The teacher holds up a series of flash cards, one after the other, rapid-fire. On each card is a vowel or a combination of vowels. The children know the drill.

"Ow, oh, " the second-graders recite loudly in unison. "A, ay, aw."

This scene is replayed daily at a back-to-basics charter school in Phoenix: kids lined up in straight rows giving rote responses to instruction that is unconnected to real reading. It reflects the belief of some parents and politicians that young readers need to memorize the sound-symbol relationships of letters and letter combinations through repetitive drilling and worksheets. The "phonics-first" and "phonics-only" forces are gathering strength as reading scores in many districts slide or stagnate.

In some states, such as California, and more recently Washington, lawmakers are getting into the act by mandating phonics instruction.

Few issues stir the emotions of educators more vigorously than the debate over how best to teach young children to read. But there is a healing movement afoot: a plea for armistice. Weary of the rancorous divide between whole-language and phonics factions, growing numbers of educators are seeking common ground. Research strongly supports the idea that phonics and whole language can coexist when blended skillfully by talented teachers.

Calling for an end to the "reading wars," an important new report from the National Research Council says that children need both. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children concludes that immersion in language and literature (whole language) and instruction in sound-letter relationships (phonics) are both critical in the early years. A 17-member, multidisciplinary committee, headed by Catherine Snow of Harvard University, spent two years sifting through the findings of several decades of research to make its case.

Comprehension, the council concludes, is the reason for reading. But unlocking the meaning encoded in the mysterious lines, dots, and squiggles that form our written language requires mastery of a number of complex skills. Phonics instruction is critical, the council says, to creating readers who can grasp and grapple with texts of increasing complexity.

"Reading should be defined as getting meaning from print, using knowledge about the written alphabet and about the sound structure of oral language for the purposes of achieving understanding," the council writes. "Early reading instruction should include direct teaching of information about sound-symbol relationships to children who do not know them, and it should maintain a focus on the communicative purposes and personal value of reading."

This finding is not news to many practitioners, who have been quietly blending whole language and sound-symbol skills in their classrooms for years.

• "I don’t think you can separate them," says Susan Marchese of Coupeville Elementary School in Washington. "They go together. I mean, how could they not? I get frustrated when I hear about teachers who are just teaching phonics, or they’re just doing whole language. I don’t know how you could take one away from the other."
• "Children have to have direct instruction in phonics," says Molly Chun of Applegate Elementary School in Portland. "But I try to embed that in a meaningful context."
• "I was trained to teach reading using the whole-language method, which minimizes phonics," says Wendy Fenner of Oregon’s Clackamas Elementary School. "But after getting into a classroom, I could see that some kids just don’t have enough tools to learn to read without phonics. So now I combine whole language and phonics, as do most teachers."

If there is so much apparent agreement among researchers and practitioners about how to teach kids to read, why is there so much vitriol in discussions of best practices? Partly, it’s politics. The political leanings of phonics proponents—many of whom are conservative, back-to-basics parents and policymakers—often clash with more progressive educational trends and practices. The chasm between the two camps reflects a deep philosophical divide, not only about instructional strategies, but about the role schools play in children’s intellectual development. At bottom the question is, Should schools teach children to think, reason, analyze, and evaluate, or should schools stick to the three Rs? Teachers and parents who favor instruction that stresses meaning over mechanics—who want children to look behind the words for enrichment and understanding—cringe at the tactics of some phonics practitioners. Drills such as the one described above suggest a rigidity and regimentation that can stifle curiosity and rob reading of joy.

But phonics doesn’t have to mean memorizing rules and spouting rote responses.

"Most of the time the word phonics is used to mean ‘knowledge about sound-symbol relationships in language,’" Heidi Mills, Timothy O’Keefe, and Diane Stephens say in Looking Closely: Exploring the Role of Phonics in One Whole-Language Classroom, published by the National Council of Teachers of English in 1992. "When phonics is defined this way, phonics and whole language are quite compatible."

