multisensory reading instruction

I saw your post about this report after I made my post.
I see nothing here that refutes what I’ve written in any of my posts.

“Evidence and Findings

A massive effort must be undertaken to inform parents and caretakers of the importance of providing oral language and literacy experiences from the first days of life - to engage children in playing with language through nursery rhymes, storybooks, and as they mature, early writing activities. Parents and caretakers must become intimately aware of the importance of vocabulary development and must interact verbally with their children to enhance verbal reasoning, semantic, and syntactical abilities.
Reading out loud to children is a proven activity for developing vocabulary and language expansion characteristics, and plays an important role in developing receptive and expressive language skills. Reading out loud to children can also help to enhance children’s background knowledge of new concepts that will appear in both oral and written language.
NICHD prevention and early intervention studies continue to provide converging evidence on the importance of developing accurate and fluent word reading skills, given the significant importance of such skills in developing reading comprehension abilities.
Prevention and early intervention studies in Tallahassee, Gainesville, Syracuse, Albany, Houston, Seattle, and Washington, DC are providing converging evidence that for those children who are at risk for reading failure, highly direct and systematic instruction to develop phoneme awareness and phonics skills, reading fluency and automaticity, and reading comprehension strategies within a literature-rich environment will be required to obtain maximum gains. It is also imperative that each of these reading components be taught within an integrated context and that ample practice in reading familiar material be afforded to enhance fluency and automaticity. Likewise, the most effective interventions provide ample opportunities to read and discuss authentic literature. “

In addition to wide reading—Moats, Chall, Stanovich, Shanahan, Chard, Krashen, Garan, Allington, Bracey, Coles, Taylor, Weaver, Wilde, Lyon, Ehri, and participation in conferences, seminars, staff development, etc:

I studied Phonetics for my Elementary Education degree.

I studied Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics for my Master’s in Speech and Hearing Science.

I updated my study of these areas when I obtained my credential to teach English Language Learners.

I graded research papers about these areas for ten years for a Professor of Communicative Disorders. In order to do that, I had to read the research that the students were citing.

I studied Linguistics again as part of my graduate certificate in reading.

I have taught Deaf children to read (they don’t do it by gaining phonemic awareness or sounding out words). I have taught kindergarten, communicatively handicapped & learning handicapped children in special day classes from pre-school through 6th grade. I have worked in inclusion settings with students in the resource specialist program.

Some of the children I have taught have needed very specific multi-sensory instruction. Most have not. Most HAVE needed lots of language experiences and read-alouds with discussion to build their background knowledge so they could apply decoding skills. That’s because most of their teachers have had to forgo that kind of instruction in order to implement scripted reading programs.

Makes you wonder….

There must be thousands of forums out there for people who just think whole language is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They must get online and discuss how clueless we all are for liking this stuff like PA, etc.

Not once have I ever been tempted to get on one of these and send message after message to “set them straight”. Why? Because I sense it would be pretty useless.

Yet we have someone here that not just answers posts, or makes a comment or two, but seems to be trying to get the most posts in the least amount of time on a subject everyone else is antagnostic about (here). Since we know major cities are dedicated to whole language and nothing but and that NCLB is no doubt not really going to change much, all I am wondering now is why she bothers?

Since MOST children are getting what she wants anyway, including most ld children, including most ld children that don’t even hear the sounds in the first place without something like LiPS, and even those very few children (in her opinion)who really need OG or something very intensive… and there are perhaps hundreds of whole language forums on the net, why come here? Reminds me of when I used to be on Mac forums and all these PC users would come in and say we were stupid to use the Mac, it’s dead, etc. But why did they come? THere were (and are) thousands of PC only forums.

I’m not saying she has no right as she obviously does. Obviously she has changed no one’s mind. The teachers who have posted are posting as we have seen that at least the kids we work with do need intensive phonetics. And the parents that read this, the vast majority have kids in schools that teach whole language as that is mostly what is done in this country— and it is not working for them. Even if it worked for the vast majority of kids (which I doubt), the major focus of THIS forum is for people that it is has not worked for. So why bother posting here?

Is because being with her “peers” is getting “dull”?

I’ve always been a bit fascinated on why someone would want to take a oppositional position like this. I’m thru arguing with her as I think it reinforces inappropriate behavior (multiple posts following each other almost to the point of spam— I don’t mean one post to clarify or another or an accidental multiple post, but post after post to add another related idea). It would be like me dividing this into ten posts and posting. I also don’t believe that it changes anyone’s mind. But I still do wonder about the behavior itself.

One thought I did have is that she plans to post so often that she bombards the database on whole language saying how great it is. Of course it would be all her posts, so it wouldn’t make much of a dent…

—des

Speaking of multiple posts….
Post count so far:
Calma (independently)—21
everyone else (may include people who have posted as guest and as someone else) (total includes— guests, vic, Sue, Janis, KJ, Reading Teacher, and myself)— 31 (including this one)

Also multiple post chains:
(I ignored what may be accident multiple posts).
Vic at 2 (5 posts)
Des at once (including this) (2 posts)
Calma at 7 (19 posts)

Might have missed a post of two. As I said, interesting.

—des

There are so many errors in your post, des, I won’t even attempt to address them all.

To my knowledge there is one listserv for Whole Language. There are others regarding reading comprehension and critical literacy, but they are not considered Whole Language.

My posts were in response to questions from others, asking for my background, my research citations, etc. Apparently, those were not real inquiries.

Nothing I’ve said has been refuted, and obviously this is not the place to discuss Whole Language (even though it works very, very well for many children with reading difficulties). I’ve tried to dispel misguided notions about Whole Laguage, but anthipathy toward it is so ingrained, I guess that is fruitless here.

