grander things like interviewing community leaders and traveling - I wish we had more means to do these things, but we don't.

Have to say, though, that this school year has been an exciting one in that area, and hopefully it is the beginning of a path that we will stay on in terms of our excursions. Thanks to the initiative of our librarian/tech coordinator Dianne Pang, and UH Director of Student-Athlete Development Cindy Rote, we have taken the kids on a tour of the upper and lower campuses of UH Manoa, giving some of the students their very first exposure to a university environment. We also took them to an e-Waste recycling event in Kaka'ako, where they got to watch e-Waste collection and interview program officials. I also got to design a meal planning and budgeting field trip (Longs, Times and Zippys) that was so basic but so eye-opening for some of them, bc of limited opportunities to go to the store, compare brands and prices, compare the price and nutritional value of a home-cooked meal to those of a fast-food takeout counter. Next on the agenda for this year is a college fair of sorts - and if you think fifth grade is too early to be thinking about college, think again! ... But I digress.

So, what to do to help Student E? Monitoring performance on comprehension activities of leveled articles of interest via Achieve 3000 helps a lot. Supplementing the super-dense, reading-intensive Scott Foresman Social Studies text ("The United States") w/the simplified text "History of Our Country" (Steck-Vaughn) also helps. The most effective strategy so far (which I'm going to have to somehow increase and beef up in quality despite the fact that it's already the most time-consuming strategy of all) is having someone read with him and guide him in reflections of what he's reading. Time for oral and/or written reflections to check for understanding and identify areas of need within the content areas - priceless, and so rare. Lucky me, though - Student E loves an audience and he thrives on praise, which makes my job a little easier. "Let no improvement go unnoticed" is Mem Fox's philosophy. Mine too.

Back to Social Studies.