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This is the Reading and Instruction Show. I'm your host as always, Dr. Andy Johnson.

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The topic of today's podcast, a Humpty Dumpty and Approach versus a Child Center Approach

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to Early Literacy Instruction. Now, there are two basic approaches to literacy instruction

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for students in their early grades. One is a skills-based approach, which I call a Humpty

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Dumpty and Approach, and a Child-centered Approach. Now, both approaches involve explicit and direct

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instruction of skills. The difference is not in the WHAT of explicit skills instruction, rather,

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it's in the HOW and the HOW much of explicit skills instruction. So, let's take a look at a

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skills-based approach to literacy instruction for early children, early learning, and that would

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be preschool, kindergarten, grades one or two. A skills-based approach to literacy instruction

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is built on the assumption that children must acquire certain skills before they're able to

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read. We must make them ready to read. It assumes as well that a great deal of explicit instruction

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must be used to teach a prescribed set of skills related to letter sounds,

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diagrams, magic, ars, the schwa sound, vowel protectors, CVC patterns, CVCV patterns,

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CCVV patterns, separating words into vowels. You get the idea. For writing, the skills-based

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approach says explicit instruction must be used to teach a prescribed set of skills related to

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grammar and punctuation and letter formation, such as handwriting and spelling. These are all

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necessary before children are able to write. We need to make them ready to write, to which I say

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in the most respectful way possible, pish posh. This does not reflect what we know about the brain

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and human learning. It's a Humpty Dumpty approach where the complex act of reading and writing

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are broken down into teeny tiny pieces. Beginning readers are taught to read by putting all the

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teeny tiny reading pieces together, one teeny tiny piece at a time. And when a teeny tiny reading

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skill is taught and mastered, the skills-based researchers all over the world screech with

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the light and flap their teeny tiny arms about, exclaiming, see, we told you a skills-based

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approach is better than all the rest. And then they march around the room with high knees,

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happily singing their teeny tiny little songs. Science of reading, science of reading,

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oh we're so happy with science of reading. However, mastering a teeny tiny skill does not mean

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that students know what to do with that teeny tiny skill when they're reading or writing.

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Mastering teeny tiny skills does nothing to enhance their ability to create meaning or to engage

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in thinking. And at its essence, reading and writing are thinking, not responding to letters

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stimuli like a mouse pressing a bar to get a mouse pellet. So let's take a look at a child-centered

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approach to literacy instruction. A child-centered approach to literacy instruction is based on

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how developing children best learn. Children learn best by messing about, by playing, by doing,

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by watching. They also learn best by first approximating the end product in developmentally

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appropriate ways. This means that children are not made ready to read or to write through skills

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instruction. Instead, children are already reading and writing and should be taught specific skills

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as they're ready for them. To children, the teeny tiny skills that are taught in the skills-based

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approach to literacy instruction are a series of meaningless abstraction that have nothing to do

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with reading and celebrating stories and expressing real ideas. It also does not reflect what we know

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about the human brain and learning. As I said, humans learn complex skills best from whole to part,

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not part to whole. That is, they see the whole, they practice the whole, and learn related skills

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within the context of the whole. This means that we first get children reading and writing,

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that's the whole, then teach the skills, the part, in the context of their reading. In this way,

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the teeny tiny skills that are taught along the way are relevant and make sense. Well, how can they

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read if they don't know how to read, you say? And that reflects ignorance. Reading, you can read

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with them. That's scaffolded oral reading. It's called picture reading where they use more picture

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clues than letter clues, but then you teach letter sounds within the context of that. When a child

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centered approach is used, the child becomes the curriculum. New skills are taught as the child

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is ready for them. It's recognized as well that we aren't simply putting teeny tiny cards together

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on an emotionalist machine. Rather, we're engaged in real human learning with real human beings.

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Real human learning for children is intertwined and interconnected with children's language,

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social, emotional, cognitive and physical development. It's part of an interconnected system. You can't

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address a single teeny tiny element without considering the whole system. A child centered

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approach is based on theories put forth by Piaget and Weigatzky, Eric Erickson, James Marsha, Montessori,

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these were outstanding research whose theories were developed by observing real children learning

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within natural settings. They did not isolate variables in controlled settings like they were

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studying mice in a skinner box. Donald Graves, Brian Campbell, Jane Hansen, Reggie Rootman

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and others also observed real students engaged in authentic reading. Based on their holistic

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learning theories, we know that the basic elements of children's literacy emerges best, emerges

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naturally as they're exposed to literacy learning conditions. Skills related to reading and writing

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are taught and learned most effectively in the context of authentic reading and writing activities

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as students are ready for them. Teachers using child centered approaches to create literacy

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learning conditions whereby all children can develop their full literacy capacities. Teachers

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using these approaches, their goal is to enable children to develop their full literacy capacities.

