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Gilliam, Gerla, and Wright (2004) also searched out strategies to help Hispanic students succeed in school. They recognized the importance of a parent’s involvement on a student’s literacy development. They conducted a study that investigated how to involve low income parents who had not been successful in school themselves in the literacy experiences of their children. Many parents want to help their children be more successful than they were, but do not know how. Classes for parents of kindergarten students were conducted to help them help their child succeed in reading.

The Texas Literacy Council showed that 40% of the minority families in the state were illiterate. It also “noted that many parents wanted to help their children, but they simply were not knowledgeable enough to provide the necessary assistance” (Gilliam et al., 2004, p. 227). These researchers decided to take on a project to help show minority parents what they could do to help their children’s literacy development through a series of classes.

The study (Gilliam et al., 2004) was conducted in an elementary school in a Southwestern city. The school was located in one of the most low income areas of the city. It served a high number of low SES and minority students. The participants were the parents of 20 kindergarten students. Eighty percent of the parents were Hispanic, 15% were African American, and five percent were Caucasian. Each parent was paid ten dollars for each session they came to and $25 at the end of the series if they had come to all the meetings. Childcare was provided by university students during all sessions for not only the kindergarten children of participants, but also their siblings.

To understand more about who the people who would want to participate in these classes were, a survey was given (Gilliam et. al., 2004). It showed that 100% of the families thought reading was important, and 65% said they read to their child daily.

Upon further interviews, the researchers found that some of the information given on these surveys was exaggerated. Perhaps parents did value reading and so exaggerated the amount they read together as a family because they did not want to look bad.

There were 10 sessions of the program, all held in the school library (Gilliam et al., 2004). The first night the school librarian showed how to check out books and the resources available, and after that session and all the rest of them, parents stayed after with their children and checked out books. The bookmobile from the public library also came and parents received library cards and bookmobile schedules. Other sessions included “storytelling in the home…choosing when, how, and what to read to children…using puppets in reading and storytelling…making and using literacy games… [and] reading and writing poetry”( Gilliam et al., 2004, p. 231).

In interviews conducted after the classes were complete (during the 10^th session), 100% of parents said that their children asked to be read to much more often after the end of the sessions than before (Gilliam et al., 2004). Half of the families described turning off the television in order to read as a family, and all reported they were being purposeful to make time to read together as a family. The researchers contribute this success to their program, but also the students could have been exposed to literacy at school and may have wanted to read more anyway, an outside factor that was not acknowledged in the results. The researchers also report that parents stated they felt better about their parenting, but do not give a percentage.  In fact there are three results where no number or percentage is given as to the amount of parents who agreed with the statement. The other two were that kindergarten students and even some younger siblings were pretending to read to the parents, a result of familiarity with text and the concept of what reading is, and parents feeling there was more bonding occurring between them and their child.

The fact that no percentages are reported for these aspects makes me think that perhaps there was not a high number who did agree, or else it would have been reported. This is deceitful and takes away from the credibility of the study.

The findings are dependable in some ways, but they do not relate the information to the children’s performance in school so we cannot measure if it had a difference there, which makes it difficult to apply to the query of this paper.  All we can see is that families were bonding, not that it helped the children in school. Credibility was also an issue, in that the researchers dismissed the findings of the preliminary survey as exaggerated, and neglected to report numbers of subjects agreeing with a statement on three different occasions. If they told readers how the survey was exaggerated, or how they knew it had been, that would have been more credible. And if researchers had reported percentages of the results, positive or negative, on each of their findings, they would be more convincing. There were definitely problems with the reporting, and a lack of proof that the program worked to enhance school performance.

Lane, Menzies, Munton, Von Duering, and English (2005) looked at the effect of literacy intervention on a student’s social skills, in class and with peers. One student was followed for the case study. The subject was a male kindergartener who was 5 years old. He was classified as at risk by the school in both literacy and behavior. He was able to identify letters at mid year, but his word attack skills were low.

The intervention provided was small group work with two other kindergarteners (Lane et al., 2005). The literacy specialist for the school worked with them three to four times a week for 30 minutes each week for nine weeks. The curriculum used was the Phonics Chapter Books Program. It included independent readings and explicit phonics instruction, as well as work in phonemic awareness, phoneme grapheme correspondence, sight words, reading, and dictation.

Data was collected by research assistants from the college who were trained by researchers (Lane et al., 2005). Phonological awareness was tested by onset fluency, where students must identify the first sound in a word. The ability to name letters was also tested. The student had to name randomly ordered letters, both in upper and lower cases. These skills were assessed DIBELS subtests.

The college students also assessed the subject’s inappropriate behaviors in class and in social situations (Lane et al., 2005). It was found to decrease drastically in both settings. The study showed increases in phonemic awareness correlated with a decrease in disruptive behavior. The subject also rated it as a positive experience, and said he wished the classes would not have ended when they did.

The researchers (Lane et al., 2005) recognize their own limitations in the fact that the use of only one participant detracts form external validity. Also, the skills were only tested and there was no data collected on how he applied these skills in his regular classroom. We might more fully understand the development of this young boy if we understood how he was able to participate in the regular literacy instruction after the intervention. It is hard to say that with only one student if the results are reliable, and would be repeatable with another student who had the same issues. Perhaps for this boy his misbehavior was a reaction to feeling incompetent. Other students may act up for different reasons, and so intervention linguistically would not affect their behavior patterns.

Pollard-Durodola, Cedillo, and Denton (2004) studied the strategies that are used to teach phonemic awareness and early word reading in Spanish. Since English has a deep orthography (where the rules for pronunciation of letters vary) and Spanish has a shallow orthography, where most letters are pronounced the same in any situation (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). Thus, findings from English language studies may not be generalizable to Spanish speaking students. This study set out to find out how phonemic, syllabic, or whole word recognition strategies were used in Spanish speaking classrooms to teach beginning reading.

Research has shown that Spanish vowel sounds are more consistently pronounced than English, and are more of a focus of early instruction (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). There is also a stronger focus on the syllable as the unit of sound, versus the phoneme as the common focus in English reading instruction. There is also more focus on onset and rime in English reading instruction than in Spanish.

Pollard-Durodola et al. (2004) conducted a case study of two bilingual kindergarten teachers who taught their students in Spanish. The focus was on what reading strategies were used, how they changed over the year as students became more proficient, and how instruction differed for low, medium, and high ability readers.

Teachers were videotaped and the tapes were analyzed. Field notes were also taken, as well as interviews with the teachers conducted. Students were assessed using the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery Revised Spanish Form word attack subtest at the end of the year.

Subjects were from the classes of these two teachers (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). Teachers had classes just over 20 students, but self identified three high lever readers, three low level students, and four average students to participate in the study, making a total of 20 students to participate in the analysis. The school was in a Southwestern city. Just under 76% of students in the district were low SES, marked by the receipt of free lunches. No information is given on the SES of students in the study.

Each class included whole group literacy instruction and small groups that were leveled by ability (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). From the videotapes, different types of instruction were identified and grouped. Drawing attention to specific phonemes, attempting to recognize the word as a whole, focus on onset and rime, drawing attention to a syllable, and a nonspecific strategy where the teacher simply said no or asked the student to try again were the strategies identified. Inter-rater reliability for categorization of strategies ranged from 74% to 83% between the two teachers.

At the beginning of the year, there tended to be a stronger emphasis on sounding out phonetically, as well as syllabication and word attack (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). As the year progressed, there was less emphasis on phonemes and more on whole words. There was also a stronger emphasis on whole words with advanced readers. One teacher used the segmentation of words only 30% of the time with advanced students, and 76% of the time with low level students at the beginning of the year. The second teacher used sounding out 25% of the time with advanced readers, 43 % of the time with middle level readers, and 18% of the time with low level students. This differs from teacher one, low level students in this class used sight word identification 53% of the time, much more often than the first class. Toward the end of the year, there was less emphasis on sounding out, the teacher said try again or told the students the word more often than at the beginning of the year, perhaps trying to promote whole word recognition to a greater extent. The second teacher used word level identification 70% of the time at mid year, and 84% of the time at the end of the year. Both classrooms moved from use of phoneme and syllable sounds to an emphasis on whole word recognition over the course of the year. They both used smaller units of sound to sound out words in lower level groups than in higher level groups, where the word was the focus rather than its parts.

In interviews, teachers did not self identify this tendency to use whole word recognition strategies to the extent they actually implemented it in their teaching (Pollard- Durodola et al., 2004). There was a list of words the district wanted all students to know, and one teacher identified with trying to teach these words, but the other did not recognize the use of this strategy and talked about sounding words out with phonemes and syllables. They recognized the use of phonemic units for struggling readers to help break down words into their phonological parts.  It was found that both classes of students were above average on the word attack assessment at the end of the year.

The results included the fact that even sight word recognition may depend on knowledge of the alphabet, to quickly identify sounds in a word (Pollard-Durodola et al., 2004). The emphasis on this part of reading development may not need to be as strong in a language where rules are more general. The emphasis on phonemic units rather than whole words for the less proficient readers may indicate their need for more focus on the alphabetic principle than more advanced readers. The study showed that teachers often encouraged students to read at the word level, but when mistakes were made, resorted to syllabic and phonemic units to correct mistakes.

A critique of Pollard-Durodola et al.’s study (2004) may be that it did not include any information on the English portions of the program. It indicated that both teachers were bilingual. Perhaps there was not instruction in English at all, but indicating that the teachers were bilingual and the schools were in the United States, one might assume that there were portions in English.

In summary, Carlisle and Beeman (2000) showed that students who were taught in their native language were just as strong in English reading and writing, and stronger in reading and writing in their native language, than students who were taught in English. Pollard-Durodola et al. (2004) showed that, in classrooms that use Spanish as the language of instruction, there is a tendency to use more whole word recognition strategies than breaking a word down into phonemes.

Denton, et al. (2004) showed that when students were tutored with read well, it improved only context free reading and did not help students with comprehension.

Chappe et al. (2002) also discovered that students of all language backgrounds could find success in decoding with explicit, systematic phonics instruction, though comprehension was not addressed. Barone (2003) found that less students ended the year below grade level in second grade when their study had been a whole language approach, rather than more ending below grade level in first grade and kindergarten when the focus was on phonics.