Aren’t you at all disturbed that your tax dollars are being used to purchase textbook series that have been shown by the NRP report to be unnecessary for most children? No, I guess not.

I get upset when people put blinders on and continue to pursue a narrow view for ALL kids because what they are doing works for THEIR kids. I don’t do that. And I’ve repeatedly said I don’t do that.

My goal, as with ALL the Whole Language teachers I know, is to teach EACH child in the best way for THAT child.

Slam all you want. I didn’t initiate the ad hominem attacks. Victoria did. I was responding to her with information she asked for, and now I’m being attacked for that.

What an unfriendly, unwavering single-minded place this is. I’m shocked at the narrow-mindedness displayed on this thread.

38 studies is, in my humble opinion, a bucket of research worth considering. Of course, in terms of all the research in the world, it’s not a statistically significant number — but that’s totally beside the point. “Reading Research” is a very, very broad area.

Those 38 studies led the NRP to conclude that “phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping [the students the studies assessed] apply these [decoding skills] to read text and to spell words.” (2-108 of the NRP report of the subgroups).

“Systematic phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance [of the students the studies assessed] in 2nd through 6th grade.” (2-88 of the NRP report of the subgroups).

“The comprehension of text was not significantly improved by systematic phonics instruction.” (Summary Booklet, 9).

Since you say that these 38 studies are adequate, why are you not accepting the conclusions reached by the NRP?

Calma, You seem to be using the term reading to mean deep comprehension of written text. I don’t think anyone here would argue that phoenemic awareness, blending, multisyllable management etc. teaches reading comprehension, just decoding. But decoding is a fundamental and without this skill one simply cannot read at all.

I’m just a mother, but I do know that some kids can learn to read without systematic phonics instructions, while others flounder without it. In any case, it seems quite incredible that systematic phonics instruction could be detrimental to children’s reading ability, which you appear to be arguing.

I also know that my dd, who was taught reading using a blanced approach, learned to read, but her spelling is poor. Moreover, out of her entire fifth grade class of 34 there is not one good speller. Perhaps three or four are okay, but the rest are like my daughter or worse. This is quite opposite from my ds, who was taught systematic phonics and is a good speller like almost everyone else in his class.

It would be interesting to see a study that tracks kids from balanced reading approach and systematic phonics approach first and second grade classrooms that tests their spelling ability in grade five. I can tell you where I’d bet my money.

I quoted what the NRP report said.

I did say that I agreed that systematic phonics is important for some children with reading difficulties.

Wide reading and lots of time for it are two of the best predictors of spelling ability and vocabulary growth. (Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus of USC).

Most English words are not regularly spelled, and phonics only helps a bit with it. Word study, or linguistics, studying the origin of words, etc., are more helpful–ie medic, medicine, medicinal–spelling becomes more visual as words get more complicated and less phonetically regular.

It would be an interesting study, indeed, if one could control for the type of instruction in every grade, the same kids continuing in each type of classroom all the way through, parental education level, socio-economic status, special ed needs, etc.

If I had to choose between being able to spell well, and being able to read thoughtfully and meaningfully, I’d choose the latter.

What if you could do both?
THey aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.
And …. if you think spelling is irregular, it sounds like you don’t understand just how predictable the language really is. HOwever, something tells me (your recitation of the whole language dogma — despite your statement that you aren’t interested in the debate, your statements are straight out of the whole language umbrella) you’re not really interested in learning about htat.

I don’t remember seeing where Open Court actually reduced performance.

Could we please refrain from calling Whole Language “dogma” and other slurs that are not really necessary? It is a very legitimate way of teaching children.

English is predictable, but not in a phonetic way. It is predictable because of root words, prefixes, suffixes, word origins, word derivations, etc.

You can always check the NRP report for the statistics on Open Court. Or REading and The Spin Doctors of Science by Denny Taylor. Or MIsreading Reading by Gerald Coles.

Sue — when calma lists 38 studies, the problem is that most of them are *not* actually studies. Most of them are just literature commentary, which is a very, very long way from scientific study. I have looked at some of those articles, and they mix politics and polemics with a minimal quantity of fact.
In fact if you’re into dry academic humour, the author whom she holds in such high regard has an abstract on ERIC which states that the article has nothing new in it, pretty strong language from a library resource!

She also picks and chooses resources; out of a multi-page report which I referred to, she carefully went over 95% of the report that in no uncertain terms promotes phonics and phonemic awareness as a *tool* and a *part* of a good reading program, and she separated out the ONE paragraph of the whole thing that *of course* lists other essential parts of a good reading program. In reading the quote only, you will think that the report promotes “whole-language” when in fact it does no such thing, it promotes a truly balanced program including but of course not limited to good phonics teaching (which is little like much of what goes under the name “balanced literacy”.)
Working like this and picking things out of context, you can make any report seem to support almost anything.
Of course, since this is her own technique, she is very happy to accuse me and others of doing it.

I would like to reply to all the other distortions and put-downs in these posts, but don’t have the time to go into length right now. See you later.

Oh, yes, just a quick PS

Quote from calma:

“If I had to choose between being able to spell well, and being able to read thoughtfully and meaningfully, I’d choose the latter.”

To those unfamiliar with this little game, this is called setting up a straw man and a false dichotomy.
First you claim that your debating opponent is doing something, and then you attack your own claim (rather than what the person is *really* saying), your claim which is designed to be flimsy and easy to destroy — the straw man.
Also you set up an either-or where there is no real forced choice — the false dichotomy.

