Imagine
an epidemic of smallpox. If your child is not immunized, odds are 50/50
he or she’ll get smallpox and suffer life-long damage. Luckily, there’s
an effective vaccine. The Public Health Center in your town has the
vaccine but the staff won’t use it. Why not? Because everyone in
the
“Using
the vaccine is against our philosophy.”
You
say, “But how will children become immune to smallpox!?”
They
say, “Children naturally become immune to smallpox. They don’t need a
shot. In fact, the shot is bad for them—even if gives them immunity.”
You
say, “But half the children who aren’t immunized will get smallpox!”
They
say, “Well, not everyone naturally becomes immune. Some children don’t
become immune because they don’t get enough support from their families. And
sometimes it’s a cultural thing. In other words, if children get
smallpox, it’s not our fault.”
This
sounds bizarre to you, but you figure, “I’m JUST a parent. What do I
know? They’re the experts.” So you put your child’s life in their
hands. And your child gets smallpox. Then you find out that Public
Health Centers in other counties and other states DO immunize children, and
almost NONE of these children get smallpox. In other words, YOUR Public
Health Center has destroyed your child.
How
does THAT make you feel? What are you going to do about it? It’s
too late, though, isn’t it?
This
is exactly the situation in reading. Anywhere from 25 to 50% of children
do NOT learn to read well. In fact, children struggling at the end of
FIRST grade continue struggling in fourth grade and in eighth grade. In
other words, poor readers at the end of first grade are very likely to remain
poor readers. And this means low-self-esteem (“I’m a dummy.”), shame
(“Something’s wrong with me. I have dyslexia.”), and failure to learn other subjects that require skillful reading—math,
science, history, getting into college, filling out job applications.
Whole lives (and our nation) are damaged when children are not TAUGHT to read
well.
I
should say, They are TAUGHT to read poorly.
It
would be a tragedy. It would be malpractice. And maybe it would be
considered a crime, if children got smallpox because health providers didn’t
BELIEVE in immunization---when the data clearly say what happens when you don’t
give the immunization. The same way, it ought to be seen as a
tragedy. It ought to be considered malpractice. And maybe it ought
to be considered a crime, when children are MADE illiterate because teachers do
not know (or refuse to use) the effective methods for teaching reading, even
though 50 years of research show EXACTLY which methods—simple methods,
commonsense methods—work with 99% of children regardless of family support,
income, ethnicity, or anything else.
So,
I’m going to tell you what reading is and how properly to teach it. I’m
also going to tell you how reading is USUALLY MIStaught—so that children
end up damaged in all aspects of school—except maybe gym. I’m going to
tell you how new teachers are MIStaught in schools of
education—so that they do not know how to teach reading effectively. And
I’m going to tell you some of the myths and false beliefs that enable teachers,
administrators, and education professors to misteach
reading while at the same time insisting they are right—although they are
totally wrong.
But
I want to make it clear that I do not blame most teachers!
They care for your children. They try hard. They work endless hours
at night and on weekends preparing lessons. But they have been
MISEDUCATED at schools of education. They have been indoctrinated into
the weird Alice in Wonderland world of “progressive” education (which dominates
American education), with its fluffy “philosophies” of education, its false
beliefs about how children learn, and its useless and wasteful “methods” for
teaching (gluing beans on popsickle sticks to assist
counting; writing “journals” when children don’t even know how to read) that
are entertaining to children, but leave them almost as ignorant at the end of
the year as when they began. Teachers are victims, too.
Damaging
Myth Number 1. Reading is Very Complex.
A
lot of teachers and education professors tell you that reading is so complex
that it requires specially trained experts (guess who?) to teach it.
Indeed, the education professors tell teachers to think of themselves more as
artists and not as technicians who know exactly what they are doing. [Ask
yourself, whom do you want to perform surgery on your child? A physician whose aim is to be technically proficient (to do the
job right), and who IS technically proficient, or a physician who sees himself
as an artist, and strives to be creative?]
This
is nonsense! A car is very complex, but you don’t need to know all about
that to teach someone to drive! Sure reading is complex—a lot is
happening in the eyes and brain—but you don’t need to know all that in order to
follow simple steps to teach reading.
You can teach almost any beginning reader the basic skills (so that the child
goes from no reading to reading on a second grade level) in 100 days (usually
less) with only 15 or so minutes of instruction a day. In other words, if
you teach reading right, and you start in September, your child will probably
read greeting cards to you on Christmas. “Merry
Christmas from all of us.”
