Literacy experts who are members of the Reading Hall of Fame took issue with the report of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which recently lambasted the nation’s schools of education.
They questioned the bona fides of NCTQ, questioning its partisanship. Their strongest criticism was directed at the report’s fervent advocacy of phonics as the only legitimate way to teach reading.
I have studied the Reading Wars of the past 30 + years and concluded that both sides were right. There should be attention to phonics, but also joyful reading for pleasure.
The literacy specialists are right to challenge an effort to impose orthodoxy on the schools and their teachers.
NCTQ is not a professional association and is not qualified to decide how children should be taught.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
First, I have always used a combination of phonics and sight reading depending on the child. I was taught by phonics and generally believe it is best because it helps kids figure out words. But then you teach some sight words so the child can read sentences right away. Phonics can be tedious at first.
However, I had a student who was TBI and taught him by sight. 120 words he could read in 2 months and he started talking in full sentences in patterns similar to those in his reader where he had never put more than two words together before. (I used the Laubach Readers, an adult program. He was 17.) Interestingly, this child had always been regarded as severely retarded. No one had tried to teach him to read.
Secondly, if the NCTQ is not an association of teachers, where do they get the expertise to judge??? This is called meddling and is the main problem the schools have—not letting teachers do their job. Good teachers learn what works for their students and use what works. The reading wars got started in the early 1950s. The schools in California had started teaching sight reading and my mother felt that was wrong and so taught me to read by phonics when I was 4. I was reading well by the time I got to kindergarten, her objective so that I would not be affected by the latest trends. The teacher was upset, according to mama because I could already read.
Thank you to the literacy experts contributing to this report! Personally, I am sick to death of publishers thinking that the only way teachers can manage to teach reading is to follow the text word for word. Last week I had to attend an in-service on the new Reading Street series by Pearson/Scott Foresman. About the only thing I took from the presentation was that as long as either a Smart Board was available or the caveman could read the teacher’s text and followed it word for word, even a caveman could teach reading. Just give me the standards/objectives and a bunch of levelized texts and some chart paper to write poems on and I can get my first graders reading. I hate being tied to a textbook and refuse to teach that way.
Publishers are there to turn a profit! That’s why they like CCSS. Has nothing to do with anything else except $$$$$.
This is the best book I have ever read about instilling reading enjoyment in kids is this book. http://www.amazon.com/Book-Whisperer-Awakening-Inner-Reader/dp/0470372273/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1376944782&sr=1-1&keywords=the+book+whisperer
The implied argumentum ad vericundiam here is problematic, when it is precisely the educational ideology of these “literacy experts” that is being blamed for what ails our practices in teaching reading.
Ms. Ravitch writes, “I have studied the Reading Wars of the past 30 + years and concluded that both sides were right. There should be attention to phonics, but also joyful reading for pleasure.” But that does not express the positions of the two sides. There are really only two meaningful sides: those who believe that children should be taught to read by a complete program of explicit, systematic phonics, and those who believe otherwise. Science has proven the merits of phonics. Unfortunately, too many “literacy experts” have stuck to their anti-phonics guns in spite of the overwhelming flood of scientific evidence.
The facts that a pro-phonics organization criticizes education school curricula, and that anti-phonics education professors defend it, are not very surprising.
Diane, you say that both sides are right, but to the best of my knowledge, particularly talking to many elementary teachers I’ve known personally or from my work in mathematics education, only one side in the reading wars pushed a “My way or the highway” approach to reading, and that was the phonics crowd. Everyone who liked whole language also used phonics, but not to the exclusion of everything else.