Who says you have to choose? Lots of us teach comprehension and spelling both.
If YOU find it difficult to do both, perhaps that is an admission that your program is terribly inefficient and time-consuming for little result.

I was responding to a the poster, marie, I think, who said something about a study of spelling and reading classrooms when I said I’d pick reading over spelling.

I picked out two paragraphs from your link, and could have picked out several more.

The 38 studies were CHOSEN BY THE RESEARCHERS FOR THE NATIONAL READING PANEL AND ANALYZED BY THEM AND THEY FOUND PHONICS WANTING FOR GRADES 2-6 FOR MOST CHILDREN. THAT WAS NOT MY SELECTION OF STUDIES, THAT WAS NOT MY CONCLUSION. THAT WAS THE CHOICE AND CONCLUSION OF THE NATIONAL READING PANEL.
I’M SHOUTING BECAUSE NO ONE SEEMS TO GET THAT POINT.

You, Victoria, were the first to attack and post straw men, false information, and disparaging remarks.

NO ONE HERE CAN REFUTE THE CONCLUSIONS OF THE NATIONAL REPORT PANEL REPORT, SO THEY ATTACK THE MESSENGER.

Another tactic of a person with nothing to say is to say things like how “dry” an article was. Who cares? That’s not the issue.

I had to be selective in what I posted from that article you cited because I was accused of going on and on and quoting too much. What do you guys want?

If you want me to go away, fine. Just stop impugning my integrity and posting statements that are false and misrepresent published data.

Victoria wrote: “Who says you have to choose? Lots of us teach comprehension and spelling both.
If YOU find it difficult to do both, perhaps that is an admission that your program is terribly inefficient and time-consuming for little result.”

I didn’t say you have to choose. As I said in my previous, contiguous post for those of you still tracking how often and how consecutively I post, it was a response to another poster.

The rest of your quote above is a personal attack on my abilities and my teaching program, OF WHICH YOU KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and is quite unbecoming from one who professes to abhor straw men, false dichotomies, etc., etc., etc. It’s what one does when one hasn’t a leg to stand on. As you don’t.

You can’t refute the great NRP report, so you attack me. How clever.

calma — here is an exact copy of your own second post on this thread:

***********************************************************

Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004 10:49 pm Post subject: national reading panel summary report

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

bTW, the summary report does NOT represent the findings of the full report accurately regarding phonics.

Check out the following critiques:

REsisting Reading Mandates by Dr. Elaine Garan
In Defense of OUr Children by Dr. Elaine Garan
Big Brother and the National Reading Curriculum by Richard Allington
Misreading REading by Gerald Coles
The Naked Truth by Frank Smith
The Minority Report by Joanne Yatvin, the only NRP member who worked in an elementary school (she was a principal)

The summary report misrepresented the full report. Phonics was NOT determined necessary for every child. It had minimal value for almost every grade level and type of student. A small number of children with learning disabilities benefit from the inclusion of a phonics program. Most of the research analyzed for the report is connected in one way or another to the author of a phonics program, the publisher of a phonics program, and was analyzed for the NRP by someone connected with the phonics program or the actual research, leading to HUGE conflicts of interest. Also, most of the research analyzed by the panel didn’t study children in actual, day-to-day classrooms for any length of time. Most kids were studied in short-term tutorial programs, with no effort to see how things actually turned out in classrooms. Furthermore, children in control groups who were taught with balanced literacy or Whole Language (they are NOT the same) did as well as, or better than, kids limited to phonics programs.

If you just read the summary report or the watch the NRP video, you are being seriously mislead.

*************************************************************

Excuse me, WHO is trying to refute the NRP report?

I am the one who posted advice to read the NRP report in the first place, and you are the one who posted all the stuff above.

You are the one who started this whole argument, and at least you could decide which side of it you are on, and also get it clear what other people are saying and not saying.

You are also the one who is posting personal insults.
Comments such as the following from you —
” It’s what one does when one hasn’t a leg to stand on. As you don’t.
You can’t refute the great NRP report, so you attack me. How clever.”—
are totally uncalled for and do not make you look more credible. I haven’t descended to personal invective, and if and when I do I’ll do a better job of it than cheap sarcasm.

Comments about Des counting and tracking posts are also not necessary and very unkind. You don’t even know who she is and some very good reasons why she might do this.

I have never seen your reading program, but you have certainly been generous with information about your thinking on the teaching of reading. As the above clearly demonstrates, your thinking as evidenced in these posts is very unclear.

You claim to be very thick-skinned and able to take criticism. Couldn’t tell it from your responses here.

Victoria, you wrote, on Sunday 4/25 that:
[b]”Start with National Reading Panel sponsored by NIH — they had better have heard of the US government? [color=darkred]The summary of the NRP re[/color]port is clear, concise, and definite — systematic synthetic phonics in every classroom.”[/b]

My posts have clearly quoted sections of, and cited page numbers for, the [color=darkblue]full report of the subgroups of the National Reading Panel, which said the exact opposite of what the summary booklet said. [/color]That is why I responded to your post with the lengthy information from Dr. Garan’s book. I wanted other readers to know that the summary booklet was wrong, that several members of the NRP acknowledged that it is wrong, and that the NRP website still allows this inaccurate information to stand.

Then, today, Victoria, you wrote: [b]”Excuse me, WHO is trying to refute the NRP report?

I am the one who posted advice to read the NRP report in the first place, and you are the one who posted all the stuff above.

