Let's talk pedagogy - Page 2

[DashsMama]

Originally Posted by uccomama

I honestly think that reading is a one to one task and is best done at home rather than being left to teachers at school whatever method they use.

Agreed! My 5 year old is already able to decode words even though we have not done any type of formal reading instruction with him. We just read alot of stories and poems with him and talk about letters and numbers when he asks about them. I am convinced that even if we do nothing else, he will be reading before age 6.

Unfortunately, we will not be homeschooling. I am in favor of it. I simply do not have the temperment for it. So my son will be in a school and (assuming he is not in our local free school or Waldorf charter) will most likely have a reading program he will have to complete. It is very important to me that that program be a good one. I want his teacher to be able to change and/or suplement the program and do what she needs to in order to meet the needs of all her students. Curricula that teach to the middle (most of them) do a disservice to both the students who need more help, and the students who are advanced in their knowledge. For example, my nephew was reading at 3 years old (my sister taught him one on one, at home). He was reading at the 4th grade level by 1st grade but still had to do the incredibly boring phonics worksheets and read those awful phonics based books that only make sense if you look at the pictures. The teacher simply had no leeway to supplement the curriculum. My sister fought like mad to get him appropriate school work. Eventually the school agreed to let him go to a second grade class for his reading lessons. The work was still too easy for him, but it was better than the 1st grade stuff. Outside of school he could read what he wished of course. My point is, if you are going to send your child to school, make sure the reading curriculum is flexible.

As an aside to my story...My sister didn't bother to teach either of her younger, girls to read early. She had had such a nightmare fighting with the school to get the appropriate materials for her son, that she didn't want to go through that hastle again. Both her girls learned to read at school, with their teachers, and they are doing just fine.

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by DashsMama

Unfortunately, we will not be homeschooling. I am in favor of it. I simply do not have the temperment for it. So my son will be in a school and (assuming he is not in our local free school or Waldorf charter) will most likely have a reading program he will have to complete. It is very important to me that that program be a good one. I want his teacher to be able to change and/or suplement the program and do what she needs to in order to meet the needs of all her students. Curricula that teach to the middle (most of them) do a disservice to both the students who need more help, and the students who are advanced in their knowledge. For example, my nephew was reading at 3 years old (my sister taught him one on one, at home). He was reading at the 4th grade level by 1st grade but still had to do the incredibly boring phonics worksheets and read those awful phonics based books that only make sense if you look at the pictures. The teacher simply had no leeway to supplement the curriculum. My sister fought like mad to get him appropriate school work. Eventually the school agreed to let him go to a second grade class for his reading lessons. The work was still too easy for him, but it was better than the 1st grade stuff. Outside of school he could read what he wished of course. My point is, if you are going to send your child to school, make sure the reading curriculum is flexible.

I hear you! I am not am homeschooler either, but this is the issue I have with government-run dumbed down schools that have to teach to a curriculum designed to produce worker drones. I am not putting my DS into 1st grade in PS, he's going to a private comtemplative elementary school next full and I am seriously considering homeschooling DD#2. My eldest only has two more years of high school, but that is a whole other set of problems!

Fingers crossed you get your DS into the school of your choice.

[orca]

Ahh...if only I give give you a definitive answer! Unfortunately, there is no right answer to your questions. Over the years the tried and true teaching methods get repackaged and “sold” as the newest methodology. The pendulum swings and everyone jumps on whatever bandwagon is deemed most progressive and effective.

IMHO both approaches are necessary and required for literacy to become a foundation of lifelong learning. My concern is “programs” that claim to fix whatever learning deficiency your child (or a class) has. In my experience there is no such program and teachers (or parents) must be astute enough to pick and choose the best qualities from many programs to suit each individual need. This is also why I am an advocate for public schooling because many private schools have their own agendas and expensive “programs” that they advertise. The onus is then on the child to understand and learn in a style that might not always suit their needs. Jolly Phonics & Letterland (to name a few) are phonics programs that I have personally seen and used but, while they try to be as multi sensory as possible, they still miss the boat when it comes to making meaningful connections with young children. For example, very few 4 or 5 year olds would have any idea who “Inky ink pot” is. The lesson then is hijacked by a conversation explaining what an ink pot is. It is hard enough to corral and focus 25+ kids attention spans, let alone with a tangent like that one... KWIM?