Hundreds
of thousands of homeschooling families support that
statement, and they don’t have degrees in reading instruction. In fact,
they haven’t taken ANY classes at a school of education. Yet, tens of
thousands of school teachers—who’ve been teaching for years and may have
masters degrees (often in reading), can’t teach 30 to 50% of children (who have
normal intelligence and who try hard) to read in 4 or more years. That’s
720 days!
A
vast amount of serious research shows that skilled reading involves the
following.
1. You learn to hear the different sounds in words. Run has three sounds: rrr, uuu, nnn. [This is called
phonemic awareness.]
2.
You learn that there are about 44 letters and letter combinations (a, m, s, sh, th,
w, wh, r, e, etc.) and that each one goes with a
certain sound. m says mmm.
This is sometimes called phonics, or the alphabetic principle.
3.
You learn to use knowledge of phonics to sound out unfamiliar words. The
sentence has the word “shift.” The new reader says, “shhhh iiii ffff t. shift.”
This is called decoding.
4.
You read the same words (shift, the, said, run) so many times that you no
longer sound them out. You see the word; your eyes scan the letters
rapidly; and you say the word. Reading words is now automatic. This
is called fluency.
5.
As you read, you pick up vocabulary. “The tires gained traction. Traction. Attract. Things pull together. Tractor. Tractors dig in and pull. Traction is like
grabbing. I get it, the tires finally started to pull the car.”
6.
And you use different methods to make sense or to comprehend what you’re
reading. For example, you figure out who did what, when, where, and why;
what came first and what came next; how characters changed; what lessons can be
learned.
Does
reading sound like something only an expert, only an artist, only someone
trained at a school of education can teach? The fact is, if you teach
all the above skills correctly (which I’ll tell you about later), 99% of
children will learn them quickly. Teach them wrongly (the usual way), and
children still won’t read in fourth grade. It’s when you don’t know what
you’re doing that the job seems complex.
Damaging Myth 2. Children Pick up
Reading Naturally
[Oh, sure! Just as they pick up math naturally.]
Many
education professors who MISeducate
new teachers, believe that learning to read is a “natural process”--as easy to
learn as speaking. Therefore, just as parents and children usually don’t
have special language lessons in the home, so (it is argued—wrongly!) children
usually don’t need carefully crafted instruction on every reading skill.
This is flat wrong—and destructive--in so many ways.
First,
if learning to read is as natural and easy as learning a language, then how
come 25-50 percent of children CAN speak but can’t read?
Second,
reading involves decoding completely meaningless squiggles (letters) on
paper. These squiggles represent SOUNDS--not words. You have to
learn the SOUNDS that go with the LETTERS in order to read the words. No
one can learn which sounds go with which letters “naturally”—without
instruction. Any more than you can learn math without instruction of some
kind. Someone has to say “That letter says mmm.”
And they have to make sure the child is looking right at it and hears the
sound. And they have to use different examples of “m”—to show that color
and size and placement on the page don’t matter—only the shape matters.
And they have to show the child how to compare “m” and other letters—“n”, “a,”
and so on—so that the child learns EXACTLY which squiggle says mmm and which squiggles do not.
But
most teachers have been taught that you don’t need to teach children which
sounds go with which letters (“the alphabetic principle,” or phonics) and that
you don’t have to teach children to sound out words using phonics
knowledge. “rrraaannn.
Oh, ran!”
No,
instead they believe that if you just read to children a lot, and occasionally
point out the letters and sounds, and have children write “journals” (How can a
child write if the child doesn’t know how to spell?), and have lots of material
for children to read (How can children learn to read by looking at books?
Do books talk back and say the words?), then children will eventually
“construct” knowledge of reading and will, in their own time (by grade three or
four) be good readers.
In
fact, these teachers (who are the MAJORITY) and education professors (who
DOMINATE schools of education) believe that children should NOT sound out
words! Instead, children should (hold on to your seat!)
PREDICT what a word says—based on (1) the shape of the word (“Gee, that looks
like it says horse.”), or (2) based on what word seems to fit (“She…..on the
ice… Uh, slammed. No, slapped… No,
slipped. I guess it’s slipped.”), or (3)
pictures on the page (“The…had big teeth… Uh… Oh,
look. A lion. The lion had big teeth.”)
