Bob Shepherd wrote this essay about reading instruction in 2019. It has aged well. It is a long discussion about the futility of the “reading wars.” Shepherd explains how useless and counterproductive the current emphasis on “reading strategies” is. It is well worth your time to sit down and read it through.

Categories Education Reform, Literacy

77 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Stef's Reflections on Teaching says:

November 1, 2021 at 10:10 am

Oh Diane,
Do the research. Bob just likes to use big words. Whole language did require phonics. It relied on teacher knowledge. You are feeding into the science of reading mess with this post.

This really is frustrating.

Reply
- LisaM says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 11:24 am
  
  Funny, but I didn’t read it that way. Whole language has always required phonics…… for those children needing extra help at the time. Phonics is a great resource for the struggling child, but it should not be replacing whole language reading instruction that most children need/understand.
  
  Reply
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 2:17 pm
    
    I should, perhaps, have chosen different language because I didn’t want to trigger a war between ideologically entrenched camps. I was referring in the essay, and I thought I was clear about this, specifically to the idea that most kids can learn to read fluently SIMPLY by having access to texts they care about and learning individual new words in context (I use the analogy of learning individual kanji in Japanese). I am not, emphatically not, rejecting approaches to reading that INCLUDE kids selecting texts they want to read, engaging in language play, discussing texts with one another, reflecting about texts and responding to them, asking questions about them, enacting them, using context to make sense of what’s written, and so on. I thought that I had been explicit about this (see the introduction to the essay and it section on kairos, context, and world knowledge) but perhaps I shall revisit my wording. My point in the essay is that phonics is one part of a good reading program and a key one for many kids and that this is, for the most part, a settled matter but that there are other important parts of the puzzle to consider.
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 11:35 am
  
  “Bob just likes to use big words.” Yikes!
  
  Doubtless there have been teachers who combined whole language and phonics-based approaches. What I addressed in the essay was the wrong-headedness of doing whole language alone with most children.
  
  Reply
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:45 am
    
    “Bob just likes to use big words”
    
    Does that mean “Bob just likes to use the whole language” (as opposed to just a small subset of the words)?
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:48 am
    
    “Bob just likes to use the whole language — as opposed to the hole language”
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:52 am
    
    It’s a mistake, I think, to jump to conclusions without considering the relevant issues. This is, for example, what politicians do when they conclude that “public schools are failing” based on scores from invalid tests. They simply take the scores at face value, but a little more thought about those tests would disabuse them of their dogmatic absolutism about “reform.” So, I am not apologetic about this being a long essay. It covers a lot of ground in a relatively short space–much of it commonly ignored in these discussions. There are many relevant issues here, and that is the very point of the essay–that all these matters are relevant but many are commonly ignored.
    
    With regard to use of “big words,” it is true that the essay uses (and defines) some technical vocabulary, but one doesn’t expect educators to be afraid of “big words.” I agree n general, that one should seek the simple, Anglo-Saxon-derived alternative when one has a decision to make among several choices–to say, “She’s quick” instead of “She’s perspicacious.” But again, one doesn’t expect to have to write down to professional educators.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 12:12 pm
    
    Shakespeare, on the other hand , liked to use the hole language
    
    This drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole’
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 12:20 pm
    
    As did Chaucer, eg, in the Miller’s Tale.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 12:23 pm
    
    She’s quick” instead of “She’s perspicacious.”
    
    And “She’s loose” as opposed to “she’s promiscuous”
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 12:25 pm
    
    Like Shakespeare, I am also partial to hole language.
  - ciedie aech says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 3:20 pm
    
    frenetically illustrative cogitations…
- retired teacher says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 12:40 pm
  
  Whole language, when correctly implemented, always included embedded phonics. In this country some teachers were not trained to do this so instruction failed in the same way “see and say” method failed for some students. Students that had difficulties with phonics were supposed to receive “reading recovery” in whole language classes. In this country most school districts were not willing to pay for this intensive instruction.https://readingrecovery.clemson.edu/about/what-is-reading-recovery/
  
  Reply
- LeftCoastTeacher says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 7:25 pm
  
  Correction: Bob just likes to use precise words. Common Core standards, tests, and test prep materials, on the other hand, use multisyllabic, imprecise words trying to sound smart, or in their words, rigorous. Bob understands that the purpose of using language is precise communication, not proof that one belongs in the aristocratic class. I say that with confidence, knowing that Bob ain’t no snob. He’s a liberal.
  
