Like all educational topics, the debate over how to teach reading is intense and highly political. Nicholas Lemann’s article thoroughly depicts the ongoing saga that has been raging for roughly 100 years. I am not a language arts teacher, however, the issue of which method to teach is similar to many issues in math.
The article introduces two approaches to teach reading – whole language and phonics based. Whole language holds that ‘learning to read and write English is analogous to learning to speak it – a natural, unconscious process best fostered by unstructured immersion’. (Lemann 129) If you were a student in a whole language classroom you would typically read works that are filled with difficult vocabulary and also read in large groups. On the other hand phonic theory holds that learning to read is similar to learning ‘music notation’ in which mastery of a set of symbols comes first. About nine days ago our MTC spent a few hours in class debating problems and relevant issues in education. Anything relating to education is a difficult issue to debate because everyone has an opinion and often feel as though their position is best.
After reading this article it seems as though there is NO best solution but rather the ‘pendulum’ will continue to swing back and forth between the two theories. During the 80’s whole language instruction took off and the phonics camp grew weaker. Recently though low test scores in classrooms throughout California have led to more teachers using the phonics based approach. I found it interesting how easily the pendulum swung. Even relatively small studies swung the pendulum significantly. Reid Lyon, a strong figure in the fight for phonics in the classroom funded a study of 285 children in a poor neighborhood in Houston found that phonics led to higher reading scores. It seems as though one small study can affect so much funding and curriculum development.
I believe that give a master teacher, similar to the team teachers that give up their time to mentor 1st and 2nd year teachers at MTC Summer School, a curriculum based on either phonics or whole language approach and the students will experience success. Even though I’ve only been a classroom teacher for about a eight months now I have certainly seen the affect the quality of teacher has on learning. Even though politicians and government officials will always have an opinion an expert teacher can negate almost any disadvantages.
One fear I do have though is that students are solely being taught to score high on the state test and many other benefits of school are forgotten, such as the love of learning and reading. I experience this fear frequently in my own classroom. This year I spent a great deal of time on basic math skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division because I thought it was important for the kids to be able to be in, for example, a food store and calculate the cost of their groceries or at least know how much change to get back. Recently though my principal talked to me about how we need to solely teach to the test and sure, it’s great that they know how to calculate those things mentally but we can now just spend a day on those skills since they can use a calculator on the MCT2. As a first year teacher I responded ‘Yes Sir, I will do that from now on’ but it does worry me down the road that the children may not be able to fully benefit from school because so much of our focus is on the MCT2.
Overall I found this article very interesting and informative. About 90% of the 7th grade mathematics MCT2 is word problems so this will prove very beneficial in my continued efforts to build up my 105 students comprehension skills.
No comments:
Post a Comment