The Trouble With Boys: Chapter 11 Boys and Literacy

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Permalink Reply by Tracy Esposito on April 13, 2010 at 8:14pm

I found page 138 to be extremely disturbing. It says that, "kids need to get and stay at grade level (this I agree with); those who fall more than two grade levels behind in reading rarely catch up." "If a student is not reading at grade level by eighth grade, teachers and administrators are already assuming that he (or she) is unlikely to ever wear a cap and gown. If this is true, we have our work cut out for us and we all know that the numbers of students reading below grade level seems to be growing. I have found that the Fundations program that we are using for intervention has been very effective with both the boys and girls. However, I find that most of the students in first grade prefer to use the white boards over the magnetic letter tiles. Do the tiles work better with the younger students?

Permalink Reply by Lisa Litz-Neavear on April 14, 2010 at 2:38pm

I wasn't clear as to the type of magnetic letters which were used in the synthetic phonics program. I initially pictured them as being like refrigerator magnets, but then I started wondering if they were like our Fundations magnets.

I think my five kindergarten students prefer the magnets to the white boards, since some of them are still struggling with fine motor skills. However, I find there's more playing with the magnets sometimes.

The 2nd-graders seem to prefer using the white boards, though.