In The News
- After four years, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Reading Association (IRA) have produced a volume called Standards for the English Language Arts. The 132 page document has been hailed by the professionals as representing "the best thinking and experience of thousands of English language-arts teachers across the country," but it apparently has pleased almost no one.
- From Letters to Sounds By G. Reid Lyon Sam's parents became worried about his behavior and academic performance in school
when he was eight years old and midway through his second-grade year. It was then Sam's teacher called to discuss some disturbing changes in his behavior. Sam was becoming increasingly inattentive during the classroom reading period, and had recently been involved in a scuffle at recess because another student had called him stupid.
- Why Johnny Can't Decode By G. Reid Lyon ELIZABETH McPIKE of the American Federation of Teachers has written that if you do
not learn to learn to read, you simply do not make it in life. The research that we conduct and support at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) bears this out in spades. A number of ongoing long-term longitudinal studies carried out by NICHD supported scientists show that approximately 17-20 percent of our nation's children have substantial difficulties learning to read.
- California Text Adoption Puts Emphasis on Phonics By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo After years of contentious debate in California about teaching children how to read, the state school board has capped off its effort to improve achievement with a renewed emphasis on phonics in the nation's largest textbook adoption for English-language arts.
- Phonics and Whole Language
The way American schools teach children to read and write has, for many years now, been under the divergent influences of two powerful schools of thought. Conventional curricula still reflect a time-honored reliance on phonics and basal readers, but a "whole-language" approach has been embraced by many educators.
- A War of Words: Whole Language Under Siege
By Karen Diegmueller Late on a Sunday afternoon last November, long after most educators had escaped the confines of the convention hotel to drink up the glorious San Diego weather, several dozen teachers remained behind for one final session.
- The Best of Both Worlds By Karen Diegmueller
Jack sits at his desk and ponders the worksheet exercises his teacher has handed out: Circle all the words on the page that contain the same "at" sound. After 20 minutes, Jack's teacher collects the worksheets and hands out a new set with a similar task. When that work is completed, the class moves on to a science lesson.
- A Delicate Balance Karen Diegmueller Silver Spring, Md. Sitting in a jumbled semicircle on the floor around Laura Grenon's rocking chair, the 1st graders listen raptly as their teacher reads The Old Man's Mitten from a big book resting on a nearby easel.
- NRC Panel Urges End to Reading Wars By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo Let the wars be over. That is one of the central appeals the authors make in a long-awaited report on reading released in Washington last week.
- Standards for Language Arts Are Unveiled By Karen Diegmueller Washington They call them national standards for the English-language arts. But the recommendations embodied in the document that two professional groups released here last week more closely resemble a set of principles for educators to follow.
- Quality Counts, The Urban Challenge CONTENTS: The Challenges, The Solutions, State By State.
- WHOLE LANGUAGE VS. PHONICS ]B Y J U D Y K. H I N T Z ]I AM CONTINUOUSLY asked to address a timely and vivid reading controversy--whole language or phonics?
- HOW JOHNNY SHOULD READ By JAMES COLLINS A war is on between supporters of phonics and those who believe in
the whole-language method of learning to read; caught in the middle--the nation's schoolchildren Jill Stewart, a contributing editor for Buzz Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine and LA Weekly, wrote this article for LA Weekly.
- The Great Debate Revisited By Art Levine Contention between proponents of the "meaning first" and the "phonics first" approaches to literacy goes back more than a century. That the former is now in the ascendant, the author argues, should be cause for concern.
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By LynNell Hancock and Pat Wingert If You Can Read This...you learned phonics. Or so its supporters say. IN 1989, WHEN GAYLE CLOUD'S TWIN BOYS entered the first grade, her
California district had just introduced the state's version of the "whole language"
method of teaching reading. Her children were assigned good books but given few
tools to help them figure out unfamiliar word. Vowel sounds, word families, even
silent E remained a mystery. What happened? Spelling skills dropped: homework
was returned filled with errors. First-grade reading scores in the Riverside
district slipped by 7 percent that year, and have been falling ever since. The rest
of the state fared no better. Las March, U.S. Secretary of Education, Richard
Riley announced that California tied for last place in the most recent national
reading tests.
- By Jill Stewart Rebecca, a tiny ponytailed second-grader, sits in class at a Westside gradeschool that is among the best in Los Angeles. She is contemplating her personal journal, the latest classroom rage for teaching kids to read. She toils with a pencil, filling a page with her crooked sentences, then proudly hands the work to me, a visitor. "I can't spell," Rebecca says shyly, "but I know what it means."
The Research