I am certainly not anti-phonics! I am just an advocate for a balanced approach to literacy that includes choices embedded in the learning process. I have many, many strategies and games for teaching phonemic awareness, but when it comes to applying that knowledge I feel it is best done in a “whole” or balanced context. To that end, a student led approach is necessary in order for the teacher (or parent) to know where to go next. Packaged programs progress regardless of student comprehension or individual differences.

Uccomama: it sounds like you have a handle on all this and are allowing your kids to self direct their learning! To clarify, any kind of formal instruction that requires a teacher to talk, model or demonstrate and the student to follow, copy or reproduce pretty much falls under the umbrella of direct instruction. It is absolutely necessary and not at all a bad thing! My point was that some kids balk at direct instruction because they want to discover and play and do their own thing rather then listen to the teacher (or parent) for an extended period of time. (And we all know kids like that!)

I don’t even know where to start on the whole boys vrs. girls thing.

In a nutshell, I believe that most schools are not designed for the realities of children and “childhood”. That said, girls tend to be more interested in co-operative learning and compliant behaviour. Teachers (being mostly female in the early grades) reward this behaviour consciously or unconsciously so the positive feelings and early cycle of success continues. In my experience boys just physically can’t sit still for the inordinate amounts of time we ask them to in a school setting, which leads to reprimands, discipline and tension. The solution? Teachers who use centres, (I'm Canadian...that's how we spell it...) play based learning and hands on learning with manipulatives etc. allow boys ( and plenty of girls!) to feel some sense of control over their learning environment and, more importantly they get to move, move, move!

I feel like I have gone way off topic here... I hope that is what you were looking for.

[Mirzam]

newmom22, thanks for your thoughtful reply to my post! I do agree with yo for the most part. I am just not comfortable with using reading programmes, although I am not familiar with the ones you mentioned, I honestly think the old fashioned phonics method provides the solid base a child needs. Obviously, the English language being what it is, basically a Germanic language (with some Romance influences here and there) using Romanize phonics make it somewhat less easy to learn than say Italian phonetically and you do need to learn the many exceptions. I guess I am somewhat disillusioned with the whole word method, given the fact DD has never grasped phonics and I am having to redo it with her before its too late.

I think we are talking at cross purposes with the term direct instruction, I understand the term in the Skinnerian animal behavioural methods of direct instruction, not one on one teaching. My DS won't sit for more than 20 minutes at a time for reading, but that is fine with me if he would rather go jump on the tramp or something, I can understand that!

Interestingly, DS's Kindergarten teacher copied some pages from Michael Gurian's book, "Boys and Girls Learn Differently," for the parents to read this weekend. One of the reasons why we chose to put him in private school next year is he will be in a class of 15 mixed 1st and 2nd graders with two teachers, one male (Montessori trained) and one female (Waldorf trained), a great deal of their teaching is kinesthetically based, especially math which I think is especially great for the boys. Not a worksheet in sight too!

Oh, don't worry about your English spelling, I was born and brought up in the UK (went to private schools), so you are writing in my native tongue. I usually have to change my spelling for these boards (I didn't bother this time).

[RomanGoddess]

Well, I have been "reading" to my toddler since she was 4 months old. We also have started nursery rhymes, which she loves. I certainly do not believe that my showing her books, singing her songs and reciting rhymes is mutually exclusive with teaching her to read using the phonics method.

What's more, from what I have seen of the whole word approach, it can and is also taught using a very boring, "rote" approach. Back when my nieces and nephews were younger, I went home to Saskatchewan one Christmas. My niece was 6 at the time and was learning how to "read". She very showed me her "worksheets". Each sheet had eight words on it, in large letters. She pointed to each word and "read" it to me.

In actual fact, she had not learned to read at all. She had memorized the words on the worksheets and that's all. She read the word "mat" but when I replaced the "m" with a "b" to spell "bat", she didn't know what the word said. What's more, she was not reading any books and there was nothing else other than these worksheets that she had been learning to read from.