You are the one who started this whole argument, and at least you could decide which side of it you are on, and also get it clear what other people are saying and not saying.”[/b]
I don’t know how much clearer I can be. You referred people to the SUMMARY REPORT on 4/25. (see above quote). I cited the full report. I explained how there is an EXTREME conflict of interest with the public relations firm that produced the summary report and video. [color=blue]I cited the NRP members who said that anyone who relies on the SUMMARY BOOKLET, which you cited, will be seriously misled. [/color]

On Tuesday, 4/27, Victoria, you wrote:
“Articles which make huge claims with little fact to back them up, and fear-mongering articles [my comment—that is a disparaging word], merely convince me more that this is not fact-based. ”

“Your attempt to discredit the NRP study by making all sorts of claims of bias and unfairness and even dishonesty reflects back on you; you seem to have a vested interest in making phonics proponents look bad — which to the educated reader, does *not* make you look good. [these are not claimes—they are facts, in black and white, backed up by hard data].”

“The NRP study, if you actually read it, was *not* based on single small studies of a few students being tutored as you say, but on a systematic survey of the reading research published over the last fifty years, massive amounts of data dfrom a huge variety of places and times and situations. Since you are falsifying that claim, why should I or anyone else believe anything else you say? You have lost all credibility. [here is one place you slander me, by saying I falsified a claim and have no credibility—you did this before I ever said ANYTHING of a personal nature to you. Also, I never said ONLY one study–you didn’t read closely enough.]”

“You make a lot of claims about decoders not really being readers and about “whole language” being effective — can you show some proof? Some measurements and some data? “[I said that I have worked with many students who are wonderful decoders but who can’t read. That has been my experience. I didn’t say “all decoders.” You are generalizing and putting words in my mouth. I can refer you to books and articles, but I won’t–I already suggested places you can find it. My posts have already been criticized for being too long].

“By the way, I am quoting from memory so may not have the exact wording, but yes, the NRP study very specifically that it is strongly recommended to have *systematic synthetic phonics in every classroom*. I’ll find the exact quote and place later, but I promise you this statement is there. Again you are falsifying and have lost all credibility. ” [Again, you are accusing me of lying, when I merely pointed out that the summary report (your reference) says the exact opposite of the FULL report. I did not falsify. The publisher of the summary report did.]

As I said on 4/28
“And in fact, the NRP meta-analysis showed that kids’ reading ability DECLINED when taught with only phonics. The NRP RECOMMENDED a balanced approach, which does not mean only systematic phonics for MOST children.

Please don’t use the NRP report to promote phonics for all kids. That’s not what it said.”

Victoria, your post on 4/29, was quite clearly a direct attack on me—“fear-mongering” “reprehensible tactics” “misleading rhetoric” “You repeatedly claim that you have spent thirty years in the classroom and therefore you know exactly the right way reading is to be taught.” [have not said that].
“filibustering” by making long posts [what is it you want, facts, opinions, citations, ? I can’t figure it out. You ask for my evidence, then berate me for posting it.]; “Statements which contradict generally accepted facts: You claim, just for one example, that Open Court *reduces* reading levels.
Well, this is a measurable and verifiable fact — where do you get your data from, and what are the data, and measured how and on what students and where and when? ” [got it from the analysis in the NRP report, among other places], “Distractors, changing the subject, false leads, and blind alleys” [again, disparaging remarks about my posts]

On 4/29 Victoria, you wrote, “Still waiting for some facts here, and you haven’t given any yet.” [This, after complaining that I posted too much information for you to bother with].

Then again, in a later post, you said I only quoted one paragraph from the link you suggested. I actually cited four of them, and could have cited more. Didn’t, for the sake of the much-vaunted brevity.

As for my not being nice enough to des, I only responded that some posters seem to think it’s important to keep track of other’s posts and whether they posted one after another or not. That was unnecessary, and had nothing to do with the topic. She accused me of making multiple posts “almost to the point of spam”. She said that I didn’t make them to clarify things, when yes, I was answering other people’s posts. She also used a very sarcastic tone in her post just before the counting one, so yeah, my thick skin got a bit pricked.

Today, Victoria, you posted this:
“Sue — when calma lists 38 studies, the problem is that most of them are *not* actually studies. Most of them are just literature commentary, which is a very, very long way from scientific study. I have looked at some of those articles, and they mix politics and polemics with a minimal quantity of fact. ”

Yep, Victoria, those are the 38 studies the researchers for the NRP chose to study. If they weren’t a good selection, your quarrel is with them, not me.

And then you wrote, Victoria,
“To those unfamiliar with this little game, this is called setting up a straw man and a false dichotomy. ” Again, you accuse me of something which I didn’t do. I was responding to a specific statement by another poster.

And then, this one takes the cake, Victoria,
“Comments about Des counting and tracking posts are also not necessary and very unkind. You don’t even know who she is and some very good reasons why she might do this. ” I didn’t use des’s name in my post. Why is that unkind, anyway? She’s the one who posted the “data.” Of course I have more posts than others—I’m the only person who thinks like I do who is foolish enough to post here. I’m responding to several different people. I can’t think of any “good” reasons for someone to do this.

And finally, Victoria, you wrote today:

“I haven’t descended to personal invective, and if and when I do I’ll do a better job of it than cheap sarcasm. ” [see above quotations from your own posts and tell me that you didn’t use personal invective or cheap sarcasm.]

“I have never seen your reading program, but you have certainly been generous with information about your thinking on the teaching of reading.”[why thank you for the kind comment. I do like to share my experiences, education, and beliefs about the teaching of reading.]

” As the above clearly demonstrates, your thinking as evidenced in these posts is very unclear. ” [if there are parts that were unclear, I’m sorry. I was trying to point out the differences between the summary report and the full report, and I got caught up in defending Whole Language,and side-tracked by your personal attacks].