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Child centered approaches have been shown to outperform skills based approaches in measures

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of reading and writing as well as reading comprehension and metacognitive knowledge.

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Now, two big ideas here. First, instruction of any kind must be developmentally appropriate

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in order for it to be effective. The second idea, children's global skills, global reading skills

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emerge faster if children are exposed to certain conditions and we're talking about

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global reading and writing skills, not teeny tiny little reading sub skills in measures of those.

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I realize that if one has been exposed to a skills based approach to reading instruction only,

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if that's the only approach that you have considered, the difference in this new perspective

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can be mind altering. However, paradigms are meant to be shifted when new patterns emerge.

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Theories are meant to be abandoned when they no longer account for all the data and when they

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cease to adequately explain phenomena. Clinging tightly with white knuckles to the teet of old

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ideas does not able one to evolve to stay the same is to engage in de-evolution. That is where

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the science of reading is taking us back to the sixties. It is ignoring the new research

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related to holistic learning. Now, let me say something about learning to speak

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and learning to read. Children's oral language abilities emerge naturally as they encounter

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language in authentic context. Their oral language, learning to speak and listen.

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Thinking about how children learn to speak and listen can help us understand the conditions

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necessary for learning to read and write. Now, this does not mean they're the same.

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This does not mean that reading instruction should replicate learning to speak and write,

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or that reading and writing occurs naturally like reading and writing. This is often the

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distorted version that the science of reading ideologists put forth. This is what they distort

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holistic or meaning-based literacy to be. That's a distortion. Science of reading ideologists

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often describe what they're against as something that it's not. That is, they'll misrepresent

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and describe what they're against in distorted and perverted ways that are in no way what the

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thing is that they're against. Even those who are against would be against their distorted version

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of what they're against. Even those who are against would be against their distorted version

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of what they're against. That is simply not the way to go. If you are against something, for God's

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sakes, take the time to actually learn what it is you're against. I've seen online and heard and

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listened to people rally and squawked their little arms about Ken Goodman and what an evil person

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he is and how bad and misguided he was without ever reading a book or an article that he wrote.

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Have some intellectual integrity, would you science of reading ideologists? If you think

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Ken Goodman was wrong, okay, all well and good. We have to have a variety of ideas. Not everyone

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should agree, but read a book or article, find an idea with which you disagree. Don't pull it out

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of context, but let's have the discussion. This isn't the Jerry Springer show where we shout at each

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other. Let's have the discussion. Now, let's consider how children learn to speak and listen.

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They're immersed in actual real life speaking experiences. They're provided small bits of

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instruction and modeling along the way in authentic contexts. They're encouraged to talk about things

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that make sense to them and are of interest to them. They learn to speak because they're using

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language for real purposes and we expect children to learn to speak differently and at different

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rates and at different times. We respond to children's oral speech instead of correcting them.

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Their early oral speech, we encourage their early attempts and successful approximations.

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We encourage creativity and humor and language is used in play and social interactions.

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Children learn to read and write best when they're immersed in authentic literacy experiences.

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They're provided small bits of instruction in authentic reading and writing contexts.

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They're encouraged to read and write about things that make sense and are of interest to them.

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They're reading and writing for real life purposes. When we expect them to learn to read and write

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differently and at different rates, when we encourage their early attempts and successful

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approximations, when we encourage their creativity and humor and when reading and writing are used

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in play and in social interaction, do not distort this. This does not mean that direct and explicit

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instruction are not used. They are. Again, direct and explicit instruction of phonemic awareness

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and phonics instruction. Everyone agrees with that. It's not the what of phonics instruction.

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It's the how and the how much of phonics instruction. All right, we've been looking at

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Humpty Dumpty and Approaches, teeny tiny little skills instruction. This has been the reading

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instruction show. I am your host, Dr. Andy Johnson.