  I checked out your Reflections on Teaching site. You make sense too, and seem to be in agreement with Bob. This blog is nothing but erudi— smart. We’re on the same page. Chillax.
  
  Reply
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:25 am
    
    Deformers use rigorous words, aka rigorwords.
    
    And the world they are trying desperately to create is, you guessed it, rigorwords.
    
    Of course, the whole edufice is rigorworthless.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:26 am
    
    Trying to create rigorworld, of course
Bob Shepherd says:

November 1, 2021 at 11:32 am

Thanks for sharing this, Diane. Much appreciated!

Reply
- Sara Hjelm (@sara_hjelm) says:
  
  November 6, 2021 at 3:26 pm
  
  Putting this on my website of links tomorrow. Really good read
  
  Reply
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 6, 2021 at 4:16 pm
    
    Thank you. And I am happy that you commented, for your comment led me to your superb website and its fascinating collection of articles. I just read “Talking about Forgetting with Students.” What a thoughtful and important contribution to our pedagogy! News one can use. Not only are the practical suggestions in this piece extremely valuable, but so is the general approach underlying it–that we must think carefully about HOW STUDENTS ARE EXPERIENCING what we are doing. Bravo!
    
    Here, Ms. Hjelm’s website: https://theeffortfuleducator.com/
    
    Note to readers of this blog: There is a menu on the website that enables you to choose translation from Swedish into your preferred language.
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 6, 2021 at 4:17 pm
    
    Thank you, Ms. Hjelm!
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 6, 2021 at 7:53 pm
    
    Honored by this. The materials on your website are outstanding. News teachers can actually use.
Harriett Janetos says:

November 1, 2021 at 12:16 pm

As a reading specialist working over the past dozen years with hundreds of struggling students, I highly recommend reading and rereading Bob’s section on phonics, which relies on reading science (as it should!). In addition, I have been teaching a third grade class once a week for the past four years, and his discussion of the role of reading strategies in reading comprehension is also excellent. Thank you, Bob!

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 4:49 pm
  
  Thank you, Ms. Janetos, for your comment.
  
  Reply
Bob Shepherd says:

November 1, 2021 at 12:17 pm

I wrote this essay in exasperation after many years of reading about the reading wars but finding, again and again, that critical matters affecting reading ability, like syntactic fluency and world knowledge, were commonly ignored. So, I tried to summarize in a relatively short space the most important issues affecting the mechanics of reading and included a preface mentioning the non-mechanics issues. It is ironic and exasperating to try to confront the problem of critical issues being left out of the discussion and key ideas not being labeled and understood and then to have people respond with comments about it’s being “too long” and full of “big words.” I often feel this way about the issue of the value of standardized testing. After years of reading reform malarkey, I decided to write a single piece that summarized my many objections to the tests that now exist. Again, it’s not a sound bite. That’s the point–that all these issues not considered by “reformers” are critical ones: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/why-we-need-to-end-high-stakes-standardized-testing-now/

It’s almost always a mistake, when dealing with a topic as complex as are reading and assessment, to think in slogans.

Reply
Steve Nelson says:

November 1, 2021 at 12:38 pm

Admirable essay, Bob. I railed against the reading wars for years, noting that whole language and explicit phonics learning were components in developing reading and comprehension fluency. One of my frequent efforts to clarify and unite the wheat and the chaff was to interpret “whole language” in an oral sense. Seen that way, Chomsky’s work, as well as Jerome Bruner’s insistence that language learning is a social phenomenon, make “whole language” a valuable notion in order to link language to knowledge and understanding. I always made the point that the advent of the printing press created a new cognitive problem requiring specific skills that did not have the benefit of neural pathways developed over several million years of evolution from musical sounds to complex utterances.

Where so much of reading “instruction” fails is the explicit phonics teaching done in the near total absence of the important points you make in the latter sections of you essay. It is as though teaching kids to sound out words will prepare them to write – or comprehend – a critical analysis of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

While the complexities of language facility requires both/and, not either/or, there is a crucial difference in weight to be considered. Explicit phonics training, all day, all year, will provide no cognitive preparation for anything useful – other than, perhaps, a gold star on a spelling test. In simple terms, the beautiful powers of language can neither be inferred from nor constructed out of phonemes. By contrast – and I believe this to be essential and important – the phonetic elements of language can be inferred from, extricated from, and understanding reached through contextual apprehension of meaning and grammar.

