A reader who identifies as “Retired Teacher” explains the best way to teach reading. The best way is to start by understanding that there is no single way to teach reading. The best way is to assess what’s right for the students in front of you. Some need help in phonics; some don’t. Some are already fluent readers and need challenging and engaging stuff to read.
RT writes:
Most competent reading teachers are effective when they diversify instruction based on the needs of the learner. Generally, the first step in effective reading instruction is to assess students. What often results in elementary classrooms is that teachers often end up placing students into a group with other students with similar needs. Some students arrive in kindergarten reading fluently. They have clearly mastered phonics so there is no need to spend time on phonics lessons the student does not need. Both Diane Ravitch and myself grew up in the “See, Say” era of reading instruction. We didn’t learn phonics. We deduced the sound system from reading it. This method will not work for many students, but there are some that would be successful with this approach.
All learners have strengths and weaknesses. Other students may have other issues like a difficulty with auditory discrimination, and teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction based on the needs of students. By the way a student with auditory discrimination or memory problems will struggle and flounder in a science of reading environment. This student may have to write the word in order to basically memorize it.
I am a certified reading teacher. I have taught many struggling students, most of whom were English language learners, to read successfully and fluently in English. Part of the reason for positive results was due to the assessing and addressing what the student needed to understand and apply the skill and become a good reader. There is no magic to this process. It is called diversifying instruction, and many competent teachers adjust teaching to meet student needs. Whatever method is used, it needs to meet students’ needs, offer the student a degree of success through application, and be engaging. Professional teachers should have the freedom to adjust instruction without government interference.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow. I had a simlar experience in teaching reading and writing in my 41 years as an elementary teacher. I could have written this article myself and could not agree more with this author. Any reading program/curriculum that takes away teacher autonomy to make best use of any and all resources that can help the diverse learner in their classroom is a wrong, harmful program. The “Powers that Be” are making decisions for classrooms based on faulty data and ignoring the socioeconomic factors that challenge some students’ success in school. This will not bring about the results they think it will. Students are diverse in how they learn (among other things) and teachers need to be able to diversify their teaching to meet the needs of students, not the metrics of some flawed test that provides no help whatsoever. Teachers needs autonomy to make informed decisions about instruction that will benefit their students, and students need the opportunity to learn in the best environment and best way that their brains work. Prescribed curricula that use a “one size fits all” approach will leave many students behind and continuing to struggle. We need better from the decision makers.
LikeLike
In my opinion after almost 40 years in teaching, Literature Circles are also so very important. Where schools need to encourage writing is with content journals and communicating with them. Seeing it all work together in the classroom provides life long learning for the students.
LikeLike
I have a good friend who is retired from teaching after 40 years in special education and the regular classroom. She reported years ago that she cannot discern emphasis on syllables. Is this common?
LikeLike
I would add that giving students things to read that they are interested in: be it teen magazine, hot rod magazines, space opera, I don’t care. Students learn to like reading if what they read interests them. And if it does, they will read and learn to read better.
LikeLike
There is no teaching machine.
LikeLike
There is no competency based learning.
LikeLike
There is no science of reading.
And Congress has more important things to do than tell teachers to do wrong because
there is no declaration of war.
LikeLike
Trump said yesterday that the federal government should not pay for healthcare, neither Medicare nor Medicaid.
Only for defending against enemies. So he is upping the defense (war) budget to $1.5 trillion.
LikeLike
Oh, it has always been “America First” right? I can’t listen to the dolt anymore, but how much more damage can he do? Imagine all that money put into Cancer research and a host of other pertinent issues than creating optics that he thinks makes him look like the “mighty dictator.” From drapes to ballrooms to pens — oh, what a fool believes.
LikeLike
Here is what my classroom looked like before corporate takeover.
I was assessing reading and writing all the time. Our school was very involved in action research. I was part of an academic community that served our students well. We had parent nights and a teacher liaison that met with parents. It was an amazing community.
Old but relevant.
https://sojo.net/articles/public-education-common-good
We do have a reading problem in our schools thanks to corporate greed and tech giants. Teacher’s hands have been tied due to mandates that have nothing to do with best practice.
Return public schools to their communities and let teachers be academic and teach.
LikeLike
Well said! Mandates are way to enforce control, but they most likely do not reflect best practices, particularly when trend is to attempt to monetize teaching and learning. Teachers need some degree of autonomy in order to better serve their students. On-line ‘point and click’ learning is failing our young people.
LikeLike
Well said! When I first started teaching, the students didn’t know their “sounds.” Well, that is what I knew, later to be phonemic awareness. I always believed there is never “one way,” all children learn differently and taught them “one mind at a time.” In the beginning, there was still leeway in teaching, but that was the beginning of whole language. We were told to “throw out all the phonics books.” Veterans told me to “hide them away.” Another teacher taught me the “Slingerland program” where students would say a word and touch the object. For example, “Eh, eh, eh, edge.” And they touched the edge of their desk. And it went on. Whatever worked for a child, is what we did. I could teach children how to sound out words and how their breath should feel coming out of their mouths. I was an anomaly because I was one of the few high school teachers who could work with at risk students (who were always passed on because, well, they were behavior problems) and teach them to read without making them feel stupid and inferior. But, in my last year they closed my program and sent me back to the middle school. There I had to use Study Sync or as the kids called it “Study Stink.” It used excerpts, asked high level questions (most of my kids were reading at 2nd grade level in 8th grade). It took me hours to figure out what Study Stink was asking me to do and then how to convey that to the students. I finally told kids, “I don’t like these questions. What I want to know is can you relate to the characters and what did you think of the story?” You are right about these “for crap” programs that “the suits” think are the panacea for everything and it never made sense to me. What I wanted was for kids to read for enjoyment, build pictures in their minds (and I found I had students who could not do that) so we would draw and basically do whatever created success for the student. It pains me to see what they have done to “for the love of reading.”
LikeLike