11/11/2023
The anecdote at the beginning of this article is a *perfect* example of why schools fail to teach so many children to read.
https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.2258
The authors understand that phonics is an important part of reading instruction. (Thank you National Reading Panel.)
It begins with a scene in which a reading "specialist" uses an incomplete phonics screener on a 2nd grader. She tests only basic letter sounds (early kinder phonics) and not the spelling patterns, like consonant digraphs, vowel teams, etc. that the child would need to access 2nd grade level text or to develop full alphabetic decoding.
Like most Balanced Literacy teachers, the authors seem comfortable with teaching letter names and letter sounds, but they don't understand how kids can use phonics to reliably read words.
Next, she tests the student on a 1st grade word list.
You might think this reflects an understanding that the ability to read words in isolation is an important skill, but NO. The authors don't understand that automatic word recognition is necessary for efficient reading.
Word lists in assessment kits like F&P, are meant to help teachers decide which level book to have a student read in order as they determine a Guided Reading reading level. Difficulty with the 1st grade word list means the child is given a low-level predictable book.
The child tries to read a book which includes simple, repetitive sentences and pictures. It's purpose-written to force a beginning reader to "orchestrate cues" from meaning and context.
Because the text isn't controlled for phonics, the girl is confronted with words that she can't yet decode.
She tries hard to sound out the words.
(Perhaps that's what a parent or her classroom teacher has taught her).
But in Balanced Literacy, expecting a kid who hasn't been taught r-controlled vowels to manage a word like "after" is not seen as unfair. Neither is giving a kid who has kindergarten level phonics a polysyllabic word like "insects."
In the paradigm of Guided Reading, a kid is supposed to balance her phonics (visual) knowledge with attention to meaning and context.
The problem, according to Guided Reading, is that the kid REALIZED that she doesn't know how to read a word and she appealed to an adult for help. In Balanced Literacy, kids are supposed to teach themselves to read by "word solving" using "multiples sources of information."
Balanced Literacy materials are based on the theory that skimming and sampling text–decoding some words, guessing others based on sentence structure and using picture clues to figure out the rest–is more efficient and reliable than reading every letter in every word.
So kids are given predictable books that force them to confront words they don't know how to decode.
And beginning readers either fake it until they make it or, like the girl in the anecdote, they don't. And they move into 2nd grade without basic reading skills.
Balanced Literacy teachers are trained to see students' challenges with predictable books not as a sign that the reading materials are flawed, but rather:
- as a problem with the child who isn't "orchestrating the cues of meaning, structure, and visuals"
- evidence that phonics is unreliable
Balanced Literacy teaches teachers to give up on phonics and try to help kids find workarounds for decoding. It tells us that phonics is not very useful.
And it sells us expensive and ultimately ineffective reading interventions.
In the anecdote, both the kid and the classroom teacher were stumped and they both appealed for help from the reading specialist. That well-intentioned "specialist" was unable to help them due to poor training and shoddy materials
So everyone in the anecdote loses out.
The struggling reader and her teacher both being failed by the instructional materials that were provided by their school demonstrates, quite concisely, why our literacy rates are so low.
And the fact that publications for teachers print articles that are so disconnected from fact, research, and evidence-based practice is yet another reason why teachers and students continue to struggle to get the outcomes we deserve.
We're regularly failed by the professional organizations, journals, "experts," curricula, materials, and training that purport to care deeply about literacy and teaching. We're long overdue for change.