“You claim to be very thick-skinned and able to take criticism. Couldn’t tell it from your responses here. ” [Oh, and I thought you didn’t use sarcasm or mean comments, Victoria].

If you’ve read this far, I hope you have paid close attention to the “facts.”

I really don’t care if you want to be a Whole Language teacher or not.

I DO care if you, or the government, want to impose specific phonics programs on all children, based on inaccurate date in the Summary Report, using my tax dollars to fund these programs. That was my original point, and it is still my main point. All the rhetoric about my writing style (good thing I never took logic, or I’d really bowl you over) and mud-slinging at Whole Language are what you call “distractors.”

Can you answer one simple question? Is the full report of the subgroups of the National REading Panel inaccurate? or is the Summary Report in accurate? They can’t both be right. The NRP has already admitted the Summary Report is misleading and anyone who relies on it is misinformed. THAT IS MY POINT. What is yours?

I guess I don’t know how to use the bold and font commands.

Hey, Victoria, which is it?

The NRP is systematic, as you claim here,
“The NRP study, if you actually read it, was *not* based on single small studies of a few students being tutored as you say, but on a systematic survey of the reading research published over the last fifty years, massive amounts of data dfrom a huge variety of places and times and situations. Since you are falsifying that claim, why should I or anyone else believe anything else you say? You have lost all credibility.”

or, the 38 studies are “just literature commentary.”

“Sue — when calma lists 38 studies, the problem is that most of them are *not* actually studies. Most of them are just literature commentary, which is a very, very long way from scientific study. I have looked at some of those articles, and they mix politics and polemics with a minimal quantity of fact. ”

The 38 studies are from the NRP meta-analysis. So, either they are *not* actually studies, or they are a “systematic survey of the reading research.”? Which is it?

Whole language forums online (whole language+ forum):
9000+ hits on google
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22whole+language%22%2B%22forum%22&btnG=Search

TAWL does seem alive and well.

—des

That’s probably 9000 hits on individual postings about Whole Language. I would be shocked if there were 9000 TAWL groups or listservs or any number close to that of websites. I didn’t get through on your link.

This is typical of what happens on this board, if someone doesn’t agree with what you say, they attack you, or call you the troll.
This board has a lot to offer. Let’s keep it that way.

What was that section where it talked about Open Court again?

(And Victoria… it was 38 studies that did support systematic instruction - my point was that 38 was a significant number in its own right. If 38 studies say something, I’m going to want to look at ‘em and see whether they’re that odious “Oh, Let Me Publish How Wonderful Direct Instruction[or Whole Langue} Was For Me!!!” ‘research’ or the more useful stuff … but I don’t care how much research there is about unrelated things, even if it’s a million articles.)

I have personally sat through a presentation by Louisa Moats on the Open Court study done in Washington and the results were very successful. Whole language was producing about 35-40% reading on grade level and Open Court (a balanced curriculum) about doubled the scores. I have taught in a district in the past that used OC and they had about 80% of their high school grads going on to college. I’ve seen OC work. There may be cases where there is insufficient training or lack of buy-in by the teachers causing it to be implemented ineffectively, so I have no problem with the idea that one may find a study that is not as impressive. It doesn’t work miracles with true LD kids…they still need individualized multi-sensory structured language training.

And anybody that questions the credibility and motives of Louisa Moats, Reid Lyon, etc., is not to be taken seriously.

There wouldn’t have ever been a NRP if whole language had not caused such a dismal disaster in US reading levels.

Janis

The NRP phonics subgroup reviewed 38 studies for their meta-analysis, and concluded that systematic intensive phonics was not necessary for children in grades 2th-6th, except possibly for some children with specific learning disabilities.

The Summary Report misrepresented this information, and in fact totally contradicted the conclusion of the NRP full report.

I’m not quite sure why this is so hard to understand. The main report says one thing, the summary report says another. And the summary report has been acknowledged by panel members as being inaccurate. They have said that anyone who relies on the summary report for information about phonics instruction in the classroom is being misled.

As Victoria has pointed out, when the message is contrary to what you believe, people set up straw men, such as the focus of many of you on the supposed inadequacies of Whole Language.

I quoted the actual reports, and reports on the actual statements of NRP members. These are NOT my opinions.

Anyone who relies on the Summary Report for information about phonics instruction is relying on inaccurate information.

“and concluded that systematic intensive phonics was not necessary for children in grades 2th-6th, except possibly for some children with specific learning disabilities.”

Well, non-LD children presented with strong systematic phonics instruction in K-1 are going to be reading well, so naturally they wouldn’t need systematic phonics in 2nd-6th!

Janis

That’s one assumption you can make, but it is not necessarily what would happen. In fact, even Reid Lyon agrees that children who have grown up in a print-rich environment, with lots of stories read aloud to them, language play, etc (ie Whole Language) learn to read without necessarily needing systematic phonics instruction. So, I can make the opposite assumption from yours, that kids who receive Whole Language instruction in K-1 don’t need phonics in grades 2-6.

Now, I am going to try to restrain myself from further posting on this thread, since it’s clear no one wants to admit to the facts of the difference between the summary report and NRP report (which is what I pointed out way back in my first post on this thread).

I have many more important things to take care of now, so toodle-ooo–hope you can have as much fun without me as your punching bag.

I’m still floored that a site like ldonline would have people who resort to personal attacks when they can’t substantiate their statements. I guess I shouldn’t be.