I told my sister that her daughter could not read at all in actual fact that she had just memorized words. My sister said "I know, that's the method they use here.

The whole word approach also invented the most boring readers going: Dick and Jane, which noone uses anymore because they are just soooo boring.

In Montessori, children learn to read using a sythetic phonics approach and none of the sensorial methods used to teach this are what I would call rote or uninteresting (they cannot be, given that it is the child that has to decide to do the activity and if the activity is boring, the child won't do it for very long). First the sandpaper letters (for a 3-year old, this is not boring), then the moving alphabet, then writing in a notebook. What's more, most Montessori classrooms have books in them which even the youngest children are free to peruse.

I guess I just don't buy the argument that learning to read by phonics is by definition uninteresting and whole word is not.

Originally Posted by newmom22

Actually, my understanding of phonemic awareness is that it is the application of phonics based skills. Our spoken language is made up of discrete words, which are made up of syllables, which themselves are made up of the smallest units of sound, called "phonemes. " Phonics can be taught in a creative, playful way but it almost always is relegated to the workbook domain. You can look at the phonics approach as a bottom/ up approach to literacy. For some kids that works, but since only 25% of the English language is actually spelled phonetically it can be a totally irrelevant teaching strategy for a lot of kids.

As with all Indo-=European languages, written English is at its base, phonetic, even if there are a million exceptions and exceptions to exceptions. English also happens to have more words than any other Indo-European language and probably more words than any language in the world. If you ever want to be able to write and read scholarly English, you really do have to have the ability to sound out words that you don't know.

[RomanGoddess]

Originally Posted by flyingspaghettimama

I have to agree with Linda, and I'm a montessori mama. I think most of the children I've seen in various M schools do engage in a wide variety of fantasy play, whether the teacher wants to admit to it or not. If they know they're not supposed to be doing it, they just take it underground, baby!

I think there has been a huge misunderstanding of the role of fantasy in Montessori. As far as I know (and Montessori educators, please correct me if I am wrong), Dr. Montessori never said that children should not be allowed to engage in fantasy. She said that adults should not IMPOSE fantasy on children but should instead introduce children to as much reality as possible. In fact, from what I understanding from having just read the Montessori Method, the children in a Montessori classroom have the freedom to do what they want in the prepared environment, as long as they are not disturbing others or breaking the rules of grace and courtesy. She describes a scene where one child stands on a table a pretends to be the teacher while the other children watch her, and notes that in a traditional classroom, this child would be reprimanded, whereas in the Montessori classroom, she would be left alone as the child clearly had leadership skills and was using them.

It should also be noted that fantasy is NOT the same thing as IMAGINATION or CREATIVITY. The Montessori method encourages the latter two as much as possible and in fact many educators argue that it is adult-imposed fantasy that stifles imagination and creativity. When you show your child Winnie-the-Pooh, the next time he thinks of a talking bear, he will think of Winnie. When you show your child Disney's Cinderella, this is the Cinderella that she will always visualise, not her own Cinderella.

In fact, creativity is at its best when you know as much about the real world as possible. To fly a spaceship to the moon, you can be the most creative when you know as much as possible about space, the earth, the moon, the sun, etc. The more you know, the more you can use your imagination and your creativity. The less you know, the more limited you are.

Finally, I think one of the most important reasons that Dr. Montessori choose to limit adult-imposed fantasy was out of a certain respect for children. Most young children do not understand the difference between reality and fantasy. This means that when you tell a child fabrications, you are essentially lying to the child and this is not showing a lot of respect for the child. And there are so many wondrous REAL things in the world that there really is no need to make it anything up.

[flyingspaghettimama]

Originally Posted by cmlp

I think there has been a huge misunderstanding of the role of fantasy in Montessori. As far as I know (and Montessori educators, please correct me if I am wrong), Dr. Montessori never said that children should not be allowed to engage in fantasy.

She did say that, but there does seem to be the impression at the very traditional M schools that we've been with that a "normalized" classroom does not have children playing Pegasus and Gorgon (or rabbit family, or let's go to the moon with the red rods or whatever) during the three-hour work period. During the cutting paper exercise, the little bits of paper are not to be talking to each other or turning into airplanes.