When the Math Wars started, again as I saw it and still see it: one side wanted direct instruction uber alles. The other called for a “deemphasis” in direct instruction. That may have been a poor choice of words on the part of NCTM. To me, it was glaringly obvious from my knowledge of the English language and the context of the actual NCTM Standards volumes released from 1989 to about 1994 (and then reduced to a single volume in 2000 with PSSM), that what was being called for was a rebalancing (or balancing, depending on what style of pedagogy and what practitioner we were talking about) between teacher-centered instruction (which includes lecture and what most people think of as direct instruction or traditional math teaching) and more student-centered instruction. Eventually, the latter became known, for good or ill, as “constructivist teaching” (to my mind a bit of a misnomer, as constructivism is a theory of learning, not teaching). Then we got “discovery learning” another ambiguous phrase that led to a lot of misunderstanding and deliberate misrepresentation.
But the bottom line was that reasonable practitioners were in fact teaching in a balanced way. There was lecture, there was guided discovery, there was more open discovery (rarely), there was project-based learning, and so forth.
After 25 years or so, we still have fanatic traditionalists, many affiliated with Mathematically Correct and/or NYC-HOLD (some of whom show up in the current debate over the Common Core Standards) who basically hang their hats on Project Follow Through as having settled, once and for all, that direct instruction is clearly the best mode of teaching. Period. And hence, anything else is just not math teaching.
As Ken Goodman revealed about a decade ago, the think-tanks and foundations backing the phonics-only approach to literacy instruction are easy to outline. And when I looked at who was on his list, lo and behold! most were the same ones in the Math Wars backing direct instruction. This was not completely surprising to me, but it was really intriguing, almost like seeing the structure of the Corleone Family before the Senate committee on organized crime in GODFATHER II.
Perhaps there were folks in the whole language community or in the progressive math community who misunderstood the main ideas of those respective movements and pushed a more puritanical approach – NO phonics or NO direct instruction. I can’t speak to the former, but in my years investigating classrooms in K-12, I can honestly say that I never saw a single one where there was no use of lecture at all, including my own. Moving away from teacher centered instruction is very difficult for a host of reasons. And on my view, the majority, if not the entirety, of the fanatics come from the phonics and direct instruction orientations.
So I can’t agree that both sides were right. The one side was extremely orthodox and absolutist. The other was balanced. And to this day, the first side is trying to stamp out anything and everything that isn’t precisely what they believe in. And that is NOT right.
Important points! What this boils down to is that the “my way or the highway” dictum is endemic to education “reform,” politicians and corporate sponsors, who talk about “choice” all the time but actually give no choice but their own version of virtually everything.
The reading and math wars never made a lot of sense to many veteran classroom teachers, who know all too well that it’s not a matter of “either or”, because there is no single approach that is effective with every student. Therefore, it’s critical that teachers be skilled in a variety of instructional methods and have many tools in their tool belts, as it were –and I, for one, am very grateful that my training in traditional Teacher Ed programs provided that.
When you put this in the context of politicians and business people aiming to bring education to scale and to market, so that minimally trained, inexperienced alternately certified “teachers” can be given scripted curricula to implement the same way in every classroom, a whole different picture and goals emerge. Didactic, drill for skill, direct instruction most readily lends itself to the aims of scaling up, marketing and lesson planning for obedient peons and profits.
What on Earth is “orthodox and absolutist” about wanting children to be taught phonics? The intransigence seems to me more on the “balanced” literacy side, which simply refuses to teach systematic phonics.
I’m a homeschooler and web designer (see ReadingBear.org), and I taught both of my sons (ages 7 and 2) to read, using phonics, from a very early age. I’m sorry to say it but your schools have failed to teach many kids to read. There has been a (largely unsuccessful) reform movement for over a generation because our schools have been failing for over a generation. It is known, it has been proven time and time again, that systematic phonics works almost every time it is tried.
The idea that one side, yours, is somehow more in favor of books and comprehension and “balance” strains credibility. Children who have been competently taught systematic phonics in Kindergarten are able to read and comprehend chapter books, not watered-down readers, in the first grade. You know what is unbalanced? You know what is really, really orthodox and absolutist? It is constantly renaming and recasting failed methods, ignoring what is known to work because it does not fit with the methods that you are married to.
The Reading Wars are evidently not over.
