Learning To Read

For years, Hyacinth Queen pretended to read the Bible along with the others in church. No one knew her granddaughter read the passages to her at home. No one knew Mrs. Queen, co-founder of the Queenstown community in Glen Burnie, could not read.Last year, deciding "it was about time to learn," Mrs. Queen, 90, enrolled in a literacy program with her granddaughter Hyacinth "Leona" Truxon. Now, she can finally read the Bible by herself.Mrs. Queen credits the Glen Burnie Community Learning Center, sponsored by Anne Arundel Community College, for her success.

If you're a parent of a kindergartener or first-grader, you might have noticed some backward or transposed letters as your child learns to read and write. Some of this is normal, but how would you know if your child had dyslexia? Susan Schapiro, an educational consultant with offices in Towson and Bel Air who has studied identification and treatment of dyslexia for years, says that if you're worried, you should pay attention to the following signs. It's not unusual for a child to exhibit one or two of these signs, but three or more - especially if there is a family history of dyslexia - warrant follow-up with a professional: * Delayed speech * Mixing up sounds in multisyllabic words ("aminal" for animal, "bisghetti" for spaghetti)

America is not alone in struggling to teach its children to read. Countries around the world with far fewer resources than the most powerful of them all are also striving to improve literacy. But they face huge difficulties, some that are similar to America's but many that are not. When children start learning to read in Israel, they work with an alphabet that has no vowels. Americans have to learn from a 26-letter alphabet, but in China, children must begin to memorize something like 2,500 characters - and that's just in the early years.

WHEN GOV. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. took off his sport coat and sat on a rail in a Towson University lecture hall Tuesday, I figured I was in for a treat. No, not because of the brouhaha between the governor and this paper that has been going on for weeks. That will probably be resolved soon, perhaps even without any faces being punched or noses being broken. I was there so that -- in the event that Ehrlich said anything right -- I'd be able to report it. And he said plenty that was right.

The faces of the teenagers gathered inside the crowded gym at John Carroll School in Bel Air were mostly white, faces of descendants of German, Italian, Polish and Irish immigrants who settled a century ago in Baltimore, prospered, and moved to the country. They are kids who grew up in what seem the most ordinary ways, who spent their days playing as 4-year-olds, learning to read by the time they reached school. This summer, they all read a book about someone who had a very different sort of childhood, whose parents had a very different sort of immigrant experience.

They arrived from small rural school districts in Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore -- and from bustling urban systems in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and their suburbs. But the more than 1,000 reading teachers and specialists who gathered at an annual conference in Towson last week had plenty of common ground, as they agreed on the need for parental involvement in reading and individual instruction in crowded classrooms. "Children and education are constantly changing," said Susan McCandless, president-elect of the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council.

NEXT TIME you're passing through Havana, stop by the Museo de la Alfabetizacion.There you'll see people in their 50s, 60s and 70s, some with grandchildren in tow, proudly finding the letters they wrote to Fidel Castro some 35 years ago.Permanently stored in the museum, the letters have a common message: I've learned to read, and here's the proof.More than 700,000 Cubans dispatched that message in the early 1960s. In one of the most remarkable literacy campaigns in history, cadres of literate Cubans took to the sugar fields and city streets of the island.

LEARNING TO read is life-changing. It's epiphany.We discovered this last week in reporting for a column on the renewed interest in Dick and Jane readers.A. Karen Blair, the Towson State University professor we interviewed about Dick and Jane, knew what we would discover and predicted it before we began talking to people in Catonsville, downtown Baltimore and Essex."Learning to read," said Blair, "is a wonderful and in many ways mysterious process, and many people remember it the way they remember where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor or the Kennedy assassination."

In retrospect, Kim Snyder says, the signs were obvious: He son didn't speak until age 3 and even then only could pronounce parts of words, like "hay-hay" for Fairhaven Street where they lived.At 4 1/2 , Will Snyder was diagnosed with a reading and language disorder or dyslexia. Its early recognition lead to quick intervention -- daily lessons with a tutor. Three years later, the 7-year-old now reads a year ahead of his grade level."He's a very confident, very ambitious little boy," Snyder says proudly.

Name: Harold Wilson CleggHonored by The Carroll County Sun for: His participation in Literacy Works program and learning to read at age 47; Clegg was honored by Gov. William Donald Schaefer Friday at the annual awards luncheon of the Governor's Employment and Training CouncilAge: 47Residence; hometown: New Windsor; CarrolltonEducation: Attended Westminster Elementary through sixth gradeFamily: Fiancee: Laura Beeker; Daughter: Ashley C., 4 months and children...

