We chose our children’s schools the way most parents did. We looked for a clean facility, friendly staff and value system that matched ours. Most of all, though, we looked for a strong reading program. We knew, even before research told us so, that if our children didn’t learn to read well early on, they would find it hard to learn anything else in school.
Not knowing for sure what we were looking for, we picked a school that spent part of every day on direct phonics instruction. According to research, this kind of instruction is especially helpful for children who struggle to match the sounds they hear to the letters they see on the page. In my daughter Jamie’s first-grade class, it meant that very few kids fell through the cracks and most learned to read pretty well by the end of the year.
Sadly, the daily direct phonics instruction ensured that Jamie spent at least one hour of every school day bored out of her gourd. That’s because she had cracked the letter/sound code all on her own, announcing to us one day in Kindergarten that she had “learned to read.” She proved it too, reading whole paragraphs from books she had never seen or heard before.
If I were looking for a school today, here is what I would look for:
- Teachers who talk more about strategies and results than they do about a particular reading program. One-size-fits-all programs rarely work when it comes to reading. Teachers have to be flexible enough to adapt their own teaching styles to meet the needs of the real students in their classroom. They must also believe that all children can read and make literacy an important part of every day.
- Does the school offer balanced literacy instruction? Research shows there are five essential components of reading that children must be taught in order to learn to read:
- comprehension strategies (to understand, remember and communicate what is read);
- phonemic awareness (hearing the individual sounds that make up language);
- phonics (learning the relationships between the sounds they hear and the letters they see);
- reading fluency (reading rapidly and accurately enough to understand what they read); and
- vocabulary development (learning the meaning and pronunciation of many words).
A good reading program will use all five, but not necessarily with all children for the same amount of time. I would also look for balance in the kinds of literacy activities offered--activities like writing and reading alone, writing and reading with adults, and being read to by adults.
Jamie survived her phonics sessions with good humor. Fortunately, her school valued balanced instruction, even then, challenging her understanding of what she read. Even better, she spent some time with teachers who assessed her progress and matched their instruction to her readiness to learn.
Today, she reads whole books at a time as she studies for her college exams. Despite—or maybe because of—her mixed experiences in school, she’s preparing to be a teacher. Her memories of “endless phonics” have inspired a determination to match her teaching to your child’s needs.
Linda Wacyk is a former EduGuide editor.