Every teacher I’ve talked with who has implemented whole language has taught phonics, and that is how I have always taught. It was never a matter of just one or the other. It’s a red herring tossed about by those who want ONLY phonics.
@Reteach 4 America: the red herring is that “analytical” phonics, or “phonics in context,” is the same as systematic phonics. It isn’t. The idea that anyone wants “only phonics” to be taught is silly. Who thinks that? Who has said or written that? Give a single example.
Actually, the only question at issue in the phonics wars, as far as I can tell, is whether children should be taught systematic phonics. Whole language camp doesn’t want children taught systematic, synthetic phonics, i.e., the kind that has been proven to work scientifically. If I’m wrong, contradict me, please. I have no problems with whole language whatsoever–except for the part that absolutely refuses to teach systematic, synthetic phonics.
Larry, what is orthodox and absolutist is, as I made perfectly clear, when one side claims that there’s no way for kids to read without phonics, and that there’s only one right way to teach phonics. And you then go on to pretty much say just that.
I wonder: if phonics is so unavoidable for reading:
1) How do kids learn to read in places with pictographic written languages?
2) Why would “teaching phonics” in the way you make such a big deal out of be necessary in a host of places where the language is, for all intents and purposes, phonetically spelled, e.g., Russia? I learned to “read” Russian (badly in terms of comprehension because my lexicon was very limited, for starters) starting in 7th grade. I can pronounce it reasonably well, decode it fairly well, but I can’t really claim to read Russian.
On the other hand, a child who already has the lexicon of a school-aged beginning reader in Russia probably doesn’t have a lot of issues with phonics. Why would she, when so little of the written language isn’t pronounced as spelled?
These issues have bothered me for as long as I have been aware of the war against whole language.
Of course, we know that English is perhaps the least phonetically spelled language of significance on the planet. Some fellow named of Clemons commented on this a lot back in the 1800s.
At any rate, I’m not a reading teacher, not even with a practice of n = 2, and certainly I didn’t teach my son to read at age 2, mea maxima culpa.
But I’ll tell you why I don’t trust the phonics phanatics: they use the same tactics, the same rhetoric, and the same rigid, narrow demands and claims that the direct instruction traditionalists have used in the Math Wars. And THOSE fine folks seem very content to ignore the huge number of American kids who, taught by those foolproof methods of lecture, drill, and practice, despise mathematics (really arithmetic, since they rarely get taught any mathematics), fear it, would do anything to avoid it, and are generally not very good at it past the lowest level, at least as far as they know (hard to say what would happen, of course, if they had a shot at playing with mathematics that tapped their thinking and seeing and imagining and didn’t require that they produce 8 x 7 instantly, along with 99 other facts on demand, or be judged “failures” at math).
And you do seem to be sounding a lot like those folks for some strange reason.
Now, technically, I’ve got no dog in this fight. I don’t teach reading. My job doesn’t depend on my ability to do so. But I do think I have gotten quite good at recognizing political b.s. when I read it, and the Reading Wars reek of it, with an all-too-familiar stench.
It defies credulity that the folks I find to be wrong at every turn in the Math Wars could be so utterly off-base about mathematics education and be so right about how best to teach reading. So either I know nothing about mathematics teaching (a distinct possibility in the minds of my critics) or they don’t know much about teaching reading.
Obviously, I think I know more than a bit about math teaching and learning. So your impassioned, angry, and somewhat insulting comments aren’t winning me over for some odd reason or other.
I think it’s safe to assume based on what you’ve written thus far that you and I won’t be exchanging holiday greeting cards any time soon. But I do wonder: how do you account for all the kids for the decades BEFORE whole language instruction arose, who didn’t thrive with phonics. Or did phonics only start to be done “right” when the Goodmans and their followers started using other approaches? Because somehow, lots of kids didn’t learn to read well or with comprehension, back then, and lots of kids didn’t learn math very well at all back before the NCTM Standards volume of 1989 appeared and ignited the Math Wars.