I think different teachers have different levels of tolerance. I don't expect a teacher to teach them how to fantasize or pretend with them...but backing off a little regarding the child-initiated play is preferable to me.

[orca]

Uccomama: One of the best traditional phonics programs I’ve ever used is “McCracken Phonics” Their Spelling Through Phonics is a must have if you prefer that style, I highly recommend it. I use a great deal of that program in my teaching practice and find that the chalkboard games are particularly motivating for young learners. I hope my previous post was clear that I think Jolly Phonics and Letterland are a waste of time. Also look up Boxcars and One Eyed Jacks, a Canadian company that specialises in gaming and learning through play. Their On a Role to Spelling and More is jam packed with dice games and activities that teach phonetic awareness and general literacy skills (adverbs etc...) They also have about a dozen game books for Math that are totally based on play with cards and dice. My classes LOVE them and I can go weeks and weeks without using any paper in my classroom with these games. They make great homework packs as well since most families love the “whole family” aspect of playing a game for homework! At the very least, they are a super way to reinforce skills if your dd’s teacher uses lots of worksheets.

Have you read Boys and Girls Learn Differently? I read it a number of years ago and don’t remember being particularly impressed with Gurian’s ideas. If I remember correctly he proposed putting boys at the front of the class because they “need” louder voices and direct supervision. Boys should be given “competitive” activities and singular tasks, whereas girls should be left to work co-operatively and complete activities as a group. It didn’t sit so well with me, but I may have a jaded memory of the book. I have it in the crawl space...maybe I’ll go dig it out and reread it!

Cmlp: I don’t want to appear argumentative, but the example you gave of your niece’s work is 110% phonics. “Word families” (hat, bat, mat, cat) are a strategy for teaching phonemic awareness. Nothing in your post was even close to an example of whole language instruction. Except the description you gave of what you are doing with your own child!!! Also, the Dick and Jane readers you mention were very much phonics based primers (as they were called in the day) Dick and Jane’s only departure from being exclusively phonics based was the addition of a vocabulary component so the readers placed a secondary emphasis on phonics. Hence, the “look, look, look” repetition. I definitely agree that those readers were artificial and not very representative of most children’s reality. Authors like Dr.Suess also fall into the category of using predictable rhymes to reinforce phonemic awareness. The whole “would you eat it with a mouse, would you eat it in a house” is the epitome of phonics instruction. I suppose I prefer to use children’s books that speak to the children’s experiences and provide pleasure through beautiful story telling and illustrations. A few popular examples would be books by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild things are), Robert Munsch- great Canadian author (Paperbag Princess etc) or Eric Carle (Very hungry Caterpillar).

I’m starting to feel like a squeaky wheel here, but I feel like whole language is being misunderstood. Whole Language is based on three premises: one, that learning to read is as natural as learning to speak, and essentially involves the same mental processes. Two, that reading is best learned in the context of reading natural pieces of literature, e.g.; poems, chants, and stories with refrains. Three, that reading is best learned "from the top down" since only 25% of our words can actually be read phonetically. The remaining 75% require learning that is in context, rather then isolation, so that children can make connections between letters, sounds and meaning.

I do go on don’t I?? Anyways, don’t fool yourself into thinking that phonics=reading and whole language =memorisation. It just simply is not true.

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by newmom22

Uccomama: One of the best traditional phonics programs I’ve ever used is “McCracken Phonics” Their Spelling Through Phonics is a must have if you prefer that style, I highly recommend it. I use a great deal of that program in my teaching practice and find that the chalkboard games are particularly motivating for young learners. I hope my previous post was clear that I think Jolly Phonics and Letterland are a waste of time. Also look up Boxcars and One Eyed Jacks, a Canadian company that specialises in gaming and learning through play. Their On a Role to Spelling and More is jam packed with dice games and activities that teach phonetic awareness and general literacy skills (adverbs etc...) They also have about a dozen game books for Math that are totally based on play with cards and dice. My classes LOVE them and I can go weeks and weeks without using any paper in my classroom with these games. They make great homework packs as well since most families love the “whole family” aspect of playing a game for homework! At the very least, they are a super way to reinforce skills if your dd’s teacher uses lots of worksheets.

