Video Explaining Phonics and Whole Language

[happybeachbum]

Great video explaining phonics and whole language.  Love that he mentions whole language and whole word is not the same

 

MEANING-FIRST VS. CODE-FIRST READING INSTRUCTION

 

[ElizabethB]

Whole language and whole word are not the same, that point of his is correct.

But, I've seen hundreds of failures from schools that teach with the current iteration of balanced literacy.  The way they teach sight words leads to guessing, and all the three cuing they teach is all based on things that lead to guessing.  Also, the children I've seen have actually not learned much phonics, they are primarily taught to guess, with phonics as a last resort and they aren't even taught all the sound spelling correspondences.

He also ignores the fact that 70% of the Dolch and Fry words are easily decodable, and all but 5 of the rest can be taught by adding in a few rules and patterns.

He also doesn't mention any of the hundreds of studies showing the superiority of phonics over balanced literacy.

And, finally, he ignores recent brain research showing that the brains of good readers are processing words in the area of the brain that processes sounds and oral language, and the letters and letter teams are being processed in parallel, very fast.

 

[happybeachbum]

The thing is sight words and Whole Word are two different things as well.  Whole Word is just another way to do phonics.  It's called Analytic Phonics or Implicit phonics

[ElizabethB]

I've remediated hundreds of children taught with analytic phonics, and in giving out grade level tests to thousands of children over the last 24 years as a volunteer literacy tutor, the only schools that have had less than 10% of the kids reading below grade level used systematic phonics programs with few sight words.  The schools using analytic phonics vary from 30 to 50% below grade level, with the worst failure rates at schools that did speed drills with sight words.  The 30% rate was schools that had analytic phonics but incorporated a good spelling program based on phonics.  One private school in Little Rock (and there the schools were so bad that most of my military friends that normally put their kids in the public schools used the private school or homeschooled), I didn't find a single failure from, but I tested only around 40 students from that school, not as large a number as I usually test from a school to get a reliable failure rate.  The private schools that used a good phonics program all had very low failure rates.  Also, one public school in Virginia used a good phonics program with few sight words coupled with a very good spelling program and had a very low failure rate.

Also, the research shows that systematic phonics works better than analytic phonics, here is one summary of the research, there are dozens of studies out there:

http://www.fivefromfive.org.au/explicit-phonics-instruction/

[HomeAgain]

The guy used a 'look-say' book (Dick And Jane) to illustrate his point with phonics.  I raised my eyebrows at that point and kept them raised for the rest of the video.  I won't be sharing his convoluted, poorly thought out definitions with friends.

[happybeachbum]

I've heard the same with synthetic phonics.  Either way it's what works for individual  children.  Not all ways will.  

Dick and Jane is a good example.  I remember having to read those books in Catholic school.  I remember thinking the same example he gave.  I also remember not relating to the family.  My mom taught me to read with a children's bible and other books probably above my age level.  I was able to understand bigger more complex sentences compared to Dick and Jane.  Though the books did give me confidence in my reading g.

[ElizabethB]

15 minutes ago, happybeachbum said:

I've heard the same with synthetic phonics.  Either way it's what works for individual  children.  Not all ways will.  

Dick and Jane is a good example.  I remember having to read those books in Catholic school.  I remember thinking the same example he gave.  I also remember not relating to the family.  My mom taught me to read with a children's bible and other books probably above my age level.  I was able to understand bigger more complex sentences compared to Dick and Jane.  Though the books did give me confidence in my reading g.

 

The Dick and Jane books are whole word readers, not phonics.

 A certain percentage of children will learn to read regardless of the method you use, but there is a percentage that only learn to read well with phonics.  Therefore, if you use phonics a higher percentage of children overall will learn to read well.  Here is the graphic showing this distribution with percentages on the International Dyslexia Association's website:

https://dyslexiaida.org/ladder-of-reading-infographic-structured-literacy-helps-all-students/

Also, when I teach phonics, I teach to a 12th grade level with multi-syllable words and have had students as young as K, but a few 1st grade students and many 2nd graders, and even more 3rd grade and above students reading at the 12th grade level with this method, syllabic phonics.

Here is an explanation of syllabic phonics:

https://infogalactic.com/info/Syllabic_phonics

And here is how I teach it to my remedial students, my average student improves 1.7 reading grade levels in the 10 hour course:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/syllablesspellsu.html

 

Edited August 22, 2018 by ElizabethB

[happybeachbum]

But whole word is phonics just another version.  I think Dick and Jane were more Look and Say than whole word.