Reflection on MOST Environments

“A major goal of MOST environments is to accelerate children’s learning by organizing instruction around rich, meaningful “macrocontexts” that students and teachers can mutually share and explore…(w)e want to make it possible for children who are at risk of school failure to interact with, teach, and learn from other students who may be more developmentally advanced.”

There is no question that “(l)iteracy skills are foundational for lifelong learning” and that “(s)uccess is particularly important at the beginning stages of reading because strategies, behaviors, and beliefs established early are difficult to change.” It is probably true as well that “at-risk students often receive instruction in phonics, vocabulary and decoding, where each is taught as an isolated skill that is unintegrated with other aspects of thinking and learning.”

Maybe it’s because I have no background in teaching reading or working with at-risk students. Or maybe I’m getting crusty in my old age. Whatever the reason may be, I’m not terribly impressed by this approach.

Our reading related an anecdote where some at-risk students were read a story and others saw the video version of the same story. The students who saw the video version were more able than the others to “retell the story and answer the comprehension questions.” Facepalm. Of course they were. One normally extracts more understanding of a story through use of video than solely through use of text.

Another important feature in this methodology is telling the story to a puppet. As one who intends to create instruction to be administered by Internet or other A-V means, I am struggling to imagine young readers telling the story to an inanimate object after seeing the video on the computer, or even in a classroom. I see frustration looming. Money’s scarce, maybe they can “talk to the hand!”

After reading about the anecdote about using video to support a story about Donald Duck. It seems interesting, has some degree of common sense, but the time and technology required to dice up a story and interject video in strategic locations would be prohibitive. Once again, time and money rear their ugly heads.

I’m sure that I am coming off as bitterly opposed to this approach, and in reality, I am not, it is just that I think that there are better methods for teaching reading comprehension to at-risk students, especially via Internet. If studies show that this approach is effective, so be it. I’m just not excited about children relating stories to puppets and creating a rubric that will determine that child’s reading scores. Teachers can always motivate students to read by choosing books and magazines which appeal to the students.

I began to wonder whatever happened to Sesame Street. As far as I know, the show was cancelled years ago, but it seemed to be fairly effective at teaching children how to read. Children loved the characters, and there was plenty of music and special effects to bedazzle younger learners, essentially selling them on the idea of reading. So I did a little research, and, surely enough, Sesame Street continues to influence the teaching of reading to younger students:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8404427/Phonics-QandA-why-Sesame-Street-learning-is-making-a-comeback.html

I decided to do a little research and came across a Master’s Thesis by Ellen K. Closs. She offers plenty of useful advice on this subject, and after reading her thesis, would tend to lean towards her methodology for teaching younger at-risk readers: Here’s a link to her thesis:

http://www.readinglady.com/mosaic/tools/TeachingReadingComprehensiontoStrugglingReaders-MastersThesisbyEllen.pdf

So, in conclusion, I see time involved and technology needed to create the videos to be a restriction to the use of this approach. If the appropriate videos are manufactured by the folks at Vanderbilt, I suppose they’re worth a shot. At-risk students apparently do benefit from their use, apparently, at least according to the literature. I’m not certain how to assess student learning, unless the students wanted to e-mail their instructor(s) relating what happened in the video.

Once again, I just do not see using this methodology for creation of internet and distance-based education. Embedding information into the videos is absolutely beneficial, and with the time and technology to do so, I suppose that it’s worth the effort. YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustreem would all be excellent ways of transmitting the videos to interested parties.

As for the puppets…well…the students can find their own!