Lucy Calkins admits she was wrong - stop using this outdated method to teach reading

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope she's really, actually walking it back and not just putting lipstick on a pig. After all, Fairfax says it teaches "blended literacy," which is really just the cueing of Calkins with a tiny bit of phonics smattered around the edges.

I too am still working to undo damage done by this way for a child. I feel stressed to teach a preschooler to learn to read so that she won't even try to use the stupid picture/first letter cues. It's not good.

OP here. Same. My preschooler is going learn how to read before K and I am going to have a meeting with the principal to confirm that he is placed with a teacher that is teaching using a phonics-based approach before he starts there (and going to say definitely NO to the K teacher my 2nd grader had).

Why would you trust evidence based techniques on one aspect of learning to read, phonics, but ignore the whole part about not pushing kids to read too soon/before they’re ready and not to stress about it? If you read to/with your kid, they’ll learn to read, despite whatever technique they are learning in school. Try not to stress over it.

OP here - lucky for me, my 4 year old is ASKING to learn and is already starting to decode on her own. I guess that's one of the benefits of having been around us while we have been working so hard to catch her older sibling up... It's not an issue for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It completely depends on the child. Mine did well with traditional methods and not phonics. Other kids do better with phonics. The key is figuring out what works for that particular child.

And that's why I said "the way my kid was taught to read in Kindergarten did NOT work for her"

[Anonymous]

You do understand there is a huge pendulum, don’t you? Are grand children or great grandchildren prob won’t be taught the phonics based approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/10/16/influential-literacy-expert-lucy-calkins-is-changing-her-views


I’m not a teacher, I did not study literacy instruction, but I do know that this is huge - the way my kid was taught to read in Kindergarten did NOT work for her and now the woman who promoted that method is walking it back and admitting that phonics, deciding, and sounding out words is what works. I hope all those teachers out there that are using this outdated method (cueing, guessing, looking at pictures first) listen and go back to the basics. My child is in second grade and we will be working on undoing the damage done by her kindergarten teacher for years to come.

Wow! I was a Lucy devotee. I still knew that children need direct phonics I struction, though, so I used a “whole literacy” approach, but many teachers don’t and this is amazing. UVA is now totaling abandoning Word Study and other methods that have been sacrosanct the past 20 years in literacy.

Source about UVA? The Curry School still lists Word Study as a required course for their graduate programs.

[Anonymous]

I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The kids who are taught phonics, given spelling tests, and told to look up words they don’t know. That’s your answer.

It’s how most of us were taught in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://www.apmreports.org/story/2020/10/16/influential-literacy-expert-lucy-calkins-is-changing-her-views


I’m not a teacher, I did not study literacy instruction, but I do know that this is huge - the way my kid was taught to read in Kindergarten did NOT work for her and now the woman who promoted that method is walking it back and admitting that phonics, deciding, and sounding out words is what works. I hope all those teachers out there that are using this outdated method (cueing, guessing, looking at pictures first) listen and go back to the basics. My child is in second grade and we will be working on undoing the damage done by her kindergarten teacher for years to come.

Wow! I was a Lucy devotee. I still knew that children need direct phonics I struction, though, so I used a “whole literacy” approach, but many teachers don’t and this is amazing. UVA is now totaling abandoning Word Study and other methods that have been sacrosanct the past 20 years in literacy.

I'm a teacher who used to have to hide my explicit phonics instruction in my lesson plans by calling it Word Study. It'll be so nice to be able to say "explicit decoding instruction" instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The kids who are taught phonics, given spelling tests, and told to look up words they don’t know. That’s your answer.

It’s how most of us were taught in school.

Yes that’s my older kids and that’s me. But ,. The Lucy Calkin method failed a generation and now add on DL . . .

[Anonymous]

DD attended kindergarten with DS of LC. Calkins is amazingly charismatic around kids. Parents too were enchanted by her May Pole Day story telling. She lived in a very large house with many otherwise empty bedrooms each furnished with a game table & chairs and a different board game. This was 25 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The kids who are taught phonics, given spelling tests, and told to look up words they don’t know. That’s your answer.

It’s how most of us were taught in school.

And how lots of Catholic schools still teach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The kids who are taught phonics, given spelling tests, and told to look up words they don’t know. That’s your answer.

It’s how most of us were taught in school.

And how lots of Catholic schools still teach.

Secular private schools, too — thank god.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope she's really, actually walking it back and not just putting lipstick on a pig. After all, Fairfax says it teaches "blended literacy," which is really just the cueing of Calkins with a tiny bit of phonics smattered around the edges.

I too am still working to undo damage done by this way for a child. I feel stressed to teach a preschooler to learn to read so that she won't even try to use the stupid picture/first letter cues. It's not good.

OP here. Same. My preschooler is going learn how to read before K and I am going to have a meeting with the principal to confirm that he is placed with a teacher that is teaching using a phonics-based approach before he starts there (and going to say definitely NO to the K teacher my 2nd grader had).

Teachers don’t pick and choose what to use. They are told what to use.

OP here - I don't think this is true at our elementary school. Although FCPS uses the "blended" approach, some teachers definitely focused much more on phonics than others.

Then they are most likely doing it on their own. At my school, if you aren't following the curriculum "with fidelity" you will get written up. Our admins and higher-ups visit a lot so it would be hard to do what you want. Thankfully, we use Fundations which works well. It's a bit slow but it focuses on mastery.

[Anonymous]

I just don’t understand how anyone ever thought the LC curriculum made sense. It simply fails to meet a sanity check. That’s why we have supplemented with phonics reading instruction and spelling practice. I think new education trends are adopted by education administration without enough healthy skepticism, of which LC is but one example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have 4 kids and my last one had no phonics. She is now in middle school. She did great with reading and was a voracious reader in elementary school so she personally enjoyed the approach. But she never had a spelling test since first grade and her spelling is behind. Vocabulary was also considered wrong to teach and I’m surprised how behind her vocabulary was compare to her siblings even though she read far more. She is a bright kid so making up the gap now that vocabulary is back We had many friends who taught phonics on the side as the reading method didn’t work. I’m just wondering what group of kids really did well on all fronts - reading, vocabulary, and spelling.

The kids who are taught phonics, given spelling tests, and told to look up words they don’t know. That’s your answer.

It’s how most of us were taught in school.

And how lots of Catholic schools still teach.

Secular private schools, too — thank god.

Yes, they teach the old school way - memorization, using a dictionary, etc.

It "worked" for generations and generations (including us DCUMers), BUT the difference it now public schools mainstream SN kids. These kids don't have the mental bandwidth, executive function, the attention span, or whatever other hinderance to do things like memorize, study for a test, sit still long enough to learn the mechanics of grammar (identify a predicate nominative), or master long division. So public school moved the goal posts and leveled the playing field and started using cherry-picked curricula so that learning was "easier". That is why public school (FCPS comes to mind) doesn't use textbooks. There is no textbook that covers their wonky, all over the place, and hard to follow curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know not everyone is into Montessori, but one thing we love about it is the way that reading and writing are taught. Phonemic awareness begins to be taught via fun games at age 3, long before letters are introduced, and many kids are reading at least CVC words by the end of PK4. It's a very phonics-centered approach and very methodical in building skills.

I send my kids to Montessori for this reason. One started reading at four and the other at five. I will keep them in until 1st grade for a solid reading and math foundation. Nothing beats a good foundation!