USA:The National Right to Read Foundation 2013 Annual Letter

[debbie]

http://rrf.org.uk/messageforum/viewtopi ... 872#p47872

Thanks to Yvonne Meyer (from Australia) flagging up the annual letter of the National Right to Read Foundation in the USA via the UK Reading Reform Foundation message forum at www.rrf.org.uk .

Important reading indeed:

If you visit the NCTQ website ( www.nctq.org ) you will also find reference to an article published in the AFT periodical, The American Educator, Summer 2013. It is further proof that more and more in academia are recognizing that what the Report of the National Reading Panel verified in 2000 is true.

"Lighting the Way: The Reading Panel Report Ought to Guide Teacher Preparation," (Rickenbrode and Walsh) should be mandatory reading for all reading teachers and curriculum directors because it points out one more step toward reform. The comparison is made between the field of medicine and that of reading instruction, noting that the identification of these five essential components of reading instruction … phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension … was distilled from hundreds of scientific studies that translated research into practice. These five components formed the keystone in "Reading First" that provided training for thousands of reading teachers over a period of eight years.

The refusal of schools of education to implement the unequivocal findings of decades of Federally funded scientific research is a major reason why there is such a tidal wave of illiterates being pumped out of our public schools each year. Transforming the schools of education would be a giant step forward in reducing and ultimately eliminating illiteracy.

"Effective teacher instruction in all five components - and student mastery of the first three components - by the third grade is critical for long-term student outcomes. Students who do not get a strong start in reading skills, vocabulary, and comprehension risk the 'downward spiral' described by researcher Joe Torgesen:

"Poor skills in phonics and phonemic awareness inhibit the development to fluent reading, which in turn leads to less reading practice, diminished vocabulary, less background knowledge, and a host of academic struggles when reading to learn becomes a requirement in the later elementary years. The majority of these children will remain poor readers through and beyond high school and are less likely than their peers to complete high school or attend college."

The National Right to Read Foundation has been in the forefront of these changes over the past 20 years. We are no less committed to "slaying the giant of illiteracy" today. There are some improvements coming that we have been working on for some time.

We recognize that the Internet, Youtube, Twitter, and "smart phones" have fundamentally changed the way we communicate in the 21st century. It is now possible to bring this vital information to the attention of teachers, parents, and the general public in a flash.

[debbie]

A piece about 'whole language' and 'whole word sight learning' in the American Thinker:

March 21, 2014

The Most Obvious Conspiracy in the History of the World

By Bruce Deitrick Price

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/ ... iracy.html

In a sane world, a good example would be Whole Word (or Look-say, as it was called when introduced in 1931). This is the famously bad reading method where kids have to memorize words as graphic designs, as shapes, as outlines.

Decade after decade, Whole Word produced dreadful results. It’s the main reason we have 50 million functional illiterates. The presence of this obvious hoax in elementary schools would seem to be prima facie proof of a vast conspiracy. Duh.

So how can this hoax survive if it’s so bad? The answer is that most people, once they become fluent readers, lose empathy for the difficulties that children face. As a result, the schools can get away with murder.

[debbie]

Whole Language High Jinks

How To Tell When "Scientifically-Based Reading Instruction" Isn't

by Louisa Moats

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498005.pdf

Ironically, partial responsibility for this unfortunate situation can be laid at the door of the National Reading Panel and its “five essential components” of effective reading instruction (phonemic aware- ness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).

While the essential components named by the panel embody the fundamentals of effective instructional practices, they also oversimplify the complex language processes involved in learning to read.

More worrisome, that list of components allows publishers, authors, and program developers wiggle-room to claim adherence to reading science merely by mentioning them in their marketing materials and asserting that the program incorporates them. The purpose of this guide is to help savvy educators and parents see through the deception to spot programs that truly are research based—and those that are not.

Moats exposes popular but scientifically untenable practices in reading instruction, including

# use of memorization, picture cues, and contextual guessing for teaching word recognition, justified by the faulty “three cueing systems” theoretical model, instead of direct, systematic teaching of decoding and comprehension skills;
# substitution of “teacher modeling” and reading aloud for explicit, organized instruction;
# rejection of systematic and explicit phonics, spelling, or grammar instruction;
# confusion of phonemic awareness with phonics;
# reliance on “leveled” books and trade books to organize instruction; and
# use of whole-language approaches for English language learners.