So, I suppose I will stipulate to the value of phonetics “instruction,” but the greater sin is the absence of focus on rich language environments.

I could go on, but it’s about your essay, not my turn!

Reply
- Steve Nelson says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 1:23 pm
  
  I also apologize for at least two errors in subject/verb agreement, showing the value of proofreading after changing wording!
  
  Reply
  - Steve Nelson says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 1:25 pm
    
    And, of course, this comment is meaningless since my first, long, comment is still in moderation.
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:29 pm
    
    I do this all the time, Steve–hit the Send button and then curse myself for that egregious error (Populace vs. Populous or whatever). Often, I will make an edit and in the process forget to change something else and post a mess.
    
    “the phonetic elements of language can be inferred from, extricated from. . . .”
    
    I think that one of the reasons for the wars over phonics is that this is how quite a few older, really good readers did it–ones who later became educators. They were driven to read very young by the stuff they could learn and the experiences they could have, and they were good enough at automatically applying general pattern recognition skills and memory to the decoding task to be able to carry this off with little or no explicit phonics instruction. But I would argue that that’s not the case for a LOT of kids. Just look at the adults around us. Half read 4 or fewer books last year. Many are barely literate and voted for the guy who thought that stealth planes were actually invisible, that it would be a good idea to consider injecting disinfectants, and that we should send astronauts to the sun. Reading, for these folks, is a terrible CHORE because of poor decoding ability; inability to parse, automatically and fluently, any but the simplest syntax; and lack of the necessary background knowledge to grok written texts.
    
    “Explicit phonics training, all day, all year”
    
    No one wants that. But a once-through early on accompanied by lots of wonderful experiences with texts also going on in the same classroom and diagnostic testing of decoding ability and supplementation later as PART of an overall reading program–valuable. I’ve taught too many high-school kids who could barely do basic decoding.
  - Harriett Janetos says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:39 pm
    
    “‘Explicit phonics training, all day, all year’
    
    No one wants that. But a once-through early on accompanied by lots of wonderful experiences with texts also going on in the same classroom and diagnostic testing of decoding ability and supplementation later as PART of an overall reading program–valuable. I’ve taught too many high-school kids who could barely do basic decoding.”
    
    This is exactly right from my perspective as a former high school English teacher and current elementary school reading specialist. I like the way cognitive neuroscientist Mark Seidenberg (Language at the Speed of Sight: How We Read, Why So Many Can’t and What Can Be Done About It) puts it: “Get in, get out–move on.”
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 10:05 am
    
    If one prefaces all comments with “I apologize for at least one error” that pretty much covers all the bases and one is never faced with the issue of trying to point out errors in a comment that went into moderation.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 10:08 am
    
    That’s what authors do in the preface to most books, at any rate (that, and blame all the errors on their typist, publisher, spouse, kids and pets and entropy.)
  - Steve Nelson says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 10:28 am
    
    True dat. It was indeed the typist who erred.
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 2, 2021 at 1:30 am
  
  to interpret “whole language” in an oral sense
  
  Yes. It makes sense with regard to SPOKEN language.
  
  Reply
- retired teacher says:
  
  November 2, 2021 at 9:48 am
  
  Whole language was never implemented well in this country. Many teachers today use the term “balanced literacy” to describe typical instruction. This includes both phonics and comprehension. If done well, it can be a very successful way to teach most students. It also inspires students to enjoy reading. However, there will always remain a few students that will not learn well this way. Those students may need more of a visual kinetic approach. A good reading teacher is versatile and will adapt to the needs of students.
  
  Reply
Steve Nelson says:

November 1, 2021 at 12:39 pm

Help! Why am I in moderation purgatory?

Reply
- GregB says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 12:42 pm
  
  It’s a random thing, happens to everyone. Probably because it had some names the algorithm didn’t like.
  
  Reply
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 2:41 pm
    
    Brett Kavanaugh
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 2:42 pm
    
    It’s not random.
    
    For example, the name Brett K. spelled out will automatically put the comment into moderation.
    