De la Colina et al. (2001) showed that students who were highly motivated to read improved more than students who weren’t motivated, regardless of ability level. When Gilliam et al. (2004) conducted classes to involve parents in reading with their children, 100% of families reported reading more together.

Barone (2003) conducted a multi-case study in order to find out what teaching methods were most effective for low income students in a school with a majority of English Language learners. The researcher chose 16 students in a sample of opportunity. She chose the first children to arrive for their assessments with the kindergarten teacher on the first week of school.  She attempted to include an even number of boys and girls by refraining from recruiting students of the sex she had too many of, until the sexes were even. She had the assistance of a bilingual English-Spanish speaking aide in recruiting children of Spanish speaking parents.

Of the 16 subjects selected, 3 dropped out of the study (Barone, 2003). This left the researchers with 6 boys and 7 girls. Ten of the children chosen were learning English as a second language. Nine of these children spoke Spanish, and 1 spoke Tagalog. Three of the chosen students spoke English as their first language. The inclusion of these students in the study seems unnecessary, as there were no recommendations made for their literary needs, even though of the 3 students that finished second grade below grade level in reading, 2 were native English speakers. The researcher also notes that 3 of the children attended preschool, but does not connect this information with their later performance in reading. The information seems unnecessary to include in the study if it is not going to be connected to the conclusion.

The school the children attended (Barone, 2003) had a high population of English as a second language students. Of the 600 students who attended the school, 60% were not native English speakers and 85% of the students here Hispanic. Eighty percent of the student body received free or reduced lunch. The school was in a medium sized school district in a Western city.

There were 17 teachers who participated in the study (Barone, 2003). Three kindergarten teachers, eight first grade teachers, and six second grade teachers. Only one of the seventeen teachers was male. Only one of the teachers was fluent in English and Spanish. In kindergarten, one teacher taught a morning and afternoon session, and two teachers shared a morning and an afternoon session, alternating days so the students had a different teacher every other day. The first and second grade teachers all taught in pairs, so one large class would have two teachers. Unfortunately, no information was given about class sizes. The teachers were provided with professional development in literacy weekly.

The study (Barone, 2003) was conducted by observing in classrooms and interviewing students and teachers, as well as collecting student work and assessments. The end of the year interviews were tape recorded, but the others were not. The notes for the other interviews were made after the interview. The researcher does not explain why only some of the interviews were tape recorded or why no record was made of the beginning of the year or mid year interviews while they were occurring. This makes the ability to confirm the research difficult, since no notes were made during the interview and they were not taped. The children were interviewed about their second grade literacy experiences at the end of that year, interviews lasting about 5 minutes. These interviews with the students could have been conducted more than once, perhaps at the end of each school year. Also, children may have a hard time remembering retrospectively their literacy experiences over the entire year, and more complete assessments of the children’s feelings about their literacy experiences could have come from interviews even once or twice during the year as well as at the end.

The researcher (Barone, 2003) and a doctoral student took field notes simultaneously in the same classroom and compared notes until their observations were 90% similar in their recording of teaching and learning activities, then they observed in different classes. The children were observed once a week in their classrooms during reading instruction. Kindergarteners were observed for an entire half day session, while first and second graders were observed during their reading block. One full day at the beginning and one at the end of the year was spent in each child’s classroom to identify how reading and writing were incorporated into the rest of the curriculum, if that is enough to accurately assess that. Depending on scheduling or where the class is at in a unit, it is possible that they might be doing less or more embedded literacy instruction than is the norm for the room. From these literacy block and full day interviews, a literacy profile was created for each student. These literacy profiles were shared with the teachers for accuracy, and for additional information. This could be problematic, because a teacher’s own view of their instruction could be biased, and it is the job of the researcher to see with a clear view what is occurring. Interviewing the teacher’s about what literacy activities were happening would be acceptable, but having them check the researchers impartial observations for validity could lead to the information collected not being impartial after all.

A literacy profile was compiled for each grade in Barone’s study (2003). Kindergarten classrooms varied in the method of literacy instruction. One classroom had a focus on phonemic awareness, reading aloud, and attempts at book discussions in English. Since the children struggled with the English discussions, the book readings and discussions were discontinued by November in favor of whole group phonics activities.

The other classroom, which had a different teacher every other day, had vastly different expectations with each different teacher. One teacher read to the students but did not encourage discussion, and did not read any of the books a second time. The other teacher spent a lot of time having the children memorize how to spell their names and completing phonics worksheets. The phonics principles were not applied to the books that were read aloud. Neither classroom provided opportunity to practice conversational or academic English. Many children talked in their small groups in Spanish. There was little support bridging home language to school language. Only 4 of the kindergarteners had a rudimentary understanding of the phoneme grapheme relationship at the end of the year, and 2 of the children could not write their name

There are some concerns about the Barone’s (2003) reporting here. She states that only 4 of the 13 kindergarteners “…had a rudimentary understanding of sound/symbol relationships at the end of the year” (p. 984). Later on the same page she summarizes “…the majority of the focal children left with very rudimentary knowledge of the alphabetic principle and little understanding of books” (p. 984). 4 of 13 is not a majority in any sense of the word, and reporting it this way makes readers question the credibility of the rest of the information reported.

The First Grade Classrooms included in Barone’s (2003) study had a major curricular emphasis on phonics and decoding. The teachers said in interviews that they believed students needed a foundation in phonics to gain the skills for reading. Children were grouped in small ability groups for instruction, but all students completed the same worksheet packets, which were not leveled for ability or English proficiency. All teachers read to the students each day, and leveled texts were available to the students. One of the classrooms was very different. Students in this classroom copied sentences form the board instead of composing sentences, and there were no leveled texts in the classroom library. Three of the 4 focal children in this room qualified for Reading Recovery, a tutoring program, and a total of 3 from the three other classrooms combined qualified.

The emphasis on phonemic awareness, decoding, and phonics gives children skills in those areas, but there was little attention paid to comprehension, vocabulary, or writing in any of the classrooms. By the end of first grade, all children were able to independently read texts and write short stories. Three children were above grade level, while 3 more exceeded the schools expectations but were still in the first grade range.

One child was at grade level, and 6 were below grade level. Of the 4 who had finished kindergarten with knowledge of grapheme phoneme correspondence, only 1 finished first below grade level.

Second Grade consisted of a more whole language approach, with a greater focus on meaning than on decoding (Barone, 2003). During, Daily Oral Language, students corrected sentences and discussed errors. Teachers read aloud and students discussed books. The students were in leveled reading groups and leveled texts were used. The focus of the reading was on meaning and reactions to plot and character. Students used Venn Diagrams and KWL(know, want to know, and learned) charts to help with understanding texts. Students wrote their own stories and books, on topics of their own choosing. Classroom discussions incorporated Think Pair Share, which helped students less proficient in English have a chance to talk their thoughts over so they felt comfortable articulating them in the large group. In one classroom, students were encouraged to make connections between their native language and English. Students were praised for native language abilities. The teachers this year helped students have academic conversations with each other, which teachers in previous years had not attempted or had given up on. At the end of the year, 8 children were at grade level, 2 children were above grade level, and only 3 were below grade level. Five of the children who ended first grade below grade level ended second grade at grade level. The focus on meaning may have made the difference for them.

The researcher (Barone, 2003) does not address the possibility that decoding does not work well for students who do not understand the words they are decoding. Students who do not know the meaning of an English word cannot comprehend its meaning by decoding alone, but this is not addressed as a reason the meaning based approach succeeded. Barone also does not address the possibility that the student’s background in phonics could have been the reason they succeeded in second grade. She concludes …after the emphasis on letter knowledge in kindergarten and phonics in first grade, the teachers in second grade utilized a more balanced approach to literacy that included shared, guided, and independent reading. This more complex curriculum enriched students’ literacy learning. (p. 1014).

She had followed two of the students, Sandra and Julio, more closely than the other students through the two years. Julio never comprehended the alphabetic principle or phonics, and he ended the second grade below grade level. Sandra on the other hand had struggled at first but in first grade began to comprehend decoding and phonics. She ended the year only slightly below grade level. In second grade she skyrocketed and ended the year beyond grade level. The omission of the possibility that her background in phonics set her up for success in a literature based classroom discounts the role phonics may have played in Sandra’s success. By saying that the second grade’s meaning based approach worked better than phonics, the researcher does not consider that a background in decoding may indeed be necessary for that approach to work.  Since Julio did not have the background and did not succeed in a whole language classroom, and Sandra did have the phonics background and went on to succeed, this is a possibility that should have been considered.

There were some credibility problems throughout the study (Barone, 2003). Some conclusions did not seem to fit with the data, and some important possibilities were omitted  Some have already been reviewed, but additionally, the researcher concludes that the lack of connection to the students’ home language in kindergarten caused the students achievement problems. But she does not address the fact that half of the English speaking students finished kindergarten below grade level. If these students also failed to thrive in the environment, then there were obviously more reasons for a lack of success than language, since their home language was the same as what was spoken at school. It seems like she wanted to draw that conclusion and ignored this fact to do so. Also, at the end of second grade 1 Spanish and 2 English speaking students were below grade level. So perhaps the differences in achievement have little to do with language at all, but with natural abilities and learning styles, or other variables.

The researcher’s (Barone, 2003) numbers again do not match when she states that two children maintained status as above grade level from kindergarten through second grade, Heidee and Eric, but when you look at her chart on the next page, Eric was not above grade level in first grade. Only Heidee was above grade level all three years.

The researcher (Barone, 2003) concludes that teachers can change the literacy achievement of students by valuing their language and encouraging academic discussion. Also, a teacher’s attitude and teaching methods can take a student who is on track to continue failing and move them onto a path of success. While it is true that significantly more students ended second grade at or above grade level in reading and writing, it made no difference for Julio, who continued to fail even in a whole language classroom.

