When Fun Killed My Reading Instruction

 "The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs… one step at a time." Joe Girard

My highly engaging reading lessons brought me a lot of evaluator praise in the 1990s, even when they failed to teach every child to read. I remember my principal complimenting me for the lesson in which I sat my first graders in a circle around a food blender. Tearing pieces of paper with consonant blends written on them, we crammed each into the whirring blender to "blend them." In those moments when I shoved a new piece of paper with a different consonant combination on it, I had 100% engagement. The burning smell rising from the blender motor held everyone's attention. No one's skills for decoding words improved that day.

When a parent would ask during a conference, "Why can't my child read?" or "why aren't you using phonics?" we'd respond with certainty that that was not how children learned to read. "It's better to have them use their brain power to guess what the word says using the three cues (semantics - does your guess make sense), syntactic (does it sound right?), or grapho-phonic - does it look right?). Filled with the confidence of the Whole Language research, we put on plays, we read out loud, and we taught mini lessons to non-readers about the habits of great readers. "Check the picture!" we chanted. "Look at the words around it!" we sang. "See if it makes sense!" we encouraged.

When a child misread the word "take" as "tackled," we loved the great conversations we had with them. "Does the word tackle make sense in the sentence "The man wrestled with the heavy trash bag as he tried to tackle it outside?" After a pause, the child might say, "Yes, it does. When you wrestle, you tackle things." How could you spoil a moment like that with a phonics lesson?

For years I kept using this "whole language" approach to reading instruction, even though I was aware it wasn't working for every child. Students will naturally absorb the phonics and decoding skills through immersion and quality lessons on reading habits. Still, I worried. Not knowing exactly how to teach explicit decoding, I leaned on the instructional behaviors that were comfortable for me - emphasizing the development of a love of reading—emphasizing the cozy, curl-up with book stuff. Then one day, I read research claiming only 1 -7% of children will figure out the code to printed language without explicit instruction (Schwartz, S., & Sparks, S. D. (2022, August 30). How do kids learn to read? What the Science says. Education Week. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-do-kids-learn-to-read-what-the-science-says/2019/10). All children, to greater or lesser amounts, need explicit, focused, ongoing instruction in each of the five core components that allow them to understand the code of reading[1].

That's when I began to note that little children did NOT find phonics lessons boring - they loved that moment of finding out how to read consonant blend CK when followed by -le. Each skill made them feel more confident and, thus, like real readers. They weren't bored by brief lessons on diphthongs, letter sounds, and the like. I'll never forget when I shared with third graders how the prefix "de" in the word debate signaled the ancient Latin root battuere, meaning "to beat or pummel." Thus, by inserting the prefix "de" (meaning "reverse the action"), the word essentially meant you were not going to beat the crap out of someone you disagree with; you would argue with them. All of them became fascinated with exploring the prefix, suffixes, and the entomology of words. They became greedy "miners" of word parts, digging for the treasures that illuminated the text with depth and meaning.

When using primary reading assessments that used nonsense words to ascertain a child's skill for decoding, I didn't get the point at first. What do nonsense words have to do with reading comprehension? Everything, as it turns out. I quickly learned when a child can successfully sound out a nonsense word, segment the word correctly, or even name letters; they are paying more attention to the letters in the word. Before playing in the orchestra, you had to learn the notes, staff, pitches, rhythms, and all the symbols that describe them. You can't be a first violinist by guessing at the notes you don't understand.

The Old Ways Die Hard: The other day, I sat with a sleepy-looking five-grade student pretending to read during a readers workshop. She looked bored. I was there coaching a pre-service teacher, and there was some downtime at the end of this teacher's lesson. After asking the teacher for permission, I sat with the fifth grader, who expressed interest in reading with me. There were so many words she couldn't read. I noticed she tried using semantics, syntax, and grapho-phonics with some but limited success. She urgently needed a quick lesson on recognizing the consonant-vowel-consonant patterns of a more phonics-centered instructional approach. Her strategies were limited to mostly guessing her way through the text. "Do you like to read?" I asked her. "Not really," she replied. "It's hard."

I hesitated because I was not her teacher. But I couldn't resist. "May I teach you a quick skill?" "Her eyes met mine." "Yes," she said. So, holding my fingers over the tiny words, I isolated a few examples of short and long vowels and the consonants after them. Her eyes lit up. "Wow," she said. "Does that work all the time?" I replied, "Most of the time. It's called the CVC and CVCC pattern of words. You can look for it in every word." I briefly explained how this pattern works. I left her to read on her own while I moved on to work with some other children.

Across the next few minutes, I'd look up to check on her, and she'd show me the book each time she turned a new page. She was excited. Later, I circled back around to her. "So, is that little skill helping?" She smiled and said, "When I get stuck, don't look at the words around it; instead, pay attention to the letters in the word." I smiled and said, "When you notice things like that, you become a strong reader. It will be hard for a while, but it will get easier if you stick with it." She smiled and said, "Will you read with me again sometime?"

 

Chris Briggs-Hale

CEO, Waterfall Learning, LLC

https://waterfalllearning.com

 

Sources:

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Reports of the subgroups. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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[1] Since at least 2000, we’ve known from the National Reading Panel that explicit, systematic instruction in phonemic awareness , phonics , Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension does, in fact, have much better results for struggling readers (NRP 2000, pp. 2-1, 2-92, 3-3, 4-3).