APS - Which Phonics Program did your school adopt?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone going to post any actual information or research here? It’s impossible to tell whether these posters are just spouting off or there is some actual validity to these claims that it’s so terrible and yet the majority of arlington elementary schools use it. That doesn’t seem to add up.

I can share my anecdata.Two kids.

Older one started reading long before Kindergarten, it just clicked and made sense from a very early age for DC1. Got to K and flourished with the Lucy Caulkins workshop, so I assumed all was good. What I know now is that it’s a great program for advanced readers, because they can move at their own pace, choose more difficult books, books of interest, etc.

Younger one had no interest in learning to read, but loves books and being read to. Attended high quality preschool, but it still didn’t click. The LC workshop model has been a disaster for DC2. DC2 has absolutely no idea what to do when encountering a new word, and uses all the bad strategies of a struggling reader (looking at the picture, guessing based on the first letter, etc.). Luckily our school is one that’s doing the good phonics program, and DC2 really needs it. DC2 is very far behind her peers who were reading prior to K, and has made very little progress beyond memorizing easy sight words. DC2 needs phonics and to learn how the parts of words come together to make sounds. It’s really depressing that I had to go out and buy workbooks and spend time over the summer trying to remediate their mistake. DC2 is really embarrassed about reading in front of peers because DC2’s deficits are pretty evident now that they are a little older.

I’m the pp who asked and appreciate hearing your experience!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is anyone going to post any actual information or research here? It’s impossible to tell whether these posters are just spouting off or there is some actual validity to these claims that it’s so terrible and yet the majority of arlington elementary schools use it. That doesn’t seem to add up.

I can share my anecdata.Two kids.

Older one started reading long before Kindergarten, it just clicked and made sense from a very early age for DC1. Got to K and flourished with the Lucy Caulkins workshop, so I assumed all was good. What I know now is that it’s a great program for advanced readers, because they can move at their own pace, choose more difficult books, books of interest, etc.

Younger one had no interest in learning to read, but loves books and being read to. Attended high quality preschool, but it still didn’t click. The LC workshop model has been a disaster for DC2. DC2 has absolutely no idea what to do when encountering a new word, and uses all the bad strategies of a struggling reader (looking at the picture, guessing based on the first letter, etc.). Luckily our school is one that’s doing the good phonics program, and DC2 really needs it. DC2 is very far behind her peers who were reading prior to K, and has made very little progress beyond memorizing easy sight words. DC2 needs phonics and to learn how the parts of words come together to make sounds. It’s really depressing that I had to go out and buy workbooks and spend time over the summer trying to remediate their mistake. DC2 is really embarrassed about reading in front of peers because DC2’s deficits are pretty evident now that they are a little older.

I’m the pp who asked and appreciate hearing your experience!

I'm assuming the pissed off posters had children who had trouble learning to read. I'm one of them. I have one who learned to read at 4 and is above grade level and another who has dyslexia. APS can do far better for all and the LC program serves only the 50% who could learn via any method....like mine. I do appreciate the poster who was thoughtful and not hostile. I"m not there yet.

[Anonymous]

I like the Lucy program but suspect I may be the only one here. I have been to some of their wonderful workshops at Teachers' College in NYC. You do not have to follow every script and teach every aspect of every lesson. You can adapt it and make it your own as you see fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the Lucy program but suspect I may be the only one here. I have been to some of their wonderful workshops at Teachers' College in NYC. You do not have to follow every script and teach every aspect of every lesson. You can adapt it and make it your own as you see fit.

From what I can tell the LC and Reading Recovery people put on really nice and entertaining professional development workshops that teachers enjoy attending. The better teachers take away a few strategies to use, and every experienced teacher has som good strategies to share. But less experienced or less discerning teachers treat these programs as if they are the Way.

And since they aren’t based on sound reading science, then many children are not helped or even harmed by these approaches. The most appalling part is that LC actively avoids talking about dyslexia (1 in 5 kids) and dismisses it as overdiagnosed instead of underremediated.

The other issue with these ineffective programs is that colleges of education make a lot of money from them. So when that is combined with a historical (and disturbing) lack of sound empirical research and cross-field collaboration they are unlikely to change until their alumni force them to.

