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Myth: Teaching a Love of Reading
January 22, 2004Many people think the love of reading is something that can be taught.
What is frustrating for us are the constant claims of Balanced Literacy and Whole Language folks who say that their method "turns kids on to reading." In reality, they might get turned on, but too many very soon will figure out they can't read well.
This reminds us of the elementary school which used MathLand for its math curriculum. The kids loved it, the teachers loved it, and the parents loved it. It was full of fun activities and the kids were really turned on to math. The school soon found out that the kids weren't really learning much math, but they were having a lot of fun. (We might suggest that the kids weren't turned on to math as much as they were turned on to MathLand.)
This highlights a basic premise behind Progressive programs: by employing creative and fun approaches to teaching, without much rigor, you can teach the love of a subject by teaching the child to love the subject.
This is patently false.
Children may be enthusiastic in a Balanced Literacy classroom, but hand them books (with no illustrations) that they've never seen and their enthusiasm will be tempered by their ability (or inability) to read well. Children in a new-new math class are equally enthusiastic, but take away the calculator and ask them to do the most elementary problems, and all of a sudden reality smacks them between the eyes.
What teachers have known for millenia is that the best way to turn a student onto reading is by teaching the child to read. (Of course, by "teaching a child to read" we mean using the time-honored phonics method.)
We've heard hundreds of stories by parents who've used phonics instruction to teach their children to read (or supplement the instruction received in the child's whole-language-based classroom), who say that after so many lessons it just "clicks" and then the child is off, devouring books on his or her own.
In the preface to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Engelmann, Haddox and Bruner, the authors write:
And because the program works, something very nice happens: perhaps not on the first lesson or on the fifth, but long before Lesson 100 your child will turn on to reading. The child's surroundings are full of written words that the child will read with great pride.While countless parents use phonics to attempt to undo the damage wrought from Whole-Language based reading instruction, we've never heard of a parent using Balanced Literacy or Whole Language to supplement phonics instruction.
Why? You guessed it, phonics instruction seems to have an uncanny ability in simply teaching kids to read, period.
To play devil's advocate:
My school (like most in NYC, now) does the Reader's & Writer's Workshop. It seems to me that if the daily mini-lessons are used well, the students do learn to read. Furthermore, a teacher using this kind of curriculum well helps the students learn to choose books at their level or just slightly challenging, so that they do NOT get frustrated by books that are more difficult, but they do enjoy the choice element of the curriculum. The teacher who works next door to me believes that students need to read an occasional "easy book" so that they can learn to read for meaning and experience the thrill of really "getting" a book. They also read many books at their level, to practice decoding & reading for meaning, and they read some difficult books, to help them move forward. It does seem to work, and she tailors her mini-lessons to the subjects the kids are having trouble with in her particular class - not the topics dictated by a more traditional reader. Granted, I've never seen it at work in a kindergarten classroom, so perhaps even more explicit instruction is necessary at that level.
I was taught writing from 1st-middle school through the Writer's Workshop method, and I think it really helped my classmates and I become excellent writers. But, we were all middle class from pretty stable homes where writing was a part of day-to-day life, so again I won't make claims for it beyond my experience. My NYC kids have shown MARKED improvement in their writing through Writer's Workshop.
You gotta have good teachers, though, whatever methods you use.
ms. frizzle January 22, 2004 06:55 PM