![]() The PA situation and other developments suggest to me that the SoR is at risk of turning into a new pedagogical dogma, consisting of a small set of tenets loosely tied to some classic but dated research, supplemented by additional assumptions that are ad hoc and ill-advised. It is an overprescription that reflects a shallow understanding of reading development, yet has become a major tenet of the “science of reading”. I’m going to lay my cards on the table here: The treatment of PA in the “science of reading”–the idea that a certain level of PA is prerequisite for reading, and that PA training should continue until the student becomes highly proficient at PA tasks regardless of how well they are reading–is emblematic of problems that have arisen within the SoR approach. They weren’t obvious to the questioner, or to the people who posted to “chat” thanking them for asking, and they won’t be obvious to many people reading this document. These conclusions seem obvious to me, given my understanding of the relevant research literature and the conditions under which children learn to read. Instructional time is limited and the clock is ticking down to 4th grade.Time spent jumping through PA hoops could instead be spent on activities that expand the knowledge that supports comprehending texts of increasing complexity and variety. ![]() If a student is reading–if they’ve “broken the code,” as Phil Gough 1 put it years ago–instruction can focus on the many more things that need to be learned to become a skilled reader. Instruction in subskills such as phonemic awareness is justified to the extent it advances the goal of reading, not for its own sake. We know that learning to read does not require being able to identify 44 phonemes or demonstrate proficiency on phoneme deletion and substitution tasks because until very recently no one who learned to read had to do these things. Why would a person need to ask this? The goal of teaching children to read is reading, not phonemic awareness. ![]() Then an experienced educator whose work includes teaching other teachers, asked: “if a student is a good reader, do we need to continue with phonemic awareness instruction?” A guest speaker gave a rambling talk about “science of reading” (SoR) issues. I was recently in a group zoom meeting (a groom? a zoup?) with some educators who meet to expand their knowledge of reading research. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |