Why was Balanced Literacy so popular for so long?

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/25/us/reading-literacy-memphis-tennessee.html?campaign_id=174&emc=edit_csb_20230104&instance_id=81820&nl=education-briefing®i_id=59355161&segment_id=121559&te=1&user_id=f03e7db5286c7287d34469744dd841c8

This article is certainly very critical of it. And the only critique given of phonics is:

“If we spend a lot of time with that explicit vocabulary, around the word ‘photosynthesis,’ at what point do we get into the actual study of photosynthesis?” Dr. Dennis said.

(The answer is science class, not reading class).

So why have school districts been using the wrong approach for so long? I would like to think the people in charge had a good reason for it, even if it ended up being wrong

[Anonymous]

As I understand it, some experts thought phonics readers were boring and would turn children off of reading (I used phonics readers to teach my kids to read before kindergarten and yes, they're stilted and boring but then you move on to real books after that), also boring and dissatisfying for teachers. So they advocated whole language in the teachers colleges. They wanted to make sure that reading is fun, exciting, interesting! For students and teachers! Instead they made reading needlessly harder and for some children impossible.

I didn't read your article, does it describe how the reading wars have been going on since (at least) the 1800s?

[Anonymous]

Teachers (who aren't taught the science of learning) thought phonics was "boring" so they taught other teachers this in education programs. Some of these teachers created fun, interesting curriculum in-line with the constructivist model of education that was and still is in vogue. This was called Fountas and Pinnell, and it became very popular in large part because it fit in with teachers' constructivist notions of what learning should look like, which in turn are rooted in progressivism and its influence on education.

I highly recommend reading the book "Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System" by Siegfried Engelmann. You can find it for free here: https://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/teachingneedykidsinourbackwardsysystem.pdf

It covers Project Follow-Through: the most expensive, extensive education experiment conducted in human history, including over 200,000 children in 178 communities, comparing 22 different modes of instruction. If you don't have time to read the book, read a summary here: https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/project-follow-through

[Anonymous]

Part of why BL was used for so long was because the creators based it off of research on what good readers do. Good readers do: use the first letter of a word and the context, they do skip words they can't read and come back to them, they do flip the vowel sound and more. Problematically,it wasn't researched to check that what works for readers who pick up reading easily, would work for most kids. So, when teachers like me heard "research based" and really read the dozens of great professional books written on the topic, we bought in.

The other problem is that balanced literacy was never intended to be taught without explicit and systematic phonics. But for some reason, some teachers (okay, many) assumed it was. Balanced literacy was intended to provide time for fluency instruction, comprehension instruction, writing instruction, vocabulary instruction and phonics instruction. For me, my first job was in a little private school that used a truly terrible curriculum that ONLY taught phonics using phonetic decodable books. There was ZERO (and I truly mean zero) comprehension, fluency, writing (other than handwriting) or vocabulary instruction taught in the early years. We didn't even have any read alouds. (for real) My students could decode a lot. But read? Not really.

At the same time, I'm grateful for those years because I can get all my students to meet or exceed what they should know in phonics and phonemic awareness by years end. There's a balance (excuse the word) here. Kids do need explicit and systematic phonics. Kids do need decodable readers. They do need to learn sight words through the lens of phonics as much as possible. But they also need vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing instruction. I probably focus too much on phonics, comprehension and writing and need to include more vocab and fluency work.

I really feel for all the students who had teachers who thought the 3 cueing system was balanced literacy and didn't have what they needed to teach phonics. However, after nearly 30 years of being in education, I can guarantee you that in 10-15 years, we'll be reading all the research that shows how SOR created a buy in that created great decoders but those decoders can't comprehend. Why in the world someone can't come up with a great full curriculum that has both is beyond me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers (who aren't taught the science of learning) thought phonics was "boring" so they taught other teachers this in education programs. Some of these teachers created fun, interesting curriculum in-line with the constructivist model of education that was and still is in vogue. This was called Fountas and Pinnell, and it became very popular in large part because it fit in with teachers' constructivist notions of what learning should look like, which in turn are rooted in progressivism and its influence on education.