In theory, whole language was never intended to exclude phonics, most researchers agree. But in practice, many educators interpreted the whole-language philosophy to mean that students would learn to read naturally, without direct instruction, if they were simply immersed in a literacy-rich environment.

The council urges teachers to keep their classrooms drenched in print, stuffed with quality children’s literature, enlivened with discussions about books, astir with journal writing, book publishing, shared reading, and other "authentic" (real) reading and writing activities. Into this rich whole-language pot, the council advises, teachers should thoughtfully stir explicit instruction in sound-symbol relationships.

"It is time for educators, parents, and everyone else concerned with children’s education to make sure that children have all the experiences that research has shown to support reading development," Snow said when the council’s report was released in March.

To teach kids phonics is to give them a code—the code that unlocks the vast universe of print. Without that code, children are effectively shut out of libraries, bookstores, Web sites, magazine stands, newspaper kiosks, and the countless other repositories of written information, entertainment, and enlightenment.

Phonics means showing students how spoken sounds link up with written symbols. In English, which is an alphabetic language, those symbols are letters. But before children can learn phonics—before they can begin mapping letters to sounds —they must first become consciously aware of those sounds: the p in pig, the t in turtle, the a in apple. They must understand that spoken language is made up of a series of discernable "phonemes"—about 45 distinct sounds in English.

Dr. Rebecca Novick, who specializes in early-childhood education at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, calls this awareness an "ear skill"—one that is vital to beginning readers. Without this basic sound awareness, Novick says, learners probably won’t benefit from phonics instruction, which traditionally has taken phonemic awareness for granted.

"To the extent that children lack such phonemic awareness," the National Research Council says, "they are unable usefully to internalize their phonics lessons."

Although most children pick up this critical ear skill easily, it eludes many others, research shows. Without it, students typically have trouble sounding out and blending new words, retaining words from one encounter to the next, and learning to spell, the council reports. "Dozens of…studies have confirmed that there is a close relationship between phonemic awareness and reading ability, not just in the early grades but throughout the school years," the council states. "Research repeatedly demonstrates that, when steps are taken to ensure an adequate awareness of phonemes, the reading and spelling growth of the group as a whole is accelerated and the incidence of reading failure is diminished."

Parents, preschool providers, kindergarten teachers (and primary teachers for kids whose early exposure to literacy is limited) are critical to planting the seeds of phonemic awareness in the minds of young children. When children hear their favorite books over and over, when they hear stories and songs filled with rhymes and alliteration, their ears become attuned to the sounds words make, says Novick. Nursery rhymes—the adventures and antics of Jack and Jill, Little Miss Muffet, Humpty-Dumpty, Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater—are a natural place to start. Children don’t need to know what a "tuffet" is in order to hear the rhyme with "Muffet." (These rhymes often resonate in our minds for a lifetime, suggesting the power they can have on the young intellect.)

Tapping into young children’s natural sensitivity to rhyme, first-grade teacher Molly Chun makes poetry a fixture in her classroom, where walls and blackboards are draped in verses written on chart paper. Chun chooses playful poems full of word play, like this one titled "The Squirrel":

Whisky, frisky,
Hippity hop,
Up he goes
To the treetop!
Whirly, twirly,
Round and round,
Down he scampers
To the ground.
Furly, curly,
What a tail,
Tall as a feather,
Broad as a sail!
Where’s his supper?
In the shell,
Snappity, crackity,
Out it fell.

After Chun leads the children through a choral reading of the poem, she says, "Tell us two words that rhyme"—an exercise in phonemic awareness. She talks about the definition of the word broad and asks the children what the squirrel ate for dinner (suggested but not stated in the poem)—an exercise in gleaning meaning from text. Then she asks individual children to come up to the poem and circle blends (such as br) and "h brothers" (such as sh) —an exercise in sound-symbol relationships, or phonics. For Chun’s students, phonics instruction grows organically from meaningful activities involving real reading. (See "When Life and Words Collide" for a closer look inside Chun’s classroom.)