@Reteach: I wish I did, but I don’t really have time to go through your reply point by point, but I’ll say a few things.
First, most of what you say against phonics was ably refuted in the 1950’s by Rudolf Flesch. Have you ever read “Why Johnny Can’t Read”? Not only well written but extremely cogent and still perfectly relevant. The similarly-named 1980s sequel was just as good. Moreover, I’d like to point out that you undercut your point that “every teacher…who has implemented whole language has taught phonics.” It turns out you dislike phonics after all. Surprise, surprise!
Second, you don’t have to spend much time on “drill and kill” to learn phonics. Yes, it requires *some* drill, but so what? A little drill never hurt any kid. A child can learn phonics in three months by spending thirty minutes a day with ReadingBear.org, for example, which follows Flesch’s method. The only reason our first graders aren’t assigned age-appropriate chapter books, rather than awful basal readers, is that their teachers chose not to use tools and methods like Reading Bear and Flesch’s.
Anyway, calling your opponents “phanatics” and “orthodox” and “absolutist” is ridiculous. It’s idle, and proves nothing, except perhaps that you are projecting not a little. And you sound pretty impassioned and angry too. So, sorry, you don’t occupy the moral high ground (or the heights of sanity or reasonableness, either).
If we’re offering books to read on this issue, let me suggest something a bit more up to date: BEGINNING TO READ AND THE SPIN DOCTORS OF SCIENCE: The Political Campaign to Change America’s Mind about How Children Learn to Read by Denny Taylor (1998), published by NCTE before its leadership sold out to the Common Core.
I think phonics skills are necessary for the majority of students to be able to learn how to read, so systematic instruction has always been integral to how I have taught reading.
“Fanatic” “orthodox” and “absolutist” are not my words, but I believe that I’m seeing how they are applicable right now.
You know, putting aside everything else, the main point I’d like to impress upon both of you is this. Study after study has supported the use of one “flavor” of phonics, which is the only thing that used to be called phonics, before whole language advocates started calling other things “phonics.” This is the method called “systematic, synthetic phonics.” There are zillions of examples of this method in use, some of them good, some of them really bad. As with any method, execution matters. One example that I know works quite well is Rudolf Flesch’s.
What is fanatical and intransigent, orthodox and absolutist, is the insistence that we can use practically every method to teach reading *except* the one that science has proven to be most reliable.
So you’ve read competing research that suggests otherwise, carefully considered it, and judiciously rejected it, Larry? Or do you just have very passionate feelings that have caused you to be highly selective about what counts as research?
Meanwhile, any thoughts on those points I raised about reading in languages other than English? I wonder how Flesch would have taught reading in China or Russia. . .
I’m not a literacy scholar, Michael, if that’s what you’re asking. But yes, I’ve read several books on topics connected to the reading wars, including a few fairly technical ones. Are your arguments really so weak that you have to turn this into a pissing contest?
There is one side in this debate that applies the scientific method. The scholarship of the other side tends to theory.
Flesch, as it happens, was from Germany, and yes, he did talk about how reading is taught in other countries, including China. In countries like Russia, Germany, and Greece, they of course use what we would call systematic, synthetic phonics methods, and they simply don’t have the sorts of reading problems we have. For many, many years, phonics was the only thing taught in the U.S. and U.K., too, and kids who went to school for a year or two had learned how to decode fine–there was virtually no problems of the sort that arose after the whole word method came on the scene. As to China, well, let’s put it this way. Nobody denies that it is possible for kids to be taught to read by memorizing abstract symbols. But, since English is mostly phonetic, it’s pretty dumb to treat it like Chinese, now isn’t it?
If English were mostly phonetic, I doubt I would have raised the issue. So that’s one question you’ve already begged.
Russian and Greek are almost perfectly phonetic. German? A lot more so than English. English may well be unique among widely spoken/read languages for its lack on phonetic spelling. Do you find a lot of spelling bees in Russia, Greece, or Germany?
