This is the Reading and Instruction Show. I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.
The topic of today's podcast, a Humpty Dumpty and Approach versus a Child Center Approach
to Early Literacy Instruction. Now, there are two basic approaches to literacy instruction
for students in their early grades. One is a skills-based approach, which I call a Humpty
Dumpty and Approach, and a Child-centered Approach. Now, both approaches involve explicit and direct
instruction of skills. The difference is not in the WHAT of explicit skills instruction, rather,
it's in the HOW and the HOW much of explicit skills instruction. So, let's take a look at a
skills-based approach to literacy instruction for early children, early learning, and that would
be preschool, kindergarten, grades one or two. A skills-based approach to literacy instruction
is built on the assumption that children must acquire certain skills before they're able to
read. We must make them ready to read. It assumes as well that a great deal of explicit instruction
must be used to teach a prescribed set of skills related to letter sounds,
diagrams, magic, ars, the schwa sound, vowel protectors, CVC patterns, CVCV patterns,
CCVV patterns, separating words into vowels. You get the idea. For writing, the skills-based
approach says explicit instruction must be used to teach a prescribed set of skills related to
grammar and punctuation and letter formation, such as handwriting and spelling. These are all
necessary before children are able to write. We need to make them ready to write, to which I say
in the most respectful way possible, pish posh. This does not reflect what we know about the brain
and human learning. It's a Humpty Dumpty approach where the complex act of reading and writing
are broken down into teeny tiny pieces. Beginning readers are taught to read by putting all the
teeny tiny reading pieces together, one teeny tiny piece at a time. And when a teeny tiny reading
skill is taught and mastered, the skills-based researchers all over the world screech with
the light and flap their teeny tiny arms about, exclaiming, see, we told you a skills-based
approach is better than all the rest. And then they march around the room with high knees,
happily singing their teeny tiny little songs. Science of reading, science of reading,
oh we're so happy with science of reading. However, mastering a teeny tiny skill does not mean
that students know what to do with that teeny tiny skill when they're reading or writing.
Mastering teeny tiny skills does nothing to enhance their ability to create meaning or to engage
in thinking. And at its essence, reading and writing are thinking, not responding to letters
stimuli like a mouse pressing a bar to get a mouse pellet. So let's take a look at a child-centered
approach to literacy instruction. A child-centered approach to literacy instruction is based on
how developing children best learn. Children learn best by messing about, by playing, by doing,
by watching. They also learn best by first approximating the end product in developmentally
appropriate ways. This means that children are not made ready to read or to write through skills
instruction. Instead, children are already reading and writing and should be taught specific skills
as they're ready for them. To children, the teeny tiny skills that are taught in the skills-based
approach to literacy instruction are a series of meaningless abstraction that have nothing to do
with reading and celebrating stories and expressing real ideas. It also does not reflect what we know
about the human brain and learning. As I said, humans learn complex skills best from whole to part,
not part to whole. That is, they see the whole, they practice the whole, and learn related skills
within the context of the whole. This means that we first get children reading and writing,
that's the whole, then teach the skills, the part, in the context of their reading. In this way,
the teeny tiny skills that are taught along the way are relevant and make sense. Well, how can they
read if they don't know how to read, you say? And that reflects ignorance. Reading, you can read
with them. That's scaffolded oral reading. It's called picture reading where they use more picture
clues than letter clues, but then you teach letter sounds within the context of that. When a child
centered approach is used, the child becomes the curriculum. New skills are taught as the child
is ready for them. It's recognized as well that we aren't simply putting teeny tiny cards together
on an emotionalist machine. Rather, we're engaged in real human learning with real human beings.
Real human learning for children is intertwined and interconnected with children's language,
social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. It's part of an interconnected system. You can't
address a single teeny tiny element without considering the whole system. A child centered
approach is based on theories put forth by Piaget and Weigatzky, Eric Erickson, James Marsha, Montessori,
these were outstanding research whose theories were developed by observing real children learning
within natural settings. They did not isolate variables in controlled settings like they were
studying mice in a skinner box. Donald Graves, Brian Campbell, Jane Hansen, Reggie Rootman
and others also observed real students engaged in authentic reading. Based on their holistic
learning theories, we know that the basic elements of children's literacy emerges best, emerges
naturally as they're exposed to literacy learning conditions. Skills related to reading and writing
are taught and learned most effectively in the context of authentic reading and writing activities
as students are ready for them. Teachers using child centered approaches to create literacy
learning conditions whereby all children can develop their full literacy capacities. Teachers
using these approaches, their goal is to enable children to develop their full literacy capacities.