I am going to check out McCraken Phonics, Boxcars and One Eyed Jacks, thanks for the suggestions. I am doing this blind in all honestly. I am using Turbo Reader with both children, but we are going slowly and only when they want to do it. DD doesn't use many worksheets at school, although more than I would like, as I mentioned above it is a public focus school using a mix of Waldorf, Intergrated Day and the Mulitple Intelligences of Howard Gardner, and an arts based curriculum, so worksheets are kept to a minimum.

Have you read Boys and Girls Learn Differently? I read it a number of years ago and don’t remember being particularly impressed with Gurian’s ideas. If I remember correctly he proposed putting boys at the front of the class because they “need” louder voices and direct supervision. Boys should be given “competitive” activities and singular tasks, whereas girls should be left to work co-operatively and complete activities as a group. It didn’t sit so well with me, but I may have a jaded memory of the book. I have it in the crawl space...maybe I’ll go dig it out and reread it!

I have only read a few pages, the ones DS's teacher sent home with his class weekly newsletter. She sent home the sections on brain gender differences, developmental gender differences and the "Ultimate Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom for Both Boys and Girls". I honestly don't see much difference in the learning style of DD and DS (two years apart in age), except DS has more kinetic energy (wiggles his legs etc). Could that be because he is a boy or younger or just a different kid?!!!

Also, the Dick and Jane readers you mention were very much phonics based primers (as they were called in the day) Dick and Jane’s only departure from being exclusively phonics based was the addition of a vocabulary component so the readers placed a secondary emphasis on phonics. Hence, the “look, look, look” repetition. I definitely agree that those readers were artificial and not very representative of most children’s reality.

Newmom22, here's an interesting bit of info on Dick and Jane, this relates to the whole word movement that took place in the middle of the last century: Here is a quote from John Taylor Gatto's book, An Underground History of American Eduction:

[Samuel] Blumenfeld does the student of American schooling a great service when he compares this original 1930 Dick and Jane with its 1951 successor: “In 1930, the Dick and Jane Pre-Primer taught 68 sign words in 39 pages of text, with an illustration per page, a total of 565 words--and a teacher’s Guidebook of 87 pages. In 1951, the same book was expanded to 172 pages with 184 illustrations a total of 2,603 words-- and a Guidebook of 182 pages to teach a sight vocabulary of only 58 words!”

I have the modern compendium reprint which I presume is based on the 1951 version, and it is plain awful, a child would go nuts reading:

"Go, go, go".
"Go, Dick go".
"Go, go, go"
"Help, help".
"Jane".
"Dick! Dick! Look, Dick."
"Oh, Dick! Help Jane. Go help Jane." (You get the picture....!)

It most certainly doesn't utilize phonetics and the repetitions are mind numbing.

Here is what Dr Seuss had to say about "Cat in the Hat" in an interview in 1981:

I did it for a textbook house and they sent me a word list. That was due to the Dewey revolt in the twenties, in which they threw out phonics reading and went to a word recognition as if you’re reading Chinese pictograph instead of blending sounds or different letters. I think killing phonics was one of the greatest causes of illiteracy in the country.

Anyway they all had it worked out that a healthy child at the age of four can only learn so many words in a week. So there were two hundred and twenty-three words to use in the book. I read the list three times and I almost went out of my head. I said, “I’ll read it once more and if I can find two words that rhyme, that’ll be the title of my book.” I found “cat” and “hat” and said, the title of my book will be The Cat in the Hat.

[flyingspaghettimama]

Originally Posted by newmom22

Cmlp: I don’t want to appear argumentative, but the example you gave of your niece’s work is 110% phonics. “Word families” (hat, bat, mat, cat) are a strategy for teaching phonemic awareness.

No - cmlp was saying that the girl had simply memorized the words, as evidenced that when cmlp tried changing an initial letter, the girl could no longer "read" the word as she could not either sound it out nor recognize the word. The original worksheet did not have a word family on it - cmlp changed it from mat to bat, to test the girl's actual decoding ability.