The faces of the teenagers gathered inside the crowded gym at John Carroll School in Bel Air were mostly white, faces of descendants of German, Italian, Polish and Irish immigrants who settled a century ago in Baltimore, prospered, and moved to the country. They are kids who grew up in what seem the most ordinary ways, who spent their days playing as 4-year-olds, learning to read by the time they reached school. This summer, they all read a book about someone who had a very different sort of childhood, whose parents had a very different sort of immigrant experience.

The 1896 brick building rising over Federal Hill rowhouses stood for law and order as Baltimore's Southern District police station - a neighborhood institution with 14 cells to house suspects, a courtroom and desks for police officers stationed there every hour of the day and night. Yesterday, the stately structure at 28 E. Ostend St. was celebrated in a new role - as an adult learning center with sunny rooms on all four stories. Mayor Martin O'Malley, speaking to a gathering of 300 at the dedication ceremony, summed up the difference between then and now. "This building used to be to lock people up," O'Malley said.

Fuller funding can help bridge learning gap I was happy to read that some school systems have finally begun to implement what has been common knowledge for a very long time - that 3- to 5-year-olds are sponges when it comes to learning anything language-related, including reading ("Early start to close learning gap," June 9). The catch has always been that these kids need caring people to talk to them, read with them and present the elements of language to them. They can't do it on their own. Nothing instills more confidence in a child than learning to read, and that confidence is what makes learning enjoyable.

It wasn't that long ago that Christopher Henderson, 5, didn't know what a sentence was. When he picked up a book at his Westview Park home, it was to look at the pictures. He had no idea that you read from left to right. But now the child talks to his older sister about sentences, and he reads books on his own. Christopher's mother, a postal worker and single mother, says she couldn't have taught her son these things by herself. She attributes his progress to a kindergarten program that immerses him in the beginning fundamentals of reading and writing.

I DON'T LOOK at it as the end of a journey, but only as a stop along the way, this last "Reading By 9" Sunday page. Four years and almost 200 of these columns ago, The Sun launched this weekly page with a promise that we would cover reading like the dew. We would look at reading instruction that appears to be effective and try to determine why. We would celebrate reading - the birthday of Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel, was a couple of days away - but we...

At a glance, it seems fairly innocuous. A visitor conducts a children's program about quilts at the Savage library. She reads a story, discusses quilting patterns and helps youngsters make quilt blocks using colored paper and glue. She throws around pattern names with the deftness of Martha Stewart - the bear paw, the Ohio star, the nine patch. But you notice that her shirt is emblazoned with a National Security Agency logo. And as you listen to her discuss each pattern, you realize that, like the quilts themselves, there is more to this bee than meets the eye. Jennifer Wilcox, assistant curator of the NSA's National Cryptologic Museum, went to the Savage library last week to talk about the hidden meanings stitched into 19th-century quilts used by slaves to aid their escape via the Underground Railroad.

A FEW MONTHS ago, we considered reading by 9 months. How about reading by 19 years?That's the daunting task facing middle and high school teachers who increasingly encounter illiterate teen-agers.It's not exclusively a city problem. "Today's high school teacher sees lots of kids who can't read," says Allan Starkey, coordinator of language arts in Howard County.If a 15-year-old can't spell or add, that can be overlooked. Cash registers at McDonald's were manufactured for the numerically challenged.

One of the most worrisome things for parents are signs their child is having difficulty learning to read, because they know reading is the key to the child's education.The Sun has assembled a panel of experts to address your concerns about reading and your child -- from a psychologist and a pediatrician to an ophthalmologist and a reading teacher. We also will ask other parents what has worked for them.Your questions and the responses of our experts will appear in our special "Reading by 9" pages on Sundays and Wednesdays, beginning soon in the Today section of The Sun.L If you have a question, send it in and we'll get the answer.

IF YOU'RE offended by federal interference in local school affairs, get ready: The federal government is eager to tell your neighborhood school how to teach reading. Sprinkled throughout the reading provisions of the landmark education bill awaiting President Bush's signature this month are references to "scientifically based reading research." If your school district's program doesn't pass the SBRR test, you can't share in the nearly $1 billion a year in funds for reading improvement authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act. Moreover, your program will be monitored by a new "peer review panel" with the power to recommend that federal funds be withheld if you're not making "significant progress."