Reading Researcher Presentation

Concordia University

- Intro -

Born September 23, 1800 near Claysville, Pennsylvania.

Best known for his McGuffey Readers; a series of stories, poems, essays, and speeches intended for primary level readers (“William Holmes McGuffey”, 1993).

His readers became so popular that “…at least 120 million copies of [them] were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing [their] sales in a category with the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary” (p. 1) .

- Intro (Con’t)-

McGuffey was a theological and conservative teacher. He wanted to instill his Presbyterian and Calvinist beliefs onto his students (“William Holmes McGuffey”, 1993).

His work was generally accepted until the nation shifted towards unified pluralism. At that point, his later works were secularized and republished without his approval to encompass the character values of the 19th century middle-class.

- Timeline -

1826McGuffey becomes a Professor of Languages at

Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

1837McGuffey

completes his first four readers. His

brother Alexander later completed the fifth and sixth

ones.

1845McGuffey is appointed

professor of Natural and

Moral Philosophy atthe University of Virginia.

1800McGuffey is born near Claysville, Pennsylvania.

1835The publishing firm of Truman

and Smith contact him to create a four-part series of readers for primary students.

1839McGuffey becomes president of

Ohio University.

1873McGuffey dies in Charlottesville,

Virginia.

1814McGuffey becomes a teacher. His first class had 48 students

ranging between the ages of 6 to

21!

- Influence on Literacy -

Helped students with:•Phonics.•Letter and word recognition.•Slate work.

Helped students with:•Reading comprehension, with a primary focus on sentences.

Helped students with:•Word definition at the 5th and 6th grade-level.

Helped students with:•Advanced reading at the grammar school-level.

- How to use McGuffey’s Teachings in Class -

• Contains stories written with mostly monosyllabic words.

• “Nearly every lesson [had] a moral clearly stated in formal didactic words at its close” (Vail, 1911, p. 7).

• Examples include the story of the boy who freed his caged bird and the boy who drowned his cat.

Davis (as cited in Gambrell & Morrow, 2015) discovered that “…spelling-based coding instruction was just as effective as reading-based decoding instruction for her students, but more effective for children with poor phonological awareness” (p. 172).

Use word repetition to help Kindergartners pronounce consonants and vowels.

McGuffey’s first lesson uses monosyllabic words such as book, nice, and clean to teach students these concepts with a built-in moral of why it is important to keep books clean.

- How to use McGuffey’s Teachings in Class -

• Continuation of the first reader, this time written with polysyllabic words.

• Again filled with McGuffey’s Calvinist and Presbyterian morals.

• Examples include the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree and the girl who shared her cake with a dog and an old man.

Nagy and Anderson (as cited in Gambrell & Morrow, 2015) noticed that most polysyllabic words were related to bigger words through their morphology. They hypothesized that if children knew how to interpret these relationships, then they could easily comprehend six or seven more words for every basic word known.

Goodwin, Gilbert, and Cho (as cited in Gambrell & Morrow, 2015) recommend teaching students root words such as isolate and discrete to help them read derived words such as isolation and discretionary.

Gambrell & Morrow(2015) recommend playing a word game called Word Detectives to help students learn how to spell and decode big words. To play this game, have your students focus on one word and ask them if they can identify any others that sound like this word or if there are any look-alike words that are related to it.

- How to use McGuffey’s Teachings in Class -

• Multiple reading selections including five sections from the Bible; Croly’s Conflagration of the Amphitheatre at Rome, and Irving’s Description of Pompey’s Pillar (Vail, 1911).

• McGuffey also shares his childhood memories of stories told to him by his father when he was an Indian scout and hunter.

Based on Mostow and Beck’s (as cited in Kuhn & Rasinski, 2015) premise that readers learn words faster when they encounter the words in a variety of contexts rather than the same one, use different types of literature to approach fluency instruction.

Using McGuffey’s Third Reader, which contains a composite of authors, apply the Wide FORI method to accomplish CCSS requirements. This will allow you to incorporate several texts over the course of the week and expose students to a broad range of concepts and help to develop their fluency.

- How to use McGuffey’s Teachings in Class -

• Continuation of the third reader.• This time, with 17 selections from

the Bible, extracts from Milton and Shakespeare and writings from those who lectured at the College of Teachers in Cincinnati.

Rehearsal and performance of a script for the purposes of a “…prosodic and meaningful oral interpretation of the text” (Kuhn & Rasinski, 2015, p. 280).

Having students model the readings and providing feedback to them through a cycle of practice and performance.

Engage in Readers Theater (Gambrell & Morrow, 2015). Have your students select a complex piece of literature from McGuffey’s Third Reader. Based on their selection, have the student practice and perform a scene from the text in front of the class. Provide feedback with positive encouragement. Repeat this process with another selection and have the students perform in front of a larger audience that may include members of the general public and parents.

Questions?

- References-