Successful Classrooms: Effective Teaching Strategies for Raising Achievement in Reading and Writing

The good news is that math scores are going up; unfortunately, reading scores are stable or dropping in many places. One way to combat this slippage is to follow the methods used in the Naranca Elementary School (El Cajon, CA), which made reading and writing top academic priorities. Of its 800+ student body, the school has 350 students speaking fourteen languages other than English, but now all students focus on English language arts for an impressive period of classroom time. By spending an unprecedented two and a half hours a day on language arts, the school has gone from the worst-performing school in the district to being named a Title I Achieving School. Using a combination of phonics and whole language approaches, students spend more time learning to read, spell, write their own stories, and read for pleasure each and every day. Disappointingly, however, while the importance of having classrooms well-stocked with books is mentioned, the role of the school library within this language arts-intensive program is not. Still, this is good food for thought, and schools and school systems which seek radical student improvement should give careful consideration to such a program. Highly recommended. Aud: E, I, C, P. (R. Reagan)