Words why

When we ask for reasons in speaking, we can use the phrase why is that? We can use why ever or why on earth to add emphasis and to show shock or surprise. We usually stress ever and earth :. Why ever would anyone want to go on holiday alone?

Why on earth has Julie bought me this expensive present? In informal contexts we sometimes use what for?

They needed more space. When we are annoyed about something, we sometimes use the phrase why should :. Why should taxpayers have to pay more because the government has not managed its spending properly? Why should old people have to worry about health insurance? We can use the phrase why not?

Why not? Be careful not to use why instead of because :. I have not placed an order for a long time because I am unhappy with the last delivery.

Not: I have not placed an order for a long time why I am unhappy …. Reason why. Outsets and onsets! Why should … : expressing annoyance. See also: Suggestions. Typical error. See also: Reason why. Popular searches 01 Collocation 02 Adjectives 03 Comparison: adjectives bigger , biggest , more interesting 04 Future: will and shall 05 Say or tell?

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Above or over? Across , over or through? Advice or advise? Affect or effect? All or every? All or whole? Allow , permit or let? Almost or nearly? Alone , lonely , or lonesome? Along or alongside? Already , still or yet? Also , as well or too? Alternate ly , alternative ly Although or though? Altogether or all together? Amount of , number of or quantity of? Any more or anymore? Anyone , anybody or anything? Apart from or except for? Arise or rise?

Around or round? Arouse or rouse? Experts say that in a whole-language classroom, some kids will learn to read despite the lack of effective instruction.

But without explicit and systematic phonics instruction, many children won't ever learn to read very well. By the end of , Silva and other district leaders in Bethlehem had figured out that balanced literacy didn't line up with the science. Now they had to figure out what to do about it. They decided the first step would be a series of training sessions over the course of a school year for all the principals at the district's 16 elementary schools.

The district leaders reasoned that the principals needed to be convinced of the science if they were going to convince their teachers to change the way they taught reading. If there was one principal who was sure to resist, it was Kathy Bast, the principal of Calypso Elementary School. She was known as the district's No. She happened to be out on medical leave when the training began, but her colleagues warned her she wouldn't like it. You're not going to take well to this training. But Bast had a secret.

Before becoming a principal, she'd been a reading specialist. It was her job to help struggling readers. In her training to become a reading specialist, she learned a lot about how to identify children with reading problems, but she learned nothing about how to help those children learn to read. With time on her hands while she was on medical leave, Bast began poking around online and discovered the vast scientific literature on reading. It wasn't being published in a lot of the journals and newsletters she got as a school principal, but as her boss, Silva, had discovered, all it takes is a Google search to find it.

When Bast returned to work from medical leave and joined her fellow principals in the training on reading science, she was ready to hear what the trainer had to say. And it kind of blew her mind. The principals went through the training in the school year, the kindergarten teachers went through it the next year, and then first- and second-grade teachers did it, too. For many teachers, the science of reading training was overwhelming at first. She hadn't learned much about phonics when she was in college studying to be a teacher.

Neither had Michelle Bosak, an English as a second language teacher at Lincoln. Candy Maldonado, a first-grade teacher at Lincoln, described the district's old approach to reading instruction this way: "We did like a letter a week. So, if the letter was 'A,' we read books about 'A,' we ate things with 'A,' we found things with 'A,'" she said.

The teachers had no idea how kids actually learned to read. After learning about the reading science, these teachers were full of regret. To help assuage that guilt, the Bethlehem school district has adopted a motto: "When we know better, we do better.

The Bethlehem schools now use a curriculum in the early elementary grades that mixes teacher-directed whole-class phonics lessons with small-group activities to meet the needs of children at different points in the process of learning to read.

At first, some of the teachers recoiled a bit at the scripted nature of the lessons; the curriculum is explicit and systematic, with every teacher on the same page each day. If the curriculum says today's the day for kindergarteners to learn words that begin with the sounds "wuh" and "guh," you can walk into any kindergarten classroom in the district and see the teacher doing that lesson. Lynn Venable, a kindergarten teacher at Calypso who has been teaching elementary school for 21 years, said she used to think reading would just kind of "fall together" for kids if they were exposed to enough print.

Now, because of the science of reading training, she knows better. She said her current class of kindergartners had progressed more quickly in reading than any class she'd ever had.

At the end of each school year, the Bethlehem school district gives kindergartners a test to assess early reading skills. In , before the science of reading training began, more than half of the kindergartners in the district tested below the benchmark score, meaning most of them were heading into first grade at risk of reading failure. At the end of the school year, after the principals and kindergarten teachers were trained in the reading science, 84 percent of kindergarteners met or exceeded the benchmark score.