"A lot of teaching about consonants and vowels and the sounds they make must take place if children are to learn how to decode words," notes Michael Pressley of the University of Notre Dame in his 1998 book Reading Instruction That Works. "Decoding instruction," he adds, "prepares students to tackle words they have never seen before, even when they are well prepared for beginning reading."

But how much phonics is the right amount? How should it be taught? When do children benefit most from phonics instruction? Phonics fans often butt heads with whole-language supporters over these issues. The best approach, according to the National Research Council and other researchers, is to give phonics lessons in tandem with real reading and writing experience. Reading and phonics piggyback on each other: Reading reinforces the lessons of phonics, while phonics speeds the learning of reading. When a child reads an engaging story (usually a trade book or library book) of her own choosing, she is motivated to decode new and unfamiliar words because she cares about the meaning they contain. When a child experiences excitement and pleasure from the words on a printed page, she becomes an eager and critical reader—the ultimate goal of reading instruction.

"To say that children learn to read by reading is not to deny the need to provide explicit instruction and many demonstrations in the classroom," Drs. Jane Braunger and Jan Lewis say in their 1998 paper, Building a Knowledge Base in Reading. "The point to be made is that the amount of extended text reading that children do is directly related to their reading achievement. Without real engagement in meaningful texts, children will not become readers. This is why a focus on early instruction in isolated skills is so potentially damaging for young readers, especially those who struggle to learn to read."

Phonics shouldn’t stand alone as a teaching strategy, agrees Dorothy Strickland of Rutgers. To be effective, it must be linked to a much broader set of strategies anchored in the full array of literacy activities. For instance, students should be encouraged to draw on prior knowledge, story context, and grammatical cues, in addition to sound-symbol cues, to figure out unknown words.

In Teaching Phonics Today: A Primer for Educators, published by the International Reading Association in 1998, Strickland suggests the following guidelines for learning and teaching phonics:

• Teaching phonics is not synonymous with teaching reading
• Reading and spelling require much more than phonics
• Phonics is a means to an end, not the end in itself
• Phonics is one of several enablers or cueing systems that help us read
• Phonics is one of several strategies for spelling
• Memorizing phonics rules does not ensure application of those rules
• Learners need to see the relevance of phonics for themselves in their own reading and writing
• Teaching students to use phonics is different from teaching them about phonics
• The best context for learning and applying phonics is actual reading and writing

In its 1985 research review Becoming a Nation of Readers, the National Academy of Education offered an even leaner set of maxims: "Do it early. Keep it simple."

"Except in the cases of diagnosed individual need," the academy said, "phonics instruction should have been completed by the end of second grade."

But what about those students who struggle in vain to break the code? Researchers have found that decoding words is extremely difficult for as many as 25 percent of children. Unlike learning to speak—an innate ability that develops naturally through interaction with a caregiver—learning to read is a somewhat "unnatural act," Novick notes. As a creation of humans (rather than a creation of nature), the conventions, logic, and structure of written communication must be given anew to each generation. With adequate instruction, most children pick up decoding skills. Kids who don’t are left out of the literacy loop. The consequences are huge in a society that increasingly revolves around information.

"No matter how they are taught…some children will still need more intensive individual help," writes Constance Weaver in Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading, published in 1998 by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Intensive individual help for struggling readers is the recommendation of a number of researchers, including the National Research Council. But they caution against giving these children tedious remedial work—worksheets, drills, instruction that is isolated from the rich, colorful world of real stories and interesting information. Slower learners as well as rapid ones need to participate fully in meaningful literacy activities.

"Because success in reading builds on the same skills for all children," says Snow, "we do not believe that those who run into difficulty need instruction that is qualitatively different from other children. Instead, they may need more focused, more intense, and more individual application of the same instructional principles."