    Maybe it’s the WordPress business model: you pay them a certain amount to put certain things into moderation for a certain time.
    
    Brett K. must have paid them a lot.
  - GregB says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 8:12 pm
    
    Mentioning the name of the 11th president will get you there too. I don’t think he paid anyone!
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 9:28 am
    
    My comment at 2:41 above went into moderation (as expected)
    
    QED
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 1:56 pm
  
  It’s impossible to know why this happens. Some mystery of WordPress. Diane typically checks what’s been placed in moderation relatively quickly and responds. She must spend a lot of time doing this, for it happens absurdly often, for absurd reasons. Looking forward to your comment, Mr. Nelson.
  
  Reply
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 2:44 pm
    
    There is probably method to the madness and my guess is that it probably involves money.
  - leftcoastteacher says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 8:31 pm
    
    It probably does involve money. When I get phone calls from spammers, and I get them daily from a business claiming an exigent need to extend the warranty on my car, the one I bought nearly seventeen years ago, the calls are listed on my iPhone as legitimate. When I get calls from the teachers union, they are listed by the phone as possible spam. Fault the spammers for evading the algorithms, perhaps. Fault Apple for creating algorithms that discriminate against unions, yeah, that’s more like it.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:35 am
    
    I bought my car only 3 years ago, but it was already 15 years old.
    
    The dash board regularly lights up like a Christmas tree from random warning lights and the speedometer goes to zero when I am travelling at 70mph.
    
    Oh, and my brakes gave out completely over the weekend while I was driving.
    
    Other than that, it works great.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:37 am
    
    Who needs brakes anyway?
    
    I found that if you shift down before coming to a stop light and then apply the parking brake , it works fine.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:39 am
    
    The only drawback is that the guy behind you honks like crazy when you are only moving at a crawl to the stoplight.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 8:47 am
    
    Once you’ve been to Saturn as I have, you have zero desire to leave Earth.
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 9:40 am
    
    lol
Linda says:

November 1, 2021 at 1:43 pm

Off topic but, I thought Poet, Bob and others would want to know that Erik Prince’s Blackwater goes by a different name (different owners). The firm now goes by the name, Academi. It remains in the private security business.
Intercept (Oct. 2021) posted an article about recent scrutiny into Prince’s activities.

Reply
Rick Johnson says:

November 1, 2021 at 3:09 pm

Having “sat at the feet” of such whole language theorists in the 70s and 80s like Frank Smith, Edmund Henderson, and others in the field of reading, I can attest that they never disdained instruction in phonics, indeed, it was a necessary decoding strategy, but it was placed in its proper perspective. As Donald Durrell once bellowed from the podium, “If you’re teaching your pupils to read by sounding and blending, I want you to stop it. Our language is meaning based, not sound based.” And Frank Smith pointed out with his tongue likely firmly planted in his cheek, “Phonics works best reading right to left, not left to right. Consider the letters “ho”. You don’t know how to pronounce this combination until you see what follows: hotel, hot, honor, horror, and so forth.” Phonics has always been a part of the theory of reading instruction. Even the so-called whole-word approach of the 50s,”children made a beginning by learning whole words, but their reading lessons were accompanied by related lessons in phonics and word blending.” (Emund Henderson) Yes, phonics is an important strategy for young beginning readers, but we must never forget that “reading is the meaningful interpretation of written or printed symbols.” (William K. Durr)

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 11:44 pm
  
  “Our language is meaning based, not sound based”
  
  This makes no sense. It’s like saying that “rocks are hardness based, not mineral based.”
  
  Reply
- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  November 2, 2021 at 8:51 am
  
  “Consider the letters “ho”. You don’t know how to pronounce this combination until you see what follows”
  
  Unless you see them in the lyrics of a rap song.
  
  Reply
Kathleen Mikulka says:

November 1, 2021 at 3:26 pm

I’m been teaching reading for 30 years. I did learn while getting my masters degree that Whole Language meant you didn’t need to teach phonics. Luckily it became evident teaching kindergarten that–while Whole Language has many wonderful parts–phonics is a necessity for most children. When will a politician finally get the message that the Standardized testing is a disaster–a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars, but more importantly a waste of teaching learning time? Our schools are NOT failing. If students actually cannot read on grade level then the schools are failing the children. It doesn’t take great powers of deduction to notice that these schools are underfunded.

