This is the Reading Instruction Show.
I'm your host, as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.
Today, we're talking about an article that was found in the New Yorker, September 1,
2023, called The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy by Jessica Winter.
Now, part one, this is going to be at least two, maybe three podcasts, but part one is
about reading workshop.
Now, Jessica Winters is an editor at the New Yorker, where she also writes about family
and education.
She's also the author of some novels, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but we are
analyzing this article, September 1, The Rise and Fall of Vibes-Based Literacy.
Now, if I were to give this a title, I would have called it The Rise of Ignorance-Based
Editors, or The Rise and Eventual Fall of Clown-Based Writers About Literacy, or The
Rise of Hubris-Based Journalism.
That would have been more accurate for this article.
It is written by a clown.
Now, I mean that in the most complimentary terms.
A clown in literacy terms is a person who thinks they know much about literacy when
in fact their knowledge base is very shallow and disjointed.
And what makes them clowns is their clownery.
This is when they write or speak as if they know a lot about things with which they actually
know very little clownery.
And we laugh at clowns.
I laugh at Jessica Winter.
I also laugh at Emily Hanford because they're clowns and they don't realize that they're
clowns.
They see themselves as great crusaders for the benefit of our children.
What about the children?
Who protect the children?
Now Jessica, just so you know, the literacy research community, real literacy experts
are laughing and laughing and laughing because clowns are funny.
But clowns are also sad.
And the sad thing about these clowns is that they've been given a platform.
Emily Hanford at American Public Media and Jessica Winter at the New Yorker.
Now this platform should be used responsibly, but it's not.
And the general public assumes that since it comes from one of these platforms that
it must be true.
Emily Hanford must know what she's talking about.
After all, she's on the radio.
And they don't let just anybody talk on the radio, you know.
And Jessica Winter's piece was published in the New Yorker.
That's a magazine.
And I'm sure the editors would want their writers to check their facts and know a little
bit about what they're writing about.
But Emily Hanford and Jessica Winter are clowns.
Emily Hanford's clown suit is that of a literacy expert.
Jessica Winter's clown suit is that of someone who thinks she's not a clown.
And here's the funny, funny, sad thing.
Some school districts and even academic conferences are silly enough to pay Emily Hanford to
travel and spread her clownery.
And that's when the clown moves from funny to sad.
But let's go back to Jessica Winter and her clown-based article found in the New Yorker.
Jessica opens up her clown show disguised as a serious article by describing an incident
that occurred at her home during COVID as part of reading instruction.
Now keep in mind that during COVID, teachers were all learning how to adapt what they do
in the classroom to online home instruction.
Now, Jessica was working with her kindergarten child and she read the term reading workshop
in her child's schedule.
Based on her child's failures during this very artificial time of teaching, Jessica
Winter concluded based on a sample size of one that A, she understood what reading workshop
was, B, it was a failure for her daughter and C, that it must be a failure for everybody.
She generalized to a larger population based on a sample size of one.
Could you imagine any researcher coming to conclusions based on a sample size of one?
One is the loneliest number.
You can't generalize to larger numbers, larger populations based on a sample size of one.
But I understand personal experiences are often used as an impetus to investigate more
deeply.
And sadly, I wish Jessica Winter would have done this.
Do they teach you nothing in journalism school?
I call it vibes based journalism.
It's obvious that Jessica Winter knows nothing about reading workshops.
And I'll explain what reading workshop is in a minute, but let's talk about vibes based
journalism.
She uses the term vibes based to demean what she thought reading workshop to be or balanced
literacy to be.
So let's talk about vibes based journalism.
First rule of journalism.
And I know all about journalism because I took a college class.
The first rule of journalism is if you're going to write an article in the New Yorker,
you should know what you're talking about.
The second rule of journalism is to know about a little bit about what you're investigating.
So you know what to look for.
And the third rule of journalism is to try to be objective in what you see and write.
Now I understand the New Yorker article was not journalism per se.
It was an article written in a magazine by a journalist, but people were confused.
And so that they don't get confused, a disclaimer should have been put on top of the article.
It should have said this article contains just a bunch of stuff Jessica Winter felt
like writing.
Any semblance to accurate information is purely coincidental.
That would have kept people from getting confused.
So let's talk about reading workshop, what it is.
Jessica Winter's portrayal of reading workshop is clown based.
Not only is it not accurate, but it's cartoonish.
Reading workshop is not a method with step by step procedures that must be followed with
fidelity like a recipe.
Rather it's an approach to reading instruction based on research and research based theory
related to how human beings learn literacy.
Reading workshop is not standardized.
In a reading workshop, what you see would be based on the teacher, the students, age
level, etc.
And what works with one class may not always work with another.
Thus, in each teacher's classroom using reading workshop, you would see different things.