Child centered approaches have been shown to outperform skills based approaches in measures
of reading and writing as well as reading comprehension and metacognitive knowledge.
Now, two big ideas here. First, instruction of any kind must be developmentally appropriate
in order for it to be effective. The second idea, children's global skills, global reading skills
emerge faster if children are exposed to certain conditions and we're talking about
global reading and writing skills, not teeny tiny little reading sub skills in measures of those.
I realize that if one has been exposed to a skills based approach to reading instruction only,
if that's the only approach that you have considered, the difference in this new perspective
can be mind altering. However, paradigms are meant to be shifted when new patterns emerge.
Theories are meant to be abandoned when they no longer account for all the data and when they
cease to adequately explain phenomena. Clinging tightly with white knuckles to the teet of old
ideas does not able one to evolve to stay the same is to engage in de-evolution. That is where
the science of reading is taking us back to the sixties. It is ignoring the new research
related to holistic learning. Now, let me say something about learning to speak
and learning to read. Children's oral language abilities emerge naturally as they encounter
language in authentic context. Their oral language, learning to speak and listen.
Thinking about how children learn to speak and listen can help us understand the conditions
necessary for learning to read and write. Now, this does not mean they're the same.
This does not mean that reading instruction should replicate learning to speak and write,
or that reading and writing occurs naturally like reading and writing. This is often the
distorted version that the science of reading ideologists put forth. This is what they distort
holistic or meaning-based literacy to be. That's a distortion. Science of reading ideologists
often describe what they're against as something that it's not. That is, they'll misrepresent
and describe what they're against in distorted and perverted ways that are in no way what the
thing is that they're against. Even those who are against would be against their distorted version
of what they're against. Even those who are against would be against their distorted version
of what they're against. That is simply not the way to go. If you are against something, for God's
sakes, take the time to actually learn what it is you're against. I've seen online and heard and
listened to people rally and squawked their little arms about Ken Goodman and what an evil person
he is and how bad and misguided he was without ever reading a book or an article that he wrote.
Have some intellectual integrity, would you science of reading ideologists? If you think
Ken Goodman was wrong, okay, all well and good. We have to have a variety of ideas. Not everyone
should agree, but read a book or article, find an idea with which you disagree. Don't pull it out
of context, but let's have the discussion. This isn't the Jerry Springer show where we shout at each
other. Let's have the discussion. Now, let's consider how children learn to speak and listen.
They're immersed in actual real life speaking experiences. They're provided small bits of
instruction and modeling along the way in authentic contexts. They're encouraged to talk about things
that make sense to them and are of interest to them. They learn to speak because they're using
language for real purposes and we expect children to learn to speak differently and at different
rates and at different times. We respond to children's oral speech instead of correcting them.
Their early oral speech, we encourage their early attempts and successful approximations.
We encourage creativity and humor and language is used in play and social interactions.
Children learn to read and write best when they're immersed in authentic literacy experiences.
They're provided small bits of instruction in authentic reading and writing contexts.
They're encouraged to read and write about things that make sense and are of interest to them.
They're reading and writing for real life purposes. When we expect them to learn to read and write
differently and at different rates, when we encourage their early attempts and successful
approximations, when we encourage their creativity and humor and when reading and writing are used
in play and in social interaction, do not distort this. This does not mean that direct and explicit
instruction are not used. They are. Again, direct and explicit instruction of phonemic awareness
and phonics instruction. Everyone agrees with that. It's not the what of phonics instruction.
It's the how and the how much of phonics instruction. All right, we've been looking at
Humpty Dumpty and Approaches, teeny tiny little skills instruction. This has been the reading
instruction show. I am your host, Dr. Andy Johnson.