Students in Michigan are struggling with reading, with average test scores for third-graders hitting historic lows. But students are beating the averages in Caledonia Community Schools. Today on “Study Hall” from School News Network, fourth-grade teacher Amy Dyksterhouse talks about how she integrates reading skills into all subjects, as part of a curriculum that takes students from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”
For the full podcast episode, visit schoolnewsnetwork.org
Full transcript:
Charles Honey: Hello everyone and welcome to study hall from school news network your window into the public schools of Kent County Michigan.A special welcome to our listeners at WGVU.Today's topic is reading and American students continuing struggles with it.Educators and lawmakers are struggling to turn around years of poor test scores both in Michigan and nationwide.A new Michigan law is due to take effect in 2027which will require more screening for dyslexia and training for teachers in the so-called science of reading. Yet at Caledonia Community Schools, southeast of Grand Rapids, students have consistently outperformed the state and national averages for several years. Last year, 74% of Caledonia fourth graders scored proficient in the Michigan Student Test of Educational Performance, or MSTEP, compared to 42% statewide. How are they doing it? I asked Amy Dyksterhouse, a veteran fourth grade teacher at Kettle Lake Elementary School and visited her classroom.
Amy Dyksterhouse (to classroom): We talked about those moving puzzle pieces.What are those moving puzzle pieces called? The tectonic plates. Turn to somebody near you and say tectonic plates.
Class: Tectonic plates.
AD: Everybody on page 22…
CH: Okay, well that was very cool, very interesting. Amy, welcome and thank you for allowing us to visit your creative classroom.
AD: Absolutely. Thanks for coming.
CH: So you've been teaching here about eight and half years, you said.Tell me a little bit more about that lesson we were just hearing and how you weave like reading skills into, you know, students learning about geology.
AD: Yeah.CKLA does a really great job of...
CH: now let's back up a minute. CKLA, what is that?
AD:Yeah, it stands for Core Knowledge Language Arts. Language Arts, So it's kind of a program that encompasses not just reading, but also the information that they're gonna glean. So as you get into a third and fourth grade classroom, we really focus on knowledge. But kindergarten, first and second are also really looking at all of the skills to go with phonics, uh morphology, grammar.We don't do as much of that as we get into the fourth grade on the phonics side, but we are really into the knowledge portion.
CH: I've heard it described as going from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”
AD: Yeah, we love that phrase because as they are uh learning to read, they're not able to process as much of the comprehension because they're just basically focused on phonics. But as we move into third and fourth grade, we're reading to learnand they're challenging each other to really go back into the text and try and infer what is it that the author's trying to teach us. I love CKLA and that's how we approach it every time, we say CKLAbecause I think of this curriculum kind of like a huge file cabinet for each one of my students. And as they open that file cabinet, they have different files. So for example, let's look at what we're talking about with geology in fourth grade. In kindergarten, they're taking that file, opening it for the first time, and they're learning about our earth and how they take care of it. Then in first grade, they're going to open that file again, and they're going to be looking at the history of the earth. Second grade is going to be talking about cycles in nature, third grades going into ecology, and then fourth grade we go to geology. Well, every time they pull that file, they're able to add more pages of information. They're adding more vocabulary. They're able to build on that knowledge that they had from the previous yearand be like, “oh, yeah, yeah, I remember when we talked about…”and it just becomes just this beautiful fluid information that they're able to then build on.
CH: So it's a very,it's very systematic, right? One layer builds upon… each layer builds upon the previous layer.And as part of this, I assume, you're trying to engage students interest in reading and a love for reading.
AD: Absolutely. And the kids do. They fall in love with reading,not just through the lessons and the units, but also just through the daily interaction of pulling more out. The lessons are super engaging and it's also I feel really important that the teacher is excited.So hopefully from the lesson that you were just watching, you're able to really hear the kids excited about reading because, I love it. We do a lot of fun things with it as well. So you'll notice there's readers, extra books all around the classroom for kids to read more about geology. We do fun things. We really engage them inextra celebrations at the end of the month. We have a genre challenge every month that if they read so many books outside of the text we're reading, they get, you know, like in our middle ages unit, we did a huge celebration where they're dressing up like knights with aluminum foil. We're having jousting matches and we're axe throwing and creating like…
CH: …not real axes.
AD: No they were those plastic ones they were great. But just letting them recognize like learning can be fun. We do a lot of interaction with group work, a lot of dialogue, lot ofI love debating with the kids on on certain things but just pulling what they know and being excited about it.
CH: I think it's fantastic what you and your teaching colleagues do and my thanks to you Amy formeeting with us this morning and helping our listeners better understand how you're helping students understand readingand to do it well.So best wishes for continued good results.
AD: Thank you.
CH: And thanks to our listeners at WGVU for joining us.To hear the full version of the podcast go to schoolnewsnetwork.org and click on podcasts or you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.Until next time. Happy studying!