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Reading_Wars.html
"In the 1950s the Dick and Jane readers used a "whole word" approach to teaching reading where words were repeated on each page enough times that, according to behaviorist research, students could remember them."

This article has a great overview of phonics vs. whole language debate, within the framework of behaviorist/constructivist approaches. Although honestly, I think it's like the mommy wars - somewhat trumped up. I really don't get why in the real world, teachers don't blend the two and why there needs to be certain "camps" with battle lines drawn... Yes, many kids need help with decoding the word, breaking them down and sounding them out. But ALL children definitely need to hear great literature, practice writing, and play with words. Montessori definitely achieves this, in my mind.

[LindaCl]

Whole language is often confused with look-say or see-say. Dick and Jane was see-say, not whole language.

A new reader really benefits from tools available from all three methods-phonics, see-say and whole language--each one by itself has huge negatives. The problem with phonics is that students can be so conditioned to decoding that they aren't cognitively listening to the story. The reason whole language took off in popularity was a consequence of alarming statistics demonstrating a decline in reading comprehension and an ever growing disinterest in reading among young people. 100% phonics is very hard to make interesting to read, and Suess was one of very few who could wrote lively and entertaining books for children without being inconsistent to basic phonics concepts. Obviously, the see-say Dick and Jane was deadly dull as well. Unfortunately, 100% whole language didn't work well either. In fact, in our state when the philosophy was implemented pretty much statewide, reading skills dropped drastically.

Though I think that it's important to come at early reading from all three directions, it will vary between one child and another which approach should be given a little more emphasis to provide what that child needs in the best way.

Linda

[orca]

Well said!

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by LindaCl

Whole language is often confused with look-say or see-say. Dick and Jane was see-say, not whole language.

Not according to the article linked by flyingspaghettimama (I am going to write a separate post on my general thoughts on the article),

Here's a quote from the glossary:

Whole Word Approach--Epitomized in the Scott Foresman Dick and Jane readers, the whole word approach focused on teaching vocabulary as sight words by exposing students to new words repeatedly through specially written stories. Thus the repetition in famous phrases like "Look, Look, Jane."

The author does end the article with what he describes as the "balanced approach"

Currently publishers are including systematic phonics instruction, more classic and popular children's literature, and whole language activities. This compromise generally goes under the rubric of a "balanced approach" to teaching reading. Advocates of balanced reading instruction should supplement a school's adopted reading program with materials that reflect the experiential background and interests of their students.

This is what I assume you mean by "whole word". Things get so confusing with all these terms!

[orca]

I'm new at this posting thing... I was a lurker for over a year, until this thread enticed me!! Anyways, I want to know how you include a quote from another post in your reply. Several quotes in the same reply? Please let me know!

So anyways, in my previous post I mentioned the pendulum swing and how everyone jumps on the pedagogical bandwagon from time to time. Like Linda said neither an exclusive phonics program or exclusive whole language program benefits children and educators have learned that the hard way. "Balanced" Literacy has evolved, if you will, from the whole language movement, but includes phonics instruction as well as many, many other aspects of literacy (including mathematical literacy, media literacy etc.) that in their totality comprise a "balanced" program. This is what is mandated by my current school board and practiced by all teachers.

If I could figure out how to pull my quotes I would highlight the examples of this that I have already given.:

[LindaCl]

Yes, the terminology is confusing. One problem that contributes to the confusion is that in a lot of classrooms the children were taught with the see-say approach but called it whole language.

See-say emphasized memorization of sight words and used texts that repeated those words over and over to reinforce the memorization. Glenn Doman's "Teach Your Baby to Read" idea is see-say. In the method, the written words or word fragments are presented as visual symbols representing all or subparts of whole words, and the alphabetic principle is presented at only a very simplistic level, if at all.

Whole language is a literature based, immersive process. It's predicated on the idea that students learn to read for message, and relies on the idea students will use story context and language clues to make sense of the narrative. The idea is that the story itself guides the learner to adopt cognitive reading strategies. One of the key features of classic whole language is that high quality literature is the key--and Dick and Jane don't qualify .