THIS
IS NOT
This
weird approach to MISteaching reading is called
“whole language.” But if you ask teachers what approach they use, they
will say “balanced literacy.” “Balanced literacy” is code for whole
language. Teachers know that many persons and groups finally realize that
whole language is bunk. But many teachers like it. They believe in
it. [That--not children reading—is what’s most important.] So, to
avoid having to defend themselves or having to change how they teach, they
disguise what they do. I mean, who could be against BALANCED
literacy? But it’s the same whole language baloney in a different package.
Here
are some of the bizarre and false things education professors in whole language
(the majority in education schools) believe—and then pass on to new teachers
who (mistakenly) trust them. I have added comments in brackets to show
how ridiculous and destructive these beliefs are.
“Children
must develop reading strategies by and for themselves.” (p.178)
Weaver, C. (1988). Reading process and practice.
[This is the basic weird idea in “progressive” education (which dominates public
education) that teachers should not TEACH (transmit knowledge) but should
merely be “guides” that help “learners discover knowledge” on their own.
Of course, advocates of this so-called “student centered” notion would never
allow physicians to discover brain surgery techniques by operating on their
children. They would never toss their children into a rip current so
their children could discover the strategy for not drowning. But somehow
it’s fine to let other people’s children—YOUR children—discover how to
read—which, in the long run, means to discover what life is like when you are
illiterate.]
“Children
can develop and use an intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondences
[without] any phonics instruction [or] without deliberate instruction from
adults.” (p. 86) Weaver, C. (1980). Psycholinguistics and reading.
[What exactly would intuitive knowledge of letter-sound correspondence be? Does
m look like it says /m/? Does “4” look like it means ////? There is
NO intuitive knowledge of what letters “say.” You have to teach it
DIRECTLY. “This sound (point to the letter) is mmm…
Say it with me?... Your turn.
What sound?...]
“Phonics
is incompatible with a whole language perspective on reading and therefore is
rejected.” Watson, D. (1989). “Defining & describing whole language.”
Elementary School Journal, 90, 129-142.
[In other words, they reject THE essential reading skill just because they
don’t believe in it?! But what does the RESEARCH say? It
says, if children don’t know phonics, they will NOT read well and will HAVE to
guess. In other words, they will be using the strategy—guessing—that is
used by persons who are illiterate. Terrific.
So, whole language teaches children the strategy for becoming illiterate!]
“
[Are YOU guessing at the words you are reading? Or do you KNOW what they
say because you know what sounds go with the letters? Do you know ANYone who is a good reader who
guesses? How these people can spout pure nonsense that is contradicted by
common observation is beyond me.]
“It
is easier for a reader to remember the unique appearance and pronunciation of a
whole word like ‘photograph’ than to remember the unique pronunciations of
meaningless syllables and spelling units.”
(p.146) Smith, F. (1985).
[Of course it’s easier to memorize one word than to learn the sounds that go
with each letter of the word. But you should know that if a child
memorizes “the unique appearance” of ten words, the child can read only those
ten words. However, if the child learns the sounds of ten letters, the
child will be able to read 350 three-sound words, 4,320 four-sound words, and
21,650 five-sound words. Which do YOU think is best for your child?
Moreover, if the child merely memorizes (but cannot sound out) “photograph,”
what is the child likely to “read” when the child bumps into “phosphate,”
“phonograph,” and “phony?”]
“Sounding
out a word is a cumbersome, time-consuming, and unnecessary activity. By
using context, we can identify words with only minimal attention to grapho/phonemic cues. The message then seems clear: we
should help children learn to use context first.” Weaver, C. (1988). Reading
process & practice: From socio-psycholinguistics to whole language.
[Is this a good idea?! Teach children NOT to sound out words?
Instead, teach them to guess using context cues—pictures! Then every
youngster will be called “dyslexic” and will get special education—which won’t
help, because many special ed teachers use the same
weird ideas.]
“Accuracy,
correctly naming or identifying each word or word part in a graphic sequence,
is not necessary for effective reading since the reader can get the meaning
without accurate word identification. Furthermore, readers
who strive for accuracy are likely to be inefficient” (p.826) Goodman, K. S.
(1974, Sept). “Effective teachers of reading know language and
children.” Elementary English, 51, 823-828.
[This is another example of whole language nonsense. In fact, readers who
are taught—by whole language—to guess at words are inefficient readers—indeed,
they are disabled readers—because they are often wrong. They mistake lion
and lying, this and these, the and there, car and can, etc. I have tested
thousands of poor readers, and that is exactly what they do—because that is what
they have been TAUGHT to do. They are GOOD learners! And there’s the
tragedy! Obviously, accurate reading is necessary for getting the
meaning. “The car is fast” does not mean the same thing as “The can is
fat.” And “Caution. Toxic fumes” does not mean the same thing as
“Cauldron. Box of tunes.”]
