Last night Professor Pamela Snow and I ran a Bendigo Early Language and Literacy Community of Practice conversation via Zoom. We discussed ten common reading instruction myths. You can view the recording and access readings and resources via Pam's blog.
As part of this conversation I mentioned the continuum of reading instruction and the continuum of phonics instruction models that I have created to use with school leaders and teachers, to better understand their approach to teaching reading more broadly, as well as teaching the specifics of word-level reading. I find it helpful to reflect on where we stand and why, and what that might mean for the students we are tasked with teaching.
These models relate particularly to two common myths that were discussed:
Analytic and synthetic phonics are equally good.
Balanced Literacy is a reasonable compromise between Whole Language and Structured Literacy.
These two (probably imperfect) models can help us to understand why Balanced Literacy and Analytic Phonics are often so hard to define and measure. They exist on a continuum, therefore they mean different things to different people .
Continuum of reading instruction
Continuum of phonics instruction
I am looking forward to writing a reading instruction myths blogpost for Shaun Killian's excellent website later this month.
Start a conversation today. Where do you stand?