Additionally, the researcher states “the results of this study showed no clear pattern of literacy development for children learning English as a new language” (p. 1014), and on the same page states “schools and teachers can change achievement patterns of students in reading, even after first grade” (p. 1014). A critical reader may ask, if there is no pattern, how can the study show that the pattern can be changed?

Gunn, Smolkowski, Biglan, Black, and Blair, (2005) studied the effects of supplemental reading instruction on struggling Hispanic and non Hispanic readers over a period of four years. Subjects were chosen from 14 schools in four Oregon communities. From a population of 4,004 students, 359 families were recruited after an assessment of reading difficulties or social skills problems. 60 subjects dropped out of the study for various reasons. 299 participants, 159 of whom were Hispanic and 140 of whom were not Hispanic, completed the study. There were 161 boys in the study and 138 girls.

There were 51 kindergartners, 87 first graders, 90 second graders, and 71 third graders. The information about ethnicity and language use came from parent interviews. 94% of Hispanic students were from Mexico, the rest from Central America or other Latin American countries. 9% of the Hispanic students were born in the United States and 85% were born in Mexico. Eighty four percent of the Hispanic families spoke only or mostly Spanish at home. Parents were paid to participate in the study (Gunn et al. 2005), $30 to complete a parent questionnaire at the end of each year, and $15 for providing information on the social behavior of their children at the beginning of the study, the end of year two, and the end of year four.

Subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of achievement and the Walker- McConnell Test of Social Skills were given to the subjects (Gunn et al. 2005). Students in each social skills category were grouped in matched pairs by ethnicity, starting with the pair of least skilled readers, then assigned randomly to a condition: either intervention was provided or not. Supplemental instruction was provided 30 minutes daily, as well as parent training and social skill intervention for students in the experimental group.

Half the students received 6 months of supplemental reading instruction in the first year of the study, and received supplemental instruction for the entirety of the second year (Gunn et al. 2005). At the beginning of the first year, all students were assessed using the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Achievement, and then were again assessed at the end of the year for 4 years. Assessors were not aware of the children’s membership in control or intervention groups. Supplemental instruction was only provided for the first two years, but testing continued to assess if there were long term effects of the supplemental instruction.

Students were pulled for supplemental instruction during times that did not interfere with classroom instruction (Gunn et al. 2005). The instruction was conducted in their home rooms. Nine instructional assistants worked with the students in small groups of two to three. For supplemental instruction, Reading Mastery was used for first or second grade students. The program consists of phonemic awareness, phoneme and grapheme correspondence, and decoding. Corrective Reading was used when the students reached third and fourth grades. This program is for older students who do not have the primary skills. It covers the same components as Reading Mastery, with topics interesting to older students, and moves at a faster rate. No information was given as to the program used with kindergarten intervention subjects. These groups usually spent five to seven minutes on phonics, 10-15 on word reading and spelling, and the rest of the session on reading passages to build fluency and accuracy.

Contingencies for Learning Academic and Social Skills and Dina Dinosaurs Social Skills and Problem-Solving Curriculum were used to help students in the intervention group improve their social skills (Gunn et al. 2005). These programs are designed to reinforce positive behaviors and help children reduce inappropriate behavior.

Gunn et al. (2005), concluded that intervention students gained much faster (p=.0052) than controls, who started at the same place at T1. Though at T3 there was not a significant difference between groups (p=.0887), the students letter- word identification did grow faster than control group ( p=.0092). At T5 (the end of the fourth year), showed that even two years after the end of intervention, these students were still significantly ahead of the control group in word attack (p=.0346). The group was no longer improving at a greater rate than the control group (p=.5461), but they still scored above the control group on the assessment.

Word attack scores showed that students in the intervention group performed significantly better (p= .0013) at T3 than students in the control group (Gunn et al. 2005). At T5, there was not a significant difference between the groups (p= .8274). Control groups were actually increasing at a higher rate (t=8.40, p<.0001) than intervention students (t= -4.23, p<.0001). There was a significant difference in the rate of improvement between ethnic groups.  Hispanic students scores started off lower than their non Hispanic counterparts. Results showed that non-Hispanic students in the experimental group improved at a greater rate (p<.0001) than non-Hispanic control groups, and Hispanic students with the same treatment improved even more quickly (p=.0228) than their matched pair. This phenomenon faded at T3, where there was not a significant difference between races (p=.0954).

For oral fluency, students in the intervention group improved at a faster rate than the control group (p=.0129) (Gunn et al. 2005). At T3, the difference in abilities between groups was significant (p=.0356). At T5 the difference was even greater (p=.0144). “…Intervetnion students at T1 read less than 2 cwpm faster than controls, but by T5, they read almost 14 CWPM faster” (Biglan et al., 2005. 78.)

The study (Gunn et al. 2005) concludes that the results showed that intervention helped for all students on word attack and comprehension. On word attack, Hispanic and non-Hispanic students both improved more than their matched pair in the control group, even though the slopes started to come together at T5. Hispanic students improved faster than non-Hispanic students. At the final assessment (T5), at the end of four years and two years after the end of the intervention) “students differed by condition on letter-word identification (d=0.25), oral reading fluency (d=0.29), and reading comprehension (d=0.29)” (Gunn et al. 2005, p. 82)

The study (Gunn et al. 2005) shows that intervention in small groups can affect the reading achievement of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic students who struggle with reading. Though Hispanic students started at a lower level (possibly because less than 15% spoke English at home), they improved at greater rates than their non-Hispanic counterparts. This is not only due to their increased familiarity with English, as the control group also became more familiar with the language during this period. The researchers suggest that it is helpful to provide supplemental instructions in reading English even before the students are proficient speaking it.

Paying the subjects to participate may have helped the researchers with their study, but brings questions into the reliability of the information. The parents may just be doing it for the money and not because they care about accuracy. Parents who have children with poor social skills or low levels of reading achievement may feel ashamed and not want to be honest, and so fill out a survey dishonestly trying to make their child look more competent than they are. They might not want to subject their family to scrutiny, and be participating just to get the money. No information was given as to the socioeconomic status of the participants.

Intervention in comprehension was not provided. If reading is the making of meaning, then this was a major omission on the part of the researchers. The researchers (Gunn et al. 2005) tested on comprehension, but comprehension strategies were not part of the intervention treatment. Testing for something that was not made part of the control is not reliable. The reader does not know what may have caused these changes. Though intervention students improved more from T1 to T3 (p= 0357 at T3) Control and intervention students improved at the same rate from T3 to T5 (p=.3703). This could be expected for something that there was no specific intervention addressing. It seems control and intervention groups may have differed on this because of a phonic ability to read the words, and thus have a chance to comprehend them, but once the control group caught up in that sense there were no strategies taught that would have kept the intervention group ahead of controls. There was also no extra help in the intervention in vocabulary, but it was tested for as well. Intervention subjects scored only slightly better (p=.0446) at T3 and even less so at T5 (p=.0571.)

In a multiple regression analysis, it was shown that three of the CFE subtests (initial, ending, and rhyming sounds) “accounted for 25% of the variance in reading fluency in Spanish and 20% of the variance in English reading fluency” in first and second grade (Riccio et al., 2001, p. 596). For older students (third through fifth grades), these numbers were lower, at 17% for Spanish and 14% for English.

The study (Riccio et al., 2001) found that the ability to identify initial and final phonemes and rhyming sounds, and to delete phonemes on the CTE Spanish test was related to both Spanish and English fluency.

One challenge to the reliability of this study (Riccio et al., 2001) could be it’s use of the CFE, the Conciencia Fonologica en Espanol. The test was created for the study, and it was a pilot version. Though great care was put into the creation of the assessment tool, it is possible that there were flaws we might not see in a small scale study. It should be tested for reliability and revised. It is important for these assessments to be developed, but it may have affected the results of the study.

Chiappe, Siegel, and Wade-Woolley (2002) investigated the development of literacy skills for ESL students of a variety of ethnicities. The authors (Chiappe et al., 2002) cited important differences in the phonemic structures of different languages, as well as differences in the syntax of the languages that can cause confusion for ESL students learning to read. Until students have learned the phonemic rules for a new language, they are interpreting everything they hear in terms of their native language.

When there are factors that do not match, many things may be missed or misconstrued. Also, the power to predict words in a sentence is diminished when students are not familiar with syntax. It is suggested that this language barrier may delay the development of English reading abilities in ESL students and put them behind their native English speaking peers. This study sought to find what the effects these literacy skills had on the reading performance in kindergarten and first grade.

A total of 858 subjects, students from the North Vancouver (Canada) school district, coming from 30 different schools completed the study. (Chiappe et al., 2002). Most of the students lived in middle class areas. The sample included 727 students who spoke English as their native language, and 131more who were learning English as a second language and spoke other languages with their families. Of these ESL students, 38 spoke Chinese, 23 spoke Farsi, Korean, Japanese, and Spanish all had seven speakers, and Tagalog had 6 speakers. There were also several other languages spoken by between 1 and 3 students, “Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Kurdish, Norwegian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbocroatian, and Swedish” (Chiappe et al., 2002, p. 374). Obviously, the classrooms were very linguistically diverse in this sample.

The classrooms in the schools included both systematic phonics instruction and an emphasis on phonological awareness (Chiappe et al., 2002). Extra help was given to at risk students in these areas. Most teachers in the district also used whole language activities, including “journal writing, Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) time, leveled books, read alouds, the use of big books, lively discussions, alphabet songs, and cloze activities to foster growth in literacy and oral language skills”( Chiappe et al., 2002, p. 374). Because special ESL classes are not available until students are older in this district, all the children in the study were in classes with English speaking children in English only classrooms.

Children were tested at the beginning of kindergarten using several different assessments (Chiappe et al., 2002). They were tested using the Wide Range Achievement Test-3 to test letter recognition of capital letters and words that ranged in difficulty. They were also given an exam to identify all 26 lowercase letters in random order, and then asked to spell their names and a few simple words. Students were also examined on their ability to reproduce pseudo words using the Sound Mimicry subtest of the GFW Sound Symbol Test.