I highly recommend reading the book "Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System" by Siegfried Engelmann. You can find it for free here: https://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/teachingneedykidsinourbackwardsysystem.pdf

It covers Project Follow-Through: the most expensive, extensive education experiment conducted in human history, including over 200,000 children in 178 communities, comparing 22 different modes of instruction. If you don't have time to read the book, read a summary here: https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/project-follow-through

None of my teacher colleagues thought phonics was boring. There is nothing boring about seeing a child read for the first time. It's not boring to the kid and it's not boring for the teacher. As usual, people who didn't completely understand kids, child development and the science of reading made the decisions. These programs basically encouraged students to guess based on pictures and context. They should be ashamed of themselves but yet they still try to push their methods despite all evidence to the contrary.

[Anonymous]

It’s popular because it’s easy and lazy to “teach”.

My kid brought the following Balanced Literacy sheet BS home:
1) use the pictures for clues
2) look at the beginning letter
3) look at the ending letter (wtf?)
4) make a good guess
5) read to the end of the sentence
6) as yourself, “does this make sense?”

No it does not. This self-teach picture BS should not be how k-4 literacy is “taught.”

Poor kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers (who aren't taught the science of learning) thought phonics was "boring" so they taught other teachers this in education programs. Some of these teachers created fun, interesting curriculum in-line with the constructivist model of education that was and still is in vogue. This was called Fountas and Pinnell, and it became very popular in large part because it fit in with teachers' constructivist notions of what learning should look like, which in turn are rooted in progressivism and its influence on education.

I highly recommend reading the book "Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System" by Siegfried Engelmann. You can find it for free here: https://www.zigsite.com/PDFs/teachingneedykidsinourbackwardsysystem.pdf

It covers Project Follow-Through: the most expensive, extensive education experiment conducted in human history, including over 200,000 children in 178 communities, comparing 22 different modes of instruction. If you don't have time to read the book, read a summary here: https://www.nifdi.org/what-is-di/project-follow-through

Where do these dumb graphic novel comics fit in? My kid can’t even read one chapter of a real book for grades 3-5 and runs out of gas. Meanwhile librarian and teacher doesn’t care if kids check out same book every week or comics weekly. Nothing else ever comes home, certainly no leveled books.

[Anonymous]

Listen to Sold a Story podcast.

Essentially the people pushing different ‘cue’ based methodologies were very dynamic and inspirational. And they got publishers, school systems, and teachers enthusiastic about this. And everyone thought the methods were based in science. They weren’t.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580473

[Anonymous]

I'm paywalled from the NYT article but this article from earlier this year is a good explainer on how balanced literacy gained popularity and then abruptly lost it:

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

One takeaway I have from reading about the reading wars, as a parent of a pretty new reader, is that kids really do need both explicit phonics instruction but "whole language" approaches (read alongs, talking about stories, examining context, etc.) to become strong readers, but while parents can do a pretty good job of contributing to the latter part, schools and teachers are much better situated to teach phonics.

If teachers just focus on the whole language piece, that leaves parents to fill in the gaps with phonics. But teaching phonics is actually a learned skill and most parents aren't good at it. I know because I tried to do it with varying success during Covid when it was clear my DD needed help with it because she hated Zoom school and would not pay attention during phonics instruction via Zoom (I do not blame her, that is not a good way for a kindergartener to learn). But it's freaking hard! First, you have to learn a lot of the phonics rules that you basically forgot years ago once you became a fluent reader. Also, you have to learn how to teach it to a 5 year old. I'm not an ECE teacher, I am good at talking to my kid about all kinds of things but I don't have any training on how to break down a relatively technical instruction for that age group. I muddled through and I know it helped some, but it was nothing compared to what an actual trained teacher with experience can do with phonics, as I learned once my child returned to in-person school.

But reading to my kid, talking about books and ideas, discussing context? I'm great at that. We read all kinds of books, we find different ways to talk about them, it's a bonding time for us and it just fits right into our life. I'm not saying I don't want teachers to do that portion at all, I'm just saying that if they can only do so much of it, I have the rest more than covered at home. But phonics? Kids should learn that in school from a teacher trained to teach it, because it's actually not that easy to teach. And kids are at school all day anyway! The idea that for years kids were being taught phonics via home supplementing while they spent the day doing read alongs and "whole language" practice? It's really dumb and I'm glad that era is over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Listen to Sold a Story podcast.

Essentially the people pushing different ‘cue’ based methodologies were very dynamic and inspirational. And they got publishers, school systems, and teachers enthusiastic about this. And everyone thought the methods were based in science. They weren’t.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sold-a-story/id1649580473

That’s the money grab side of it where retired pensioner public school Admin go work at a discovery Ed or Eureka and sell $1b contracts back to their districts.

