The Wait and See Approach: While some students crack the alphabetic code with minimal or even no instruction, others require systematic phonics reinforced by decodable texts to become skilled readers. The catch is that when students enter school, we don’t know for whom code-based instruction will be essential. We can wait and find out, and in fact, we do this so often that the approach has a name, “wait to
Open Letter: lives depend on literacy; lives depend on us
June 3, 2019
Teachers are lauded for our martyrdom- “other professions make money, but teachers make a difference”- and frequently bashed , so rarely will we publicly voice our self-doubt. When we’re driving home after a hard day or lying awake at night, we may think about students who struggled. Despite (or perhaps because of) our tireless efforts, we wonder, years after they leave us, “Was there something more I could have done?”
Part 2: Complicating the Simple View of Reading
June 2, 2019
The Simple View of Reading beautifully demonstrates the equal importance of decoding and language comprehension. But because the formula is so… well… simple, it leaves out quite a bit. To look more deeply at skilled reading, we needed other models. We wondered, about the Simple View: What are the components of decoding? What is language comprehension? For those questions, we found answers in Scarborough’s Rope, developed by Dr. Hollis Scarborough
Part 1: Simple View of Reading
May 30, 2019
Decoding x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension The Simple View of Reading is helping us rebalance instruction in my Balanced Literacy school district. For a while, “balance” meant whole-language reading instruction with 20 minutes of word study, even in kindergarten and first grade, so students were not developing the foundational skills necessary for reading. Many students appeared to be on track in the primary grades when they recited simple leveled-texts,
Reading Science: Not Just Phonics
May 30, 2019
From What Is the Science of Reading? Shanahan on Literacy: Teacher question: I keep hearing that teachers don’t know the science of reading. But all the teachers that I talk to say that they teach phonics. What’s really going on? In his blog, Shanahan does a wonderful job of explaining that the science of reading covers more than phonics, and his post has already come in handy for us because
Who are you calling a word-caller?
May 27, 2019
Much of the appeal of Balanced Literacy lies in its focus on reading authentic texts for meaning. It is said that under the previous adoption in my district (a basal), we were developing “word-callers,” students who could read fluently but who were unable to comprehend. Balanced Literacy was adopted in the hope that putting reading comprehension at the forefront of every lesson would cure our district of word-callers. I’m relatively
