chunking

While we're having a great time with our second grade buddy, Lisa*, Susan's and my session with her didn't go as smoothly as it could have last week. Our buddy just doesn't seem to enjoy reading. She likes books, loves talking about books, and clearly enjoys being read to. However, when reading a book herself, she frustrates easily and doesn't make sustained attempts at decoding unknown words. After a sentence or two, she's ready to move on to something else and has an arsenal full of diversionary tactics waiting to be deployed. As a result of this, our attempt to do a running record with her wasn't successful -- even though we had selected easier books for our session than the ones we looked at the week prior. Lisa was still struggling or still reticent to read, or a little of both.

On more than a few occasions, when encouraged, Lisa would try chunking the words she didn't know. She wasn't always successful, even with words that seemed particularly amenable to a chunking strategy, like compound words. Reading Fox, and looking back at a specific instance where Lisa was trying to decode by chunking, I think I might see why she was unsuccessful. On one occasion, she wanted to decode a word by chunking it, and wanted Susan to cover one portion while she decoded the other. I can't recall the exact word, but her strategy progressed along the lines of taking a word such as "nothing" and trying to chunk it into "not" and "hing" or "no" and "hing," ignoring the "t". (Susan, if you're still reading my blog, correct me in the comments!) Fox said something that seems to make sense of what was going on here.

Fox (2008) states that using "the multiletter strategy hinges on identifying chunks" in words (p. 180). However, when using this strategy, readers have to know which letters form viable chunks and which do not. Readers, Fox tells us, "use their knowledge of letter-sound patterns to determine the letters in new words that are most likely to belong in groups" (p. 180). This is a skill that must be practiced. I had a bit of an "aha moment" when I read this, because it seemed to identify why Lisa was struggling when attempting a chunking strategy. Either she has not had enough practice honing her chunking skills, or she hasn't yet mastered letter-sound and analogy strategies.

I am curious whether Lisa receives extra reading help. It's clear she's been taught strategies to help her decode new words, and while she both tried and experienced a level of success with of some of these strategies during our time together, her stamina is low. I am not sure if offering an even easier book to read will spark a desire to read more, but I'm hoping so, and will try some easier books when we meet tomorrow.

*pseudonym

darius goes west

I've been hearing a lot about the documentary Darius Goes West lately, a documentary about a young man with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy named Darius Weems. This film has been highly recommended (by Oprah, for instance) for use in middle to high school classrooms - to both raise awareness about the disease (which is the number one genetic killer of youth worldwide) and to "propel the positive & empowering message of Darius Goes West as far and as wide as possible." (from dariusgoeswest.org) To achieve this goal, The Darius Goes West website will ship out a free DVD to educators and has made available a "standards based curriculum" to accompany the film. Arrangements can also be made for Darius Weems to attend a video-conference Q&A in your classroom.

Admittedly, I hadn't given a lot of additional thought to what I'd heard about Darius Goes West - for one thing, if I land in middle school, I'll be teaching middle level science (although an interdisciplinary approach that investigated the cause of Duchenne's, research like gene mapping, treatments, and potential cures could be very interesting). However, while channel surfing the other night, there it was, being shown on the Halogen channel. I decided to watch it, and it was a very touching movie about a 15 year old young man who knew his life would be cut short (his brother died as a result of Duchenne's at 19) and wanted only to go west and get his wheelchair "pimped" on MTV's "Pimp my Ride." It definitely evoked sympathy for Darius (especially since MTV wouldn't touch his wheelchair or invite him on the show) and inspired you to also pay attention to issues of inclusion and difference. Of course, it also encouraged you to support Duchenne's research. Overall, I thought that the documentary was good.

As I watched, though, thoughts expressed in one of the readings from our special needs class kept springing to mind. I can't recall the title of that article, but it contained a section decrying the "poster child" method of raising awareness of (and funds for) diseases and/or disabilities. One danger, we were told, is that the emphasis becomes the generation of revenue, with the poster child simply shilling for disease research. A good treatment of this issue can be found in another article, "From Poster Child to Protestor". Author Laura Hershey's particular beef is with the Jerry Lewis telethon, and she expresses the following complaint about manufacturing poster children:

Now we were taking on one of the biggest barriers of all: the paternalistic attitudes which prevail in our society, and which are reflected so dramatically in the annual telethon.

So, for anyone reading this blog, I toss the ball into your court. What do you think about this? Is finding a charismatic, sympathetic character and casting him or her into the role of "Poster Child" good, mostly good, tending to do more harm than good, or just wrong? Let me know what you think. And do watch Darius Goes West if you get the chance.