Dear anyone reading this,
I’m going to pause my fancifully named series on DEADLY WORDS to reach out and see if people have any thoughts, on this series specifically or anything else on this Substack.
I’m pretty sure that most people reading this basically agree with me on most things, which is fine, but really it isn’t. My goal was not solely to set up a platform where I could declare my beliefs and get a bunch of likes (which are nice, but haven’t gotten that many, and I’m OK WITH THAT).
Rather it was to do what Rob Tierney and David Pearson did last summer when they posted their monograph, Fact-Checking the Science of Reading: Opening up the Conversation, on an open-access site. I had serious misgivings about their monograph, which I expressed directly to them, and here, and on their site. But I had and have admiration for the subtitle, “Opening up the Conversation,” and for posting it where a conversation might actually happen.
So far there’s been very little conversation on this site. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or anything, but I’m wondering whether and how we’ll ever get past these nagging disagreements, quibbles, kerfuffles, whatever. Maybe the term “wars” has outlived its usefulness—if it ever had any. Whatever you call it, we still have these huge rifts within the community of literacy educators that I find difficult to understand and—more important—are not in the interest of our students or the society at large. Maybe there is disagreement on this basic premise. I’d love to hear about it if so.
I don’t know how any of this is landing with people who don’t basically agree with me. There aren’t many, or maybe any, who registered—although one popped up in my inbox a few days ago, for which I was thrilled.
If there’s anyone reading who disagrees, in full or in part, with what I’m writing, will you pls let me know? A comment here
or anywhere (just trying to make it easy) would be welcomed. Or you can email me if you’re shy or don’t want to post publicly.
For those who do basically agree with me on most things, may I ask a favor: Could you please forward this post to someone on the, shall we say, other side(s)?
I still have hopes we can end the reading (fill in the blank). Call it/them what you will. There will always be disagreements; it’s foolish to think they’ll all disappear. But some, maybe all, of the things I’ve laid out over that past couple of months are part of our current knowledge base, and should be acknowledged as such. I realize that’s my perspective, but it’s more than just “an opinion.” It’s where (according to me) the research evidence stands.
If you or someone you know disagrees with any aspect of this declaration, I would love to know and know why. I’ll also be happy to hand the platform over to others for guest posts. Haven’t thought through how exactly that would work, but if anybody out there is interested, lmk. In the unlikely event there’s a huge rush to take me up on this offer, I’d prioritize folks who want to take issue with something I’ve posted, either a little bit of an issue or a great big one.
Best wishes to you all, and my thanks for reading. Now I hope some of y’all will be writing.
Donna Scanlon has been mentioned several times in these comments. If you listen for 10 minutes at 17:30 in this recent interview (https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests/donna-scanlon), she echoes this statement by Dr. Sam: "When in-servicing teachers, I urge them to encourage students to use the graphophonemic information first and then cross-check it against context & syntax." She distinguishes between word identification and word confirmation and discusses the importance of "set for variability" (flexible pronunciations--"try a different sound") in a way that I can't see anyone disagreeing with. And yet . . . she refers to SOR being against using contextual cues, which illustrates part of the confusion that confounds reconciliation.
She also laments the bad associations attached to the term "balanced literacy" and offers the term "comprehensive literacy". I don't use "balanced literacy" or "structured literacy"; I call what I do "inclusive literacy". What's in a name?
I did not avoid the question, I pointed out that your concerns fall into the category of research design. Scanlon's decades of research should not be discounted or ignored. I hope I'm clarifying my point that your views around the three cueing systems are not what many folks try to make it out to be. It was never meant to be a teaching system- and the attempts to turn it into are not what I teach my teachers to do. The best model I am aware of for using ALL the information system is the one employed in Reading Recovery, and again, what folks say is done in RR is not what RR folks are doing.
As you read more of my writing, I always seek evidence of common ground and common practices. So I'm VERY interested in Seidenberg and how his views fit Clay's views around creating a self-extending system. I'll also point out that laying the foundation should happen early on. What that foundation might be is also determined by the needs of the students. Some students thrive on analytic approaches (essentially discovery learning). Some students get the foundation rather quickly. How do you see SOR adapting to those facts (or do you disagree with that assessment)? I'm seeing examples of SOR folks treating analytic phonics as an inferior approach. It's not. What to use depends on the student (however I've said many times that it is crucial that synthetic phonics be part of any Tier 1 program).
Before you answer about your views around analytic phonics, please look over this excerpt from a July 18th blog entry, Shanahan posted a few years back. "The average effect size was somewhat higher for synthetic than analytic approaches, but not significantly so (it was so small a difference that one can't say one is really higher than the other). In other words, synthetic and analytic phonics are equally good."
I'm not seeing much evidence that SOR is treating things that way. What am I missing?
BTW, I'm glad to see some things on which we seem to agree. I'm glad to see that.
Dr. Sam