Why are we still teaching reading the wrong way?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Over the years, I have had many more students who struggled to decode than couldn't comprehend. I teach in a Title One school and our phonics program leaves a lot to be desired with phonological awareness. The kids score low on DIBELS and it takes them longer to even get to decoding. By that point, phonics instruction is over and our one reading intervention teacher was cut last year. So we have kids in 3rd grade and up who still cannot quickly decode. If you can't quickly decode, you will never read fluently enough to comprehend.

This is the problem with holding off decoding. The curriculum just keeps going and getting more difficult and then there's no time to catch up and teach phonics. You can catch up easier on comprehension once you can decode through reading and experience.

Strongly disagree. Language must come first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Over the years, I have had many more students who struggled to decode than couldn't comprehend. I teach in a Title One school and our phonics program leaves a lot to be desired with phonological awareness. The kids score low on DIBELS and it takes them longer to even get to decoding. By that point, phonics instruction is over and our one reading intervention teacher was cut last year. So we have kids in 3rd grade and up who still cannot quickly decode. If you can't quickly decode, you will never read fluently enough to comprehend.

This is the problem with holding off decoding. The curriculum just keeps going and getting more difficult and then there's no time to catch up and teach phonics. You can catch up easier on comprehension once you can decode through reading and experience.

Strongly disagree. Language must come first.

DP. I think there's a disconnect, posters talking past each other. Are we talking about 4 year olds, kindergartners and 1st graders, 2nd graders or older?

Shouldn't decoding and language be taught together?

[Anonymous]

For kids with limited experiences, learning to decode words that have no meaning is not helpful. You can teach kids to decode, but if words have no meaning, it does no good. That's why lots of approaches is the best approach to teaching reading.

Those who think that phonics is the "be all, end all" solution to teaching reading do not understand this.

Phonics is important, but critical thinking skills are more important. And, you need language for those.

[Anonymous]

By the time a child is in kindergarten I can’t imagine there is any harm in starting with phonemic awareness and decoding. There is time in other subjects to get exposure to more complex language etc.

By having a strong phonemic foundation and continuing that through more advanced sound patterns the kids can read and spell unfamiliar words later. The most common/ simple words will become “sight” words that are recalled rather than decided as the process becomes automatic.

This order of teaching would also allow for the earlier detection of dyslexia which should be remediated as early as possible (and which can be reliably identified in kindergarten).

I don’t expect all teachers to be SPED teachers, but they should know the common signs of dyslexia in struggling readers so that they can refer children for evaluation instead of losing critical time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By the time a child is in kindergarten I can’t imagine there is any harm in starting with phonemic awareness and decoding. There is time in other subjects to get exposure to more complex language etc.

By having a strong phonemic foundation and continuing that through more advanced sound patterns the kids can read and spell unfamiliar words later. The most common/ simple words will become “sight” words that are recalled rather than decided as the process becomes automatic.

This order of teaching would also allow for the earlier detection of dyslexia which should be remediated as early as possible (and which can be reliably identified in kindergarten).

I don’t expect all teachers to be SPED teachers, but they should know the common signs of dyslexia in struggling readers so that they can refer children for evaluation instead of losing critical time.

You've never taught reading to young children, have you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. Over the years, I have had many more students who struggled to decode than couldn't comprehend. I teach in a Title One school and our phonics program leaves a lot to be desired with phonological awareness. The kids score low on DIBELS and it takes them longer to even get to decoding. By that point, phonics instruction is over and our one reading intervention teacher was cut last year. So we have kids in 3rd grade and up who still cannot quickly decode. If you can't quickly decode, you will never read fluently enough to comprehend.

This is the problem with holding off decoding. The curriculum just keeps going and getting more difficult and then there's no time to catch up and teach phonics. You can catch up easier on comprehension once you can decode through reading and experience.

Strongly disagree. Language must come first.

I meant by this statement that after about 2nd or 3rd grade, kids are expected to read most words phonetically, therefore it's important to teach decoding during the K-2 years. I can't imagine trying to teach the 5th grade standard curriculum and teach a child how to decode.

[Anonymous]

From edweek.org... Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Education for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading...”I find this so interesting that almost all of us were not taught to teach reading in our programs. I thought it was just me. We learned about read-alouds and vocabulary strategies, but were pretty much told if we get the child to enjoy reading, they will read.-- J.D. Ramsey (@writerramsey) October 14, 2018”

Looks like more teachers are figuring out that their programs let them and the kids down.

https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F62%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D77723&cmp=eml-eb-highered-eml2.1-11012018&M=58651766&U=3022122&UUID=db6154ac12f00bf266bb41975d05b708

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By the time a child is in kindergarten I can’t imagine there is any harm in starting with phonemic awareness and decoding. There is time in other subjects to get exposure to more complex language etc.

By having a strong phonemic foundation and continuing that through more advanced sound patterns the kids can read and spell unfamiliar words later. The most common/ simple words will become “sight” words that are recalled rather than decided as the process becomes automatic.