I
hope you get the point. Whole language and balanced literacy are
crackpot schemes, snake oil, more theology than science, based on speculation
and weird theories of reading that have nothing to do with reading and are
discredited by serious research. And they make your children
illiterate. [But the professors get tenure and the authors get royalty
checks.]
Here
is What You Want to See.
The
following is supported by the vast majority of scientific research (not untested
theories) on reading and is consistent with the President Bush’s Reading First
program that provides funds to states and school districts to improve reading
curricula.
First,
your child’s beginning reading curriculum works on the five main reading skills.
Most of the early work is on phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle.
1. Phonemic Awareness.
The ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words. There are about a dozen
ways to hear and manipulate sounds in words—a dozen examples of phonemic
awareness. These are best taught from easier to harder. For
example,
a. Identify words that sound the same and
different. run, sit, fun
b. Rhyme. can, man,
fan, rrr__
c. Count the number of words in a sentence.
The dog sat by the cat = 6 words
d. Count the number of sounds (phonemes) in a
word.
sat = /s/a/t/ = 3 sounds
e.
Segment words by identifying the first, last, and middle (medial) sounds.
“What is the first sound in rrrruuuunnn?”
f.
Identify what word it would be if one sound were removed (phoneme
deletion). “Listen… sssaaaat. Take
out the ssss. What word now?...”
g. Identify what a word would be if a sound were
replaced with another. “Listen…. ssssiiiit.
Take away the ssss and put in fff. What word now?...”
Phonemic
awareness helps children learn to read and do other literacy skills.
How? A student who can hear and manipulate the
sounds (phonemes) in words, can more easily: (1) remember which sound goes with
which letter; (2) sound out words [cat. k/aaaa/t.]; (3) spell [How do you spell cat. kaaaat .
/k/ is c. /a/ is a. /t/ is t.” ]; and (4)
detect and correct errors in reading and spelling.
Your
child’s teacher should be able to tell you what phonemic awareness is and
exactly why it is important, describe at least six kinds of phonemic awareness,
provide about 15 minutes of instruction on it every day as a separate activity
(not embedded in anything else), and should tell you exactly how she teaches
it. See http://reading.uoregon.edu/pa/index.php
for more information on phonemic awareness.
2. The Alphabetic
Principle. The
ability to associate sounds with letters and to use this knowledge to sound
out/decode words. Notice that the alphabetic principle (sometimes
called phonics) has two skill-parts.
a. The children know letter-sound or
sound-symbol relationships: that m says /m/, i says /i/, and r says /r/.
b. When the student sees an unfamiliar word (rim) in a
story book, the student uses letter-sound knowledge to sound out or decode the
word— perhaps letter by letter at first, and then quickly.
“The bike has a bent rrrriiiimmm….rim.”
Using
the alphabetic principle (shown above), the student knows exactly what the word
says.
In
contrast, children who are not taught phonics in a systematic way, or who are
not taught to use phonics knowledge as the first and most reliable strategy for
identifying words, have to guess or “predict” what words say using “context
cues,” such as pictures or what seems to fit the meaning of a sentence.
For example, instead of reading “The bike has a bent rim,” the student guesses…
“The bike has a be…be..bell…belt….ri…ri…rip.
The bike has a belt rip.”
Often,
these mis-taught children never learn to read skillfully.
You
want your child’s teacher to know the two sides to the alphabetic principle
(letter-sound relationships and sounding out/decoding words). You want
her to tell you why it is ESSENTIAL. You want her to show you HOW she
will teach these. It should look something like this.
a. “Boys and girls. Look. New sound. This sound (points) is rrr.
Say it with me…. Your turn. What sound?..”
b. “Boys and girls. I’ll show you how to sound out
this word. [“ran” is on the board or is
written in large letters in the teacher’s book.]
”Here I go.” [The teacher slowly moves her finger under the letters and
clearly says the sounds.] “rrraaaannn.”
”Say it with me.” [The teacher slowly moves her finger under the letters
as both she and the children say rrraaannn.]
”Your turn. Sound it out.” [Teacher runs
her finger under the letters.]
”What word? Say it fast!” [The teacher quickly moves her finger
under the word and children say “ran!”]
”Yes, ran. You are SO smart.”