[Anonymous]

Reading Specialist here... at a Title 1 school

1. Lucy Calkins is not a program. She is a person who leads the literacy think tank at Teacher's College in NYC. There are hundreds of staff developers that write the Units of Study.

2. The UOS are not a scripted program. They are a transcript and a resource to teach reading, writing, and phonics. All teachers have the ability to make the lessons their own by editing parts of the mini lesson.

3. The PhUOS is not just something Lucy thought up. They consulted the best of the best in word work ( Patricia Cunningham and many, many others) to build a program that is engaging, research based and developmentally appropriate.

4. It is laughable that you think the UOS teach students to "guess at pictures". Have you seen every single lesson k-8? In the early developmental stages of reading, teachers teach students to use strategic actions to word solve and yes in very early readers, one thing students do is use pictures to help them cross check to make sure a word looks right, sounds right, and makes sense.

5. Yes, phonics instruction is vital to reading development AND it can not occur in isolation. In order to transfer to reading and writing- you need both- explicit phonics instruction AND authentic reading practice. This is why they developed the Phonics UOS. Teachers all across the country were noticing that they were teaching phonics and word work in isolation and there was no transfer to writing- same with spelling lists. Reading and writing should compliment each other.

So here is the thing- Inmost counties here, everyone uses the workshop model- why? Because students need to want to read and be given long stretches of time to read- centers and other previous ways of teaching reading look cute but don't always= reading growth. Workshop is all about responsive teaching. A short focus lesson and the rest of the block is for teachers meeting with kids one on one and in small groups.

In my title 1 school, the increase in reading engagement has been incredible using the workshop model and the UOS. To say this program is just for advanced readers is incorrect. Adding the phonics program last year was what really supported a lot of our lower readers who needed that foundational base. We have never seen more growth than we saw last year using all three UOS. Yes, only one year but we had not seen that level of growth before.

And no, I don't work for TC. But I will say that in my 19 years of teaching reading, it is the best proefssional development I have ever attended . How many of you have sat in your student's classroom during a UOS Phonics lesson? Before you crucify a resource, perhaps don't believe everything you hear on an annonymous message board.

Have a great day!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading Specialist here... at a Title 1 school

1. Lucy Calkins is not a program. She is a person who leads the literacy think tank at Teacher's College in NYC. There are hundreds of staff developers that write the Units of Study.

2. The UOS are not a scripted program. They are a transcript and a resource to teach reading, writing, and phonics. All teachers have the ability to make the lessons their own by editing parts of the mini lesson.

3. The PhUOS is not just something Lucy thought up. They consulted the best of the best in word work ( Patricia Cunningham and many, many others) to build a program that is engaging, research based and developmentally appropriate.

4. It is laughable that you think the UOS teach students to "guess at pictures". Have you seen every single lesson k-8? In the early developmental stages of reading, teachers teach students to use strategic actions to word solve and yes in very early readers, one thing students do is use pictures to help them cross check to make sure a word looks right, sounds right, and makes sense.

5. Yes, phonics instruction is vital to reading development AND it can not occur in isolation. In order to transfer to reading and writing- you need both- explicit phonics instruction AND authentic reading practice. This is why they developed the Phonics UOS. Teachers all across the country were noticing that they were teaching phonics and word work in isolation and there was no transfer to writing- same with spelling lists. Reading and writing should compliment each other.

So here is the thing- Inmost counties here, everyone uses the workshop model- why? Because students need to want to read and be given long stretches of time to read- centers and other previous ways of teaching reading look cute but don't always= reading growth. Workshop is all about responsive teaching. A short focus lesson and the rest of the block is for teachers meeting with kids one on one and in small groups.

In my title 1 school, the increase in reading engagement has been incredible using the workshop model and the UOS. To say this program is just for advanced readers is incorrect. Adding the phonics program last year was what really supported a lot of our lower readers who needed that foundational base. We have never seen more growth than we saw last year using all three UOS. Yes, only one year but we had not seen that level of growth before.

And no, I don't work for TC. But I will say that in my 19 years of teaching reading, it is the best proefssional development I have ever attended . How many of you have sat in your student's classroom during a UOS Phonics lesson? Before you crucify a resource, perhaps don't believe everything you hear on an annonymous message board.

