Why can’t our kids write?
“Plants need water it need sun to” sounds weird but it is often cited as an example of writing produced by today’s elementary school kids.
Correctly written, it means “plants need water and sun, too.”
It’s a common example from Judith C. Hochman, co-author of the 2017 book The Writing Revolution, and a graphic illustration of what’s gone wrong in the teaching of writing in schools.
With the release of the latest Nova Scotia student test results, the numbers confirm that our students are performing dismally in the wake of the pandemic. Plummeting student test score numbers in reading, writing and mathematics attract eyeballs, but the biggest revelation is that our kids are losing their writing skills at an alarming rate.
“It all starts with a sentence,” Hochman points out. If children cannot recognize or write a proper sentence, writing becomes an insurmountable challenge. Guessing at words, stringing random words together and free writing exercises are no substitute for learning to write properly and to express yourself in longer forms.
Signs of flagging student progress in literacy are everywhere in classrooms. Students are still guessing at words while reading in the early grades. Most elementary kids are rarely asked to write more than a sentence or two. Getting kids to turn off their cellphones saps a lot of energy.
MISGUIDED APPROACH
Nova Scotia’s whole approach to teaching reading and writing is the cause of much of the problem. Three fundamental pieces in that program — threecue word guess reading, process writing and Reading Recovery — were all rejected as ineffective in the groundbreaking Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read report released almost a year ago.
Since then, Nova Scotia has not only ignored the findings but sacked the deputy minister, Cathy Montreuil. It was Montreuil who was taking the lead in attempting to introduce “structured literacy” in place of the existing curriculum, based upon the discredited Fountas and Pinnell “levelled reading” program. Nor is the department tapping into the expertise of Mount Saint Vincent University professor Jamie Metsala, senior academic adviser to the Ontario Right to Read inquiry.
Most elementary teachers are language arts or social studies university graduates who enjoy reading and are decent readers. When it comes to writing, it’s a different story. They tend to have little formal training in teaching writing beyond implementing Writer’s Workshop exercises and are not completely comfortable teaching writing.
A 2016 study of nearly 500 teachers in Grades 3-8, conducted by Gary Troia of Michigan State University and Steve Graham of Arizona State University, found that fewer than half had taken a college class that devoted significant time to the teaching of writing. Less than a third had taken a class solely devoted to how children learn to write. Given their lack of preparation, it’s not surprising that only 55 per cent of those surveyed reported enjoying teaching the subject.
NOT A NEW PROBLEM
Reading and writing skills have been in steady decline in Nova Scotia for a decade or more. While some 68 per cent of Grade 3 students in 202122 met minimum standards in reading, down eight points from 76 per cent in 2012-13, the pattern is worse when it comes to writing. Student writing standards in Grade 3 have deteriorated significantly in all aspects of writing proficiency (ideas, from 88 to 50 per cent; organization, from 80 to 38 per cent; language use, from 83 to 43 per cent; and conventions, from 71 to 32 per cent). Two out of three Grade 3 students are familiar with Snapchat but exhibit little proficiency in grammar or spelling, and most can barely write a complete sentence.
Student proficiency by Grade 6 is critical because, as the October 2022 World Bank report on Pandemic Global Learning Loss claimed, students unable to read by 10 are considered to be living in “learning poverty.”
Until recently, that problem seemed far removed from the lives of Canadian children.
Six out of 10 kids in the world’s low-income and middle-income countries are classified
as “learning poor,” putting their future in jeopardy and their lives at risk. In Canada, the World Bank estimates that from 4.3 to 8.3 per cent of 10-year-olds qualify as “learning poor.” It’s much higher in Nova Scotia, where 29 per cent of 10-year-olds (in Grade 6) lack basic proficiency in reading.
While enhancing learning supports and improving the scores of African and Indigenous students has been a major priority, the pandemic disruption has wiped out previous gains.
Grade 3 reading scores for students of African heritage held firm at 57 per cent meeting standards, some 12 points below the provincial average score. Writing remains a serious problem, with fewer than half the cohort of 695 students meeting expectations. A similar-sized cohort of Mi’kmaw/ Indigenous students in Grade 3 suffered similar setbacks during the pandemic.
SLOW CRISIS RESPONSE
So far, Education Minister Becky Druhan and her department have fumbled the ball during the pandemic disruption.
Nowhere is the Education Department’s “muddle through” mentality better exemplified than in its slow-footed, ad hoc response to the deepening literacy crisis.
After ignoring the Ontario Human Rights Commission Right to Read report upon its release, Druhan and her officials six months later produced a Six Pillars framework for discussion last June. The document endorsing “structured literacy” was issued but implementation was voluntary and earmarked for several “pilot schools.”
Provincial literacy experts were taken aback when the
Six Pillars framework surfaced again, in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous scores. Conventional reading and writing strategies, including “balanced or levelled literacy” and Reading Recovery remain in place, even though they were rejected months ago in Ontario and other provinces.
The just-announced “new plan” for Grade 2 literacy is nothing of the sort. After keeping Six Pillars under wraps, it’s just now being introduced to teachers, delaying implementation for another full year.
Confronting the literacy crisis is not just about fixing the chronic problem with reading. Elementary children are losing their abilities to form sentences and express themselves in writing. Two out of three Grade 3 students (68 per cent) lack basic proficiency in writing conventions or spelling and the structure of language. It improves by Grade 6, but half of all students still lack that proficiency. That’s twice as many as in 2012-13.
Social media dominates the lives of children and teens, and that may be a factor in the deterioration of language expression. It’s still not good enough to throw up our hands and consign a whole generation to lesser lives without the ability to read or write with any proficiency. Free writing without any emphasis on proper sentences, transcribing words or punctuation is getting us nowhere; it’s time to introduce more structure without curbing students’ creative expression.