|
F AR TOO MUCH ENERGY HAS BEEN INVESTED IN FIGHTING THE "READING WARS." If learning to read depended only on using phonics or whole language or some other pure approach, then all children in single-method classrooms would read either well or poorly. School-sponsored testing and research studies do not show anything near such uniform results. Yet, supporters of a particular method claim success when the percentage of children reading at grade level climbs 10 points. That amount of improvement does indicate that something in a classroom is better than it was before, but it also shows that other things are still wrong for a significant number of children. Righting all wrongs through instruction is impossible because many of those wrongs are environmental or genetic. But as capable teachers prove every day—in all kinds of schools—it is possible for all children to read well enough to succeed in school and life. What works is a broad-based program, personalized by teachers smart enough to give children what they need when they need it. Creating a broad-based reading program starts with the recognition that reading is a mixture of several skills learned and used simultaneously, but not always in the same combinations or strengths. The major skills necessary for reading are: 1. Phonemic awareness—the ability to separate streams of speech into their component sounds 2. Grapho-phonemic correspondence—being able to match written symbols to the speech sounds they represent 3. Word analysis and synthesis—being able to break print words into speech syllables and to blend letter sounds into words 4. Sight-word vocabulary—being able to recall automatically the pronunciation of a large number of print words previously learned 5. Syntactic knowledge—knowing the permissible order and the proper grammatical inflections of words in English sentences 6. Semantic knowledge—understanding the meanings of words alone, combined with other words, and in different contexts 7. Literary knowledge— knowing the common forms, narrative patterns, expressions, and conventions used in different types of literature and factual writing so that one can make reasonable predictions about what will come next when reading a particular type of writing These are the skills directly involved in decoding written language, but readers also need to be able to transfer their oral language skills—such as emphasizing particular words, phrasing, and voice inflection—to reading. This is difficult for many children because there are few written symbols for guidance. Mastery of one cluster of skills is never enough. A child who has only the phonemic skills pronounces words haltingly, without regard to meaning or the natural rhythms of speech. She does not apprehend the written text as a whole. If, in addition, a child has analysis-synthesis skills and a large sight-word vocabulary, she can read rapidly and smoothly, but still may lack understanding and natural phrasing. Such a child can get by in a display of oral reading because she pronounces all the words right, but she is not yet a true reader. Only the mastery of semantic, syntactic, and oral language skills can make her that. When, finally, she has mastered some of the literary skills, she becomes an accomplished reader, able to handle many kinds of material and to grasp a range of meanings, explicit and implicit, contained in quality texts. Although I have specified "mastery" above, an ironic twist is that being pretty good in all types of skills is better than being perfect in one or two of them. While some children who have had lots of life, language, and literature experiences before coming to school can figure out and gain control of reading skills on their own, most children need broad-based instruction at school. The problem today is that too many children have been raised on television—without books, enriching experiences, or much adult-child conversation—and too many teachers do not recognize these deficits. They teach the obvious print-speech connections and assume that their students will pick up semantic, syntactic, literary, and oral transfer skills on their own just as students did in the past. Teaching at its best includes instruction in all types of skills and an awareness of children’s background knowledge and stages of development. Good teachers continually examine their students’ progress, their own experiences and beliefs, and what is possible
in their classrooms. They respect research for its insights and direction, but they are not enslaved by it. When they decide on a teaching method—or, more accurately, a combination of methods—they put all their expertise and effort behind it. As time goes by, they make changes, moved not by fads nor, one hopes, by the dictates of school administrators or politicians, but by their ongoing assessment of their students’ needs. Where teachers work this way—and parents help by reading and talking to their children and taking them places —there are no reading wars and no nonreaders. Joanne Yatvin, Principal of Cottrell and Bull Run elementary schools in the Oregon Trail School District in Sandy, Oregon, is among 15 members of the National Reading Panel convened in April by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to evaluate research on reading instruction and recommend ways to apply it in the classroom.
|
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
|