Perhaps you should have familiarized yourself with the reading articles on LD Online under LD In Depth and you would have discovered the philosophy that those of us who are professionals on this site adhere to. Another would be the International Dyslexia Association.

“So, I can make the opposite assumption from yours, that kids who receive Whole Language instruction in K-1 don’t need phonics in grades 2-6.”

Uh, no. That doesn’t quite work. The kids who didn’t automatically learn to decode on their own hit a brick wall when their sight word banks reach capacity around third or 4th grade…then they get evaluated, placed LD, and taught with a MSSL methods, if they are lucky.

Janis

I finally had a chance to look at the NRP report—Chapter 2, Part II on Phonics Instruction.

Quotes from page 2-94

“The conclusion drawn from these finding is that systematic phonics instruction is significantly more effective than non-phonics instruction in helping to prevent reading difficulties among at risk students and in helping to remediate reading difficulties in disabled treaders. No conclusion is drawn in the case of low-achieving readers [in 2nd through 6th grades] because it is unclear why systematic phonics instruction produced little growth in their reading and whether the finding is even reliable. Further research is needed to determine what constitutes adequate remedial instruction for low-achieving readers.”

[Note: no suggestion that whole language would constitute adequate remedial instruction.]

Also in regard to the last point: “Possible reasons might be that the phonics instruction provided to low-achieving readers was not sufficiently intense, or that their reading difficulties arose from sources not treated by phonics instruction such as poor comprehension, or there were too few cases (i.e., only eight treatment-control comparison pulled from three studies to yield reliable findings.”

“The conclusion drawn is that growth in word-reading skills is strongly enhanced by sustematic phonics instruction when compared to non-phonics instruction for kindergartners and 1st graders as well as for older struggling readers. Growth in reading comprehension is also boosted by systematic phonics instruction for younger students and reading disabled students. These finding should dispel any belief that teaching phonics systematically to young children interferes with their ability to read and comprehend text. Quite the opposite is the case. Whether growth in reading comprehension is produced generally in students above 1st grade is less clear.”

As for Open Court, it was looked at in only one of the studies the NRP looked at. Page 2-170 shows that against a whole language control group of 1st graders, really significant gains across the board were seen. For second graders, the results were mixed—word identification and decoding saw significant gains (but well below those for 1st graders), while spelling and comprehension were somewhat lower . The sample size was about half that for the 1st grade. I don’t think that one conclude that Open Court is a washout based on this one study.

Yes, this is usually the point where those who think we “just can’t see the truth” fade rather quickly (still waiting for my questions to be addressed…) to go back to the folks who will circle their wagons (facing inside, of course) and agree with each other.

“That’s one assumption you can make, but it is not necessarily what would happen. In fact, even Reid Lyon agrees that children who have grown up in a print-rich environment, with lots of stories read aloud to them, language play, etc (ie Whole Language) learn to read without necessarily needing systematic phonics instruction. So, I can make the opposite assumption from yours, that kids who receive Whole Language instruction in K-1 don’t need phonics in grades 2-6.”

Calma,
I agree with you that all kids should grow up in a print rich environment as you’ve described. Also, I believe that there are plenty of children who will have an easier time learning to read by having had this type of experience. (Also, regular exposure to good literature is a wonderful way to enrich vocabulary and build comprehension).

But from personal experience I can say that even growing up in an environment filled with language, words and books, there are at least some kids who will still need a more systematic approach (phonics) if they are to become functionally literate.

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/ch2-II.pdf has the chapter in question.

Pretty clearly states taht teaching the systematic phonics has “mixed” results past the K-1 stage…. oh, except for the disabled kids.

Frustrating that “non systematic” and “no phonics” programs were pretty much lumped together.

It also at least brings up the importance of “how” things are taught — that, indeed, student motivation is a factor and you can make “drill and skill” into “drill and kill” — either because you don’t think it should work but somebody’s insisting you do it, or because you are … who was she from George Carlin, Sister Mary Elephant?… and We Must Know All This Perfectly Before We Move On.

I’ve met both of ‘em and neither one is pretty — but neither is the “Oh, I’m having such rewarding fun teaching the wonders of language” teacher who is ignoring the future of that 15% of her class who aren’t learning to read. What the heck, it works for 85% and that’s a B, right? Oh, but we can Refer Them To SPecial Ed, where They Can Handle THose Special Kids. (The IQ 122, knows more about radios and elephants than you or I kiddo who could be reading *if* we got him in first grade…)

Yeah, well, for a measure of logic, after we battled it out for several days and dozens of pages, calma turned around and quoted me!! Anybody whose thinking skills are that confused is not someone whose curriculum I’d want anything to do with.

I am not an educator, so my comments may be of very little value on this board. However, this topic has upset me.

My DS is a 2nd grader in a gifted class and on the A&B honor role (handwriting grade kicked him off the A Honor role). He has been reading since the age of 3 (self-taught) and has always read well above his grade level. His comprehension was superb and his fluency advanced for his age -
UNTIL THIS YEAR.

Thankfully, my husband and I realized that his new “comprehension” issues were not LD or ADD related. This child comes from a home that is actually one large library ; ) - as my husband and I are both avid readers with a wide selection of interests.

As you will note in my “new topic” regarding reading comprehension issues, we had our son tested to determine why he was having comprehension issues and had begun to hate reading.

Well….., we found out that our son is a “whole language” reader with very few phonic skills other than the ones he created. Somehow, he either wasn’t taught phonics or the teachers just assumed he had learned phonics. We will never know.

After some wonderful insight from Victoria, I began to research this issue and found out about the great “reading” debate. As a reasonably logical person, I find it outrageous that this debate exists.