This order of teaching would also allow for the earlier detection of dyslexia which should be remediated as early as possible (and which can be reliably identified in kindergarten).

I don’t expect all teachers to be SPED teachers, but they should know the common signs of dyslexia in struggling readers so that they can refer children for evaluation instead of losing critical time.

Just fyi, before a child can be referred for an evaluation, it takes at least a year or more of RTI (response to intervention) before most schools will even consider an eval. My current school won't allow anyone to even breathe the word evaluation, unless the child is an immediate critical danger to himself or others, unless the teacher has implemented several 8 week rounds of tier 2 and tier 3 RTI. It takes a long freaking time even when the teacher is on top of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the time a child is in kindergarten I can’t imagine there is any harm in starting with phonemic awareness and decoding. There is time in other subjects to get exposure to more complex language etc.

By having a strong phonemic foundation and continuing that through more advanced sound patterns the kids can read and spell unfamiliar words later. The most common/ simple words will become “sight” words that are recalled rather than decided as the process becomes automatic.

This order of teaching would also allow for the earlier detection of dyslexia which should be remediated as early as possible (and which can be reliably identified in kindergarten).

I don’t expect all teachers to be SPED teachers, but they should know the common signs of dyslexia in struggling readers so that they can refer children for evaluation instead of losing critical time.

Just fyi, before a child can be referred for an evaluation, it takes at least a year or more of RTI (response to intervention) before most schools will even consider an eval. My current school won't allow anyone to even breathe the word evaluation, unless the child is an immediate critical danger to himself or others, unless the teacher has implemented several 8 week rounds of tier 2 and tier 3 RTI. It takes a long freaking time even when the teacher is on top of it.

There are more kids than you think who develop later. I taught first grade (back when K was not the "new" first grade). Many kids would lag and then take off around January. Things would start to "click." Sure, I like to think it was due to instruction in my class--but, honestly, sometimes it was just plain maturity and readiness. And, yes, I did teach phonics and decoding--but, I also did a lot of language development and sight words.

As for evaluating for dyslexia in K--I'm not sure you would be able to distinguish between readiness and dyslexia at that stage. Hopefully, a lot has been d'sone to learn more about dyslexia than when I was teaching. I cannot tell you the number of parents who came in concerned about the reversal of "R's" and feared their kids were dyslexic. (Reversing "R" is quite common at the age of 6-7.

[Anonymous]

For kids with limited experiences, learning to decode words that have no meaning is not helpful. You can teach kids to decode, but if words have no meaning, it does no good. That's why lots of approaches is the best approach to teaching reading.

Those who think that phonics is the "be all, end all" solution to teaching reading do not understand this.

Phonics is important, but critical thinking skills are more important. And, you need language for those.

This is a huge issue with second language learners. It is especially difficult with second language learners who have not learned to read in their own language. In this case, you are teaching both the vocabulary (and filling in the background knowledge) and how to read at the same time. It's pretty overwhelming.

[Anonymous]

Yep PP. This is my job as an ESOL teacher for students in KG-2nd grade. It takes a long time which is something my admin doesn't understand or care about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yep PP. This is my job as an ESOL teacher for students in KG-2nd grade. It takes a long time which is something my admin doesn't understand or care about.

+1000 An ESOL teacher at the secondary level. Same tasks and responsibilities as described by PP. Acquisition (all skills, including reading) takes a while, and cannot be reduced to two semesters! As is the case with Newcomers and Beginners!

[Anonymous]

I feel your pain past two ESOL posters. When you throw in poverty and lack of previous health care and malnourished young brains, it's a mountain. You have to be realistic about what you can accomplish. Don't let anyone put this all on you!

[Anonymous]

My kids caught onto reading early and easily, so I do t personally understand your frustrations. I mean, can’t you just be happy that your kid and their kids learn to read at some reasonable time? Do we really have to get pissy about the minutia?
The OP sounds butt-hurt about something, but I can’t tell if it’s because her kid is having trouble reading or she’s having a hard time teaching her students how to read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting op ed in the NY Times bemoaning the lack of phonics instruction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/opinion/sunday/phonics-teaching-reading-wrong-way.html

Our children aren’t being taught to read in ways that line up with what scientists have discovered about how people actually learn.

It’s a problem that has been hiding in plain sight for decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, more than six in 10 fourth graders aren’t proficient readers. It has been this way since testing began. A third of kids can’t read at a basic level.

How do we know that a big part of the problem is how children are being taught? Because reading researchers have done studies in classrooms and clinics, and they’ve shown over and over that virtually all kids can learn to read — if they’re taught with approaches that use what scientists have discovered about how the brain does the work of reading. But many teachers don’t know this science.

What have scientists figured out? First of all, while learning to talk is a natural process that occurs when children are surrounded by spoken language, learning to read is not. To become readers, kids need to learn how the words they know how to say connect to print on the page. They need explicit, systematic phonics instruction. There are hundreds of studies that back this up.

That is not how my kids learned to read at all, so clearly it is not a universal truth, so I caution adopting any one way as the scientifically correct way for all people. That sounds like the ego of the researcher talking.