Article about guru backing down on 'balanced literacy'

[bookbard]

Anyone able to gift this article? Looks like it's about one of the whole word people admitting that phonics is important . . .

Lucy Calkins Retreats on Phonics in Fight Over Reading Curriculum - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[Innisfree]

Here you go…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/us/reading-teaching-curriculum-phonics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6Uw.g_71.qNs6KiH0GBoS&smid=url-share

[bookbard]

An interesting read- looks as though once it started to hit sales, she's changed it up a bit, but her curriculum is still not ideal and yet of course she's flogging it to make money. Ugh.

[El...]

She sure comes across as profiteering to me. However, I'm still riled at her from the Sold a Story podcast. 

[Frances]

Not sure how she lives with the guilt of knowing she likely kept millions of children from achieving their full reading potential.

[silver]

Here's a newer article about her. She's "on sabbatical" for this school year.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teachers-college-to-dissolve-lucy-calkins-reading-and-writing-project/2023/09

[Heartstrings]

The blurb says “critics may not be appeased”.    I’m a critic and I’m not appeased. At all. My understanding is that even her re-written curriculum is still not really phonics based.  Of course getting schools to buy a new product is just more money in her pocket.   Why anyone would trust her and her products at this point is beyond me.  They should be looking for new curriculum options with new companies entirely.  

Edited October 30, 2023 by Heartstrings

[saraha]

I listened to this on npr

NPR Reveal episode update How teaching kids to read went so wrong

They had reported on this sometime previously, then on the 7th did another episode updating the story

[Clarita]

From the NYT article it seems like she just added some phonics as oppose to re-write the curriculum. So I have my doubts that it would be systematic phonics. (Quotes are from the NYT article.)

Professor Calkins said word-guessing would not be included in her revised curriculum. But in some ways, she is offering a hybrid of her old and new methods. In a sample of the new materials that she provided to The Times, teachers are told that students should first decode words using “slider power” — running their fingers under letters and sounding them out — but then check for mistakes using “picture power.”

And quotes like the following does not help her case at all.

Professor Calkins does not believe she has anything to apologize for. She pointed out that some partner schools, like P.S. 249, a high-poverty, high-performing school in Brooklyn, have embraced a separate phonics supplement she published in 2018.

And, she asked, shouldn’t the phonics-first camp apologize? “Are people asking whether they’re going to apologize for overlooking writing?” she said.

[Heartstrings]

14 minutes ago, Clarita said:

And, she asked, shouldn’t the phonics-first camp apologize? “Are people asking whether they’re going to apologize for overlooking writing?” she said.

This line of thinking always bugs the holy heck out of me. People act like teaching phonics has to mean you teach nothing else.  “What about vocabulary?” “what about comprehension?”   Those are all separate.  Writing and comprehension especially are easier to teach to children who can read and spell!   Why ask kids who can’t read at all to write sentences and paragraphs, it’s such a weird concept.  It’s like asking the math teacher to apologize for not teaching writing.  It’s a separate skill.  

[Kalmia]

Every time Lucy Calkins opens her mouth she spews stupidity. Most school-age children can learn what a phonogram is, what syllables are, what the spelling rules say. It is ludicrous that she'd use terms like "slider power" and "picture power," an insult to the intelligence of all children and proof that she does not believe children should be given the tools they need for reading at all the levels of difficulty they will encounter throughout their lives. 

Accusing phonics-first proponents of not caring about writing!?: Straw man fallacy, a last-ditch effort made by those drowning in their own wrongness: "Stop discussing this topic! Look over there at what they are doing!!" And no phonics-centered educator has ever suspended language arts instruction after making sure the students can sound out words. The very idea is insane. 

I wish she would, ashamedly, disappear into a hole somewhere. Perhaps donate most of her ill-gotten fortune to a simple charity (one she can understand) that does good works, like feeding the hungry. She can never make up for what she has done, particularly to so many children in poverty, children in minority groups, children for whom English is a second language, and children with learning disabilities -- and even the children of upper middle class, suburban parents! She managed to spew her flawed methods all over the demographic diversity of our country.