No one would be getting on national television for being a good speller in those countries, would they?
Of course, please note, I’m not arguing against phonics as part of a balanced literacy curriculum. But apparently, like Tea Party extremists everywhere, there are phonics extremists who just can’t seem to allow for true blended instruction as in whole language curricula.
I recall learning phonics in the early ’50s. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t all we were taught, however. There were those simplistic repetitive readers (Dick & Jane in my school). I imagine they made some contribution to the process. Then again, there is only one word I recall being excited about figuring out in my entire early reading life: beautiful. Why was that so memorable that nearly 60 years later I still recall it? You tell me. And that’s something that just wouldn’t be likely in a completely phonetic language.
But of course, there’s more to this debate than my amateur thinking can bring to bear. In particular, there’s all that research that you keep mentioning. So I’ll mention that book again: BEGINNING TO READ AND THE SPIN DOCTORS. It states quite clearly that the vaunted research was less than accurate, fair, or honest.
Now that might be shocking if we were not in an era in which politics seems to determines what counts as data, science, and so forth far more than, say, actual science. In the world of the last 30 years, no amount of climate research can convince a denialist that there’s a problem called global warming, one that can be traced primarily to human activity, and one which needs to be addressed by adjusting that activity. Why is that so hard? Well, it’s not what Big Coal and a lot of other corporate entities wants us to think about or believe. So they buy themselves a few nitwits in Congress and. . . spin the truth.
We’ve seen repeated assaults on what mainstream science thinks is the best explanation for the origin of species (not life) and the descent of man. Some fellow named Darwin wrote about it. But we’re told by loads of folks that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaneous, that carbon dating isn’t at all accurate, that the earth is about 6,000 years old, etc., and some of those folks are in the United States Congress, too. Can’t imagine where they came from. . .
From what I’m reading, the notion that phonics (your brand of it) was the One True Way got rushed through California’s government and injected into federal policy at breakneck speed in the late 1990s thanks to our old pal Reid Lyon. And, well, as he rose to national power under GWB, he turned out to be. . . not the most reliable guy on the planet when it comes to what works.
I know: you believe that ALL the research worth discussing points your way. I’m getting the sense that that just isn’t so.
And there are some pretty damned smart people who’ve spent their lives teaching reading and/or researching the teaching of reading who rather vehemently disagree with you, too. I don’t know, but some of them seem pretty credible to me. . . a lot more so than does Mr. Lyon, for instance. But you’re not a scholar of literacy. Nor am I. So why is it that you see no room at all here for debate, yet you resent my use of the word “fanatic,” etc. ?
My father taught me to read when I was 4 by showing me cards with whole words on them. In elementary school, I too was taught out of Dick and Jane readers. By third grade I regularly went to the classroom book rack to read about brownies or Bomba the Jungle Boy. Somewhere after that, probably in 9th grade when I was required to own a Random House College dictionary, I doped out syllables. BUT it was not until graduate school I became aware of “phonics” and that one could sound out a word, and that there were 40 sounds in English but only 26 letters. The wonder of knowing how to read, the wonder of the alphabet at all, did not come to my consciousness until I had to teach Remedial English to college freshmen. Somehow reading was just never a struggle for me, though that skill I acquired largely without being aware I was learning anything.
The phonicators continue to spread the myth that Whole Language does not include phonics instruction. Whole Language has always included phonics instruction done in context. Period.
Tracey: that’s what I’ve heard from every elementary teacher I’ve ever spoken with about it, starting with a former Presidential Teacher of the Year from Virginia. I don’t really have the background to understand the fanaticism except that whole language strikes me as sane and humanistic, which never does seem to appeal to fanatics when it comes to education. No pain, no gain, right?
