At The Hechinger Report, we publish thoughtful letters from readers that contribute to the ongoing discussion about the education topics we cover. I have found that the Daily 5 Caf does a great job of doing that (I used it in previous Kindergarten classes).
After reading your post, I believe that much of your points portray an accurate depiction of reading within the classrooms and issues that many are facing. I think for a younger age group, phonics should have less restrictions and be implemented more into the classroom atmosphere. Learning requires effort and you dont learn much with an easy text. I know that I desperately want to teach the students letters and the sounds they make, blends, etc. The digital natives are not exposed to skilled reading; social media precludes literate students. When phonics is tested head-to-head against word memorization, phonics wins.

Advocates believe its better to devote instructional time to the ideas and stories that are in the books rather than forcing kids to memorize the sounds that letters make. I especially appreciated the historical and current view brought together in clear style. Read Jan Richardson. I applause this article Four things you need to know about the new reading wars (Barshay, 3/30/20)because it summarizes the issues so succinctly with a great deal of common sense. Barriers will arise without students understanding common patterns in the English language (as flawed as they are at times). I do not think there will ever be one way to teach reading that will fit every student but we should never give up trying to reach every reader. Many young children struggle to memorize. inside flip informational isbn preliminary typology monitoring
sight words richardson jan bundle level fun based I am trying to create a group of learners who not only can read, but also are content area literate.
Its well worth archiving. In addition to the reading component, students have to summarize the reading through a journaling activity. If a teacher is focused on the students response to the text when reading with the children and can engage them with meaningful questions, discussions, writings, and projects, then there will be success. Students pay attention to what their teachers pay attention to, and focusing too much on phonics, can make students think reading is all about sounding out words. However, with the politics and systematic issues within, Im not sure if we will reach that point. I feel that the teaching of Phonics is very important.
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Although they may choose books that are above their level, I have found that my students begin this way but after becoming disengaged with these books, they begin looking for books that are a just right fit for them. Nationally, we can expect this trend to continue.
I believe it is important for us to teach students how to read, however, if students cannot comprehend the material to understanding of the content, then we have only reached them half of the way. I find your topic of reading wars to be of great significance due to the fact that these conflicts changed the trajectory of my own education in the early 90s.
More importantly, independent readings primary goal is motivation and passion for reading phonics and comprehension are important but independent reading recognizes motivation as the starting blocks in a long-distance running race. The idea is to get students reading. Whats wrong with balanced literacy? For more details, read my colleague Jackie Maders story on what research-based reading instruction looks like in the classroom.
She can write the most beautiful, eloquent pieces, but she must rely on spell check (or her mom) to proofread her writing for her. At the book fairs each child was asked to self-select 12 childrens books and these books were delivered to the children on the final day of the school year.
Your column featured this process to differentiate students reading levels.
I truly believe this is a great idea that will help our students by exposing them to more literature and ultimately increase their literacy skills. The server responded with {{status_text}} (code {{status_code}}).
Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education. The reason as mentioned by this article is the battle between teaching students who learned phonics versus a list of words to memorize. With that being said, our county now has a reading curriculum that includes phonics.
This initiative is aimed at promoting literacy cross curriculum. By submitting your name, you grant us permission to publish it with your letter. Three lessons from data on childrens reading habits, Education Week survey of early reading instruction, Mining online data on struggling readers who catch up, Evidence increases for reading on paper instead of screens, Kids struggle to read when schools leave phonics out, What parents need to know about the research on how kids learn to read, Weighing the best strategies for reading intervention, https://researchrichpedagogies.org/research/reading-for-pleasure, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic.
Having Shanahan as a clear voice in the article was an excellent, most respected professional. However, a minority of students wont learn to read without phonicsand many students would read significantly worse without phonics. As a teacher at a Title 1 school, I have seen the effects that a low socioeconomic status has on student achievement. Literacy teachers use this data to make informed decisions about the best instruction for individual students. I agree that a bit of phonics on the fly is not beneficial to students. Students may only have the opportunity to hear books being read to them while they are in school. Indeed, many kids figure out how to read on their own before reading instruction even begins at school. I am a fairly new teacher with only 3 years of experience. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Instead, I learned that these compromise curricula often retain three teaching strategies for which there isnt good research evidence: cueing, independent reading time and leveled reading. It is noticed that the war between implementing reading programs are all about a sense of balance when it comes to the success of the students involved.