Phonological awareness was assessed in four different ways, using subtests of the Phonological Awareness Test (Chiappe et al., 2002). First, a rhyme detection assessment from the where students picked a word that rhymed with the first word, then the Syllable Identification exam that asked students to identify the last syllable. The Phoneme Identification subtest asked students to say the last sound, or phoneme, instead of the whole syllable. Lastly, children were asked to delete a phoneme from a word with the Phoneme Deletion subtest.

Children were also assessed on their ability to do word retrieval, where they were not asked to read at all but rather were shown pictures of objects and had to say the name for them (Chiappe et al., 2002). There is no information given on whether the ESL students were allowed to say the word in their native tongue, this information was left out by the researcher. Though a subject might know the word for something in their own language and be able to retrieve the word from their memory banks, they might not know the word for it in English. It would provide more clarity if the researcher gave this information. I assume they were allowed to respond only in English, and in such case, obviously this assessment would not be one in which students who do not know English would find as much success as they would in their native language.

To assess the students’ familiarity with English syntax, a sentence with a missing word was read and students were asked to provide a word that fit (Chiappe et al., 2002). Students were also asked to repeat sentences to assess their verbal short term memory.

Finally, students were given pictures of signs and logos to assess their familiarity with environmental print.

First grade students were tested on decoding and spelling, as well as other measures using subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (Chiappe et al., 2002). These included word attack for pseudowords and common and uncommon word identification. Students were also asked to spell ten real words and ten pseudowords.

Any phonetically plausible combinations of phonemes were accepted for the pseudowords, so multiple letter patterns were accepted as correct, as long as there was a precedent. First grade students were also assessed on pseudoword repetition, phoneme deletion and substitution, awareness of English syntax, and verbal short-term memory.

Children were tested at the beginning of kindergarten (in October and November), and in March and April of their first grade year (Chiappe et al., 2002). Kindergarten examinations lasted about 30 minutes, and for 40 minutes in first grade. Children were separated into at risk and not at risk for reading failure groups in each category of native English speakers and ESL students.

The study (Chiappe et al., 2002) found that in kindergarten “the interaction between language group and reading skill was… significant, F(1, 831)= 2.23, p<.05, indicating that differences between At-Risk and Not-At-Risk children were greater for NS [native English speakers] than ESL children” (Ciappe et al., 2002, p. 380). In comparing the two groups, ESL children struggled more with the rhyme identification assessments, f=11.64, p<.001. Overall, there was not a huge difference between English speaking and ESL students in the ability to process phonemically in English. There were greater differences in at risk and not at risk students than the language groups in phonemic awareness.

The native speaking children performed better on oral cloze tasks (repeating deleted words) than ESL learners (f=7.71, p<.001) (Chiappe et al., 2002). Though the results were not statistically significant, English speaking students were able to use their short term memory to repeat more of a sentence than ESL students. Perhaps because they were more able to rely on syntax, they were more able to remember the sentences as more than a meaningless string of sounds, which may have been the case for students with little proficiency in English.

In first grade reading scores and pseudoword repetition, it was found that language was not a significant factor (Chiappe et al., 2002). The only thing that would predict the reading performance in first grade from kindergarten would be membership in at risk or not at risk groups. Native English speakers did perform better than ESL student on the oral cloze measure, just as they had in kindergarten. It was statistically significant, f=50.80, p<.001. The study also found that the difference between at risk and not at risk group was more for students in the ESL group. Additionally, ESL students performed worse than their counterparts on remembering and repeating sentences, though the result was not statistically significant.

Between the two grades, ESL students grew more than native speaking counterparts (f=5082, p<.05) in reading skills (Chiappe et al., 2002). The researchers note they were still slower at word retrieval, which was the test where the students were asked to say a word for an illustration.

Native speaking children scored higher on providing a missing word (oral cloze) than ESL students (f=34.04, p<.001) (Chiappe et al., 2002). The differences between ESL and native English speakers were larger in first grade than they were in kindergarten. The study also found that native English students were stronger in their short term verbal memory, but that both groups grew at a similar rate. The study found that for ESL learners, phonological skills and letter knowledge in kindergarten, but not verbal memory, were related to the ability to read and decode individual words in first grade.

The study also reports ESL students caught up to native speakers in phonological processing, but not on syntactic awareness and short term memory of words (Chiappe et al., 2002). In fact, the gap actually increased between the two assessments for ability to use English syntax, showing that ESL students did not grow as fast as native English speakers.

The researchers (Chiappe et al., 2002) cite that “ESL students were decoding at the same level as their NS peers despite differences in their oral language skills” (Ciappe et al., 2002, p. 394). The final conclusion (Chiappe et al., 2002) was that students of all language backgrounds can find success in decoding with explicit and systematic instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness.

The researchers state “these results suggest that systematic and explicit instruction in phonological awareness and phonics will benefit children from diverse language backgrounds” (Chiappe et al., 2002, p. 393). The validity of this statement could be challenged, as there was a balanced classroom approach that included other methods to teach literacy as well, which may have been more helpful in teaching students reading skills. Just because phonics was used, there were many other methods as well, and there is nothing presented to prove that the improvements were not based on the story reading, silent reading time, or other whole language activities that were said to be present in the classrooms. It could also be argued that the researchers have seemed to neglect reading comprehension in their study.  The ability to decode is important in learning to read, but it is incomplete without the ability to understand what had been read. The decision not to assess on any comprehension skills is a disappointing omission by the researchers.

There are a large number of Hispanic students in schools today that are learning English, with Spanish as their native language. Some school districts have Bilingual education programs, as did the district in the Carlisle and Beeman’s (2000) study.

Denton, Anthony, Parker and Hasbrouk, (2004) also investigated strategies that work in bilingual programs. They attempted to discover whether the Read Well or Read Naturally programs helped bilingual students in three different areas: word identification in lists, word attack (phonemic decoding), and passage comprehension.

The participants in the study were 93 students ranging from the 2^nd to the 5^th grade in five different schools in one Texas district (Denton, et al., 2004). All the students were learning English as a second language (ESL). All the participants in the study were Hispanic and spoke Spanish as their first language. Participants in the study included 48 males and 45 females. The students were in bilingual classrooms. The school used a transitional bilingual program, so in second grade the teachers used mostly Spanish as the language of instruction, and by the time the children reached 5th grade, the language of instruction was predominantly English, with instruction gradually shifting to English over the elementary years.

Students’ pretest scores on the word attack subtest of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test- Revised placed them into one of two groups (Denton, et al., 2004). These groups were emergent decoding and established decoding in English. The students were placed in matched pairs based on these test results. There was an attempt to have the pairs be from the same classroom if possible. 1 comparison/control group for Read Well and 1 for Read Naturally groups consisted of the matched pairs of students. There were 2 experimental groups that studied with either Read Well or Read Naturally. These programs were not compared with each other, but with their own comparison group. Due to attrition, nineteen of the students who finished the study were in the Read Well treatment group and fourteen were in the Read Well comparison group. Thirty-two were in the Read Naturally treatment and twenty eight were in the Read Naturally comparison.

The students in the treatment groups received tutoring with undergraduate university students using either the Read Well or Read Naturally program. They were tutored three times per week for 40 minutes each session over a ten week period. There was some individual tutoring, and some students were in small groups of two, three, or four.

Groups were formed based on scheduling constraints within the school.

The Read Well program was found to help with students’ decoding, but not with comprehension in comparison to the control group (Denton, et al., 2004). The tutoring focused on the parts of pronunciation that are different in Spanish and English, so the students could use their prior knowledge of the Spanish language to learn how the languages differed. Students who were tutored with Read Well gained 4.06 points on average in decoding. Only context free reading was improved. Word identification was the only factor that showed statistically significant gains (f=5.70, p=.023). Word attack showed a mean gain of 5.16, though the comparison group gained 2.35, and in comprehension thee mean gain for the treatment group was 1.58, only .01 more than the control group. After completing tutoring with this program, students were able to read English words in that they could pronounce them fluently, but they could not understand what they meant.

Using the Read Naturally program, there was no significant difference from the control group on any of the criteria. Word attack had a mean gain of -.22, and word identification had a mean gain of only 1.12 (comparison group gained 1.75, more than the treatment). The highest gain for this group was only a 2.13 point improvement for the treatment group on passage comprehension (the control group also improved .71 of a point on the same measure).

One problem with the internal validity of this study is that the way groups were chosen was not elaborated beyond the constraint of scheduling within the schools.

Students groups varied greatly; from six students who received one on one tutoring to groups of two, three, and four students. I would say that a student who is tutored for 40 minutes one on one will have a much greater amount of progress than a student who receives 40 minutes of instruction in a group of four. The tutor can not attend to the child’s individual needs as much in a larger group. Also, there is no information given as to the tutoring group size for the two experimental treatments. Did Read Well and Read Naturally treatments have similar student to teacher ratios? Additionally, there was no information given on what students were missing in class to participate in the treatment. Were they missing the literacy block in their classroom? This could have had an effect on why, in some instances, the control groups surpassed the treatment groups in their mean gain in scores on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests.

De la Colina, Parker, Hasbrouck, and Lara-Alecio, (2001) also explored the use of Read Naturally on students learning to read in Spanish. Their subjects were in a school district in Texas that provided bilingual instruction for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, in an attempt to transition them into English speaking and reading. This is done out of the belief that students learn to read in a second language more easily if they are fluent in their first language.

A review of the literature showed the researchers (De la Colina et al., 2001) that aspects that improved English speaking children’s ability to read with automaticity were rereading the same passages, modeling by a teacher, and the students’ ability to monitor their own progress.

Materials from the Read Naturally program were translated for the students (De la Colina et al., 2001). The program entails students repeatedly reading the same passage, listening to tapes of the passage and reading along, and then notifying the teacher when they are ready to test.

Subjects for the study included first and second graders from four different classrooms (De la Colina et al., 2001). All students chosen had to be able to read between 30 and 60 words per minute in Spanish, or be able to read between 50 and 100 sight words to qualify for the study.