Children have the best chance to overcome reading difficulties if intervention starts in first grade, "before a history of failure has set in," Novick reports. Kids should get help while their natural curiosity and willingness to learn are still intact. One-to-one tutoring gets the best results, according to Novick, who cites a 1996 study showing that four types of activities are particularly important to the success of tutoring:

• Reading text that gradually and repetitively introduces both high-frequency vocabulary and words with common spelling patterns
• Receiving direct instruction about the letter-sound relationships with words
• Being helped to identify and spell words through numerous interactions in which the teacher helps the child bridge old knowledge and new
• Hearing the tutor’s words as that tutor models how to identify or spell unknown words

It’s important, though, that extra help not eat into the child’s other literacy opportunities, especially time for individual reading and writing, Weaver cautions. She recommends a number of creative ways to build in extra time and help for struggling readers. For example, schools can provide:

• Support from reading buddies, including classmates, older children, aides, and senior citizens
• Instructional aids such as books on tape and high-quality, multimedia computer programs that engage readers interactively
• In-classroom support from other professionals, such as speech and language teachers and reading specialists
• Support before or after school or on Saturdays from such specialists (who could be given staggered schedules)
• Library support before and after school
• Supplementary literacy programs and events, such as schoolwide ‘read-ins’

Word "chunks" as a focus of phonics instruction hold great promise for all kids, but especially for children for whom decoding is a troublesome concept. Molly Chun’s first-grade classroom is hung with sheets and sheets of chart paper printed with lists of rhyming words that share groupings of letters: fan, man, ran, van; cat, fat, mat, hat; did, hid, rid, kid. Researchers have discovered that the brain stores patterns of letters—particularly patterns that often occur together, such as an, at, and id in the example above—rather than individual letters or whole words. Research suggests that readers read in chunks, too. A fruitful phonics lesson is to draw children’s attention to "onsets" and "rimes" in syllables—that is, the consonant that begins a syllable (the onset) and the vowel-consonant grouping that follows (the rime). In the example above, an, at, and id are the rimes, and the beginning consonants (f in fan; k in kid) are the onsets. Once a child learns a word with a common rime, he is likely to recognize that familiar chunk when he encounters a new word containing the same letter grouping. Thus, he is able to read unfamiliar words more easily by drawing analogies from known to unknown words.

While most reading experts agree that both phonics and whole language belong in primary classrooms, the best way to blend them is less clear-cut. Teachers may find themselves teetering on an instructional tightrope when they begin to mesh the two perspectives.

"There is a balance, and a very delicate one, between not doing enough to help children learn to draw upon phonics knowledge to recognize familiar and unfamiliar print words, and emphasizing phonics too much," Weaver notes.

Many researchers share a deep concern that without a unified theory to guide instruction, teachers will throw in a little phonics here, a touch of whole language there—an approach that has been disparaged as the "instructional Cuisinart" or "tossed salad" style of literacy instruction. While researchers may disagree on the precise balance of phonics and whole language, there is consensus on one key point: Reading programs should be grounded in research. And most researchers, whatever their perspective, agree that meaning is the essence of reading, even for the littlest kids.

Writes Weaver: "I argue for instruction based on a coherent integration of the best of differing bodies and types of research and a theory of reading that puts meaning at the heart of reading from the very beginning, rather than as some distant goal."

Novick sums up the delicate balance teachers must find as they lead their young students to mastery of written language. "The ability to match print to sound is a crucial part of becoming an independent and fluent reader," she says. "Children also need to develop and maintain a positive disposition toward literacy and the ability to think critically and imaginatively. The challenge for teachers is to help children build a solid literacy foundation in the primary grades, one that provides not only basic skills, but also multiple opportunities to ‘get lost in a story’ —to reflect, reason, create ‘possible worlds’ through stories and dramatic play, and to share experiences, ideas, and opinions."