How many parents out there have children that are now labeled “LD” because they were given improper or inadequate reading instructions during their formative years? How many children have given up on the learning process because no one understood why they were so slow or failed to grasp a subject matter? How many schools out there are teaching “whole language” without a phonics base?

How can this be an issue? How can the proponents of “whole language” believe they have any logical or reasonable basis for their stance? How can a teacher tell me that “skipping a word and inserting another one” is reading? That’s lazy, self-defeating and outright cruel to the child. Please explain to me how a child’s failure to read and fully comprehend a subject can be so casually disregarded? What if we hadn’t had him tested at such an early stage? I shudder at the thought of how many children with poor reading skills believe they are the failure.

I’m sure this will anger many of the reading teachers who believe in the “whole language” approach. However, I love my children too much to let such a topic continue without a parent’s perspective.

Victoria - keep it up….logic is rare now a days. Well, its 2 in the morning and I have to be up in a few hours. Hope this made sense. I’m sure my spelling was horrible. Too tired to proofread. I’m sure my writing will seem more like ranting tomorrow.

Ken Goodman, an expert and enthusiastic proponent of whole language, believes things like “well, if a word is important, it will be repeated” — and, generally, that it’s okay to make errors as long as you get the gist of your reading.
Much of whole language depends on using predictable text — but the best reading happens when it’s *not* what you expect.

Lost Parent,

You are anything but lost! You completely understand the insanity of the whole language philosophy and how it has failed huge numbers of children. You are very right to be upset.

Janis

>[quote=”Lost Parent -“]I am not an educator, so my comments may be of very little value on this board. However, this topic has upset me.

That certainly is NOT the case. Homeschoolers just about never use whole language and they are also parents. Parents are mostly against the whole language thing. It is an educational fad , imo. This is NOT an educator only board. Your thoughts are DEFINITELY welcomed and valued here!

>Well….., we found out that our son is a “whole language” reader with very few phonic skills other than the ones he created. Somehow, he either wasn’t taught phonics or the teachers just assumed he had learned phonics. We will never know.

This is correct. At between 3-4th grade, without phonics skills many (but not all kids— some “figure out the code independently”) wiill falter. It isn’t their fault. There is nothing natural about reading.

>After some wonderful insight from Victoria, I began to research this issue and found out about the great “reading” debate. As a reasonably logical person, I find it outrageous that this debate exists.

Well it is illogical that’s why you find it outrageous! :-)

>How many parents out there have children that are now labeled “LD” because they were given improper or inadequate reading instructions

My guess is that they are commonly referred to special ed. Or else just sort of limp along in sort of a state of half illiteracy.

>subject can be so casually disregarded? What if we hadn’t had him tested at such an early stage? I shudder at the thought of how many children with poor reading skills believe they are the failure.

Sadly too common.

>I’m sure this will anger many of the reading teachers who believe in the “whole language” approach. However, I love my children too much to let such a topic continue without a parent’s perspective.

Not a lot of people here are into this fad. The reason is that we have seen the failures of whole language first hand. Or else have worked with children who absolutely need phonetics approaches, sometimes intensively. (Still some of these same kids are encouraged to guess at school. One of the kids I tutor has a strange IEP with the “weakness” that he will not try unfamilar word patterns– iow, he won’t guess. And here I thought that was a strength.)

>Victoria - keep it up….logic is rare now a days. Well, its 2 in the morning and I have to be up in a few hours. Hope this made sense. I’m sure my spelling was horrible. Too tired to proofread. I’m sure my writing will seem more like ranting tomorrow.[/quote]

I’m glad something came out of that annoying discussion. Kudos to Victoria. :-)

—des

Thank you for the kind words. I need them after some of these arguments.

Thanks DES and Victoria for the advice and support! It’s great to have such informed people as a sounding board.

I do also like to see what people wtih different opinions are thinking — but it’s hard to keep defensiveness out of it.

Just want to clarify terminology; no further message.

This message is from someone who said she was packing up and going away, only to come back and back and back again to have the last word. This isn’t discussion at an academic or professional level, it is yet more name-calling from across the playground.

Well, she is right — whole language is not a fad — fads don’t get zealously loyal followers.
Stating something is not a fad is hardly name-calling (though the “But I’m NOT speaking to you!” message is of playground vintage); I’m still wondering about the Open Court information, though… and obviously she’s still reading these posts, so I am thinking it is safe to assume that it was a second-hand or third-hand interpretation (from the Respected Whole Language Umbrella Leaders) — how much of the other information was also someone else’s creative (mis?)interpretation?

Dear Calma,

You wrote on 04-28: “I’m really not interested in a debate on Whole Language vs. Phonics.” The NRP Report has not resolved the conflict. Dr. Jeanne Chall’s “Great Debate” on reading methods rages.

Your posts have energized LD Online. Sue J, Webmastress wrote (05-07): “do also like to see what people wtih (sic) different opinions are thinking — but it’s hard to keep defensiveness out of it.” Sue is astute. People defend their beliefs when the challenge is religion, child-rearing, politics, or a choice of reading method.

I have been told that some children thrive in Whole Language classrooms. I have also been told that some children thrive in classrooms that immerse students in systematic, explicit, bottom-up phonics. Mariedc wrote (04/29) “But decoding is a (sic) fundamental and without this skill one simply cannot read at all.” Does research tell us which is the more successful method for teaching reading to students: Whole Language or Phonics?

LD OnLine is a site that concentrates on improving reading instruction for LD children. That is also my goal. Let us consider only LD children for now, and not the general population of non-readers.

