Marie Clay and Her Life’s Work
Molly Mason
LCRT 5701
Fall 2017 Overview of Marie Clay’s Professional Career
Marie Clay is one of the most influential literacy scholars in modern history. Marie completed her teacher training at the Wellington College of Education, and was awarded a primary teacher's certificate in 1945. Marie completed her master's thesis, "The Teaching of Reading to Special Class Children" and earned her master's degree in 1948. She was then employed as an assistant psychologist for the New Zealand Department of Education. In 1950, she went to the U.S. to study developmental and clinical child psychology at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Welfare. From 1992-1993 Marie served as president of the …show more content…
The Literacy Processing Theory charges that literacy learning involves continuous change over time, and that building on strengths makes it easier for children to learn. While children may start with their oral language knowledge and phonological awareness, as they read and write more, they accumulate more skills, and so their ability to deduce more complex reading and writing problems increases (Early Literacy Learning, n.d.). Marie Clay has a definite growth mindset approach to learning. She argues that children are active learners, who all have “unique strengths which teachers can build on to design appropriate instruction” (Konstantellou & Lose, …show more content…
The Reading Recovery program has proven to be a highly effective short-term intervention of one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher. The measurement of early literacy behaviors is as complex as the process of early literacy behaviors. Clay developed the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, which is the primary assessment tool used in the Reading Recovery program.
Clay (2002) argues for continual and systematic observation of students reading behaviors over time. Observations demonstrate what readers are able to do. Observations are much more useful for teachers’ understanding of students abilities than beginning of the year or end of the year tests (Clay, 2002). For example, a football coach can’t only look at the score during or at the end of the game, they must observe the way their players are playing as they are playing – a running record that identifies patterns. The coach can then help the players learn strategic moves to
Molly Mason
LCRT 5701
Fall 2017 Overview of Marie Clay’s Professional Career
Marie Clay is one of the most influential literacy scholars in modern history. Marie completed her teacher training at the Wellington College of Education, and was awarded a primary teacher's certificate in 1945. Marie completed her master's thesis, "The Teaching of Reading to Special Class Children" and earned her master's degree in 1948. She was then employed as an assistant psychologist for the New Zealand Department of Education. In 1950, she went to the U.S. to study developmental and clinical child psychology at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Welfare. From 1992-1993 Marie served as president of the …show more content…
The Literacy Processing Theory charges that literacy learning involves continuous change over time, and that building on strengths makes it easier for children to learn. While children may start with their oral language knowledge and phonological awareness, as they read and write more, they accumulate more skills, and so their ability to deduce more complex reading and writing problems increases (Early Literacy Learning, n.d.). Marie Clay has a definite growth mindset approach to learning. She argues that children are active learners, who all have “unique strengths which teachers can build on to design appropriate instruction” (Konstantellou & Lose, …show more content…
The Reading Recovery program has proven to be a highly effective short-term intervention of one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving first graders. Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each school day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher. The measurement of early literacy behaviors is as complex as the process of early literacy behaviors. Clay developed the Observation Survey of Early Literacy Achievement, which is the primary assessment tool used in the Reading Recovery program.
Clay (2002) argues for continual and systematic observation of students reading behaviors over time. Observations demonstrate what readers are able to do. Observations are much more useful for teachers’ understanding of students abilities than beginning of the year or end of the year tests (Clay, 2002). For example, a football coach can’t only look at the score during or at the end of the game, they must observe the way their players are playing as they are playing – a running record that identifies patterns. The coach can then help the players learn strategic moves to