Have a great day!

Oh some people do not like their thoughts challenged.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/02/677722959/why-millions-of-kids-cant-read-and-what-better-teaching-can-do-about-it

Thank you for teaching our kids and dedicating yourself to professional development. Sincerely. You are doing a great job and I truly appreciate it. The link is for those who might want the other side of the story. It can be read with eyes or ears. See what I did there? Referenced dyslexia again. Say my name, say my name saymyname

[Anonymous]

Question - our school does writing through the Writers Workshop Model - is that Calkins?

[Anonymous]

Our first son def. had some Calkins - initially at least. Our second some in K but 1st seemed to change. The change came with a new reading specialist at our school.

[Anonymous]

Yes - Lucy Calkins is the author of Readers and Writers Workshop Units of Study. I’ve been an educator for 20 - district literacy specialist - and I’m dumbfounded that a district considered as exceptional as APS doesn’t have a phonics program. I have taught 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade with a range of programs and agree that workshop does a remarkable job of helping kids to see themselves as readers and writers. For writing in particular, her units of study really get kids expressing themselves through writing.

The problem is that workshop does not address all our students’ needs. Literacy instruction requires explicit systematic phonics instruction (Fundations is great except needs to be supplemented with decodable texts and needs more phonemic awareness (I’ve heard GREAT things about Heggerty), explicit vocabulary instruction, and KNOWLEDGE. Frequently, poor comprehension can be attributed to lack of background knowledge. Core Knowledge (“CKLA”), Wit abd Wisdom, and EL Education curriculum all engage students in grade level texts that build knowledge.

Poor or limited curriculum causes so much inequity in our schools. We have to demand better from APS. Readers Workshop/Lucy Calkins doesn’t do enough for our kids. My daughter is in K now and the random letter worksheets she’s bringing home everyday are making me cringe.

We could look at some of the local large urban districts, like Baltimore and DC, where balanced literacy has come to mean complex and culturally relevant texts, vocabulary instruction, phonics/morphology, SOME leveled text (not all), and writing for many purposes.

[Anonymous]

Oh some people do not like their thoughts challenged.

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/02/677722959/why-milli...etter-teaching-can-do-about-it

Thank you for teaching our kids and dedicating yourself to professional development. Sincerely. You are doing a great job and I truly appreciate it. The link is for those who might want the other side of the story. It can be read with eyes or ears. See what I did there? Referenced dyslexia again. Say my name, say my name saymyname

That article surprised me as someone who was trained almost 20 years ago in balanced literacy. It meant we had phonics training, phonemic awareness AND cueing systems (does it look right, sound right make sense) together and almost coequally. I was seriously taken aback that teachers thought that kids should guess a word based on a picture and beginning sound all by itself. Who would do that? When the kid can't get the word we were taught to delve deeper. Ex. ok so what you guessed didn't make sense with the letters in the word, so sound it out. Also, from what I was trained in you used word families, rhyming words and vowel patterns and increasing phonological awareness activities to continue growth in "balanced literacy." What possessed these teachers to just let the kids get away with using picture clues? Just my take, but I felt like the article from NPR used teachers who inappropriately implemented reading of any type, not just "balanced literacy"

[Anonymous]

So I posted above about writers workshop. We don’t use that reading workshop model and we don’t use a picture based guessing system. So I guess that’s good

[Anonymous]

Here’s an example from the Lucy Calkins “phonics” program.

I think the idea of writer’s workshops has its place, but absolutely not at the expense of high quality, systematic, phonics instruction.

https://www.facebook.com/277398362390972/posts/1668834229914038?sfns=mo

[Anonymous]

That’s from her phonics curriculum? OMG.

[Anonymous]

Lucy Calkins: "How to teach phonics to kids who already know how to read"

[Anonymous]

Like I said above, the program is great for kids who come to K knowing how to read or who pick it up quickly. It’s not good for those who do not, unless there is an explicit phonics program like Fundations also being taught at the same time. Phonics can be engaging, and frankly, it’s just necessary for a lot of kids to ever become proficient readers and spellers. I find it completely bizarre and incomprehensible that some educators disagree.