Students were split into three groups, one received instruction for a 12 week period, one received instruction for 10, and the last received instruction for only eight weeks (De la Colina et al., 2001). Each group met three days per week for 45 minutes. Small groups, mixed by engagement level as well as classroom assignment (to control for teacher affects) were formed to receive the intervention. One problem with this design may be that the groups were staggered so the first group started two weeks before the second, and in another two weeks the third group started. The researchers admit that students in the later groups may have gotten competitive and worked harder in order to catch up to the growth of their peers who started first. A way to fix this problem could be to simply start all the groups at the same time, and stop instruction for the shorter term groups earlier. Instead of starting the eight week treatment on week four, start them on week one and terminate their treatment at week eight.

Students’ engagement level was determined by the number of stories they read each week (De la Colina et al., 2001). This was not a reflection of reading level, because lower level stories were simpler and shorter, so they could be read faster. Highly engaged readers read a mean of 5.8 readings per week, and low level readers read only a mean of 2.6. These groups were both comprised of both high and low reading level groups.

Results of the study found that highly engaged students improved much more than lower engaged students, regardless of the amount of weeks they were tutored for (De la Colina et al., 2001). Two of the lowly engaged groups performed worse as the intervention went on. For the 12 week intervention, low engagement students did not have any statistically relevant improvement. The improvements that were made were somewhat modest, and could have been due to the regular classroom teaching and were similar to progress that may have occurred, even without the intervention (De la Colina et al., 2001). Ten of the 12 groups did improve over the course of the study, and those who were highly engaged improved between two and four times as much as students who were less engaged.

I find that this study (De la Colina et al., 2001) to be transferable to the extent that a student’s engagement, regardless of language, may affect their progress. I think the results are not as credible as they could be. The design was flawed by the effects of students working hard to catch up to their classmates, and the fact that the length of time intervention was received provided little difference is not explained. It is possible that floor effects in the ability of the program to help students improve caused the similarity of results among groups, and this should have been attended to.

Riccio et al. (2001) also worked with students learning to read in Spanish. They recognized the importance of phonological awareness in beginning reading acquisition, and the goal of the study was to investigate correlations between phonological awareness and Spanish and English reading ability.

Participants for the study (Riccio et al., 2001) attended three different Texas elementary schools. The school district had a bilingual education program. One hundred and forty nine participants were recruited, including 71 girls and 78 boys. All of these children were classified by their parents as Hispanic. The ages of subjects ranged from 5 to 11 years, they attended kindergarten through fifth grade. The majority (126) of the subjects were in bilingual classrooms, while 6 children moved back and forth between bilingual and English only classrooms during their day, and 17 were in classrooms conducted entirely in English.

Examiners who administered the tests to students were all bilingual (Riccio et al., 2001). Four measures were found to be especially important, and subtests from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processes (CTOPP) were used to measure English phonological awareness in initial sound matching, ending sound matching, rhyming, and deletion. The Conciencia Fonologica en Espanol (CFE) was created by the researchers and reviewed by a panel of experts in the bilingual education field and bilingual Hispanics from different cultural groups. This test also measured the ability to distinguish and match initial and ending sounds, identify words that do and do not rhyme, and the ability to delete phonemes. Students were also asked to read a short passage for one minute in each language. The Spanish version came from Read Naturally, and a doctoral student/translator translated it into English. The report did not clarify if the students received a different passage or the same translated passage in each language.

Having the same passage would have affected the results, because whichever one the students read first, they would be familiar with the content, even if the second time it was in another language. The background knowledge is there the second time and it is easier to guess the word.

Wiencek, Cipielewski, Vazzano, and Sturken, (1998) investigated the literacy activities and teaching methods that prepared low income students for success in first grade. A morning and an afternoon group of kindergarteners were included in the study. The two classes were taught by two different teachers who shared the same classroom in a Midwestern school district. The morning class had 23 students and was mostly Caucasian, with 1 African American student, and had 1 special education student who was mainstreamed into the class. The afternoon class was attended by 21 children, and consisted of mostly Caucasian students with 2 African American students. The morning class had a majority of children who came from middle class income level families. The afternoon class was considered more low income. This socioeconomic status division was caused by bussing and children attending school with children from their own neighborhoods. No information on the gender of the students was given.

The researchers (Wiencek et al.,1998) observed the types of literacy activities going on in each class. They described these activities, the social context in which they were enacted, the presence or absence of scaffolding, and teacher and student roles. Data was collected one day a week by observations and its resulting field notes. Teacher assignments and student work were also collected. This data was collected by one of the researchers and two graduate research assistants. The study states that in several instances, the researcher and student assistant collected data at the same time to validate their observations. The report only says on several occasions data was collected simultaneously and does not give data for how often that happened or if the notes were similar when it did. This information is important for the reader to assess the validity of the observations, and it is omitted here. Quantitative research was collected by assessments of alphabet recognition, concepts of print, phonological awareness, and ability to read. The names of the assessments were not included. This information was collected by all the researchers in October and in April, at the beginning and the end of the study.

The literacy activities that occurred were often not those that emergent literacy research suggests are essential to early learning in this area (Wiencek et al.,1998). The study found that many of the literacy activities in the two classrooms were more appropriate for upper class students who had more experiences with literacy at home. Children who came from low income homes often needed more time to explore books and concepts about print, as well as work with phonemic awareness and phoneme grapheme correspondence. They found that many children had limited small group or one on one teacher interaction, and had little chance for teacher scaffolding. In this method, the teachers found that the students who demonstrated higher levels of ability at the beginning of the study (who were often children of middle income families) kept their high ability, but the students who had came in low did not catch up to these students.

They compared this to a rich get richer and poor get poorer situation, where those who can read get better at it and those who cannot find it difficult to ever catch up.

The district and teachers supported a developmentally appropriate view on early education, wherein students will learn literacy when they are ready (Wiencek et al.,1998). This approach leaves out literacy activities which are equally important in other views of literacy acquisition.  For example, emergent literacy research shows it is important to do a variety of literacy activities, including active engagement, development of phonological awareness and alphabetic awareness, and encouraging an interest in reading and books. “Developmental appropriateness is often a [sic] like a trap for lower socioeconomic children who need opportunities to explore and develop knowledge of literary concepts and written language” (Wiencek et al., 1998, p 11). Since the teachers planned together and their teaching styles were not analyzed in the results, there was little chance for comparison between the 2 classes. The design makes the ability to transfer study to other classrooms possible. Perhaps comparing one of these classrooms with one that did incorporate the Emergent Literacy principles might have been more illuminating as to strategies that work for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds.

The study (Wiencek et al.,1998) also does not address the possibility that because kindergarten is optional in this district, some of the emergent literacy skills that are taught in kindergarten in most districts may indeed be covered in first grade in this district. If children do not have to go to kindergarten, the first grade teachers probably will not expect them to know all that teachers in a district that requires kindergarten would.

To summarize, Craig et al. (2003) showed that with proper intervention, such as state funded preschools for low income students, social class should not make a difference in reading achievement. Wiencek et al. (1998) showed that many literacy activities in the kindergarten classrooms studied were more beneficial to middle income students than low income students, who need more support in exploring books and concepts about print that they might not receive at home.

Effective Methods for Teaching Hispanic Students

Carlisle and Beeman (2000) studied the effect of the language of instruction on the literacy acquisition of students for whom English was a second language. The researchers studied two first grade classrooms during successive years at the same school. Because the school was shifting its bilingual language policy from teaching mostly in English (eighty percent English and twenty percent Spanish), to mostly in Spanish(eighty percent Spanish and twenty percent English), the researchers were able to study 2 successive years of first graders, one in the predominantly English program and the next year in the predominantly Spanish program. The English Instruction (EI) group consisted of 17 children, 9 boys and 8 girls. The Spanish Instruction (SI) group had 17 children, 9 boys and 8 girls. Most of the families in both groups spoke predominantly Spanish at home, and 80% qualified for the free lunch program for low SES children.

After receiving instruction in Spanish or English, the students were evaluated on Spanish listening, Spanish reading, English listening, and English reading using subtests of the Woodcock Johnson Psycho Educational Battery in Spanish and English and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Carlisle & Beeman, 2000). There were also nonstandard measures to assess listening and reading comprehension and writing skills. The researchers also used literature in Spanish and in English by the same author, then used a short multiple choice and fill in the blank test to assess comprehension.

For the EI class, English listening was significantly correlated with Spanish listening (r=.53, p<.05), but English and Spanish reading were not significantly related (r=.26) (Carlisle & Beeman, 2000). For the SI class, the correlations were not significant (p=.35 for English and Spanish listening, p=.16 for English and Spanish reading). The SI class was as strong as the EI class on measures of English reading and writing but was significantly stronger for measures of Spanish reading and writing. The researchers found that instruction in Spanish made a significant contribution to the development of Spanish reading comprehension (Carlisle & Beeman, 2000, p.346).

The EI students performed better in the oral language of their language of instruction, but this did not transfer to written language (Carlisle & Beeman, 2000). The hypothesis was that the children taught in English did not develop strong reading skills. The study did not share a reason for the differences in reading skills, simply stating that if they could not decode the words, comprehension strategies were useless. The study did not address the possibility that if children did not know English well, decoding words would not make a difference if the child did not know them in the first place, or that when learning a new language, oral language comprehension comes before writing.

Since the children did not get writing instruction in the language they already knew, their development in this area may have been suspended until they gained proficiency in English enough to comprehend the written part. Children who learned to read in Spanish did not have this hurdle to overcome in their reading development, and were able to start decoding familiar words earlier. There was no significant difference between SI and EI for English writing, but in Spanish writing, the SI group performed better than the EI group.

The study lacks reliability in that there were different teachers teaching the SI and EI groups. This may have impacted students’ abilities, even more than the language of instruction. A teacher’s approach, expectations, abilities, and influence could have been enough to affect the results given the small sample. Perhaps if the study was expanded to have many teachers for Spanish and English instruction, that would be less of a factor.

But with only two classrooms, a lot of the difference could be attributed to the effect of the teacher. There was more than one variable in this case, not just the language of instruction, but also the purveyor of instruction.

Introduction

Schooling has historically not considered the possible educative value of including native culture and languages and has instead emphasized integration into the mainstream, with the result that many cultural minority students may not be achieving the success they might otherwise achieve.  In many cases, their families have come to mistrust public school. Given this situation, this Chapter will critically review research studies that help to identify practices to help cultural minority students achieve while utilizing the resources of their home culture and language.