It’s not only humanistic, it’s also instructive. In primary education, basal readers tend to be rather low quality. They are written for the purpose of providing a systematic approach to learning phonics, as well as the development of a sight word vocabulary, and they are very useful for those purposes. However, the vocabulary in basals is very limited and the stories are often rather boring, so I found that wasn’t enough to reach all children or to increase vocabulary. Good literature with rich language increases vocabulary, promotes student engagement and provides opportunities for children to learn word attack skills within contexts that are meaningful to them. So I think it’s most beneficial to use all of those kinds of resources –and more, such as environmental print and non-fiction.
It’s not a myth, it’s a sad fact. “Phonics instruction done (only) in context” is at best watered-down, half-hearted phonics. Too many children just don’t learn and don’t properly understand phonics rules, or enough phonics rules, unless the rules are taught explicitly and in a systematic order. The sort of phonics that (a) is worthy of the name “phonics” and (b) has been proven to work in scientific studies is systematic, synthetic phonics. If our teachers used that method–and then did whatever else they wanted, reading real literature (my phonics-educated children do) etc.–then our children would be able to read. Since they don’t, too many of them can’t.
If it was true, the last decade of focused phonics mandated by NCLB in Title I schools in Reading First programs should have produced remarkable improvements in reading. It didn’t. It’s a myth.
Another myth is that schools have actually fulfilled requirements of focused phonics. They haven’t. They’ve put some more window dressing on their same old practices, and not a lot changed, unsurprisingly.
Oh, so Reading First failed because bad teachers just wouldn’t do things the right way, not because it was bogus. O-KAY!
I worked in Reading First and the materials were mandated –and scripted. Teachers had no choice. My job was to coach teachers and ensure fidelity. The problem was the approach, not the teachers.
The tragedy is that the “reading czar” under GWB, who was responsible for pushing that program onto the nation, one Reid Lyon, was far more interested in lining his pockets than in whether what he was vending was worth the paper upon which it was printed. And this is the same fine fellow who suggested publicly that the solution to the nations education woes was to start by “blowing up the schools of education.” That he’s not in jail for fraud or for an implied terrorist threat, tells you something about how the game works.
Study of Reading Program Finds a Lack of Progress http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111803650.html
Billions for an Inside Game on Reading http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901333.html
Thanks for those links to Mary DeFalco, who posted at length on this blog about Lyon back in July.
I teach my first graders to read using the Whole Language approach; balanced literacy–which includes phonemic awareness and phonics instruction in context– is the key. My students always do fine when they leave me. In fact, the second grade teacher has noticed that the second graders who have difficulty with reading are the ones coming from outside our school and we generally discover that their previous school relied a bit too heavily on phonics instruction.
Ms. Ravitch, you stated, “I have studied the Reading Wars of the past 30 + years and concluded that both sides were right. There should be attention to phonics, but also joyful reading for pleasure. ”
The alternative to a phonetic approach to reading is not “joyful reading for pleasure.” Phonics can not be driving force of a reading program. Keep in mind the study done on Reading First. Where there is an intensive, decoding-based curriculum, children do not do well on tests of reading comprehension in grades one, two, and three despite considerable extra instructional time. Reading First Impact Final Report,
Common Core emphasizes “automaticity” in phonics and sight vocabulary. Common Core wants to bring back the archaic practice of studying sight words in isolation which is a waste of time. Words in isolation have no meaning.
Phonics has always been important aspect of reading in the primary grades but it must be kept in balance.
“Phonics instruction should never dominate reading instruction. At least half the time devoted to reading should be spent reading connected text -stories, poems, plays, trade books etc. No more than 25% (and possibly less) of the time should be spent on phonics instruction. Teach only the rules that are frequently used. Children should read some text daily, preferably a complete story, with phonics instruction integrated into the text reading.
Steven Stahl, The Reading Teacher april 1992
The major difference between the phonetic approach and the meaning/Constructivists approach is that the Constructivists have always placed emphasis on higher order thinking skills/critical thinking; beginning with the child(bridging his prior knowledge to the text at hand) and ending with the child – helping child make connections. The Constructivists want to the children to be active learners in lieu of rote learners.
