My school just adopted the Four Blocks model. I just read the article posted the “in the news” section on the main page…
“Bush Adviser Casts Doubt on the Benefits of Phonics Program” reported that Dr. G. Reid Lyon, a researcher at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and President Bush’s top adviser on reading, expressed concern about the lack of scientific evidence to support the use of a reading program called Month by Month Phonics.”
Month by Month is the phonics component of Four Blocks.
This is so frustrating. Two-thirds of U.S. fourth graders read below their grade level. We blame TV, video games, single parents, etc., but we won’t examine the methods (Whole language/Balanced literacy) we use…
Re: Four Blocks Literacy Model
The giant NIH/NIHCD study (available from LD In Depth section of this board) recommends
SYSTEMATIC SYNTHETIC PHONICS IN EVERY CLASSROOM.
When you look at the program, ask yourself:
Is it systematic? Does it teach a skill, reinforce it, review it, and then add a second skill and teach that one and then teach how to use both skills together, and then build on a third skill, and so on? Is there a developmental list of skills taught, from simple to complex? If yes, it’s systematic. If it’a a bunch of unrelated games and activities, it’s not.
Is enough time given to teach the system — a good program will have twenty minutes a day or three hours a week minimum; if it’s just a worksheet on Friday, it’s not systematic.
Is it synthetic? Does it teach the separate sounds and symbols of English specifically? For example, are there lesons specifically teaching “s” as in sun and snake and then in bus and kiss, followed later by lessons teaching sh as in ship and shirt and then in dish and crash? Is it done *out loud*, *orally* (since phonics concerns *sounds*, silent work in basic phonics is a contradiction in terms) Again, a random worksheet once a week for kids to do as seatwork or homework is not effective; and a system that teaches kids to memorize words by sight and then guess at what they have in common is well-known to be very inefficient.
Is it required that every teacher teach this material appropriately and for a reasonable amount of time in every classroom, or is it left up to the teacher’s whims whether she does this work or not?
Once you have the answers to these questions, if any one of them is a definite “no” (and that is the most common in most schools), copy the NIH report and take tio to your teacher, your principal, and your school board. Keep up the good fight.
I’m not a Four Blocks fan. Just not explicit and systematic enough.