Thank you for raising such an important issue. You say, "I don’t know why Hanford hasn’t talked about problems with comprehension instruction."
It could be because the solutions aren't as straightforward as they are with foundational skills. The comprehension chapter (Making Sense of Words We Analyze) of my instructional guide to reading, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense, was a lot more difficult to write than the phonics chapter (Making Sense of Words We See).
Take your example of inference-making. In the recent article, A Randomized Controlled Trial of Tutor- and Computer-Delivered Inferential Comprehension Interventions for Middle School Students with Reading Difficulties, the authors conclude:
"This study showed that older students with comprehension difficulties made gains in inferential comprehension when they received a novel inference-making intervention derived from theories and empirical work on inference and reading comprehension."
Many of us are eager to use a content-rich program in our classrooms, but we want to know HOW that content is being delivered. And we don't want to be the ones to create that delivery system.
On the ground level, I cringe when good ideas become mandatory: That means they will soon die. Public schools are built on one-size-fits-all assumptions on human nature. They eat panaceas for breakfast. Specific problems cannot have specific solutions. Whatever candy you have *will* be shared with the class, even if they are deathly allergic.
I love reading what I can about cognitive science. Books like "How Learning Works" and skills like retrieval practice inform my teaching. Lately I've given my elevator pitch to "The Knowledge Gap" to anyone who will listen. Yet when administrators enforce today's fad, implementing cognitive science can become insubordination.
Educators are missing the forest for the trees. SoR and Knowledge Matters are alike politically motivated and undermine teacher professionalism. Of course kids need instruction in decoding. Of course they need instruction in knowledge making and building. What they don’t need is political intrusion getting between them and their teachers. Since 1995 Americans have turned to policy makers to do what they cannot do: prescribe instruction. They can fight for more funding. They can seed professional development. This path is wrong from the bottom up.
There seems to be a two-fold lack of basic skills (reading/spelling) AND general knowledge upon which to build… not to mention behaviour/attitude.
Without returning to the punitive past we need to revitalise appreciation and aspiration - for teachers and for education itself - and there’s no shortcut.
Effective instruction and guided practice - lots of it and sorely lacking at present - makes permanent…
Please, let’s not squander or derange the “science of learning” opportunity…
I've listened to the podcasts. The legislation being passed in states reflects the ideas promoted. The dog caught the car, and now SoR advocates are backpedaling, wondering publicly if it is the teachers who are misunderstanding the science they promoted? I didn't buy the original story. I won't be sold this one either.
Embracing phonological awareness, phonics, or some other individual component of successful reading will prove to be just another example of people's search for a magic solution. Cathecting anything rapturously often excludes consideration of other things. Worse: When one discovers that it "didn't work" (e.g., solve the reading crisis), it's like an inoculation against doing another thing with a scientific basis.
We seem to want to distill educational research into a tiny bottle with the label "elixir." Educators concerned about reading actually do need "balanced literacy," but the balance needs to integrate practices, procedures, methods, and materials that all are predicated on strong empirical evidence.
Teaching decoding well does not absolve educators of the responsibility to teach other things (e.g., vocabulary, general information, etc.) well...oh, and BTW, eclecticism isn't an elixir, either.
As a recently retired Special Education teacher for K-12, but focusing on elementary school, and having taken passed the 4th out of 8 Letrs training, I don't understand why we spend so much time reinventing the wheel on this. Teachers, tutors, parents and others have been teaching reading to students for hundreds of years. Just looking back to my parent's generation and my grandparents, they learned how to read without all of the modern tactics. In some cases, there was a McGuffey reader in classrooms, text books and books of literature (age appropriate). They all learned to read well without this massive reinvention.
Frankly, when you listen to people of the older generations and read books written in the 1800s, the use of vocabulary and Lexile levels were far higher than today. How did they learn to read before Lucy Calkins and others?
Teaching children to read starts very young with parents reading to children as they look at word and letters before any formal education. They hear the pronunciation of words long before learning their ABCs in Kinder and 1s. Many children end up reading the words back to their parents from favorite book by use of memory and equating the word to a series of phonemes that they don't yet understand.
I like most of my generation knew how to read before school, but so many parents today, especially those from 2nd language families, seem to think school and learning starts the first day of Kindergarten. If a child does not know their letters and basic numbers before school starts, they are already set up for failure and remain way behind the kids from families with engaged parents who immersed their children with books and learning activities, even counting cereal at age 3 and 4.
We've taken on this explicit phonics because kids come to school with little or no home education. It's the parents that need training to be parents.
Thank you for raising such an important issue. You say, "I don’t know why Hanford hasn’t talked about problems with comprehension instruction."