Same thing happened and worse when Obama did Common Core standards (k-8 math, ELA), and tied Fed money for signing up for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm paywalled from the NYT article but this article from earlier this year is a good explainer on how balanced literacy gained popularity and then abruptly lost it:

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

One takeaway I have from reading about the reading wars, as a parent of a pretty new reader, is that kids really do need both explicit phonics instruction but "whole language" approaches (read alongs, talking about stories, examining context, etc.) to become strong readers, but while parents can do a pretty good job of contributing to the latter part, schools and teachers are much better situated to teach phonics.

If teachers just focus on the whole language piece, that leaves parents to fill in the gaps with phonics. But teaching phonics is actually a learned skill and most parents aren't good at it. I know because I tried to do it with varying success during Covid when it was clear my DD needed help with it because she hated Zoom school and would not pay attention during phonics instruction via Zoom (I do not blame her, that is not a good way for a kindergartener to learn). But it's freaking hard! First, you have to learn a lot of the phonics rules that you basically forgot years ago once you became a fluent reader. Also, you have to learn how to teach it to a 5 year old. I'm not an ECE teacher, I am good at talking to my kid about all kinds of things but I don't have any training on how to break down a relatively technical instruction for that age group. I muddled through and I know it helped some, but it was nothing compared to what an actual trained teacher with experience can do with phonics, as I learned once my child returned to in-person school.

But reading to my kid, talking about books and ideas, discussing context? I'm great at that. We read all kinds of books, we find different ways to talk about them, it's a bonding time for us and it just fits right into our life. I'm not saying I don't want teachers to do that portion at all, I'm just saying that if they can only do so much of it, I have the rest more than covered at home. But phonics? Kids should learn that in school from a teacher trained to teach it, because it's actually not that easy to teach. And kids are at school all day anyway! The idea that for years kids were being taught phonics via home supplementing while they spent the day doing read alongs and "whole language" practice? It's really dumb and I'm glad that era is over.

20+ years of parents complaining is NOT abrupt.

[Anonymous]

I mean, these people literally closed schools for 1.5 yrs. They don’t really have any coherence.

[Anonymous]

I think the people who sold that snake oil should be shot.

My young adult still can't read well because of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm paywalled from the NYT article but this article from earlier this year is a good explainer on how balanced literacy gained popularity and then abruptly lost it:

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

One takeaway I have from reading about the reading wars, as a parent of a pretty new reader, is that kids really do need both explicit phonics instruction but "whole language" approaches (read alongs, talking about stories, examining context, etc.) to become strong readers, but while parents can do a pretty good job of contributing to the latter part, schools and teachers are much better situated to teach phonics.

If teachers just focus on the whole language piece, that leaves parents to fill in the gaps with phonics. But teaching phonics is actually a learned skill and most parents aren't good at it. I know because I tried to do it with varying success during Covid when it was clear my DD needed help with it because she hated Zoom school and would not pay attention during phonics instruction via Zoom (I do not blame her, that is not a good way for a kindergartener to learn). But it's freaking hard! First, you have to learn a lot of the phonics rules that you basically forgot years ago once you became a fluent reader. Also, you have to learn how to teach it to a 5 year old. I'm not an ECE teacher, I am good at talking to my kid about all kinds of things but I don't have any training on how to break down a relatively technical instruction for that age group. I muddled through and I know it helped some, but it was nothing compared to what an actual trained teacher with experience can do with phonics, as I learned once my child returned to in-person school.

But reading to my kid, talking about books and ideas, discussing context? I'm great at that. We read all kinds of books, we find different ways to talk about them, it's a bonding time for us and it just fits right into our life. I'm not saying I don't want teachers to do that portion at all, I'm just saying that if they can only do so much of it, I have the rest more than covered at home. But phonics? Kids should learn that in school from a teacher trained to teach it, because it's actually not that easy to teach. And kids are at school all day anyway! The idea that for years kids were being taught phonics via home supplementing while they spent the day doing read alongs and "whole language" practice? It's really dumb and I'm glad that era is over.

20+ years of parents complaining is NOT abrupt.

The complaints from parents were continuous, but the shift in teaching pedagogy was pretty abrupt in many instance, and Covid was a major driver as teachers re-entered the classroom and had to get real about what works and what doesn't. Plus it was easier for teachers and schools to placate parents pre-Covid. Now parents have more insight into the curriculum, often having seen it in action via Zoom. And there is a much greater sense of urgency due to Covid learning loss.

