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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.