Explicit teaching of oral reading fluency, reading comprehension and writing isnt always visible. How do kids actually learn how to read? More by Jill Barshay. Working with guided reading the teacher is able to determine the students needs and can differentiate the lessons for the needs of the students. I concur with Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute and professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, that intentional systemic integration of content is important for reading. Above and struggling readers tune out because the program does not match their developmental readiness.
I also disagree with your comments on independent reading.
I also agree that requiring students to memorize loads of words is not necessary when many sight words can be decoded.
In my school we take a balanced literacy approach with our students.
I had a very hard time with reading comprehension when I was in school.
Over the long term, kids reading achievement is driven substantially by whether theyre getting access to the content, the science and social studies and things about the world, said Darling-Hammond, because what you understand from what you read depends on whether you can hook it to concepts and topics that you have some knowledge about..
Independent reading time. Exposure and integration to relative content literacy is quite suggestive and directional for developing proficient reading skills. However, according to this article it states, phonics is marginally better, according to Timothy Shanahan. I am an educator doing what I think is best for the students I teach each day and trying to keep up with the continually developing world of literacy instruction. The article emphasized the importance of being able to read and comprehend Science and Social Studies texts.
As a first-grade teacher, students come to me on all levels, so there is no reason for students to spend almost ten percent of their instructional time completing a phonics program. Hi, I think your column Four things you need to know about the new reading wars is a great summary of current thinking on reading that is backed by science and research.
pugh Allowing all students to read texts about the same topics helps create a community in the classroom, but also allows my students to perform and grow within their own levels.
I do plan on implementing that from now on because it really does make the most sense and teaching sight words is time consuming with little pay off. As I was reading through this blog, I noticed the very first question, Is phonics really better?
There needs to come a point where the student needs to feel successful, after a minimal amount of struggle.
While I agree with the statement, I think we should be careful to find the distinction between challenging students and making students struggle. Dr. Schneider reminds us that for someone to get better at something One must be motivated to perform and motivation comes from feelings of success, enjoyment, and accomplishment. I have found that leveling texts within the same content helps my students grow.
Reading often gets pulled into the so-called reading wars, which is actually more about classroom practice and might better be renamed as the literacy wars. The literacy wars are mostly about reading as a cognitive practice, broken down into a set of techniques such as phonics, sight words, & comprehension. Independent reading time gives a child the opportunity to engage with text on their own terms and not under pressure in the academic setting. They also need a whole lot of other things.. Instead of arguing over the best method to use to teach reading, the focus should be on the best method to inspire a love of literacy in students. But, that is all that is just listening to words, we are not writing down everything we say on a daily basis so a student is not going to be able to recognize that word when it is seen in print. They will learn how to say and read words correctly. At the time, the idea of balanced literacy seemed likely to stop the debate by taking the best from each approach. But in practice, balanced literacy curricula often dont include a strong phonics program. To be successful, the children need to be immersed in a strong systematic approach and there should be progress monitoring to see if there is growth or not. Regardless of the current trend, what budding readers need is a teacher that knows and utilizes their strengths to ensure success. The best argument for phonics is that no one is harmed by it and a large subset of students is helped by receiving explicit phonics instruction from kindergarten through second grade.
Many of the students I serve come from backgrounds where English is not the primary language. I for one, as do many other educators, feel that phonics really is the very first building block that is necessary to teach our students. Some students need help with eye-tracking across and down a page of text, for example.
Our focus has been centered on literacy, the ability to read and write. How do we convince the powers that be that we need a change? misuse
Educators have invested money in many reading programs to reverse the trend; however, only time and data can let us know whether these reading programs are going to address our literacy deficiency.
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