Now later in her article, Jessica Winter, who obviously knows nothing about literacy
instruction, she describes reading workshop using very, very confusing terms.
Leading to the idea that reading workshop is just higgly-piggly, but reading workshop
is structured, it's planned, and there's very direct and very explicit instruction based
on the individual students' needs.
And it's strongly research based using real reading science based on how real humans
best learn.
Now during a 40 to 90 minute session, you might see some or all of the following elements.
You would see independent reading.
Yes, students selecting and reading real books.
This is an important part of reading workshop, but it's only one part.
If you want to get better at a skill, you need to practice that skill.
We want students to get better at reading.
They need reading practice.
This means that classrooms need lots of books in them, lots and lots and lots of good books.
And students should be able to find these good books, books at their independent level
and below.
Second one is literacy logs.
There's usually a literacy log or a journal of some kind.
This is where students respond in writing to some aspect of what they've read that
day.
Usually the teacher puts a prompt on the board before reading so that students can think
about that prompt as they're reading.
It could be a prompt like describe an interesting character or describe where the story took
place or an interesting problem or event.
Record an interesting or important word and tell what you think it means.
Find and record words with the long A sound.
You're limited only by your imagination.
You get a sense of how students are processing the story.
You can use this to reinforce letter patterns or letter skills.
The third thing is there's usually a whole class mini lesson.
This is a mini lesson is where you use very direct and very explicit instruction to teach
things.
A small mini lesson, mini anywhere from two to 10 to 15 minutes.
Here you teach phonics or letter sounds among other things.
Yes, you teach phonics or letter sounds among other things.
I'll repeat it again so it's not misconstrued.
You teach phonics and letter sounds among other things and as recommended by the National
Reading Panel, a variety of types of phonics instruction would be included.
You'd use synthetic phonics, embedded phonics, large unit phonics, analytic phonics, phonics
by spelling.
National Reading Panel says one is not better than the other, all types should be included.
There would also be mini lessons to teach comprehension skills and word identification
skills and vocabulary and grammar and all the things you would find in a scope and sequence
chart and more.
Yes, you can teach skills based on the scope and sequence chart, but the best scope and
sequence of all is your students based on what you see happening on what they need, on what
the students need.
That becomes the basis of the mini lesson.
There would also be number four, targeted mini lessons.
These are small flexible group mini lessons where students that you see who are struggling
with a skill might need a little bit extra.
They're called up front to the table to work on targeted skills related to any of these
things, letter sounds, letter patterns, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension.
These groups are flexible based on what you see.
More advanced readers might be called up front for more advanced skills.
These groups are flexible.
The fifth thing would be conferences and there are several types of conferences.
This is where the teacher talks to the reader about what the reading sets goals for the
types of books and the number of books and listens to the child read.
As the teacher listens, notes are taken.
You understand you're keeping track.
This is good assessment.
There's also small group conferences where you're talking with students in small group
and listening to them read, drive by conferences, student to student conferences, all the while
the teacher is noting and recording what that teacher sees.
There's also students talking.
Conversation is important for language development.
It's an important part of reading workshop.
Conversation enhances vocabulary, language development, reading fluency and comprehension.
You would have structured conversations around books, taking place in a whole class setting,
in a small group setting or in pairs.
Conversation.
Let's talk about then, these are just some of the things.
You'd see some or all of them depending on the day.
Let's talk about transfer.
If you think reading is just sounding out words and reading class should just be a bunch
of sounding out word instruction like obviously Emily Hanford does in Jessica Winters, you're
not going to understand what's going on in reading workshop.
But just because you don't understand a thing doesn't mean the thing is not effective just
because you don't understand it.
And here's the thing during COVID all teachers were adapting on the fly.
They're trying to make their classes relevant.
But it's very hard to transfer the essence of reading workshop to an online environment.
That's important to understand just because you saw reading workshop in a schedule doesn't
mean that that was replicated at home.
Now let's talk about the 10 pillars of effective reading instruction.
Jessica Winter, Emily Hanford, if you're going to write about reading instruction, I
would assume that you know and understand the 10 pillars.
These are 10 elements that should be found in any comprehensive reading program.
When reading workshop contains these 10 pillars, I'm going to go over each one of them.
Number one is phonemic awareness, manipulating sounds within words and putting sounds together
to create words.
That usually happens at the preschool, kindergarten and early first grade level when students
are reading comfortably, reading level one it's discontinued.
Phonics instruction and word work is the second one.
Phonics instruction related to letter sounds and patterns.
All teachers believe in phonics instruction.
It's not the what of phonics instruction, it's the how and the how much.
Three activities and instruction to develop all three neurocognitive systems used for
word recognition.
More on this below, but you need to know that we use more than letters to recognize words
as we read.
