Yesterday, I wrote about what happens when an idea finally begins to roll. The discussion centred on something I have been advocating for many years: teaching children the correct sounds of letters.
What some readers may not realize is that I was writing about this as early as 2010 and 2012. LINK
A Balanced Approach to Teaching Reading to Dyslexic Students
In a recent LinkedIn post, reading consultant Brian Vieira argued strongly against sight word or whole word instruction, calling it the “worst way” to teach reading. He emphasized the superiority of phonics-based methods, pointing to the vast number of English words, the finite set of speech sounds, and scientific evidence favoring sound processing over memorization.
In my last post, I argued that most children who struggle with reading are not “disabled” in the clinical sense, but rather victims of poor or confusing teaching. When the foundations are muddled—wrong sounds, distorted input, or unclear strategies—many children disengage, and once that shut-down happens, remediation becomes far harder.
– Extraneous Sounds That Cause Shutdown
For decades, the “reading wars” have pitted Whole Language against phonics. Yet despite the swings in fashion, reading failure rates have remained stubbornly similar across eras: 20–30% of children still struggle significantly.
Why? Because both approaches often share a critical flaw: teaching stop consonants with an added schwa sound (/uh/).
Today I viewed a YouTube video which said that reading is not natural. Read the rest below:
Why So Many Kids Struggle with Reading (And What Needs to Change). For decades, we’ve been teaching reading the wrong way—and the consequences are clear. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 40% of fourth graders in the U.S. are performing below basic reading levels. While some progress has been made, the reality is that many children are still falling through the cracks.
In this video, I explore:
The Boston Globe and APM Reports:
Karrie Conley is one of the lead plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against Heinemann, an educational publishing company. The lawsuit claims that Heinemann's reading curriculum made it harder for two of her daughters to learn how to read. (Liz Linder/APM Reports)
Karrie Conley and Michele Hudak filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the educational publisher Heinemann and three of its best-selling authors promoted “deceptive” and “defective” products that made it harder for their children to learn to read.
My thoughts:
These two mothers are misdirecting their efforts. As I’ve stated numerous times on my blog and social media, the root issue lies in how teachers are instructing letter sounds. When curious children encounter incorrect sounds and struggle to blend letters, they often disengage from the reading process. This challenge can be easily addressed through screening for incoming first graders. By providing interventions for children who have been taught the wrong sounds, we can significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the number of students leaving school unable to read. LINK
This morning, 23.5.2022, I read many tweets referring to a post in New York Times.
There was only one educator, Jerusha Beckerman, who spoke her mind instead of following the crowd.
Here are a few of the many tweets and my comments.
Jodi Snowdon @joleigh_snow
Simple fact- if you don’t know the code, you can’t learn to read. You can guess but it won’t take you far enough to reach your potential.
Stephen Krashen “About teaching basic phonics correctly I assume you mean accurately. I suspect that approximately right rules that work most of the time are OK. With reading, children acquire the more subtle rules. So many children have learned to read this way. Is there any research showing the proper way and demonstrating that it is better? Here is, of course, another Krashen paper you might be interested in: Defending Whole Language: The Limits of Phonics Instruction and the Efficacy of Whole Language Instruction
https://tinyurl.com/y8opzwpn
