City Schools Poised to Implement a Novel Idea in Reading : Education: After several months of a pilot program, teachers are excited about a method that emphasizes self-esteem and reading pleasure on a class-wide basis. The next step is to convince parents.

Students in Betty Rios’ third-grade class at Balboa Elementary School found their world of reading turned upside down this year.

Instead of being split into three reading groups as in previous years--high, middle and low based on their general ability to decode sounds--they all share the same textbook and class novels.

Instead of using so-called “basal” readers--those with stories written specifically for reading instruction at each grade and ability level, and with limited vocabulary and ideas--they share children’s literature written as much to stimulate the pleasure of reading as to push skills.

And instead of working separately on skills--practicing grammar and spelling on work sheets, on sounding out word parts or on choosing the right multiple-choice answer about a story’s theme--the students merge reading, writing and discussion of a story along with the associated skills.

Unknown to them, they are part of a sea change in the way reading is taught in the San Diego Unified School District and throughout California, the result of new state education guidelines for elementary and junior high school language arts known as whole language.

So when Rios’ students sat down earlier in the year to learn about famed French Impressionist artist Claude Monet, they first talked as a class with her about what artists do, about what someone does to become an artist and about how art might differ from country to country. Rios shared with her students--most of whose families emigrated from Mexico--her experiences at art museums in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City and San Diego.

Then the students read the story out loud together, and later they learned the meaning of Impressionism , posed questions to each other about Monet, prepared art work based on their understanding of French art and wrote essays in their journals using the new vocabulary and grammar skills Rios emphasized.

All 70,000 elementary-age students within San Diego city schools--the nation’s eighth-largest urban system--will participate in the new curriculum beginning with the 1990-91 school year. The results from several months of pilot teaching by Rios and several dozen other pilot instructors will be presented to school trustees today, along with recommendations for final textbook purchases.

While smaller, more homogeneous districts countywide began implementing the guidelines this year, San Diego held off a year to review competing texts and experiment with approaches for non-fluent English speakers and special-education students.

District reading scores on standardized tests--indeed, scores nationwide--have been disappointing for several years.

Administrators believe that for many students, the present system instills neither technical mastery nor love of learning. Many teachers say that traditional materials written for the low reading groups were boring both for them and for their students.

Now, by eliminating standard ability grouping, basal texts and isolated skills instruction, district administrators have thrust themselves into the strong, often contentious nationwide debate over what to emphasize when teaching reading and how to measure results.

While top officials, from schools Supt. Tom Payzant on down, cite extensive national research to buttress their approach, they concede they have a lot of work to do in convincing parents and in training their 2,800 elementary teachers for the move away from traditional methods developed over several decades. The district could face pointed questions from parents of high achievers, who have already expressed doubt about mixing their children academically with slower readers.

“It’s a real challenge, no question,” said Melinda Martin, who is coordinating the new curriculum adoption. “We have to make teachers comfortable with the materials and make them believe they will work in the classroom. Only when they see kids and parents excited about reading and performing better will we see the momentum starting.”

Martin will depend greatly on a core of about 80 teachers, already persuaded--through experience with the new books and methodology--to conduct ongoing workshops. They will discuss with other teachers how to use the texts, how to use reading to teach writing and phonics, how to encourage students to work in small, cooperative groups and how to help parents and teachers raise their expectations.

“I had some hesitations before, how all of the children would work together in a single atmosphere,” said Jan Richards, a second-grade teacher at the Grant science magnet elementary school in Mission Hills. “What I’ve seen are children who would have been in the low group having their self-esteem just zoom because they find themselves reading the same book with the kids they know (were) at the top group before.”

“It’s not an artificial self-esteem,” said Kay Karzen, a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at Fremont Elementary in Old Town. “The children feel more in command of what they are doing.”

Grant teacher Anne Marshall, with a fifth-grade class that includes many high-achieving students, said she finds student changes do not stop with greater self-esteem.

“If a child continually sees others getting up in front of 30 peers and reading their journal, they also begin to put more time into the reading, and start to understand more,” she said.