If
a teacher teaches letter-sound relationships and sounding out as shown, or some
version of it, then she knows what she is doing. The instruction is
focused on ONE thing. She clearly MODELS the information. She LEADS children to do it. Then she TESTS them (“Your
turn”) to make sure they got it.
And
she CORRECTS every error. “That sound is rrrr.
What sound?”
Also
you want to see the teacher moving from teaching letter-sound relationships to
sounding out words--like this.
1. Teach a says aaa and m
says mmm.
2. Then sound out am and ma.
3. Then teach s says sss.
4. Then sound of sam and mas.
5. Then teach (for example) that t says t (not tuh)
and r says rrr.
6. Then sound out sat, rat, mat.
7. Then sounds for e, d, i, f, and other
high-frequency sounds and words.
8. Then read simple stories made from these words.
In
contrast, you do NOT want to see the teacher holding up a “big book,” reading the
sentences and occasionally telling children the sound of a letter, and working
on more than one or two letter-sounds during a lesson. This is called
“embedded” phonics instruction. It is about 50% likely to result in poor
readers. There is just too much information for children to “get”
which letters say what sounds. They will quickly become confused and stop
paying attention.
And
you absolutely DO NOT want the teacher to say, “Well, phonics is only one skill
among many” or “Phonics is just teaching meaningless associations.
Also,
you DO NOT want to hear a teacher say “There are multiple ways to recognize words”
or “There are several different kinds of cues—for example, pictures, the shape
of words, and what fits in the sentence.” Or,
“We teach children multiple strategies.”
Any teacher who talks that way
does not know the research, is into whole language, and is VERY likely to
damage your child. DO NOT BE FOOLED!
Direct,
focused and systematic instruction on letter-sound relationships and on
sounding out words is for many children the difference between becoming
proficient vs. struggling their whole life.
Remember, guessing or predicting using “context cues” is what POOR readers do.
3. Fluency with Text. The nearly effortless and automatic
ability to read words accurately and quickly in connected text. Fluency is
reading with accuracy and speed. Fluency is important both for enjoyment
and comprehension. If a person struggles with words (gu…qu…guil…quil…) , the person will also struggle to figure out the meaning
of sentences. In fact, dysfluent readers spend
so much time and effort trying to figure out what the
separate words say, they can barely pay attention to the meaning of the
sentence. “The ju..jur….jury
found her gu..qu…guil…quil…”)
In other words, they learn very little from reading.
To
help children read connected text (e.g., story passages) accurately and
quickly, it is important to:
a. Teach children to decode separate words
(regular and irregular—“said,” “the”) accurately and quickly—which means (1)
using knowledge of letter-sound correspondence (not guessing); and (2) blending
the sounds into words.
b. Teach children to self-correct.
c. Provide practice on reading words enough times that
it is almost automatic; that is, the words become “sight words.”
Note: sight words are not words a student memorizes. The student
still knows how to decode them letter by letter. Rather, the student has
read the words so often that decoding takes only an instant.
d. Provide practice reading text with which children are
already accurate, encouraging them to read faster and faster without making
errors (i.e., more words correct per minute, or wcpm).
Read more about fluency here. http://reading.uoregon.edu/flu/
4. Vocabulary. Understanding (receptive) and using
(expressive) words to gain and express meaning. The three reading skills
above—(1) phonemic awareness, (2) the alphabetic principle (letter-sound
correspondence and the strategy for sounding out or decoding words), and (3)
fluency—have to do with the mechanics of reading. The last two
skills—vocabulary and comprehension—have to do with making sense of the written
word.
Vocabulary and comprehension cannot be
taken for granted. Students need to be taught how to get and express
the meaning of words and passages. This is especially important for children
of low socioeconomic status. These children are read to less often, hear
fewer vocabulary words, and therefore understand and use far fewer words than
children born to working class or professional class families.
Following
are some of the more important methods of vocabulary instruction.
1. Read storybooks to children.
2.
Provide direct instruction of new vocabulary words by selecting important words
in a story; giving explanations or definitions of the words; and giving
children many chances to discuss and use the new words.
3.
Teach older children to use morphemic analysis (analysis of word parts) to
determine meaning. For example,
“Bisect.
Bi means two. Sect means part. So, bisect means divide into two
parts.”
4.
Teach contextual analysis—inferring the meaning of a word from the context in
which it occurs.
“The
fan’s oscillations cooled everyone in the room…Sometimes fans move back and
forth. If everyone was cooled, it probably means the fan blew on
everyone. So, oscillate probably means to move back and forth.”
You
can find more on vocabulary here. http://reading.uoregon.edu/voc/
5. Comprehension.
1.
