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Friday, November 17, 2006
When the Pictures Stop Telling the Story
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After all these years of writing about reading and how kids learn to do it, I find out there’s more to know. I was talking to Thomas Glass, a professor at University of Memphis, about superintendent pay, and we got to talking about reading and why impressive test scores in early grades often start dropping around fourth grade.
“The curriculum changes,” he said. Texts no longer have pictures that describe exactly what is going on in the story. When the story says, “Jane ran up a hill,” an early reader would show a picture of Jane running uphill. But as kids get older, the texts offer fewer picture clues.
Scores decline.
This is a new one for me.
Are there any elementary school teachers or parents out there who can speak to this?