The Effect of Tracking and Stereotyping by Teachers

A study by Elhoweris et al. (2005) sought to find out if a child’s ethnicity affected whether or not his/her teacher would refer them for gifted and talented programs. Two hundred and seven teachers in a large Midwest school district were given a short vignette about a student who possessed gifted characteristics. Ninety two percent of the teachers were female, and 83% were white. One third of the vignettes revealed the student in question was white, another one third revealed the student was black, and one third gave no racial information as a control group. The teachers were randomly assigned to one of the 3 groups. The teachers were asked to decide if the student should be referred to a gifted and talented program. Ethnicity had a significant effect, (p!.05), on the teacher’s decision. Even though all the information about the student was exactly the same except for the ethnicity, the African American student was rated the lowest of the three groups.

This study (Elhoweris et al., 2005) is not as generalizable as it could be because it was conducted only in the Midwest. Racial attitudes vary around the country, and may actually be more severe in some places, and less severe in some places. I think also this could be applied to other minorities. It would be interesting to compare the rates for different minorities’ referrals, especially Asian students, who are typically assumed to be model students, even when they do not display the characteristics of such a student.

Hosp and Reschly (2004) investigated the connection of race and ethnicity to placement in special education programs, rather than the gifted and talented programs Elhoweris et al. (2005) looked at. Hosp and Reschly looked to discover what the predictors for the overrepresentation of minority students might be besides race, and so factored academic achievement in to the equation as well as demographic information (race and ethnicity) and economic information.

The researchers (Hosp & Reschly, 2004) looked at the rate of five different ethnic groups of students being assigned to special education, African American, Native American, Asian Pacific Islander (APA), Hispanic, and Caucasian.  Programs for students with mental retardation, emotional disturbance, and learning disabilities were analyzed. African American students were shown to be overrepresented in classes for the mentally retarded as well as programs for students who are emotionally disturbed. Native American’s were overrepresented in classes for the learning disabled. Less APA students are identified in all three categories than would be expected considering their percentage of the general population.  As Ruan (2003) found, teachers often overestimate the abilities of APA students due to stereotyping, which can disadvantage Asian students who do need the extra help but are not identified and given intervention. Hosp and Reschly (2004) also reported that African American, Hispanic, and Native American students do not make up a proportion of the students in gifted and talented programs that would be expected given their proportion of the general population.

For this study (Hosp & Reschly, 2004), data on the demographics of students enrolled in special education programs was collected. The ratio of the percentage students in programs for each of the three disability categories to the percentage of each ethnicity in the general population was compared to the same ratio for white students to figure out the relative risk ratio. Achievement statistics were gathered from school districts and their websites. Data that was compatible with the design came from only 16 states, but the researchers stressed that these 16 states represented all the major regions of the United States. For the study, “due to the large number of comparisons, an alpha level of p= .005 was used” (Hosp & Reschly, 2004, p. 190).

For each of the three groups, mental retardation, learning disabilities, and emotional disturbance, the variance for all the racial groups was 32.8 %, 24.4%, and 30.1% respectively (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). Economic factors were stronger in determining special education membership than race was, but in some ways it was found to correlate with race, so it is difficult to differentiate the causality coming from one or the other. The academic consideration was a strong influence for only 2 of 12 categories (categories consisted of percentage of students in special education in relation to the number in the general population of the school for each racial group compared to the ratio for white students, for each of the three special education types). The other ten categories, it “accounted for a significant amount of variance for six of the models… [but] for the remaining four models, the academic block did not contribute a significant amount of unique variance” (Hosp & Reschly, 2004, p. 192).

The findings report that for mental retardation special education classes, economic factors were the strongest influence out of economic, demographic, and academic achievement categories (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). The variance was .27 for African American students, .21 for Hispanics, .246 for APA, and .162 for Native American, p <.005. For emotional disturbance, race (demographic) was the most statistically significant influence (variance =.193 for African American students, .313 for Hispanic, .140 for APA, and .259 for Native American students, p<.005).

Academic performance most affected referral and membership in programs for the learning disabled (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). Results were an independent variance of .228 for African American, .031 for Hispanic, .137 for APA students, and .078 for Native Americans.

APA students had the strongest predictor as race in all three special education categories, while the majority of cultural minority students seemed to have significant influence from all three student identifiers (race, income, and achievement) (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). For all the racial groups, academic performance seemed to affect membership in the special education groups less than economics or race, but was slightly stronger in affecting placement in classes for mental retardation.

Racial demographics were stronger for African American and APA students than for Hispanic or Native American students (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). While the academic predictor was the weakest overall, it did contribute significantly to the placement of students in 8 of the 12 groups.

The study (Hosp & Reschly, 2004) eliminated small districts from the sample that only had a few minority students. This was because in a district with under a certain number of students of a specific ethnicity, officials are not allowed to report test scores to the public, because the pool of students is so small the confidentiality of reporting it is does not meet privacy standards. It is much easier to figure out who is who out of a group of 5 students than it is to identify one student out of 50 or even 500. This was necessary because they could not obtain the information, so thus there was no way the researchers could include it in the results. The study is thorough for the information attained, but since small districts could not publish the information, it is does not paint a complete picture.  Patterns of enrollment may be different in different types of districts.  It could be that in these rural districts with few minority children that there is even less culturally relevant teaching that provides a chance at success for these students.

A critique of the study is also addressed by the researchers (Hosp & Reschly, 2004). The fact that the research was done far removed from any individual student’s achievement makes it hard to identify exactly where students who should not be in special education are being enrolled in these classes. The researchers suggest that “research needs to be extended to the individual level” (p. 196). The fact that the individual students were not assessed by researchers seems problematic, because they could not assess student’s in the same way teachers could, they only looked at a few factors that may well be, unfortunately, associated with race. By not assessing any students themselves, we as readers cannot tell whether race or class alone, and not academic performance, was what drove the teachers to assign a student to special education classes.

To summarize, ethnicity has a negative effect on whether a teacher will refer a student to gifted and talented program, even when all other factors are the same (Elhoweris et al, 2005). Conversely, it has been shown that African American students are referred to classes for the emotionally disturbed more than white students, and low socioeconomic status was a strong factor in recommendation to classes for the mentally retarded(Hosp and Reschly, 2004).

The Effect of Class and Socioeconomic Status on Teaching and Learning Craig, Connor, and Washington (2003) found that African American students

from low income families who attended state funded preschools performed better in their oral language and cognitive skills by the time they reached third grade than middle class African Americans who did not attend these preschools. In the Detroit school the study was conducted in, seventy five percent of the students were African American. All subjects spoke African American English (AAE). Fifty students were involved in the study; 30 boys and 20 girls. Half were in kindergarten and half were in the preschool class. The middle class students who started in kindergarten did not attend preschool.

The researchers (Craig et al., 2003) pre-assessed the children for oral language and cognitive skills when they first arrived at the school, and conducted formative assessments along the way. The assessments were conducted by African American female examiners. These examiners spoke African American English with the students during the tests, which were audio recorded to check for reliability. Assessments used were subtests of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children and samplings of students use of expressive language in describing pictures. Samples were scored by segmenting responses into communication units and analyzing them for complexity of syntax, diversity of vocabulary, and mean length of each unit. The computer program Computerized Language Analysis was used to evaluate the responses.

Students in preschool tested lower when they first started school, possibly because they were younger, and showed no significant improvements at the end of first grade (Craig et al., 2003). But by the end of third grade, the lower SES preschool students had surpassed the children who started in kindergarten and did not attend preschool in reading comprehension skills, the slope difference in the improvement between the groups was 6.68 (p<.001 ). The study found that coming from a family with low socioeconomic status affected a student’s reading acquisition less than an early diagnosis of reading difficulties. Students who had had their special needs addressed a year earlier were at a better place by the time they reached third grade regardless of their socioeconomic status than students who may have had these issues addressed a year later.

The study (Craig et al., 2003) concluded that with proper intervention, social class should not make a major difference in a student’s success. One critique of this study is the fact that students were tested upon their entry into school, the lower SES group a year earlier when they went into preschool. Comparing the students at different stages in their development may not make for accurate contrast of the two groups, since with age oral language develops, especially distinguishable in young people,. However, testing all students a year before kindergarten started, or testing all students at the inception of kindergarten and comparing them this way would be more accurate.

The majority of the literature used to teach reading has reflected predominantly Anglo Saxon Protestant characters and values. Often, when a minority is portrayed, they are a secondary character, they are stereotyped, or they are represented in skin color only and the character reflects white mainstream culture. This is reflected not only in trade books for children, but also in the textbooks used in schools (Harris, 2002).

Research has shown that students may be more engaged and comprehend more when they read literature that reflects their home culture. Reyhner (1986) cites information from the U.S. department of education claiming that “students read passages more deftly when the passages describe events, people, and places of which the students have some prior knowledge” (p. 14).

After the civil rights movement and the women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s respectively, most literacy textbooks were reviewed for racist and sexist content, which led “to recommendations for change, such as printing readers in African American English” (Monaghan et al., 2002, p. 229)

In the past few decades, some improvements have been made in the published literature used in classrooms, but there is still a lack of consistently culturally relevant literature for use with students of color and with all students. Harris (2002) states that though multicultural literature is being used in schools and libraries in many ways “one overlooked site for inclusion is in series created for reading or language arts instruction”(pg. 372). Some teachers do not see the necessity of using multicultural literature with white students (Harris, 2002).

One reason for a struggle to use multicultural literature in classrooms is the fact that publishers are primarily concerned with turning a profit, and “many books categorized as multicultural sell less than 5,000 copies” (Harris, 2002, p. 369). Questions have also arisen as to whether literature with minority characters, but written by a white author, can be relevant or count as multicultural (Harris, 2002).

