Letters

Last night, I was at the holiday dinner meeting of the Fire Bell Club of New York City - a group of firefighters, fire dispatchers and business people who have an interest in the NYC Fire Department. I brought the October 2001 issue of Teaching K-8, in which you featured me, so I could give it to a friend. He had invited me to the dinner and is also a friend of former FDNY Commissioner Thomas Von Essen.

When the Commissioner walked in, I asked him to sign the magazine for me. He took the time to read the article, ask me questions, and write a personal note on page 46 as well as autograph the cover. He wrote, "Dear Rich, Thanks for all your help in preventingfires and making our firefighters safer- Thomas Von Essen - Proud to be Commissioner - FDNY."

I thought you'd like to see the photo of him holding the issue with me. I'm almost as proud of this as I am of being in your magazine. My friend, for whom this particular copy was intended, will have to keep waiting, because he's not getting this one!

Rich Hartig

via e-mail

A VIGNETTE

A kindergartner named Casey came home from school one day with his worksheet and a note from the teacher. The message said that the day's lesson was on learning the upper and lower case letter "D." Students were to circle the letter "D" and color the duck on the worksheet. The teacher stated that while Casey printed the letter "D" and circled all of his "D" words correctly, he didn't color the duck completely. When Casey's mother examined the paper, she noticed that the duck's eyes were colored yellow, its bill and feet were orange and the duck's hat and scarf were colored purple and black" Casey said, "I didn't color the rest because a real duck's body is white Why would anyone color the duck?"

This is a true story that happened to a friend of mine when her son attended kindergarten many years ago. One can see that not all students simply follow directions without thinking and questioning what they are doing. We can only hope that Casey's teacher has improved upon her teaching practices. Casey seemed to know many things from this lesson - he could print and identify the letter "D" and color and he obviously knew a great deal more about ducks than his teacher. Casey understood the main point of the lesson; I'm not so sure his teacher did.

This vignette is just one example of how lack of good, clear thinking on the part of the teacher can cause miscommunication and misunderstanding regarding lesson objectives. Students who can color a duck or any other object is not the purpose of a lesson for young readers. Besides needing to learn how to recognize letters and sounds associated with letters in words, beginning readers need to make connections by engaging in meaningful text.

Casey's story could be considered a gentle reminder to educators about keeping our eye on the big picture when teaching.

Joan Fingon

Rutland, VT

GUNNING FOG INDEX MISPRINT

Please note that there is a misprint in both Step 3 and Step 4 of the "How to Use the Gunning Fog Index" sidebar which appeared in our January 2002 feature, "Kid- Calculated Reading Levels." In Step 3, the instruction should have read, "... move the decimal point two places to the right." In Step 4, the instruction is to multiply the sum by 4, when it should have actually read ".4" We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.