You have had many years of experience with the Whole Language method; I have none. The little knowledge I have of the method is that it uses big books, spends hours reading predictable books aloud to children, and teaches phonics as needed. One Whole Language professor told me that it is acceptable for a beginner to read “horse” as “pony” because the student has comprehended the sense of a passage. I have a problem with that. I believe efficient readers should be able to read words accurately.

Approximately 85 percent of English words can be decoded by applying phonics principles. It seems reasonable to include phonics in reading instruction for LD students. The questions are: when, what, how, in what order, and how much?

Two words account for more than ten percent of all the English words in print: the, of. It seems reasonable to include memorization of these words and several others (I, eye, aye) in reading instruction for LD students.

Is there a conclusive technique to measure the effectiveness of reading instruction?

Arthur

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Arthur. I appreciate that you refrained from making snide comments.

I am not posting to debate phonics vs Whole Language.

I only posted to correct the misinformation stating that WL is a fad. It is not a fad.

So I just decided to check the board after a long absence and my original posts on this topic. Oh my!!

Calma, if you’re still reading, this is what started this thing. Phonics instruction isn’t even the issue here! A bright first-grade child, so proud of his phonics knowledge, reads for me. He receives systematic, multisensory phonics instruction in a “balanced” reading program where teachers tell him to not decode, but to skip and guess at the hard words *first*. He comes to a somewhat hard but decodable word. Guesses based on the first letter. His guess makes perfect sense, but is the wrong word. He keeps going, and gets a comprehension question wrong because of this one tiny misreading. (Don’t even say that he should have checked his graphophonic cues, because he’s way onto the next sentence—it makes sense to him! Why should he second guess himself?) Good phonics instruction, no practice using it because of this lousy whole language-invented strategy. No automaticity + no sight-word gain + intact language and phonological skills = one poor reader who didn’t have to be.

Moats, in her article “Whole Language Lives On,” describes what certain awful whole-language ideas are doing today as they seep back into our classrooms. What I see is that teachers are training kids to:

1. “Skip the difficult word; read to the end of the sentence or paragraph”
2. “Read on. Reread inserting the beginning sound of the unknown word”
3. “Substitute a word that makes sense….”
(Regie Routman; the entire list, with Routman’s name at the bottom, was given to this child’s parents so they can reinforce this nonsense at home)

Which is, really, teaching them to read like poor readers. Context cannot predict words reliably enough to be a dependable word-id strategy (5-25% of the time?). Calma: Do *you* really skip hard words when you read? Do *you* guess based on the first letter and then just put in a word that just makes sense? The reality is that lots of teachers are teaching kids how to do this, right now, and they are creating lots of poor readers who just don’t have to be. I don’t believe that the kids will eventually figure out how to do it, either. Whole language instruction is still damaging kids today, without even bringing phonics into it.

Cult, perhaps. Blind followers who can’t abide questioning.
We all need to guard against the tendency.

In science, you have to distinguish between sulfates and sulfites and sulfides; all of them make perfectly good sense in the sentence, but if you make a mistake you can cause explosions or poisonings.
In medicine you have to distinguish between micrograms and milligrams; both make perfectly good sense in the sentence but when you make a mistake the patient dies.
In engineering you have to distinguish between shear and strain forces among others; both make perfect sense in the sentence but if you make a mistake the bridge or the building collapses.

Think I’m making this up? Read up on medical errors and engineering failures. It is estimated that several thousand people die every year from human error.

Of course if you are happy with the fact that the center of science and technology is already moving to Asia and that technical jobs are bleeding across the Pacific daily, go ahead and be happy that your kids can guess the general meaning.
If you would like an educated workforce, high-paying technical jobs, new modern conveniences, repair people who can do repairs, safe buildings and roads, and medical staff who give you and your children the correct dosages, it is an awfully good idea to be picky about those little finicky details.

If the person reading the words decodes them accurately, but doesn’t know their meanings, we are in the same boat.

Beginning reading has to be taught if it is to be learned.

PROPOSITION 1: LD students usually demonstrate significant growth in Reading Ability when they receive systematic, explicit, bottom-up phonics instruction from a well-trained, experienced teacher.

PROPOSITION 2: LD students ordinarily demonstrate no greater growth in Reading Ability when they receive systematic, explicit, bottom-up phonics instruction from a well-trained experienced teacher than they do in Whole Language programs.

Merely writing or speaking either proposition does not make it so.

In a time-worn tale we learn that some early Greek philosophers were arguing about the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth. When one member of the group suggested finding a horse and counting the teeth, he was put to death. Truth was not to be achieved by measurement, but only by the unaided light of human reason.

Nearly everyone finds value in measuring. We measure ingredients for recipes. We use a thermometer to test to discover if a child’s fever has broken.

“If something exists, it exists in some amount. If it exists in some amount, then it is capable of being measured.” Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, 1644

Progress in reading ability exists. Fluent reading exists.

Reasonable people could agree on the superiority of a reading method to teach LD children if we only had a valid, reliable test.

Objective tests are precise. They are also disparaged by many educators.

Whole Language proponents use Running Records, Miscue Analysis, and Portfolio Assessment as evidence of reading improvement. These tools are subjective, and they do not lend themselves readily to comparing the reading ability of different students at various ages.

It would seem incumbent on the advocates of Whole Language and those who favor Systematic Phonics to discover or create a scientific reading test to validate their instructional method.

Call me stubborn, but I’m still curious to know what Calma does when she comes to a new word! There probably aren’t too many of those left for us at the post-graduate level, of course. I’ll bet she’d use her super-duper phonics skills to sound it out *first!*

BTW, beautifully put, Victoria.