And the whole word memorization and/or drills aren't the focus-though they're often one of the strategies included in the curriculum. But this is true of every phonics curriculum I've ever seen as well. Students will always be given at least a basic arsenal of sight words to memorize, even in phonics curriculums.

I learned to read in a very small school where one of the first grade teachers (mine) used a phonics based curriculum and the other used a see-say based curriculum. I remember the see-say very well, and it doesn't look anything like a true whole language curriculum like those I've seen out there now.

Linda

[LindaCl]

It just occurs to me that we're mixing up "whole word" and "whole language" as well. They aren't exactly the same. The "whole word" idea is that words are learned in terms of a visual symbol rather than as a series of coded sound patterns. This discusses the differentiation between the look-say or whole word strategy from the whole language approach.

Whole language, as I said, concentrates on the aspect of comprehension of the narrative or story, and doesn't take a stand one way or another about how to approach the words themselves--either phonetic clues or visual patterns in terms of a "word attack" strategy. It tends to the idea that reading skill develops along the same lines as learning to speak. The mind wants to make sense of the narrative, and particular strategies the reader employs more deeply develop and reinforce themselves naturally, from continuous exposure to literature.

***

As I re-read flyingspaghettimomma's link, the distinction between "whole word" and "whole language" is given there as well. They have two very distinct definitions in the glossary. The look-say and see-say and whole-word ideas are the same, but whole language is different.

[flyingspaghettimama]

Originally Posted by LindaCl

It tends to the idea that reading skill develops along the same lines as learning to speak. The mind wants to make sense of the narrative, and particular strategies the reader employs more deeply develop and reinforce themselves naturally, from continuous exposure to literature.

Whatever the benefits of each approach, I find this theory (learning to read is as "natural" as learning to speak) to be incredibly just...not right. It's not neurologically correct, and has no scientific basis. Reading is completely different than speaking; and the learning processes are completely different. Oral communiciation is found in every culture throughout the world. Written communication is not, and usually requires instruction, constant exposure accompanied with individualized attention, or both in order to develop.

Neurolinguist Steven Pinker has written extensively about this topic. Here is a quote from him:

"Language is a human instinct, but written language is not. Language is found in all societies, present and past. . . . All healthy children master their own language without lessons or corrections. When children are thrown together without a usable language, they invent one of their own. Compare all this with writing. Writing systems have been invented a small number of times in history. . . . Until recently, most children never learned to read or write; evenwith today's universal education, many children struggle and fail. A group of children is no more likely to invent an alphabet than it is to invent the internal combustion engine. Children are wired for sound, but print is an optional accessory that must be painstakingly bolted on. This basic fact about human nature should be the starting point for any discussion of how to teach our children to read and write."

[Mirzam]

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/Reading_Wars.html
"In the 1950s the Dick and Jane readers used a "whole word" approach to teaching reading where words were repeated on each page enough times that, according to behaviorist research, students could remember them."

This article has a great overview of phonics vs. whole language debate, within the framework of behaviorist/constructivist approaches.

Man, for a reading professor the article had some serious typos (even I, the horrible speller that I am, noticed.)

The major “flaw” in his argument and core of his article is the premiss that phonics = behaviorist/teacher-centered/direct instruction and whole language = constructivism/student centered instruction.

What he doesn’t understand, or fails to mention, is behaviorism and the constructivism are two sides of the same coin.

He writes about E.F. Skinner the behaviorist

”I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule”

who studied under Pavlov using the same methods, language development in humans is the same as conditioned stimulus response, ie Pavlov’s dogs. Moving forward, these kinds of animal behavioral programs are now seen in DISTAR Mastery Reading programs like Teaching Your Children to Read in 100 Easy Lessons which even uses hand signals, the same ones used when training dogs!

