This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation – even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this new American Public Media podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences – children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Episode 1: The Problem
Corinne Adams watches her son’s lessons during Zoom school and discovers a dismaying truth: He can’t read. Little Charlie isn’t the only one. Sixty-five percent of fourth graders are not proficient readers. Kids need to learn specific skills to become good readers, and in many schools, those skills are not being taught.
This podcast was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
Emily Hanford is soooo wrong about Reading Recovery. Her theory of how Reading Recovery teachers teach reading is based on absolutely misguided and incorrect research. It is peice-mealed to fit a narrative. Dick and Jane books are not the same as patterned text. These books are geared to teach kids HOW to look at print. If they do not have directionality and concepts about print they cannot decode. They have to know where and how to look at print before they can decode print. This is at early kindergarten levels. At the same time they are learning about letters and sounds. Kids are not at these levels long. In no way shape or form to Reading Recovery teachers teach first graders just whole word learning (although they need some word recognition) and phonics and phonological text IS taught. Reading Recovery is NOT whole language. Reading Recovery is a short term intervention. Further interventions are considered if kids need further support. Many do not. You CANNOT use assessment data if a child has had two weeks of intervention and say “see the intervention did not work.” Hanford has used Mays research which is HIGHLY flawed and compares apples to oranges. A lot can happen between 1st grade and 4th grade. Tier 1 instruction has to be in place for reading instruction in the classroom in order for ALL students to make continued growth. Marie Clay did not say phonics was nonsense and phonics instruction part of Reading Recovery training. The three cueing system is a HUGE misconception. Get your facts straight! Go to RRCNA.org
Thank you so much for these amazing podcasts. As I listened to them, I was reliving the past 30 years of my teaching career; as a Title-I teacher, a classroom teacher, then a Reading First Coordinator and Literacy Coach. I actually felt sick to my stomach knowing that I used the queuing system and was actually doing little to nothing for the students learning to read. When implementing Reading First, I was met with many of the obstacles and opposition that others across the country had felt. While thinking I had failed, it was a small relief to know that the initiative failed due to overwhelming opposition. An opposition to the science of reading that is only now becoming accepted. We are truly 20 years behind. I am glad to say I am still teaching, and now with a team of colleagues that also agree with the science of reading. Together we are finally making the changes in our school system and curriculum that will truly benefit the students as readers. This will take time and commitment, but I believe we are now on the right track.
Thank you for these podcasts. I agree with the other letter-writers in that the education system has wronged students for so long with their choice of reading programs. My district (Boston Public) has purchased and implemented most of those mentioned. I can only imagine the financial cost. Many of my coworkers and I have always ‘secretly’ taught phonics and it’s good news that it can come into the open with the validation of the Science of Reading. My school has begun to implement structured phonics programs across most grade levels.- which teachers support. However, there is STILL an elephant in the room. We are REQUIRED to teach a ‘Tier 1’ curriculum to ALL students. In our case, it is a program called Expeditionary Learning (EL) . It is a very rigorous curriculum and comes with a ton of above greade level books as supplemental reading. I have read the reviews and people like it, but I find the materials unattainable for my EL students, students with disabilities, students reading below grade level, students with interrupted education…well that is just about all the students at my school. Maybe SOLD A STORY could take a look at this program and shed light on its value in helping students to read because my colleagues and I -just don’t get it.
Lola ,I am pleased you posted your concerns about ‘Sold a Story ‘since all articles need scrutiny.
I have been involved in the’ reading wars’ for 40 years and do like to hear both sides of the issue, to tease out the misconceptions on both sides.
Here in Australasia Emeritus professors Tunmer,Chapman and Wheldall as well as other researchers have published peer reviewed research on Reading Recovery for decades and found serious flaws in the claims RR has made of its success rate. Like May they have found that the effects of RR, unfortunately wash
out with time. Any research can be found to have some flaws. That is why it is important to look at other sources like cognitive and neuro science which suggest that structured phonics is best for maybe,60% of students and does no damage to the other 40%.
I have read Clay’s writings where she states “no child needs explicit instruction in phonics”. In 1998 she wrote “all readers from 5 year old to the effective adult reader, need to use the sentence structure,order clues,features,special knowledge , first and last letter knowledge,before they resort to left to right sounding out of the chunks or letter clusters or in the last resort,single letters.” Phonics programmes reverse this order of importance.
Predictable or patterned texts are purpose written to teach children not to rely on phonics but instead should predict words using meaning , sentence structure and letter clues.