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 3:36 pm
  
  t doesn’t take great powers of deduction to notice that these schools are underfunded.
  
  Amen to that.
  
  Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 4:49 pm
  
  And thank you, Ms. Mikulka, for your service to kids and for your comment.
  
  Reply
- LeftCoastTeacher says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 7:28 pm
  
  Exactly!
  
  Reply
Ponderosa says:

November 1, 2021 at 6:02 pm

I love Bob’s post, but I don’t see how it supports the view that the Reading Wars need to end. On the contrary, they need to continue until malpractice like the three-cueing system is on the run.

In addition, a new front on the Reading Wars should be opened in the area of comprehension. America’s teachers have got this all wrong. They’re still trying to teach pseudo-skills like finding the main idea and don’t understand how vastly important background knowledge is.

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 6:58 pm
  
  But didn’t you know, Ponderosa. a person reading a passage in a proposed city ordinance, a will, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the New York Review of Books, Voyage of the Beagle, or Madame Bovary just needs to look at the illustrations for clues! And if that fails, there’s always TikTok. Problem solved!
  
  And ofc it’s always better to have kids look at the first letter of each word in a passage and then glance around the page for a clue to what it might be than to teach them to decode words generally. So efficient! And so much fun! It makes it into a game! Very entertaining, like Bingo or Shuffleboard! That’s why all books and other written communications are accompanied by pictures illustrating each word.
  
  Oh, gee, sorry. That’s only in some parallel universe where all writing is in rebuses.
  
  Reply
  - Harriett Janetos says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 7:04 pm
    
    This guessing game is EXACTLY what we’re still up against. I receive students who frantically search the illustrations because they simply haven’t been taught how to decode words. These are our ‘instructional casualties’. Beautifully expressed!
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 7:11 pm
    
    like Bingo or Loteria
  - Steve Nelson says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 7:15 pm
    
    HELP! My original comment is still languishing in moderation. I don’t like anything in moderation, but particularly not my comments!
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 7:27 pm
    
    The author of WordPress, Franz Kafka, sends his regrets. Sorry this has happened to you, Mr. Nelson. It’s common, though.
  - Steve Nelson says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 7:46 pm
    
    I just figured you’d enjoy it!
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 9:06 am
    
    WordPress Happiness Engineers
    
    If Kafka were an engineer
    For WordPress, this I fear:
    Our words would metamorphosize
    Before our very eyes
    
    “Deform” becomes “Reform”
    And “manuals” are “lit”
    And “test” becomes the norm
    And “no one gives a shit”
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 9:40 am
    
    Another gem!
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 10:59 am
    
    Rebusive Writing
    
    The writing with “rebuses”
    Is really just abusive
    Of folks who didn’t go
    To college, doncha know?
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 1, 2021 at 10:44 pm
  
  There is, I think, Ponderosa, a place where you can make common ground with folks who consider themselves progressive educators but haven’t gotten the message about how fundamental knowledge is to reading. These emphases on vaguely defined, nonoperational “skills” and content-free “standards” undermine the very purposes of reading. Why should anyone want to do this stuff? Well, I want to sharpen my mastery of CC$$.ELA.RL.666.18364b? Uh, no. I want to read this because I want to know about ducks. Or whatever. This nonsense takes focus away from WHAT is being communicated and poorly,–very, very poorly–places it almost entirely on HOW. And that’s no fun. It’s a killer. A friend of mine who teaches 5th grade was telling me about a great discussion that she was having with her kids about vultures and other birds of prey. They were fascinated by them–especially by the yucky parts, and wanted to know more, more, more. Then, an administrator walked in, and she immediately killed that discussion and started talking about “making predictions from text.” But everyone who is, today, a reader can tell you about how he or she got hooked. For me, it was insanely crazy stuff in sci-fi stories and pop science–the heat death of the universe, the birth and death of stars, trees that change their sex. I had to know more. Asimov, Gamow, Herbert, Clarke. So, not only is having the requisite background knowledge (the stuff that the author assumed the reader would know) essential, but knowledge is WHY we bother to do this hard thing, learning to read. We are driven to know. It’s the motivator. Or, in the case of literature, we want to have those experiences. When the focus is taken off the knowledge and the experience, then our instruction has lost its way. It has lost sight of what reading is FOR. And it becomes deadly. I’m a great believer in providing examples of and having students imitate text conventions and literary techniques, but all this “skills” nonsense is sheerest puffery. It dissipates into nothingness when examined with anything remotely approaching a critical eye.
  