Then he talks about L.S. Vygotsky, the Soviet psychologist who conducted research in higher skill levels, known in the US as Higher Order Thinking (HOTS) which deals with changing attitudes, values and beliefs. The term “Constructivist” learning used by Vygotsky when training teachers is to build on knowledge that children have already learned refers to the building of knowledge in a particular direction - dictated by the social/political outcomes of the one doing the directing/teaching, i.e. state mandated tests and curricula (teaching to the test). Even more interesting is Vygotsky worked with another Soviet psychologist Alexander Luria who also had Pavlov as a mentor. They were all working on behavioral disorganization in humans.

Phonics proponents led by Rudolph Flesh in his book Why Johnny Can Read attacked the whole word approach because it did not get students into reading children's stories that did not have carefully controlled vocabularies. Phonics advocates focus their efforts on the primary grades and emphasize the importance of students having phonemic awareness, that is an understanding of the alphabetic principle that the spelling of words relates to how they sound when spoken. A problem with English is that it does not have a one-to-one sound symbol relationship that would make reading much easier. The many homonyms in English such as to, too, and two create difficulties for students, even at the university level in regard to spelling.

Actually the man’s name was Rudolph Flesch and the book was entitled Why Johnny Can’t Read. By teaching children to read using traditional phonics -- not using Skinner’s “rat training” phonics methods -- you had far less control over what a child read because they didn’t need a controlled vocabulary. This goes back to the controlled direction of learning of Vygotsky. The problem has been over emphasized, even by sincere people that merely want to teach children to read. The 44 sounds that the majority of people recognized can be spelled just over 400 ways. Eight-five percent of the words in English language can be read with knowledge of only 70 phenograms. A large number of the remaining words can be learned on a as need basis, and they are seldom needed.

Anyway, this has taken me ages to type up inbetween feeding my kids dinner, admiring DD’s self-made math problems and getting them to bed. LindaCL has clarified the confusion between whole word and whole language which has helped, thank you!

I think my point in all this is there are phonics and and then are phonics, and the phonics that should be bashed are those that employ the dog training techniques not the tried and true method of yesterday. They must of worked because in 1882 5th graders were reading Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and many more.

DD was definitely taught to read using the Whole Language approach that Linda describes but still has holes that a better understanding of phonics would fill. You can at guess just so many words....

As I refreshed this post, I just noticed flyingspaghettimama's post. I have to say this is a facinating discussion!

[Mirzam]

I feel like I am flogging a dead horse at this point, but with all the distractions I had while trying to post the above, I forgot to address this quote from Jon Reyner's article:

Students who come from "high literacy" households--where young children are read bedtime stories on a regular basis, there are lots of children's books, and adults read regularly--tend to learn to read well regardless of the teaching approach used. These students tend to enter school with large vocabularies and reading readiness skills (and sometimes they already can read).

Students from "low literacy" households are not exposed much to reading in their homes and tend to have smaller vocabularies. They may speak non-standard dialects of English such as Ebonics and can be unmotivated students, especially if they see teachers as enemies trying to change how they speak and act, in other words their language and culture. It is argued that standard phonics approaches can be unsuccessful for these students. Whole language approaches encourage teachers to find reading material that reflects these students language and culture.

History doesn't support this hypothesis IMO. In 1940 96% of whites and 80% of blacks were literate. This is less than 80 years after the abolition of slavery. Were the blacks in 1940 any less disadvantaged than those of today? By the end of the last century the US had an illiteracy rate of 40% in the black population and 17% in the white population. We spend 3 to 4 times as much real money on schooling as we did back then.

[flyingspaghettimama]

Originally Posted by uccomama

History doesn't support this hypothesis IMO. In 1940 96% of whites and 80% of blacks were literate. This is less than 80 years after the abolition of slavery. Were the blacks in 1940 any less disadvantaged than those of today? By the end of the last century the US had an illiteracy rate of 40% in the black population and 17% in the white population. We spend 3 to 4 times as much real money on schooling as we did back then.

Do you have a citation? I have never heard before that the literacy rate was so high in 1940 for African-Americans?

I'm not sure that Vygotsky and Skinner are two sides of the same coin. I find them to be very different in their respect for the child and learner-instructor relationship.

I agree that behaviorist phonics instruction is sad...my mother is a teacher in a public school and says that the state mandates that she use a phonics that uses scripts and call-and-response interaction. She says it's horrible...