Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Sold a Story

Coming tomorrow, from American Public Media, a podcast series by Emily Hanford: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.

In 2018 Hanford wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times: “Why Are We Still Teaching Reading the Wrong Way?”

Here’s a related article from the Times: “In the Fight Over How to Teach Reading, This Guru Makes a Major Retreat.”

If you have any doubt that reading instruction has gone wrong, listen to the average, everyday college student read aloud in class. But that’ll be difficult to do, because many instructors have learned not to ask students to read aloud. It’s likely to be painful.

Related posts
Reading, really fast : A story from my literacy tutoring : W(h)ither grammar

[“Read aloud”: I don’t mean cold-calling on students to read. I mean, say, asking a student to read a passage that they’ve referenced in a discussion.]

comments: 5

Daughter Number Three said...

I'll listen to it once it's available. I don't want to hit the NYT paywall for the links... the teaser is sure mysterious about which part of the reading wars is to blame.

Michael Leddy said...

I put “gift” links in the post. Hanford‘s 2018 piece makes it clear: it’s “whole language” and “balanced” approaches, with phonics taking a back seat.

Daughter Number Three said...

Ah, gift links!

Elaine said...

I am thinking about how very long ago _Why Johnny Can't Read_ was published....

Michael Leddy said...

Yep — 1955.