History of Heritage Language Development and its Use in Schooling

Some researchers and teachers have more recently found that helping children to develop their language abilities in their native language helps more with their acquisition of a new language more than an English only approach does (Kondo-Brown, 2002). It is also difficult for schooling to be effective when conducted in an unfamiliar language, as it takes an average of 5 to 7 years for a person to learn all the complexities of academic English, the language of schooling (Kondo-Brown, 2002). A person might be able to converse in English in under a year, but the foundation in the academic language needed for school, because it takes longer to master, may not be available to students until the upper grades. By then they may have missed many of the important foundations for this later study.

America has historically had a subtractive/ additive policy when it comes to language (Kondo-Brown, 2002). Schools attempted to transition students from their native language into English only, and then attempted to teach students a new language in foreign language classes. There is little attempt to maintain a student’s native language unless it is English. Often the family is the only resource to maintain bilingualism for minority language students. Adults who have come from minority language backgrounds have talked of their “reluctance to use their heritage language due to negative external reactions” ( Kondo-Brown, p. 221).

Because students do not understand the language, the only resource they have is a graphophonic cueing system.  Without the ability to understand the words they read, there is no way to use context, syntax, or semantics to understand what they are reading. Students who enter school with prior knowledge of Asian languages have also had problems in school, because of the need to transition between characters to an alphabetic system. These students have to learn the concept of graphophonics in a whole new way. (Kondo-Brown, 2002).

History of Differentiation in Schooling Based on Socioeconomic Status

In the 1960s, the U.S. government instituted a War on Poverty. This legislation wanted to help the poor get a better education, so that human resources were not being wasted. Head Start was established to give poor children equal footing as middle and upper class students upon entering kindergarten. The idea was to “attack the very social structure that caused poverty” (Spring, 2005, pg.390). Walter Heller was appointed to create a report on poverty, entitled “The Problem of Poverty in America”. This report claimed poverty and poor education were linked, blaming the workers for their low wages rather than the system that paid such low wages (Spring, 2005). The report states “it is difficult for children to find and follow avenues leading out of poverty in environments where education is deprecated and hope is smothered” (Spring, 2005, pg 391). Title I of the Educational Opportunities Act helped to “provide financial assistance… to expand and improve… educational programs by various means…which contribute particularly to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children.” (Spring, 2005, pg 392), while Title II provided monetary resources to school libraries and for textbooks.

Summary

To review, the history of American schooling has been one of attempting to create a unified culture. There have been attempts to bring students from diverse backgrounds together, but rather than creating an amalgamation of cultures, there have been attempts to bring minority cultures into the fold of Protestant Anglo Saxon values. Students may come to school with a specific feeling or attitude based on the history people in their culture have experienced in public schools in the past.

Examples of this effort to create a unified culture include attempts public schools have made in the past have Catholic students use Protestant books and reading materials to study from, leaving them little choice but to create private schools so their culture could be valued in schools.

African American students were not provided education in the countries early years, and many believe the inferior schooling provided in separate schools was a way to keep them uneducated and powerless. The attempt to eliminate Ebonics, which linguists view as a valid dialect, devalues African American culture and makes them feel unappreciated in schools.

Native American’s were taught English early on, but were able to use the alphabetic system to further their Native culture and language. When the attempt to Christianize Native Americans and bring them into the mainstream culture did not work, whites in power removed Indian children from their families and sent them to boarding schools where they were stripped of their language and culture. Many Native American’s still refer to public schooling as the White Man’s schooling, and have deep distrust of schools. Native American students continue to have a disproportionate representation in special education classes, as do with African American and Hispanic students.

Hispanic peoples, who have lived in the southwest since before Europeans landed on the east coast, were compelled to public schooling that devalued their language and attempted to transfer them to mainstream language and cultural practices. They continue to be subjected to so called subtractive schooling under No Child Left Behind, in which their native language skills are not respected and are not developed into further skills, but rather seen as something that needs to be transferred into mainstream language and culture.

Early Asian settlers were first not allowed to attend public schools, and then were relegated to separate schools. Now that schools are integrated, teachers often misjudge the abilities of Asian Pacific American students because of stereotyping and differences in communication styles between cultures, and many do not receive the assistance they need to succeed.

The materials used to teach in many American classrooms have not been culturally relevant, and continue to have flaws that keep minority students from seeing themselves represented in the materials of their classrooms. Since there has been little attempt to maintain native languages of students, this can also cause problems in reading acquisition because students cannot comprehend, even if they can decode, in a foreign language.

It is essential to keep in mind the experiences different cultural groups have had when assessing their success in school. Since some minorities, for example Native Americans, have had negative experiences with public schooling as a group, they may place a different amount of importance on success in schooling. Also, understanding what has happened in the past can help us see a big picture when looking at the current research, and give a broader context when attempting to find ways to help children from all cultural backgrounds succeed in a more and more diverse classroom. We can see from the past that the idea of a melting pot of American citizens has not left minorities in this country with an equitable education. We must start looking at our classrooms as a mosaic in which each piece is different, but all are equally important and valuable. The next Chapter will look at studies that have explored different methods used to enhance the reading development of children from many different cultural and class backgrounds.

During the nineteenth century, the Irish Catholics were despised by the Protestant majority for many reasons, including religion and job issues. They were treated hostilely in the schools, were required to read texts that were dominated by Protestant values and contained anti Catholic material, and were compelled to read from the Protestant Bible.

The Catholic community wanted changes in the curriculum, but the powerful Protestant culture ignored their complaints. The Catholics asked for money from the common school fund to fund their own schools, but they were turned down and as a community decided to fund private schools that accepted their culture. Because they were not willing to send their children to schools in which their culture and religion were devalued, Catholics were doubly taxed, first to pay for the common school fund through taxes, and secondly to pay for their own schools where another religion was not pushed on their children. Even into the 20^th century, “many Catholics would refer to public schools as Protestant schools” (Spring, 2005, p.108).

Education of African American Students

During times of slavery in the South, there was little formal attempt to teach slaves coming from Africa to speak English, though this of course happened eventually. Some learned to read and write, but in most cases this was done covertly. Slaves had to hide their attempts to learn to read, or their ability to read, from their masters or other whites. It was actually illegal to teach a slave to read. Many slaves were punished severely if it was found out that they had learned to read. At the start of the Civil War, about “5 percent of slaves had learned how to read” (Spring, 2005, p. 114). Abolitionist societies that worked to end slavery also worked to educate the slaves who had been freed.

In the late 1700s, communities in Massachusetts were required to provide grammar school to children. No law said black children could not attend, but many were unable to for economic reasons (they were needed at home to work and help provide for the family). The children who did go were mistreated in the schools by whites. Black parents, in order to protect their children, actually tried to get a separate (segregated) school system for their children. This dream was made a reality with the help of white philanthropists. By the 1820’s, African Americans realized that an inferior education was the consequence of segregation. Public schools created their own version of the segregated school on the premise that this school would be more equal to that of white children.  Abolitionist David Walker argued that “the inferior education blacks received in schools was designed to keep them at a low level of education” (Spring, 2005, p.113).

Until 1954, schools were segregated by race. Separate but equal conditions created schools that were not actually equally funded. They did, though, provide African American students with African American teachers who understood their needs and provided role models from their culture (Spring, 2005).

During the 1960s, the civil rights movement prompted a review of the existing reading texts for racist content (Monaghan et al., 2002). There were recommendations to print texts in African American English. There has been controversy in the professional community over the validity of Ebonics, or African American English (LeMoine, 2002). There are three different theories about the origins of this dialect. First, English-origin theorists propose that African American English is a natural dialect of English, and uses the same grammar structure as English. The second theory is that of the Creolists, who suggest that the origins of African American English come from the simplified languages used to communicate by enslaved persons in West Africa and the Caribbean (LeMoine, p. 167). Lastly, African- origin theories suggest that African American English is not a dialect of English at all, but rather derived from African languages from the Niger and Congo areas. African- origin theorists stipulate that the underlying grammatical structures of African American English are from these African languages, and not English. “…All three perspectives agree that Ebonics is governed by a system of linguistic rules (grammatical, syntactical, morphological, pragmatic, and semantic)…features” (LeMoine, 167), making it a valid language however one believes it developed.

African American English is a different dialect than the Standard English that is spoken in most American schools, and this can cause difficulties for students trying to traverse back and forth between their home and school dialects. Though there have been many increases in the opportunities for education for African Americans in recent years, these students are still struggling to be recognized for their full potential. Hosp and Reschly (2004) report information from a previous study that shows that, at least for African American and Hispanic students, differences in achievement between these groups and Caucasian students show themselves as early as kindergarten. They are overrepresented in special education and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs (Elhoweris, Mutua, Alsheikh, and Holloway, 2005).

Education of Native American Students

Early treaties with Native American peoples provided accommodations for the schooling of Native children. The education provided attempted to transform the culture of the Indians into the mainstream culture of the United States. Educators tried to teach the children to stop being nomadic and instead become farmers. This was an attempt to civilize the native people, which to whites meant to make the Indians’ cultures more like their own (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.31). There were schools for Cherokee people that taught women to sew and men to use farm equipment. Thomas Jefferson and many others thought that to get Indians to assimilate to the dominant culture, it was “important to teach Indians a desire for the accumulation of property and to extinguish the practice of cultural sharing” (Spring, 2005, p.116).

Following the Civilization Act of 1819, schools were formed to educate Native American children. Under the guidance of Superintendent of Indian Trade Thomas L McKenney, attempts were made to convert the Native culture of these students into the Protestant mainstream in only one generation. “These Presbyterians could accept nothing less than the total rejection of the tribal past, and the total transformation of each individual Indian” (Spring, 2005, p.124).

Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian, created a Cherokee alphabet that he wanted to use to help preserve Cherokee culture. Missionaries had only seen this as a way to transfer Indians into Anglo culture. Sequoyah’s alphabet had 86 symbols that all represented a sound from the oral language of the Cherokees. It was somewhat easy to learn, because these symbols represented all the sounds in their spoken language. Using this Alphabet, the Cherokee nation put out a written newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1928 (Spring, 2005, p.126). They were able to use the alphabet, a concept they had learned from settlers and missionaries, to maintain their own culture.