Letters are found within words.
Words are found within sentences.
Sentences are found within context.
More on this in a minute.
But four, activities and instruction for word identification.
If you don't immediately recognize a word, you need to consciously employ some strategy
to figure out what that word is.
And there's four strategies that you consciously employ.
Phonics, context, more themic analysis and analogy.
The fifth pillar of effective comprehensive reading instruction, daily reading practice.
We said it before, you need to practice at a skill to get better.
Reading practice and able students to practice the skills learned in authentic reading context
so that they're able to transfer those skills to other reading contexts.
Six, social interaction and conversations around good books.
This develops higher level thinking and it is stated earlier oral language enhances the
development of language skills, vocabulary, comprehension and makes creates stronger interpersonal
connections within the classroom.
Number seven, authentic writing experiences.
These are activities in which students describe their ideas and their experiences.
And writing is the best way to develop the syntactic queuing system.
More on that in a minute.
Modern instruction, that's the eighth pillar of effective reading instruction.
Instruction here is related to the cognitive operations associated with comprehending.
These are cognitive operations thinking such as inferring, predicting, summarizing, story
grammar.
But this also involves study skill strategies related to expository text.
The ninth pillar is vocabulary or activities to develop word knowledge.
We don't teach vocabulary as much as we create the conditions where students can learn and
add depth and dimension to the words.
Children learn anywhere from three to five thousand words a year.
They don't learn these using vocabulary worksheets.
So we need activities to add depth and dimension to get these into students, productive and
receptive vocabulary.
And the 10th pillar, the last thing that should be found in a comprehensive reading
in program is attention to the effective element to motivation and emotions.
We need to attend to the emotions involved in reading.
We also need to attend to the desire or motivation to read.
A reading teacher's number one job is to help students fall in love with books.
After that, 98% of your instruction is taken care of.
A reading teacher's number two job is not to frustrate or humiliate students.
Now the last thing about this first part.
In her article, Jessica Winter says three very clowny things and you say a lot of clowny
things here and I'm going to call you out for it.
I'm sorry.
Clowny thing number one, the first thing she says, quote, they figure out words based
on a Q in strategy.
The reader asks herself if the word looks right, sounds right and makes sense in context.
What a clowny thing to say.
Let me clear this up.
Let me unclown this for you.
The Q in system is not a strategy.
It's not a skill.
It's simply an understanding that our brain uses three interacting in interconnected
systems to automatically recognize words during the act of reading.
Yes, we use phonetic information, but we also use semantic information or context and syntactic
information grammar and word order to recognize words and create meaning.
Good readers are creating meaning.
And when we read for meaning, we see letters in the context of words.
We see words in the context of sentences.
And we see sentences in the context of context.
We use context or semantic information as well as syntax or grammar and word order along
with letter clues to help us recognize words and create meaning.
She goes on to say as part of clown thing number one, to see if the word looks right,
sounds right and makes sense.
And this isn't quite accurate.
But no matter what approach we're using, we want to develop what's called metacognition.
That means thinking about thinking.
We want students to pause to see if what they're reading makes sense.
Yes, metacognition.
Clowny thing number two, Jessica Winter also says, my daughter was taught to use picture
power guess words based on accompanying illustrations.
Yes, Jessica, this is developmentally appropriate for kindergarten students to do.
This helps develop metacognition again, thinking about thinking, pausing to see if what you're
reading makes sense within the context of sentences.
Young readers should consider a picture.
Yes.
Not to guess at words.
No, guess is a buzzword that's pulled out of context.
Asking what makes sense in context is not guessing.
And here's clown thing number three that Jessica Winter says, she memorized high frequency
sight words using a stack of laminated flashcards and the who, etc.
Yes, they're called sight words, Xeno sight words, dull sight words, fry sight words.
There's different sight words and they have different.
These are the most frequent words that students encounter and students should be able to recognize
these most frequent words by sight.
Jessica, if you had ever read a research article about reading, you might have encountered
the term sight words to reduce the need for processing.
There are 100 to 200 depending words that students should recognize by sight.
They shouldn't have to sound them out and you don't memorize them per se.
You learn to recognize them by sight.
When students leave kindergarten, they should know anywhere from 25 to 50 sight words depending
on the study.
But this is not the same as the look say approach of the sixties.
These are called sight words, sight words.
So a little preview of our next podcast.
This is almost the end of part one.
Jessica Winter, who knows nothing about literacy instruction, seems not to know the difference
between units of study, balanced literacy and reading workshop.
We're going to flesh that out.
And she mentions the science of reading.
And here's the big question for you science of reading advocates.
What exactly do you want to see more of?
And what exactly do you want to see less of?
What behaviors or skills do you want to see more of and less of?
Let's define our terms.
This has been the reading instruction show.
I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.