Set comprehension objectives; for example, children will answer specific
literal (who, what, when), inferential (why), and evaluative (can you think of
a better way…?) questions.
2.
Focus on main ideas in a story or informational text.
3.
Preteach vocabulary words important for comprehending
the material.
4.
Read (with children) the material in manageable chunks, and ask literal, inferential,
and evaluative questions on each chunk.
5.
Have children think about and discuss what I know; what I want to know; and
what I learned.
You
can learn more about comprehension here. http://reading.uoregon.edu/comp/index.php
The second thing you want to see is systematic
and explicit instruction. This is the most effective form of
instruction. But most reading teachers and most of the education
professors disagree. They think that systematic and explicit instruction
is too “directive,” stifles children’ creativity (as though being illiterate
enables you to be creative!), and is not needed. “They will learn
naturally.”
However,
most reading teachers and most of the education professors that teach them are
flat wrong!
Respected scientific research in education and psychology shows clearly that
instruction yields higher and faster achievement in more children (with and
without learning difficulties) when instruction is systematic and explicit.
But
what does systematic and explicit mean?
Systematic means that:
1. Instruction is given in a planned, logically progressive sequence of
things to be taught. For example, certain letter-sounds (a, s, i, m, r) are taught before other letter-sounds (b, n, y, sh) because they are easier to learn and are used more
often.
2.
Instruction is guided and assessed with clearly defined objectives for
everything taught. Objectives are stated in terms of what children will
do.
Good objective. Students are given two minutes to read the
assigned passage from “The bear and the hare.” They read the passage at a rate
of at least 100 words correct per minute.”
Poor objective. Students read story
books quickly and get most words right.
3.
Instruction is focused precisely on the thing (knowledge unit) to be learned,
as specified by the objective. For example, if children are to read a
passage at 100 correct words per minute, then that is exactly what the teacher
focuses on during the ten minute fluency exercise during lessons. She
does not work on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension at the same time.
4.
Instruction provides planned practice to strengthen all of the skills worked
on.
5.
Instruction provides planned work on new examples (e.g., words, text) to foster
application or generalization of previously taught knowledge.
6.
Instruction includes assessments designed and used in a timely fashion to
monitor the different phases of instruction, or mastery: acquisition, fluency,
generalization, retention, and independence.
Explicit means that:
1. The teacher reveals in an obvious and clear way to children the
knowledge she is trying to communicate. She does this through
demonstrations (modeling) and running commentary to children. For
example,
“I’ll
show you how to sound out this word. [man is
written on the board.] Listen. I do NOT stop between the sounds.
[Teacher touches under each letter as she says the sound.] mmmmaaaannn. Now, I’ll say
it fast. [Teacher slides her finger under the word.] man.”
2.
The teacher ensures children’s attention to important features of an example or
demonstration. “Look [points to the word ate] here is a vowel, then a
consonant, and then an e at the end [name]. So, we do NOT say the e at
the end.”
Here
is an example of instruction that is NOT explicit. It is implicit—or
buried in the teacher’s talk. [You don’t want to see this!]
The teacher
holds up a big book that has a paragraph from a story. The children
cannot read most of these words. Also, they do not know which sounds most
of the letters make. She reads the words slowly. Occasionally she points to the
letter r and says rrr. She expects that this
will be enough for children to get the connection between the letter and the
sound. Of course, many children do not get it.
In
contrast, explicit instruction would have the teacher hold up the big book and
say,
“New
sound. This sound
(points to the letter r in ran) is rrr. Say it
with me… And this sound (points to r in car) is rrr.
Say it with me… And this sound (points to r in barn) is rrr.
Let’s see if you remember our new sound. What sound is this? (points to r in ran)… What sound is this? (points to r in barn)… What sound is this? (points to r in car)…. Now I’ll read the story.
(Teacher points to each r as she reads and has children say rrr
and then read the whole word.)
As
you can imagine, this explicit instruction of letter-sound correspondence is
more likely to teach most children quickly.
Perhaps
the most important thing you can do—since you can’t be sure that President
Bush’s Reading First (which provides powerful incentives for schools to teach
reading correctly, according to the research) will produce change in your
children’s school—is to teach your own children beginning reading skills or at
least be prepared if they begin to struggle. This is not hard to
do. In fact, it is a piece of cake. Just get “Teach Your Child to
Read in 100 Easy Lessons.” And your child will be reading in 100 easy
lessons. [I have no financial interest in the book.]