Literacy in Schools Reflects Literacy at Home

Louis Rosen’s letter on March 10 points out correctly that the problem with California children’s reading performance has a lot to do with literacy at home. He indicates that one way to overcome illiteracy is to provide literacy programs for parents.

That is already happening in many of our schools.

Washington Elementary School in Santa Ana [has] wonderful programs. There is a reading program for parents and preschoolers. Parents come to school on Friday afternoons to read to their toddlers. They are instructed in ways to bring love for books to the children.

The school also has a reading program where parents come with the children before school starts and together spend some time reading in the child’s classroom.

There is a literary, not literacy, club at Washington. Parents meet twice a month to share what they are reading as a club. This group also includes teachers, the principal and the school psychologist.

There are wonderful programs all around. One must look, not misjudge.

RUTH COTTO-SILVA

Santa Ana

* Columnist Agustin Gurza brought up some interesting points in “Drowning in English Immersion,” March 9.

The students who are “picking up English quickly” are the same ones who were working in Spanish. Could that foundation be what’s making the difference?

But how is the kindergartner who has no English and no help in English at home going to do when required to do more challenging work in second and third grade?

Proposition 227 says a child should be fluent in English, written and spoken, after one year of immersion. I’ll check back on my school’s kindergartners next year.

Some districts are not offering bilingual programs unless 20 families in the same grade level request it. This, despite the interpretation of the law allowing schools to offer the program if they have the infrastructure. It isn’t as easy as some people think.

ANA-MARIA GREENE

Language Arts Resource Teacher

Garden Grove

* I am following with great interest your stories on reading and improving the schools. I have a first-grader who is struggling to learn to read. The first thing I am always asked is, “Do you read to him?” I have read to him every night since he was a baby. In fact, he gets very upset if I try to get out of it for any reason.

Another common belief is that phonics is the whole answer. My child was evaluated and found to have a more visual learning style, which is more common in boys, and true phonics doesn’t help them like a student with a more verbal learning style. Lucky for us, both styles are presented in his classroom.

The third belief is that starting sooner is better. Since no one really understands the whole magic of learning to read, there is no button to push. There are no steps that guarantee success by a certain time.

If a child is not ready, if the brain has not matured, then pushing reading is self-defeating, because the child cannot comply and may learn to avoid the whole uncomfortable process.

Just raising standards will not help. Standards need to consider what a child is capable of accomplishing and that all are not ready at the same time.

MARSHA F. LINDSEY

Tustin