In the late 18^th and early 19^th Century “Both Choctaw and Cherokee classroom materials were written in English and the Native languages…Students in the Choctaw and Cherokee schools demonstrated literacy rates approaching nearly 100% and many youths attended colleges in the east” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.31). According to Spring(2005), the high literacy rates were much higher than whites in Texas and Arkansas (p.129). This threatened many whites, since language was being used in the context of Native culture and was not being used to translate ideas and transition the Native culture to Anglo American.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, Native American children were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools where they were stripped of their culture and language. Isolation from their families removed the connection to tribal customs and culture, while teaching English and Anglo customs was emphasized in this removed context.  Students were punished for speaking in their native tongue.  Spring(2005) called these “acts of cultural and linguistic genocide” (p.189). Students were also forced to study and practice Christianity, and forbidden from practicing their native religion or spiritual practices (Wikipedia, 2006).

The Puritan ideals that these schools were run on were almost directly opposite those of Native Americans.

The list of these Puritan ideals included respect for authority; postponing immediate gratification; neatness; punctuality; responsibility for one’s own work; honesty, patriotism, and loyalty; striving for personal achievement; competition; repression of aggression and overt sexual expression; respect for the rights and property of others; and obeying rules and regulations. These principles were anomalies for native peoples who lived in communal settings and had practiced skills for cooperative survival on this continent for thousands of years. (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.30)

To this day, many Native Americans do not trust public schools, referring to it as the white man’s education. There is a negative attitude about these schools in the Native community (Klug and Whitfield, 2003).

After the verdict was handed down in the case of Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954, children living on reservations were able to attend public schools off the reservation. Here Native children were a minority and their needs were largely ignored in these schools. Many children were placed in classes for mentally retarded children, because their language, not their ability, targeted them as unable to learn (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.40). Native American children are still disproportionately placed into special education.

During and after World War I, intelligence tests were used to place students.

According to Spring(2005), these tests “seemed to confirm the racial superiority of the English and Germans. Also, they seemed to confirm to Anglo- Americans that Native Americans and African Americans were inferior races” (p.298). These tests were not culturally sensitive in any way. By giving everyone the same test, which was normed for Anglo Americans, “IQ testing became a new way of segregating students in public schools, this time on the basis of ‘intellectual ability’” (Klug and Whitfield, 2003, p.40). According to Delpit (1995), “when a significant difference exists between the students’ culture and the school’s culture, teachers can easily misread students’ aptitudes, intent, or abilities as a result of the difference in styles of language use and interactional patterns”(p.167).

After conquering territory in the southwest after the Mexican American War, Anglo pioneers made many attempts to dominate and subjugate Mexicans who remained in the area. In 1855, California decided that all classes would be taught in English.

According to Valenzuela(1999), schooling has traditionally been a subtractive process. The transition of students into English from their native language, or English as a second language (ESL) “neither reinforce[s] their native language skills nor their cultural identities” (p.26). The tradition of these types of English only or ESL programs has failed to appreciate Spanish from the start, and continues to undervalue it today.

Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States. Before voting to become a commonwealth in 1951, many Puerto Rican’s resisted the control of the United States, especially in the schools. In the early 20^th century, Americanization policies were enacted in the schools, requiring texts and curriculum to represent the United States’ culture rather than the local culture, and requiring all classes be taught in English. Teachers who could not speak English, or who did not use it to instruct, were fired (Spring, 2005, p.237).  Instead of using the language abilities and capitalizing on their cultural resources, the attempt was made to transition the culture of the students into mainstream American culture from their native Puerto Rican culture. After becoming a commonwealth, Spanish was restored as the official language of the schools (Spring).

Education of Asian Pacific American Students

In the beginning, it was not that Asian Pacific Americans’(APA) culture as not respected in schools, the problem was that they were not allowed to attend schools at all. In 1884, San Francisco passed a resolution prohibiting schools from accepting APA students. The Supreme Court ruled in 1885 that schools must provide education for APA students, and segregated schools were established.

Assumptions by teachers have also hurt APA students. Many Asian Pacific American students are assumed to be exceptionally smart and successful in school. Even when they do not display these characteristics, the teacher may not even notice because they often quietly do their work. This is a stereotype that causes many APA students to not get the support they need in the classroom. The teacher assumes the students are doing well instead of really making it his or her business to know if this is true (Delpit, 1995, p. 170-171).

They “appeal to the individual in the totality of its social roles as a citizen, and family man, representative of society in General and the residents of a particular area. The contents of the media covers all aspects of the relations of man with society and its subsystems, all areas of public relations, which included”. Read the mass media essay if you want to know more.

Broadcast media types

Under the mass media is commonly understood as social institutions that ensure the collection, processing and types of mass communications on a massive scale. Mass information is intended for numerically large, usually geographically dispersed audience and is fast and regularity of distribution, almost simultaneous consumption mediate, to some extent character.

The transmitted information must necessarily be in the public interest. Dissemination is an integral part of the mass spiritual communion of people, which emerged at a certain stage of human development in addition to direct interpersonal communication.

Each of these media has its own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.

Essays about media

The specificity of the press expressing its contents through the written word, lies primarily in the more than on radio and television, and analytical texts. The reading process involves a high degree of abstract thinking, active imagination, intellectual stress. In the result, the closer becomes the interaction between the author and the reader. Also, newspaper and magazine texts as a convenient repository of information: you can return to them for a detailed study, they are compact, easy to reproduction, etc. Among the specialized printed publications about health can be noted magazines such as “Health”, “Health of the schoolboy”, “Medicine and health”, “planet health,” “Women’s health” and others. Also, these publications are available on the Internet.

On the Internet a number of specialized sites on health is large enough, only in there are about five hundred.

Importance of mass media. Essay describes the main advantages of a radio are associated with greater compared to TV, promptness and accessibility and almost unlimited spread, and with technical simplicity and low cost production process. However, it should be noted that with the development of scientific and technological progress differences associated with the efficiency and availability have become blurred. Expressive means of radio journalism a live voice, noises, music have high potential accuracy and imagery in the transmission of real events. Today, radio is poorly involved in the dissemination of health information.

Mass media articles

TV combines the capabilities of radio, film, photography, painting, and theater. Synthesizing the image and sound, it is able to achieve almost complete lifelikeness of broadcast pictures, provide the timing of events and the audience watching them. There are the following reasons for such a rapid and massive proliferation of television:

• Information is shaped, holistic in nature and therefore highly affordable;
• TV shows easy to read (do not require even basic literacy);
• Creates the effect of personal presence and participation;
• Much of the information people receive is through vision (it is the main channel for obtaining information about the world).

In order to identify what role in the dissemination of information about health needs to play the media you need to define the purpose and functions of mass media in society.

American theorists and historians of printing, there are four theories that characterize the media, each of which has its own specific purpose. First, it is the authoritarian theory, the purpose of which is to maintain the policies of the current government, as well as in the service of the state. Secondly, the libertarian theory. Its purpose is to inform, entertain and sell, but mostly to help find the truth and to control the government. Thirdly is the theory of social responsibility, which aims to inform, entertain and sell, but basically to translate the conflict to the level of the discussion. And the fourth theory socialist. Its purpose is to contribute to the success and maintenance of the socialist system, in particular of the dictatorship of the party.

In modern formed a different approach to the media close to libertarian theory. It is also called the concept of free will. Theorists of this doctrine clearly defined functions of the society and the state. Man in this conception is the goal, and the happiness and welfare of the individual target companies. The main function of the society is to promote the interests of its individual members.

“The state exists as a method to ensure the individual’s environment in which he can realize their potential”. On this basis, the main purpose of media is to satisfy the needs of society in information. The need for information is the need to aggregate such information, in which the company needs for normal functioning and development. The functioning and vitality of society as a whole depends first and foremost on the health of its individuals.

Health stands as one of the necessary and essential conditions of active, creative and fulfilling life in society. This is what at the time drew the attention of Marx, presenting the disease as constrained in your freedom life. Inadequate level of health (ceteris paribus) has a negative impact on social, labour and economic activity of people, productivity and intensity of labor; a negative effect on some indices of natural movement of population, as well as to health and physical development of the offspring. In this regard, information about health should take a leading place in the information space of television, radio, press and Internet.

Annual medical statistics shows an increase in morbidity and an increase in the number of persons with disabilities, which in turn adversely affects the demographic situation in General. On average, the population is annually reduced by 600-900 thousand. The mortality rate in 2005 reached a value of 16.1 ppm. Of particular concern is the increased mortality in the young age cohorts. In 2005, life expectancy at birth was 65.3 years: men is 58.9 years, women 72,3 years. Such a significant difference (13.4 years) between life expectancy of men and women in no country in the world. This gap is much higher than in most countries where this value is on average 5 to 7 years.

To preserve health is the urgent task of forming the entire population of a new culture of health that not only reduces the likelihood of diseases, but also allows you to progressively strengthen a person’s vitality based on the use of traditional and non-traditional methods of prevention and treatment of diseases.

Form of mass media

To change the attitude of people towards their health is impossible without the help of powerful tool for shaping public opinion – media. The role of the media in shaping attitudes, values, norms, ideals and patterns of behavior for individuals and society as a whole, is invaluable. Television, radio and the press, fulfilling educational, informational, cultural and spiritual functions, is able to increase the interest of the population to the problems of maintaining a high level of health.

Currently mass media topics issue of research is the study of the media field, in particular the kind of social dimension has disseminated information about health.

It should be noted that modern media can have both positive and negative affect in the dissemination of health information.

A positive role could be played by social advertising. In the particular advertising of toothpastes, shampoos, hygiene products, etc. to perpetuate in the minds of men observe the rules of personal hygiene.

Unfortunately, the domestic media is often found in advertising products that can harm the health. For example, in advertising food restaurant “Mcdonald’s” focuses on the fact that the suggested diet is full and healthy. However, according to medical experts, the products of “fast food” only has a negative impact on health, leading to such undesirable consequences as obesity.

Currently, the advertising of strong alcoholic beverages and tobacco products on television is prohibited. Quite obviously, such measures need to be taken in the relations of alcoholic beverages. Moreover, for effective struggle with bad habits, is required to prohibit such advertising not only on television but also on radio and on outdoor billboards.