Marshall finds her class “more skilled now in writing, in picking out details, in reading a novel and predicting outcomes better, and in going beyond what they have read in class to write epilogues, for example.”

“The children just beam when they see me getting out the reading books,” Richards said. “It’s not a cure-all, but, on the whole, it will meet more needs of more children.”

Kindergarten teacher Mary Simpson at Sandburg Elementary in Mira Mesa said the program fits in with new ideas about the way children develop at different speeds intellectually during their early school years.

“I’ve taught 25 years, and I really like the way this brings everything together in an integrated way and does not label a little guy a failure (in kindergarten) because he can’t learn as quickly,” she said.

None of the pilot teachers found any problems with more advanced readers being held back by the lack of clearly defined ability groups, Martin said.

Said Chris Reising, a sixth-grade teacher at Kennedy Elementary in Southeast San Diego: “In cooperative groups, the higher kids help the lower kids to achieve more, and the so-called lower kids bring a perspective that the higher readers don’t always have.”

In addition, more advanced students can write journals or commentaries in greater depth “to whatever level they are capable of going,” Morrison said.

All of the teachers stress that they can group students flexibly for extra work on particular skills, such as vocabulary, phonics, spelling or writing.

“Periodic grouping is fine for specific purposes, but we don’t want yearlong ability grouping, because that ends up labeling kids,” Payzant said. “Students become locked into expectation levels they can never shed.”

The district says it will continue to teach phonics in early grades, where students sound out or decode letters and groups of letters. For decades, phonics has been the major approach to reading instruction nationwide, and its advocates have debated whole-language proponents over the better method of teaching reading.

But educators have been admonished to do both in a major new report by the federally funded Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois. California schools Supt. Bill Honig endorses the concept, citing what he calls the state’s “eclectic approach,” in which phonics are an important intermediate step to be used along with literature.

“Skills are a large part of the program, but we approach them differently,” kindergarten teacher Simpson said. “For example, we may read a poem about jumping rope, and talk about a lot of jumping activities, and then we pull out of that the word jump and the sound for J, and we practice it that way. . . . They pick up on it right away, because they can relate to the sound, and it’s not just practicing Js in isolation.”

Former Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education Chester Finn, now a professor at Vanderbilt University, has said that a “book should want to make students want to go to a library and read as well, not just do phonics and find the main idea” on a work sheet.

All of the pilot teachers stressed the importance of preparing their colleagues--and parents--for the changes through the ongoing workshops, which Martin has promised to set up.

Richards, the teacher at Grant, said the textbooks offer wonderful guides for teachers. “Once everyone becomes familiar with the materials, they will see the rewards from going with this big jump,” she said.

“I have stressed to teachers not yet involved to learn the writing process even ahead of next year, of starting to use cooperative groups, of starting to use a literature book with the whole class.”

Simpson does not discount initial teacher reluctance, however. “It took some two or three months to see how everything really fits together, that there is a process where I might not see the results in my students until a month or two or three later. Teachers won’t feel comfortable until they go through it. . . . It’s like reading about jumping out of a plane as opposed to actually doing it.”

Simpson will also urge her colleagues to talk with parents. “I explained the entire program with parents at the beginning of the year, that there was a lot of research behind the program and that it would be just as much adjustment for them as for teachers and that they should come to class or call me any time.”

Teachers and parents will also be introduced to district efforts to measure student achievement through journals, portfolios of essays and discussions, as well as through standardized testing. Nationwide, educators are revising tests so that they require students to demonstrate their use of skills, rather than just testing their knowledge of them.

But Morrison said that “teachers will have some qualms” because the present tests will still be used to judge achievement during the first several years, even while teachers spend less time drilling students on skills, which has been the traditional way of preparing for such tests.

“I know there is going to be a continuing press from parents, the public and the larger community for some kind of data to demonstrate we are moving (forward), at the same time we are trying to (perfect) the new performance-based evaluations,” Payzant said.

But Simpson has few worries on that score. “I took last year’s test and gave it to the kids here now, even though the tests were designed just for skills instruction,” she said. “And my children did better, even though they are having more fun and doing far more than just skills practice this year under the new program.”