As you can see, I have feelings...

[JumpyTheFrog]

4 hours ago, Clarita said:

And, she asked, shouldn’t the phonics-first camp apologize? “Are people asking whether they’re going to apologize for overlooking writing?” she said.

I don't think these people understand order of operations. Asking a kid who can't read to write something is like asking someone who can't add to do calculus.

[JumpyTheFrog]

The idiocy around reading is why I started a YouTube channel aimed at teaching regular parents the phonics and syllable division rules they should know to help their kids with reading. I figured most public-school parents aren't going to buy homeschooling curriculum, so I thought a series of videos would help. (It seems like many of the phonics videos on YouTube are cutsey and aimed at kids.) I only started my channel in the spring, but what has surprised me most is the percent of my viewers who are in other countries, such as India and Vietnam.

[Kanin]

13 minutes ago, Kalmia said:

Most school-age children can learn what a phonogram is, what syllables are, what the spelling rules say. It is ludicrous that she'd use terms like "slider power" and "picture power," an insult to the intelligence of all children and proof that she does not believe children should be given the tools they need for reading at all the levels of difficulty they will encounter throughout their lives. 

I totally agree. Why give kids stupid names for stuff when perfectly good words already exist. My second graders know the terms syllables, short and long vowels, digraphs, and more. 

We teach kids the proper names for terms in math, geography, etc... why doesn't Lucy want that in reading? Probably because she wants to have it be "her" terminology. Ugh.

[El...]

12 minutes ago, JumpyTheFrog said:

The idiocy around reading is why I started a YouTube channel aimed at teaching regular parents the phonics and syllable division rules they should know to help their kids with reading. I figured most public-school parents aren't going to buy homeschooling curriculum, so I thought a series of videos would help. (It seems like many of the phonics videos on YouTube are cutsey and aimed at kids.) I only started my channel in the spring, but what has surprised me most is the percent of my viewers who are in other countries, such as India and Vietnam.

That's awesome, Jumpy!

[El...]

10 minutes ago, Kanin said:

I totally agree. Why give kids stupid names for stuff when perfectly good words already exist. My second graders know the terms syllables, short and long vowels, digraphs, and more. 

We teach kids the proper names for terms in math, geography, etc... why doesn't Lucy want that in reading? Probably because she wants to have it be "her" terminology. Ugh.

"Probably because she wants to have it be "her" terminology." 

Precisely. 

[SanDiegoMom]

My daughter and I listened to Sold a Story together.  Just the other day in class (12th grade) she said she experienced watching a student who had apparently been taught this way.  They were reading Shakespeare and he would read words and the beginning and ending were often right but the word was a completely wrong word.  (not real examples but like using supposedly instead of surprisingly or destruction instead of determination).  This is an AP Lit class.  My daughter was so sad for the student.  Seeing the results in real life vs just listening to a podcast helped her understand HOW this really affects everyone who was taught that way.

We were in this school district when my kids were in Kindergarten, and I purposefully taught them to read before sending them to school.  I didn't know as much as I do now, but I knew that Phonics worked and what the schools had didn't, so they learned over the course of the year before!

[ScoutTN]

2 hours ago, JumpyTheFrog said:

The idiocy around reading is why I started a YouTube channel aimed at teaching regular parents the phonics and syllable division rules they should know to help their kids with reading. I figured most public-school parents aren't going to buy homeschooling curriculum, so I thought a series of videos would help. (It seems like many of the phonics videos on YouTube are cutsey and aimed at kids.) I only started my channel in the spring, but what has surprised me most is the percent of my viewers who are in other countries, such as India and Vietnam.

I love this! Will refer people to it! Love having more resources. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by ScoutTN

[kbutton]

I learned just a few days ago that our state is majorly pushing back on Lucy and her ilk to the tune of an executive order from the governor: https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Learning-in-Ohio/Literacy/Read-Ohio

IIRC, Ohio State was instrumental in pushing the bad stuff for a long time.