Through scaffolding – teacher’s guidance- children learn to interact with the text. The teacher guides them in observing the visual (text, pictures, and graphics) and non visual/conceptual which includes background knowledge along with knowledge of the language structure: semantic, syntactic, and graphophonics systems. The teacher guides the students to use these two sources of information to construct meaning. She/he guides them in bringing together experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities. She/he guides the students in using these strategies before reading by activating prior knowledge, questioning and predicting about the text and then they read to verify their predictions.
The teacher models how to think by thinking out loud. She/he uses clues from the text to hypothesize about a character’s feelings, actions, beliefs, or values. The teacher encourages the children to make pictures in their minds, to imagine what is happening so that they can better understand what the characters see, hear, feel, taste, and smell.
While reading, students continue to question, predict and read to verify. A discussion follows guided reading during which the higher order thinking skills of evaluation, application / connection, synthesizing, and summarizing are developed. Graphic organizers help visualize their thinking. Through discussion the teacher helps children learn about life. Each story is like painting a picture of some aspect of life. Discussion of stories help develop values of honesty, loyalty, courage, empathy, compassion and understanding of others’ feelings, likes and dislikes. Through guided discussion the teacher helps student understand the meaning of humanness/ diversity. Responding to a text takes on many other forms instead of just answering questions. Activities such as writing, illustrating, drama, choral reading follow guided reading. Children need to make connections to self, another text, and the world around them. With all the strategies children are made active learners in lieu of rote learners.
Contrary to the Common Core’s belief, kindergarten and first graders are capable of higher order thinking. Young children will readily tell you if they like the main character of a story; why or why not?- Evaluation. Kindergarten and first graders love to have their brains picked. Their responses and contribution to a Venn Diagram – comparing their life to the life of the characters- will knock your socks off. Dramatizing fine tunes their awareness, interpretation, and imagining skills, helping them step into the shoes of the characters.
Common Core has one objective: “Closed Reading” -Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.”
In examining the Common Core Standard for the primary students, in particular the Emergent Reader, I discovered that the people who constructed the primary reading standards don’t understand the Emergent Reader. They don’t understand how children learn nor what type of material they need. The CC describes the Emergent reading text as follows:
– “emergent reader text is texts consisting of short sentences comprised of learned sight words and CVC words; may also include rebuses to represent words that cannot yet be decoded or recognize…”
Common Core again ignores years of research. Marie Clay, a world renowned educator who developed Reading Recovery proves otherwise. With her guide lines there is no need of rebuses. Here are her characteristics of a text used with emergent readers:
-1-2 lines caption books of stories which are familiar
-Strong picture support
-Predictable via repetition and the sentence structure
-Each line is a complete sentence
-Print is large
Marie Clay developed a very successful reading program. She believed in teaching to a child’s strengths, not to their weaknesses if we want them to succeed. She initiated the conversational tone with emergent readers while placing new vocabulary in their ear as she did her “Picture Walks.” CC introduces text with the drill of sounds, letters, abstract definition of new vocabulary. Marie Clay with her Reading Recovery, gives all the support a child needs so he/she will not make a mistake. ( The Arkansas Program for one, adapted the tenets of Reading Recovery to be use with a group.) Also important to Marie Clay were the following conditions: happy environment, freedom to explore, confidence, feeling of success, a challenge that can be met, hands on, modeling, along with utilizing all senses. All these characteristics are missing in the Common Core. Also, the emergent reader should have a new story each day to read unlike anthologies that provide one story a week.
As I started out saying: The alternative to a phonetic approach to reading is not “joyful reading for pleasure.” There is so much more to developing the skill of reading than just decoding and finding answers with in the text.
“Reading is about mind journeys and teaching reading is about outfitting the traveler: modeling how to use the map, demonstrating the key and the legend, supporting the travelers as they lose their way and take circuitous routes until they are off on their own.” (Ellin O.Keene and Susan Zimmerman in “Mosaic of Thought”)
THANK YOU MARY DE FALCO!