KEY RESOURCES

Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (1998) presents the conclusions of an extensive research review by the National Research Council. The council recommends that first- through third-grade curricula include these components:

• Beginning readers need explicit instruction and practice that lead to an appreciation that spoken words are made up of smaller units of sounds; familiarity with spelling-sound correspondences; and common spelling conventions and their use in identifying printed words; "sight" recognition of frequent words; and independent reading, including reading aloud. Fluency should be promoted through practice with a wide variety of well-written and engaging texts at the child’s own comfortable reading level.
• Children who have started to read independently, typically second-graders and above, should be encouraged to sound out and confirm the identities of visually unfamiliar words they encounter in the course of reading meaningful texts, recognizing words primarily through attention to their letter-sound relationships. Although con- text and pictures can be used as a tool to monitor word recognition, children should not be taught to use them to substitute for informa- tion provided by the letters in the word.
• Because the ability to obtain meaning from print depends so strongly on the development of word recognition accuracy and read- ing fluency, both of the latter should be regularly assessed in the classroom, permitting timely and effective instructional response when difficulty or delay is apparent.
• Beginning in the earliest grades, instruction should promote comprehension by actively building linguistic and conceptual knowl- edge in a rich variety of domains, as well as through direct instruc- tion about comprehension strategies such as summarizing the main idea, predicting events and outcomes of upcoming text, drawing inferences, and monitoring for coherence and misunderstandings. This instruction can take place while adults read to students or when students read themselves.
• Once children learn some letters, they should be encouraged to write them, use them to begin writing words or parts of words, and use words to begin writing sentences. Instruction should be designed with the understanding that the use of invented spelling is not in conflict with teaching correct spelling. Beginning writing with invented spelling can be helpful for developing understanding of the identity and segmentation of speech sounds and sound-spelling relationships. Conventionally correct spelling should be developed through focused instruction and practice. Primary grade children should be expected to spell previously studied words and spelling patterns correctly in their final writing products. Writing should take place regularly and frequently to encourage children to become more comfortable and familiar with it.
• Throughout the early grades, time, materials, and resources should be provided with two goals: (a) to support daily independent reading of texts selected to be of particular interest for the individual student, and beneath the individual student’s frustration level, in order to consolidate the student’s capacity for independent reading and (b) to support daily assisted or supported reading and rereading of texts that are slightly more difficult in wording or in linguistic, rhetorical, or conceptual structure in order to promote advances in the student’s capabilities.
• Throughout the early grades, schools should promote independent reading outside school by such means as daily at-home reading assignments and expectations, summer reading lists, encouraging parent involvement, and by working with community groups, including public librarians, who share this goal.

The report is available online at http://www.nap.edu. To order a copy, contact the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, DC 20055, 1-800-624-6242.

A national Reading Summit being convened by the U.S. Department of Education this fall will focus on the council’s report. For information on the summit, to be held September 18-19 in Washington, D.C., visit the Education Department Web site, http://www.ed.gov/inits.html#1.

KEY RESOURCES

Building a Knowledge Base in Reading (1997), a research synthesis by Jane Braunger of the Northwest Laboratory and Jan Lewis of Pacific Lutheran University, offers the following "core understandings" about learning to read, along with suggested classroom applications:
1. Reading is a construction of meaning from written text. It is an active, cognitive, and affective process.
2. Background knowledge and prior experience are critical to the reading process.
3. Social interaction is essential in learning to read.
4. Reading and writing develop together.
5. Reading involves complex thinking.
6. Environments rich in literacy experiences, resources, and models facilitate reading development.
7. Engagement in the reading task is key in successfully learning to read.
8. Children’s understandings of print are not the same as adults’ understandings.
9. Children develop phonemic awareness and knowledge of phonics through a variety of literacy opportunities, models, and demonstrations.
10. Children learn successful reading strategies in the context of real reading.
11. Children learn best when teachers employ a variety of strategies to model and demonstrate reading knowledge, strategy, and skills.
12. Children need the opportunity to read, read, read.
13. Monitoring the development of reading processes is vital to student success.