It could be because the solutions aren't as straightforward as they are with foundational skills. The comprehension chapter (Making Sense of Words We Analyze) of my instructional guide to reading, From Sound to Summary: Braiding the Reading Rope to Make Words Make Sense, was a lot more difficult to write than the phonics chapter (Making Sense of Words We See).
Take your example of inference-making. In the recent article, A Randomized Controlled Trial of Tutor- and Computer-Delivered Inferential Comprehension Interventions for Middle School Students with Reading Difficulties, the authors conclude:
"This study showed that older students with comprehension difficulties made gains in inferential comprehension when they received a novel inference-making intervention derived from theories and empirical work on inference and reading comprehension."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888438.2024.2331517?src=
Many of us are eager to use a content-rich program in our classrooms, but we want to know HOW that content is being delivered. And we don't want to be the ones to create that delivery system.
On the ground level, I cringe when good ideas become mandatory: That means they will soon die. Public schools are built on one-size-fits-all assumptions on human nature. They eat panaceas for breakfast. Specific problems cannot have specific solutions. Whatever candy you have *will* be shared with the class, even if they are deathly allergic.
I love reading what I can about cognitive science. Books like "How Learning Works" and skills like retrieval practice inform my teaching. Lately I've given my elevator pitch to "The Knowledge Gap" to anyone who will listen. Yet when administrators enforce today's fad, implementing cognitive science can become insubordination.
I'm never sure what to do with that.
Educators are missing the forest for the trees. SoR and Knowledge Matters are alike politically motivated and undermine teacher professionalism. Of course kids need instruction in decoding. Of course they need instruction in knowledge making and building. What they don’t need is political intrusion getting between them and their teachers. Since 1995 Americans have turned to policy makers to do what they cannot do: prescribe instruction. They can fight for more funding. They can seed professional development. This path is wrong from the bottom up.
There seems to be a two-fold lack of basic skills (reading/spelling) AND general knowledge upon which to build… not to mention behaviour/attitude.
Without returning to the punitive past we need to revitalise appreciation and aspiration - for teachers and for education itself - and there’s no shortcut.
Effective instruction and guided practice - lots of it and sorely lacking at present - makes permanent…
Please, let’s not squander or derange the “science of learning” opportunity…
I've listened to the podcasts. The legislation being passed in states reflects the ideas promoted. The dog caught the car, and now SoR advocates are backpedaling, wondering publicly if it is the teachers who are misunderstanding the science they promoted? I didn't buy the original story. I won't be sold this one either.
Embracing phonological awareness, phonics, or some other individual component of successful reading will prove to be just another example of people's search for a magic solution. Cathecting anything rapturously often excludes consideration of other things. Worse: When one discovers that it "didn't work" (e.g., solve the reading crisis), it's like an inoculation against doing another thing with a scientific basis.
We seem to want to distill educational research into a tiny bottle with the label "elixir." Educators concerned about reading actually do need "balanced literacy," but the balance needs to integrate practices, procedures, methods, and materials that all are predicated on strong empirical evidence.
Teaching decoding well does not absolve educators of the responsibility to teach other things (e.g., vocabulary, general information, etc.) well...oh, and BTW, eclecticism isn't an elixir, either.
As a recently retired Special Education teacher for K-12, but focusing on elementary school, and having taken passed the 4th out of 8 Letrs training, I don't understand why we spend so much time reinventing the wheel on this. Teachers, tutors, parents and others have been teaching reading to students for hundreds of years. Just looking back to my parent's generation and my grandparents, they learned how to read without all of the modern tactics. In some cases, there was a McGuffey reader in classrooms, text books and books of literature (age appropriate). They all learned to read well without this massive reinvention.
Frankly, when you listen to people of the older generations and read books written in the 1800s, the use of vocabulary and Lexile levels were far higher than today. How did they learn to read before Lucy Calkins and others?
Teaching children to read starts very young with parents reading to children as they look at word and letters before any formal education. They hear the pronunciation of words long before learning their ABCs in Kinder and 1s. Many children end up reading the words back to their parents from favorite book by use of memory and equating the word to a series of phonemes that they don't yet understand.
I like most of my generation knew how to read before school, but so many parents today, especially those from 2nd language families, seem to think school and learning starts the first day of Kindergarten. If a child does not know their letters and basic numbers before school starts, they are already set up for failure and remain way behind the kids from families with engaged parents who immersed their children with books and learning activities, even counting cereal at age 3 and 4.
We've taken on this explicit phonics because kids come to school with little or no home education. It's the parents that need training to be parents.
……Too much television…..