I also found the anecdote at the beginning of the Time article interesting, about the teachers in Oakland who were switched back to a phonemic awareness approach and hated it FOR YEARS. Before finally people started recognizing that it worked. To me that's so alarming because IME a focus on phonic pays instant dividends for a new reader. And that's true whether this is a kid who is dealing with dyslexia and is below grade level and hates reading, and a kid who is learning to read with very little explicit instruction. Watching a kid learn to decode language in a systemic way is really rewarding because it's a tool they can use forever. It will make their lives easier. It's crazy to me that teachers who had been using Balanced Literacy for years could go years on a phonics-first approach and still argue against it. Especially because a phonic first approach is not like hours and hours of phonics a day. It doesn't eliminate read alongs. It just requires 15-30 minutes of phonemic focus daily. That's it. And the rewards are immediate and huge. What are they fighting against? I truly do not get it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm paywalled from the NYT article but this article from earlier this year is a good explainer on how balanced literacy gained popularity and then abruptly lost it:

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

One takeaway I have from reading about the reading wars, as a parent of a pretty new reader, is that kids really do need both explicit phonics instruction but "whole language" approaches (read alongs, talking about stories, examining context, etc.) to become strong readers, but while parents can do a pretty good job of contributing to the latter part, schools and teachers are much better situated to teach phonics.

If teachers just focus on the whole language piece, that leaves parents to fill in the gaps with phonics. But teaching phonics is actually a learned skill and most parents aren't good at it. I know because I tried to do it with varying success during Covid when it was clear my DD needed help with it because she hated Zoom school and would not pay attention during phonics instruction via Zoom (I do not blame her, that is not a good way for a kindergartener to learn). But it's freaking hard! First, you have to learn a lot of the phonics rules that you basically forgot years ago once you became a fluent reader. Also, you have to learn how to teach it to a 5 year old. I'm not an ECE teacher, I am good at talking to my kid about all kinds of things but I don't have any training on how to break down a relatively technical instruction for that age group. I muddled through and I know it helped some, but it was nothing compared to what an actual trained teacher with experience can do with phonics, as I learned once my child returned to in-person school.

But reading to my kid, talking about books and ideas, discussing context? I'm great at that. We read all kinds of books, we find different ways to talk about them, it's a bonding time for us and it just fits right into our life. I'm not saying I don't want teachers to do that portion at all, I'm just saying that if they can only do so much of it, I have the rest more than covered at home. But phonics? Kids should learn that in school from a teacher trained to teach it, because it's actually not that easy to teach. And kids are at school all day anyway! The idea that for years kids were being taught phonics via home supplementing while they spent the day doing read alongs and "whole language" practice? It's really dumb and I'm glad that era is over.

20+ years of parents complaining is NOT abrupt.

The complaints from parents were continuous, but the shift in teaching pedagogy was pretty abrupt in many instance, and Covid was a major driver as teachers re-entered the classroom and had to get real about what works and what doesn't. Plus it was easier for teachers and schools to placate parents pre-Covid. Now parents have more insight into the curriculum, often having seen it in action via Zoom. And there is a much greater sense of urgency due to Covid learning loss.

I also found the anecdote at the beginning of the Time article interesting, about the teachers in Oakland who were switched back to a phonemic awareness approach and hated it FOR YEARS. Before finally people started recognizing that it worked. To me that's so alarming because IME a focus on phonic pays instant dividends for a new reader. And that's true whether this is a kid who is dealing with dyslexia and is below grade level and hates reading, and a kid who is learning to read with very little explicit instruction. Watching a kid learn to decode language in a systemic way is really rewarding because it's a tool they can use forever. It will make their lives easier. It's crazy to me that teachers who had been using Balanced Literacy for years could go years on a phonics-first approach and still argue against it. Especially because a phonic first approach is not like hours and hours of phonics a day. It doesn't eliminate read alongs. It just requires 15-30 minutes of phonemic focus daily. That's it. And the rewards are immediate and huge. What are they fighting against? I truly do not get it.

Private schools here aren’t getting real.

They are still F&p, whole language, and balanced literacy garbage.

And never did any remedial math or phonics after reopening full time in fall 2021. Sad. Lost two years of elementary school foundational material and teaching.