Much has been written about how best to teach reading. The well-documented reading wars, featuring phonics vs. whole language instruction, is still playing out with phonics now in the ascendancy. The current trend toward measuring reading with word fluency exams like the DIBELS and overall reading ability measured by machine-scored multiple choice tests certainly favors the phonics approach. But how was reading taught in the past? If the reader is more than 30 years old, what methods were used to teach you? To get at the answer, we asked Frances (Childs) Myers, long-time reading consultant for the Kennewick School District, to describe the reading program in 1970. Here is what she wrote:
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Children entering fourth or fifth grade in the Kennewick schools in the early seventies could anticipate being placed in a grade with other children of the same age. They could also expect to be taught at their learning level, rather than their grade level. There were several events in the mid-sixties that led to some fundamental changes in the intermediate grades which challenged teachers to individualize instruction.
A survey, sent to all teachers in intermediate grades asking them to define where they needed help, revealed they wanted assistance in reaching those children who were unable to read in the textbooks provided for them at that grade level. As a result of this survey, a reading consultant was hired, and soon thereafter an instrument called a Standard Reading Inventory was put into use,
The Standard Reading inventory was designed to place children at their Instructional level of reading for instruction. and at a level called Independent for practice. At the Independent level a child reads freely, widely, and with great pleasure and should be given an opportunity for much of this reading. At the Instructional level, the teacher will provide assistance and the child will be challenged. Little growth occurs at the third level which is called the Frustration level.
The Title I Grants which were received in the mid-sixties allowed the district to hire reading teachers who could assist teachers, and help them to place children in materials where they could learn and grow. No longer would children be taught at their frustration level. It was considered normal to advance a student who was able to read perhaps at the second or third grade level, into the fifth grade- along with others in his age group and to be taught at the level where he could succeed.
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One of my recollections of the program in those days was that a goal was to make reading enjoyable and to foster life-long reading. Supplemental materials, such as the Bill Martin series, were available to spark the interest of every child. Reading was fun! Of course I am an old fuddy duddy now and I remember those days through rose-colored glasses. There must be merit in turning reading into drudgery with the goal of passing some district or state mandated test. I just don’t seem to be able to find it.
I may have dismissed the DIBELS as not having much value, which is probably not completely fair, but here is what Wikipedia has to say:
“Teachers sometimes remark that students subject to regular DIBELS testing throughout their K-3 years come to view reading as a meaningless exercise in making sounds or saying words. If this is the case, then these students would be severely handicapped in reading more complex texts later on, since an important strategy used in developing reading vocabulary is using contextual meaning to infer the meaning of an unknown word. If the reading process is viewed as inherently meaningless, students rely too much on orthographic rules, which are unreliable in English.”
That is certainly not something I want to happen.
I received this note from Fran and she has allowed me to post it in the comment section:
“Thank you Bob, the words you wrote were so appropriate. The children who come to us–the raw material, so to speak, come from so many different environments, and function at so many different levels-from a child already reading to a child who has had nothing in his environment to enrich his ability to learn to read. A problem to tackle-but never to solve if we expect children to all learn alike and at the same rate.” Fran
Ain’t it the truth!