For decades my mother taught privately ,hundreds of students reading failures,of local schools here in NZ. These students frequently still could not read even though some had had two programmes of RR. They were all remediated with a very structured programme of intensive phonics combined with comprehension as was used in a previous time in NZ just before Marie Clay’s methods were introduced.
Congratulations to Emily Hanford and her team for these podcasts. As a New Zealander, I was privy to much of the research as it was progressing in the 80’s and 90’s and of course it continues today. What strikes me is the absolute power that lobby groups and big money bring to dictate what will and won’t be taught, what will and won’t be funded for furthering knowledge. Of course this will be true in all areas of science and arts.
On a personal level, I grew up in a home of educated white people where my Mother taught us before we went to school to sound out words and to encourage us to read to her the library we had brought home for the week. I did the same with my own child and games were played with him while walking to change the first sound of a word with a different letter when he was around 4 years old. He of course became a competent reader. At age 8 when he was given some standardised test that was used here in NZ, I was told by his teacher that he was successfully reading words that were expected of 16 year olds although he didn’t know what many of them meant. The teacher was mystified. I choose not to say the obvious as our scheduled time was short. But knowing he was not afraid of reading a word he did not know was very gratifying, he had a dictionary for that.
I have been a reading specialist and am currently an Orton-Gillingham Master Teacher. I have been haunted by curriculum and students being passed along, not being able to read, decode, or even begin to understand how many ways you can spell long /a/. I am pained for teachers because of a lack of time and materials, and the monumental task of teaching children to read efficiently when, often, they are given a curriculum to teach that doesn’t make sense. Through COVID, I created four Literacy Kits including word sorts and activities that actually go with a story for fluency. For instance, give a child a word sort with short vowel words, color-coded for success and for building confidence, then give them a story with the words. Make sense? Teach a child the floss rule and then give them a story with the floss words in the story. It’s a simple concept and I was tired of skills being taught in isolation. Teachers simply do not have the luxury of time and often money to make all of their own resources so I did it with my Reading Specialist daughter who shares my philosophies. I have been a teacher for more than 20 years and through COVID, was weary for all educators and what we faced. More importantly, I was sickened for the children not having the skills needed to be readers when there is evidence that this is preventable in most cases. I lose sleep! Emily and other current journalists are on to something and I am appalled that we, in education, are still looking at this information as brand new. The articles from schools around the country making changes is great, but so late. Our kids are suffering and they need not do so.
I have been a reading specialist and am currently an Orton-Gillingham Master Teacher. I have been haunted by curriculum and students being passed along, not being able to read, decode, or even begin to understand how many ways you can spell long /a/. I am pained for teachers because of a lack of time and materials, and the monumental task of teaching children to read efficiently when, often, they are given a curriculum to teach that doesn’t make sense. Through COVID, I created four Literacy Kits including word sorts and activities that actually go with a story for fluency. For instance, give a child a word sort with short vowel words, color-coded for success and for building confidence, then give them a story with the words. Make sense? Teach a child the floss rule and then give them a story with the floss words in the story. It’s a simple concept and I was tired of skills being taught in isolation. Teachers simply do not have the luxury of time and often money to make all of their own resources so I did it with my Reading Specialist daughter who shares my philosophies. I have been a teacher for more than 20 years and through COVID, was weary for all educators and what we faced. More importantly, I was sickened for the children not having the skills needed to be readers when there is evidence that this is preventable in most cases. I lose sleep! Emily and other current journalists are on to something and I am appalled that we, in education, are still looking at this information as brand new. The articles from schools around the country making changes is great, but so late. Our kids are suffering and they need not do so.
I am a reading specialist, National Board certified, with a master’s in elementary reading and I have taught for over 30 years in a large urban school district. My last position was as a primary grade interventionist. Most teachers I know have never heard of cueing. I have serious doubts about how prevalent this practice was/is. How can we continue to blame this for our country’s “reading problem” when less than half of our teachers are actually doing it?
A middle ground exists between phonics and Look-Say/Balanced Literacy(guessing): Linguistic Reading of patterns that goes all the way back to the first new world reader, the Bay Horn Book. Using patterns of word endings in vertical display(ladders) reading from bottom to top in game format is essentially an “Etude” for teaching and practice for individuals and groups, esp. for slow or non-readers. Most(95%) of persons have language in the left brain and the we read from right to left with more exposures/inputs needed in the right visual field. This linguistic approach fulfills this need for right field stimulation. For true lefties(5%) invert the text and read from right to left(upside down)–later they are able to read left to right but need success first. Knowing some brain science is helpful.