I think, too, students weren’t making progress in comprehension because they lacked background knowledge. Kids definitely need phonics and they also need a rich curriculum of science and history and geography and art and music. It’s too bad phonics somehow got blamed for poor comprehension, instead of the real culprit.

I think we should also extrapolate from this—if kids are reading to learn content, it’s usually best presented below their level, so that their effort is out toward context instead of reading skills. If they’re reading to practice/improve reading, obviously that should be at/just above. I think this applies at much higher levels than we think because, Vygotsky.

The Knowledge Gap is a great read on the comprehension piece- it also helps when kids can use decodables for practice, but also have access to audio- either on their own audio or read to- and on grade level or above so the comprehension and vocab is building, but not being held back by their decoding level.

I don’t think I can agree that “reading is supposed to be FUN.” I certainly believe that reading should be an ENJOYABLE experience and that “fun” can be an outcome. I was fortunate enough to have a father and grandfather, both of whom were self educated. Both read voraciously. Neither had much formal education but both were strong believers in reading and read to me daily when I was a youngster. They introduced me to our local public library and its librarians when I was a small child. Through all this I came to understand that life was made larger through reading. Sometimes this was fun, sometimes not but reading was always an enjoyable experience.

Before COVID-19 I served as a reading companion (tutor) in the local elementary school. I was trained that we do not use phonics -at all. Stressed me out. I agree the pendulum swung too far in the opposite side. I would encourage my students to read and then re-read so they could basically tell me the story the third time. For every grade level instructional book we finished I would often reward them with a subject specific “fun” book to read. It was no small feat. I miss it.

Sentence diagraming was taught in my elementary education during the early 50's and have served me well throughout my life.

I am soooo in my head on this one! Came into teaching in the hey day of balanced literacy and my own path to reading was in the whole language craze. I’m a math coach now, so haven’t kept up with reading research, but Science of Reading is something I’m looking more into. I don’t disagree with anything I’m reading here, either. Any easily digestible resources for a mama who would like to learn more?

So good!!! So true!!!! And the reason for many of the issues that students have such poor ability to even read simple sentences 😞.

I suspect that teaching reading in a school environment (20 plus kids) is an entirely different beast than teaching reading at home. And I’m not sure it makes sense to try to apply successes in one to the other. I’m pretty sure all three of my kids would have learned to read regardless of whatever instruction we had at home, but if they had been in a class, the story would have been different.

I used phonetic instruction (Teach…100 Easy Lessons .., Phonics Pathways, and The Ordinary Parent’s Guide…) in teaching my children to read. I was baffled when each one went through a ‘guess the word’ phase. I queried myself, “They know the sounds the letters and combinations make, why are they guessing like they did not receive this instruction?” I have a hypothesis as to why, but was wondering if any others have had a similar experience?

This is so helpful! My little reader is struggling a bit. (Covid learning year last year). He’s chugging along but this helps me offer the “right” reading resources at home this year (back in PS).

All About Reading is a curriculum that covers phonics, comprehension, and literary concepts like poetry, stanza, onomatopoeia, synonyms, homophones, etc.

Vicki Davitz Carney

June Bishop

Ah, the old “I got distracted by piglets” excuse.

Very informative.

Can't like this enough. SPOT ON.

Very good article! I call the student “below level” fiction reads “Junk Food Books.” They are fun, delicious, and fast… and you don’t get a lot of nutrients out of them. Then I tell them about my favorite Junk Food books: fairytales. It is the Wendy’s of the book world, and Mom does it too: light escapism! Yet we have our serious books as well: things we want to learn. Adults today, if they read at all, rarely expand from the junk food diet. My oldest has two books on his nightstand: the junk food and the serious, and he knows the role each serves for him.