At three schools, it was percent. Silva is thrilled with the results, but cautious. He's eager to see how the kindergartners do when they get to the state reading test in third grade. It's impossible to know if the science of reading training is what led to the test score gains.

Some of the schools in the district moved from half-day to full-day kindergarten the same year the training began, so that could have been a factor. But Bast, the principal at Calypso, thinks if her teachers had continued with the old approach to reading instruction, she'd still have a lot of struggling readers in her school. You can find schools and school districts across the United States that are trying to change reading instruction the way Bethlehem has, but according to Moats, ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction is the norm.

Seidenberg says the scientific research has had relatively little impact on what happens in classrooms because the science isn't very highly valued in schools of education. Education as a practice has placed a much higher value on observation and hands-on experience than on scientific evidence, Seidenberg said. Back in the early s, after the panel convened by Congress released its report, Butler and her colleagues wanted to know: Were teacher preparation programs in Mississippi instructing teachers to teach reading in ways backed up by the science?

So they did a study of the teacher preparation programs at the state's eight publicly funded universities. The institute reviewed syllabi and textbooks, surveyed the students in the classes, observed some of the classes, and interviewed the deans and faculty. The study found that teacher candidates in Mississippi were getting an average of 20 minutes of instruction in phonics over their entire two-year teacher preparation program.

Kelly Butler was alarmed. She and her colleagues went to state education officials and pleaded with them to take action. In , in a rather extraordinary move, the state Department of Education mandated that every teacher preparation program in Mississippi require two courses in early literacy to cover what was in the National Reading Panel report.

It was extraordinary because even though states have the authority to regulate teacher preparation programs, only a handful of states have specific requirements about what prospective teachers learn about reading. Colleges and universities generally don't like state officials telling them what to do.

Angela Rutherford, who works with Butler and is a professor in the school of education at the University of Mississippi, put it more bluntly. Rutherford wasn't sure the state mandate would make a big difference because many of her colleagues in teacher preparation didn't know the science themselves or didn't believe in it.

She said many of them have long believed in whole language. Butler says the resistance to the science among college faculty and administrators baffles her, but it runs deep.

Once, when she was talking to an education school dean about the reading science, the dean said to her, "Is this your science or my science? It was not clear how much impact the state mandate to teach reading science was having. The legislature appropriated millions of dollars to pay for training in the science of reading for all of the state's elementary school teachers.

However, if new teachers coming out of teacher prep programs didn't know reading science, the state would be spending money perpetually retraining teachers. At this point, no one really knew what prospective teachers were learning in those early literacy classes required by the state. So in , Butler and her colleagues decided to repeat the study they'd done in This time they looked at private colleges in Mississippi, too.

They examined the early literacy courses at 15 teacher prep programs. They found, with one exception, that all the state's teacher prep programs appeared to be teaching the components of reading identified by the National Reading Panel report.

But when Butler interviewed deans and faculty, most of them admitted they'd never actually read the report. And when she asked them basic questions about the science of reading, most of them didn't know the answers. The schools of education were complying with the letter of the law, but many faculty members didn't really understand the science themselves. Teachers in the K education system are used to professional development.

College professors are not. A Mississippi governor's task force decided the professors would benefit from the same training that the state's elementary school teachers were getting. No one was going to require college instructors to do the training, but state legislators had passed a measure to encourage it. Since , teacher candidates in Mississippi have been required to pass a test on reading science.

If you don't pass what's known as the Foundations of Reading test, you don't get licensed to teach elementary school in Mississippi. It's now in the best interest of faculty to teach the science, because if they don't, their students won't get jobs. The first question was: "True or false? Speaking is natural, reading and writing are not. Roshunda Harris-Allen, a professor in the teacher preparation program at Tougaloo College, said she wasn't taught reading science in college or as part of her doctorate.

And she didn't learn phonics as a kid. She said that she struggled with reading when she was a child. Trashonda Dixon, a literacy instructor at Tougaloo, says she did get phonics instruction when she was young, but she never learned how to teach phonics. The Mississippi faculty came together for training several times over the course of a year, and some even received mentoring as they were teaching reading science to their college students.

Moats said she once did some LETRS workshops for college faculty in Colorado many years ago and one of her colleagues did abbreviated training for faculty in Maryland, but Mississippi is the only place she knows of where college faculty are going through an extended course.

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