Reply to Sold a Story and Phonics instruction

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Very depressing to see the lifeblood being sucked out of reading in favor of PARCC scores and "science." The pendulum will surely tilt back in favor of whole language, but it sounds like it will too late for most of our kids. Comprehension is critical. Writing skills are critical. Developing a love of reading - critical. Learning buzzwords like "R Blends" are not. [/quote]

People like you are the cause of a lot of grief.

Of course kids should read whole books and talk about what things mean, and they need to understand enough about the history of the English language to know that we have several different spelling systems smooshed together.

But most kids also need help with learning how to sound out simple words. Whole language fanatics who ignore the need for phonics are a menace.

If you or your kids learned reading without any phonics, wonderful, but many other kids obviously need some phonics.[/quote]

News flash: children all over the world - and in this country learned how to read without phonics drilling all day -with these anachronistic thingys called books. Indeed, if you were born before the 1990s, you managed to learn how to read by decoding words, and reading/writing stories, with minimum phonics per day. Some kids do need phonic drills because of learning differences, but most kids do not. And if reading is essentially flatlined in favor of "science" and drills, kids who are capable of reading without phonics are bored and their language learning is stunted. It's not surprising that people on the right (prone to saying things like "people like you") love phonics for certain students - not their own, of course, for students they deem as less capable. [/quote]

PLEASE jusy stop. This is NOT political and it is frankly evil for you to try to make it that way. Our DCPS has been doing phonics for years, well before there was this much media attention to it. But sure, please go tell my kid’s beloved, amazing K teacher with 4 decades of experience that she’s a right-wing stooge. That would be a very amusing conversation. [/quote]

Not sure why you are injecting so much of your copious inner bile into a pedagogical discussion? Educational methods are 1) frequently debated; frequently political; 3) often intersecting with racism/classism, etc. Intelligent minds can disagree. As public school parents of elementary students we are all looking at homework, touring schools, going to back to school “literacy nights,” etc. There is a clear shift in how we are teaching reading from guided reading to heavily phonics based curriculum. Much of this is driven by test prep. It does seem sad. It will work for some kids, but it’s not a differentiated instruction model, so it does suppress growth for other students. If you are comfortable with that - fine. Others are not. [/quote]

Acting like phonics is a right-wing issue is absolutely toxic behavior. Get a grip. [/quote]

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