Over the past few years there has been a lot of mainstream coverage on a decades’ old debate in education commonly referred to as “The Reading Wars”. The war being referred to was the debate over which instructional approach was superior, Structured Literacy (SL) or Whole Language. SL is the term that was adopted by the International Dyslexia Association in 2014 as an umbrella term describing all programs that teach reading utilizing phonics. In contrast, Whole Language instruction includes no explicit teaching of phonics. As the Reading Wars continued a blend of SL and Whole Language emerged. This blended instruction is referred to as Balanced Literacy (BL). In BL, instructors maintain their Whole Language approach and add in some phonics elements. One part of the war that has been largely settled is that phonics must play a role in literacy instruction and that Whole Language does not work. Thanks to the brilliant work of American Public Media Senior Producer and Correspondent Emily Hanford, word has gotten out that we must eliminate the flawed Whole Language and BL methods from our classrooms.
Today most folks who support SL are using the term the Science of Reading (SoR) to help explain their position and differentiate themselves from BL. All over the country there has been a push to legislate SL training for K-3 Teachers in the name of the SoR. Here in Colorado we’ve been doing the same.
For 20 years I’ve taught children with dyslexia how to read with the Orton-Gillingham (OG) method. Training in this method of phonics instruction is difficult and takes years to master. Before a teacher can help their students to succeed with this method the practitioner must first understand it themselves. It requires a comprehensive understanding of the English language including 44 graphemes, 6 syllable types, and multiple complex rules related to reading and spelling. Instruction in OG and other Structured LIteracy (SL) phonics methods require a lot of time. Because the instruction is heavily focused on building automaticity with all elements of our language, instruction requires repetition and puts a high demand on students’ processing and working memory. This instructional method is far from easy and that is why I’ve only used it with students for whom other forms of instruction are not effective. I used it because it was the gold standard for literacy instruction for children with diagnosed reading disabilities. I fully anticipated using the OG method with the population of students I serve until I retired.
The circumstances around our illiteracy crisis are complex and the fix we need is certainly not training all K-3 teachers in SL methods like OG which were not designed for use in general education. We have a crisis now! SL is undeniably the most complex instruction and using it in this way is absolutely overteaching. We don’t need our children to become scholars on the ins and outs of the English language. If you are reading these words right now, did you need to be taught the structure of the entire English language in order to do so? We do not have time to waste!
Understanding the Goal of Literacy Instruction
Literacy instruction has one overarching goal, communication. When we rob people of the ability to read and write we put a painful limitation on their ability to communicate. Last February I attended a screening of a gut wrenching and powerful film called The Truth About Reading. This film featured sub-literate adults and the “Structured Linguistic Literacy/Speech to Print Approach” (SLL/S2P) which ultimately helped them learn to read. While this approach wasn’t new in the field of literacy instruction it was definitely new to me. And although it is a mouthful to say, everything else about this approach is infinitely easier than a SL approach. Structured Linguistic Literacy or Speech to Print (SLL/S2P) instruction is an umbrella term that was recently coined to help describe approaches to reading instruction that derive from the groundbreaking work of Diane McGuinness. These approaches which also may be referred to as "phonetic-linguistic," and "linguistic phonics” have been getting good results for over 20 years. More importantly, this type of approach makes perfect sense to use with ALL students because it is effective, efficient and can be delivered equitably. It is also 100% scientific by design.
The alphabet was created so we could have “pictures of sounds” to share with one another. The brilliance of written language is that one person writes down a “code” of speech sounds (a.k.a. letters) on the page so that another person can pick up those “sound pictures” and apply the same sounds to understand the message. Our brains are hard-wired for spoken language and this process of speech to print is fairly easy for us to do.
English is a morphophonemic language, so writing conveys information about both sound and meaning. Understanding the alphabetic principle is the key to cracking the written code. SLL approaches teach this explicitly, logically, and efficiently, while SL obscures this principle by "teaching the code backward" from letters to sounds instead of sounds to letters. When you use a SLL/S2P approach to teach reading and writing you do what is natural and cognitively best, strengthening the neural pathways that are already in the brain to activate that speech. There is no need to memorize every grapheme, understand syllable types or be able to apply rules. The brain can self-teach in much the same way as it does for spoken language and other tasks for which we are hard-wired. If a person can speak then they can learn to read and write with SLL/S2P.
With this basic understanding I stopped using OG and enrolled in a SLL/S2P training approach called Evidence Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI). The results I saw with my students as they transitioned to EBLI were staggering. The instruction was easy to deliver and the students were engaged. Not only did my students’ skills in phonics, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, handwriting and comprehension improve but they showed an attention to their work and a level of interest that I hadn't seen before.
EBLI has been carefully structured to unite the Science of Reading with the actual science of how humans learn. It has made my job infinitely easier, and by implementing the carefully laid out “recipe” of EBLI with fidelity, my current method of instruction is foolproof. Lessons are interleaved and fully adhere to the way in which we as humans are hard-wired to learn. All of the necessary elements of literacy instruction (phonics, spelling, vocabulary, fluency, handwriting and comprehension) are covered. Planning is a breeze and there is wonderful scaffolding to support my students and me.
Why Am I hosting this Free Educational Series?
Teaching has been one of the biggest joys in my life. I love what I do more and more each day. I know that the majority of teachers today are exhausted, burnt out, unappreciated and unfairly compensated. Whether they are preschool teachers or college professors, they are, through no fault of their own, often completely ill-prepared to teach their students how to read. The sad and awful truth is that there are hundreds of thousands of students at all levels of instruction who cannot not read, and we are responsible.
I urgently want to share the new approach and strategies I’ve learned as broadly as I can to educate others who are not even aware that this highly effective approach exists. I’m sharing the resources that have helped me in order to provide understanding for people in all parts of our community. I want our elected officials to have a thorough grasp of literacy instruction so legislative decisions can truly benefit everyone in our community. I want to introduce the science of SLL/S2P to psychologists so they can recommend this type of instruction when diagnosing struggling readers. I want to help school administrators and educators celebrate success with all learners in their buildings.
I hope that you will join me in my efforts to spread the word by sharing this knowledge. Please join us for the Evening of Learning with the creators of two incredible SLL/S2P approaches, EBLI and Reading Simplified. Sign up for the EBLI workshop called “The Taste of EBLI” if you’re an elected official, psychologist or school administrator and have no prior teaching experience. I have complete confidence that you will come away from these experiences with a passion for this instruction, as well as the strong realization that you don’t need much training at all to read and spell with EBLI. Everyday we ask our students to work hard and try new things. How often do we ask ourselves to do the same?
What would you say if I told you I had the cure for cancer? Would you turn away? Would you say we’ve just invested in something else that’s kind of good at fighting cancer so we'll just stick with that? Would you say I don’t want to hear about the newest and most effective tools, because they’re radically different from what has been done before? There is a sub-literacy and illiteracy crisis of enormous proportions in our country, our state and our city. I’m asking you to join me in recognizing the truth of this crisis but also in recognizing our incredible good fortune. We know what to do about it and together we can fix it.
Shari Most