  Reply
  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 10:48 pm
    
    A proposed cure for that puffery: Banish the term “skill” from discussion of ELA pedagogy and curricula. Replace it with “procedural knowledge,” and then–THEN–people will be forced to consider whether they are teaching kids any concrete news they can use.
  - Ponderosa says:
    
    November 1, 2021 at 11:07 pm
    
    I agree that using “procedural knowledge” could help.
    
    Professors of education who read this blog: please listen to Bob, and then reeducate America’s teachers.
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 9:22 am
    
    Skills for Bills
    
    To sate the Bills
    We fill the skull
    With worthless skills
    That makes ’em dull
    
    To read “up close”
    With microscope
    Create the most
    Insipid trope
Bob Shepherd says:

November 2, 2021 at 12:00 am

I am a bit chagrined that this thread has devolved into fighting, yet again, the wars over phonics. Perhaps I was overly hasty in saying, in the essay, that we’ve learned the lesson about the value of a phonics component to early reading instruction. Perhaps, in the essay, I should have anticipated this and put the phonics stuff last, but there is more, much more, in the essay, and the rest of the piece and, alas, those were the points I most wanted to make. I thought when writing it that I would get the easy stuff out of the way first and then tackle the ones more essential because of the extent to which they are ignored or flouted: what science now tells us about grammar and vocabulary (and how they are acquired), the importance of requisite background knowledge, and understanding of the kairos or extra-textual elements informing and shaping the meaning of a text (such familiarity with the text’s conventions, such as those of genre)–all key determinants of comprehension.

Reply
- SomeDAM Poet says:
  
  November 2, 2021 at 10:35 am
  
  “I am a bit chagrined…”
  
  There you go again with the big words.
  
  Perhaps you should just chagrin and bear it for a change.
  
  Reply
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 10:44 am
    
    Irked on Phonics
    
    Chagrined about phonics
    And reading textonics
    That earthquakes create
    And endless debate
  - SomeDAM Poet says:
    
    November 2, 2021 at 11:03 am
    
    Irked on Phonics (take 2)
    
    Chagrined about phonics
    And reading textonics
    That edquakes create
    An endless debate
kathleen mikulka says:

November 2, 2021 at 8:23 am

I’m afraid that the conversation devolving into a phonics discussion (YES, that is part of the powerful 3 cueing system) is demonstrative of the poor state of reading instruction at the university level. PS It’s just as bad with the state of math instruction–check out those CC$$.

Reply
kindergarteninterlude says:

November 6, 2021 at 1:17 pm

Speaking of absurdity, I am very curious…
When I was young and learning to read, and when my boys who are in their 20s were learning to read, I don’t remember there being this obsessive tracking of skill acquisition in place. These days it is the norm to find kindergarten teachers made to use spreadsheets to note the date that a student learns a particular letter. And there is a second column for learning the letter sound. Yet another column shows when the child was able to say a word that begins with that letter.
Letter ID is tested and retested and tested yet again. And the results are noted. On paper. All year long.
Of course my first question is, is there any usefulness to this “Active monitoring” (Or obsessive tracking) in terms of a child learning letters and sounds? Would there be any difference in the outcome if teachers did not have to do this ludicrous paperwork?
And my second question is: was this done in the 70s, 80s, 90s?

Reply
- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  November 6, 2021 at 5:39 pm
  
  Years ago, I was a publishing ex overseeing big textbook development projects. I learned about GANTT charts and project management software and that these promised to enable me to keep minute track of project resource use and bottlenecks, so I started using the stuff. And boy did that software create beautiful charts to show to the CEO! Charts like Greek temples! Real-time data (well, as real as my ability to gather and enter it)! Very impressive at status meetings!
  
  And I found that I was spending half or more of my time simply updating the stupid charts. So, I did what any rational person would do. I threw the software in the trash and went back to managing by walking around (MWA) and having DISCUSSIONS during these walks with members of my staff about what was happening and what their concerns and ideas were. Unfortunately, in this day of micromanagement of teachers, the teachers don’t have that luxury.
  
  Reply