The paper, published jointly by the Northwest Laboratory, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the International Reading Association, is available for $12.95 from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, 101 S.W. Main Street, Suite 500, Portland, Oregon 97204, (503) 275-9519 or 1-800-547-6339, ext. 519. A collection of classroom vignettes featuring seven Northwest teachers whose literacy practices reflect these 13 core understandings will be published this fall.

Coauthor Braunger conducts workshops for educators, school boards, and community members on classroom reading instruction that reflects current understandings of language and literacy development.

KEY RESOURCES

Learning to Read and Write: A Place to Start (1998) by Rebecca Novick of the Northwest Laboratory includes these suggested strategies developed by Constance Weaver for building phonemic awareness and phonics knowledge within a whole-language framework (see Weaver, Gillmeister-Krause, & Vento-Zogby, Creating Support for Effective Literacy Education, published by Heinemann in 1996). Among them are:

• Read and reread favorite nursery rhymes to reinforce the sound patterns of the language, and enjoy tongue twisters and other forms of language play together.
• Read aloud to children from "big books" or charts large enough for all children in the group or class to see the print easily. Run a pointer or your hand or finger under the words, to help children make the association between spoken words and written words.
• Part of the time, choose "big books" and/or make charts of stories, poems, and rhymes that make interesting use of alliteration, rhyme, and onomatopoeia.
• When sharing "big books" or charts, focus children’s attention on the beginnings and ends of words. It is helpful to focus on elements that alliterate and rhyme, before focusing on individual sounds.
• The most effective and efficient phonics instruction focuses children’s attention on noticing onsets and rimes. During the discussion of onsets and rimes, you and the children can make charts of words with the same sound pattern (to help children use analogies to read new words). Read alphabet books with children, and make alphabet books together.
• Read with children other books that emphasize sound —books such as Noisy Poems, edited by Jill Bennett; Deep Down Underground, by Oliver Dunrea; and Dr. Seuss books. Comment on sounds.
• When reading together, help children use prior knowledge and context plus initial consonants to predict what a word will be; then look at the rest of the word to confirm or correct.
• Talk about letters and sounds as you write messages to children and as you help them compose something together, or individually. This is a very important way of helping children begin to hear individual sounds in words as well as to learn to spell some of the words they write.
• Help children notice print in their environment—signs, labels, and other print.
• When children demonstrate in their attempts at writing that they realize letters represent sounds, help them individually to write the sounds they hear in words.
• Provide tape recordings of many selections for children to listen to, as they follow along with the written text. It helps to provide small copies of the text, not just a "big book" or chart.

KEY RESOURCES

In Reading Instruction That Works (1998), Michael Pressley of the University of Notre Dame writes: "The radical middle…is only radical in contrast to the extreme whole-language and phonics positions that have defined the recent debates about beginning reading instruction.…The most sensible beginning-reading curriculum should be a balance of skills development and authentic reading and writing."

The book can be ordered from Guilford Publications, 72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012; http://www.guilford.com

KEY RESOURCES

In the collection of articles titled Reconsidering a Balanced Approach to Reading, Constance Weaver of Western Michigan University says that effective phonics instruction:

• Is derived from and embedded within a rich literacy context that also integrates reading, writing, and literature with the use of oral language across the curriculum
• Requires children to think, not passively complete worksheets or engage in drill
• Focuses on patterns, not rules
• Focuses on rimes and onsets before single phonemes
• Combines attention to phonemic awareness with attention to letter/sound correspondences
• Is interactive and collaborative, involving discussion

The book can be ordered from the National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 West Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois 61801, 1-800-369-6283, http:// www/ncte.org

— SAMANTHA MOORES

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