Parents have been asking lately:  Do you think it is possible for my child to make up everything they lost during the coronavirus pandemic?  My answer is a definite yes, if we use the correct teaching methods.  Let me give an example to explain.
 
A 15-year-old high school freshman was brought to my reading clinic one year. She tested at the pre-kindergarten level in reading.  She knew the consonant sounds, but none of the vowel sounds.  She could not even read or recognize words with the short a vowel sound, such as cat or can.  Nor could she read the word the.  It took me 3½ years, but I taught her to read using vowel clustering.  Her school used balanced literacy and one-on-one phonics tutoring.  She had failed for nine straight years with systematic phonics tutoring.  As I’ve said many times, phonics simply does not work for all students.  The school said she would never be able to learn to read.  Yet, she did learn, and she was very excited to be able to read. 
 
If changing teaching methods can make up for 9 years of learning loss or failure, then yes, we can help each and every student who is struggling after the coronavirus pandemic.  We can help students learn to read, but to do so, we must change the way we teach struggling students.
 
How Should We Start? 
Many well-intentioned educators are saying that we should “stick with grade level curriculum.”  They are saying, regardless how far behind or confused your students are, teach what is assigned for that grade level.  I say, wrong.  Such a policy will only cause more failure.  Look at the example of our 15-year-old.  If I had said that she is 15 years old and she is a freshman in high school; therefore, I must teach her freshman high school reading material, she would never have learned to read.  She had failed for nine straight years; her failure was deeply ingrained. She did not believe she would ever learn to read.  No, we must start where the confusion or failure begins.  If the student is 15 years old and cannot read at the pre-kindergarten level—does not know even simple vowel sounds—then, obviously, I have to teach that student at the pre-kindergarten level, no matter her age or grade in school.
 
The same is true with students returning to the classroom after the coronavirus pandemic. We cannot teach them at the level they should be at in school; instead, we must teach them at the skill level they possess when they return to the classroom.  If there are fourth-graders reading at the first grade level, then we must begin to rebuild by teaching them at the first grade level. Using this method, I really have had students move up four grade levels in reading in one school year.  When it comes to reading, you cannot skip around. The student must learn one step at a time.  This is how we teach with vowel clustering.
 
Why Did Phonics Not Work?
As Dr. Mark Seidenberg states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, the reason phonics did not work for my 15-year-old student and for many students is that it does not connect with oral speech.  Vowel clustering works directly with the oral language system.  This is why we have been so successful.
 
Earlier Post: Reading Wars and How Should We Teach Children to Read? 

Earlier Post: Reading Wars Are Over! Who Won? Certainly Not the Students

As Dr. Seidenberg goes on to explain, real scientific research has had little effect on how reading is being taught in the classroom.  If we simply return students to the classroom and do not change how we teach reading, reading failure will continue.  At present, the Nation’s Report Card shows that 65% of fourth graders tested below grade level when they took the test in 2019. These test scores were before the coronavirus pandemic.
  
Yes, we have a problem in reading education, and that problem is only going to get worse.  The only way we can get rid of reading failure is to change how we teach children to read.  Phonics simply does not work for struggling students.  As Dr. Jeffrey S. Bowers explains “the strength of evidence for phonics has been exaggerated…. the evidence for phonics is weak.” 
 
So, if phonics does not work for struggling at-risk students, what should we do?  I have been successful using vowel clustering with failing and struggling students. Eight years of research document my success.
 
Will All of The Education Problems Be Solved Just by Sending Children Back into the Classroom? 
No, we also need to be careful about how we reopen schools.  Chad Aldeman, a policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, encourages us to look back at history.  He states that past disasters, especially the 1918 pandemic, should teach us the path that we should follow. 

“Without a plan for recovery focused on students’ needs, we’ll be condemning a generation of children to worse academic and economic outcomes throughout their life. Looking back in time, the children born during the 1918 flu pandemic had lower educational attainment, increased rates of physical disability, lower income and a greater reliance on government welfare. With hindsight, we have an opportunity to learn from the evidence of past disasters and take action now to make sure the same results don’t happen again.”

Exactly what are the reading wars?  The reading wars are an ongoing feud between phonics and whole language.  Phonics is the older of the two teaching methods. Phonics started back in 1690 with the New England Primer.  Then, as now, problems cropped up, which led to the introduction of “whole-word” or the “look-say” teaching method.  The war was on. 

​In the 1960’s, educational theory swung back toward phonics, but then in the 1980’s, it turned back toward “whole-word,” which was quickly becoming known as “whole language.”  In 2000, the National Reading Panel (NRP) was organized, supposedly to solve the question of which method was better.  That was 21 years ago, and yet the battle rages on.  The result of the NRP study was actually that most schools today have converted to balanced literacy—a combination of phonics and whole language.  Balanced literacy has not proven to be any more successful than phonics or whole language.
 
Everyone claims that balanced literacy is new, but I myself learned back in the 50’s from a combination of phonics and the Dick and Jane readers (classified as whole language).  Yes, they were awful.  Unfortunately though, many students did not learn to read under that system in the 50’s.  As one man explained to me, “they put me in a pullout phonics program every year from first grade on.  It didn’t do any good.  I still can’t read.”

 
Reading failure Is a Long-Standing Problem in the United States

If we look at the Nation’s Report Card, we can quickly tell why the reading war continues.  As these three pie charts illustrate (based on data from the 2019 Nation’s Report Card), reading failure is at an all-time high. 

For more of my research comparing the effectiveness of vowel clustering and phonics, see Chapter 3 of my 2019 book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation

The fact that phonics has problems is not news.  Over the years, numerous phonics advocates have also warned about the shortcomings of phonics.  In 2001, Linnea C. Ehri, a strong phonics supporter, admitted that phonics would “not help low achieving readers.”  Jeanne Sternlicht Chall, as far back as 1967, warned that phonics would not work for all students.  So yes, Fletcher is correct: many enthusiastic newspaper reporters, Internet bloggers, and even some researchers have exaggerated and overstated the case for the effectiveness of phonics.  Phonics simply does not work for many students, especially struggling students.  The students who need help the most.

 
Earlier Post: Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

 
Instead of fighting over phonics and whole language, we need a totally new method for teaching struggling students how to read.
 
It is time to stop bickering and find a new teaching method.  No, balanced literacy is not the answer either.  We need a new teaching method that helps students link reading with the oral language system.
 
Mark Seidenberg clearly states in his book, Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It, that  the way we teach reading is “a significant part of the literacy problem.”
  
Seidenberg goes on to point out three main problems with our present teaching methods

• current teaching practices are based on outdated assumptions.
• true scientific research in reading has had very little effect on how reading is taught in the classroom.
• new neurobiological brain research in reading is being totally ignored by today’s educators.

 
Dr. Seidenberg goes on to point out that we have decades of research showing that the only effective way to teach children to read is to teach skills that connect reading with oral speech.  So, why are we arguing over phonics and whole language when neither of those methods connect to oral speech? 
 
We’ll talk more about the importance of the oral language system for learning to read next time, but for now I want to close with a quote from Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 35 years.  Dr. Fauci was speaking about scientific research and opinions in reference to the coronavirus pandemic, but I believe that his comment about research and opinions is equally valid for the reading wars. 
 
“People’s opinions are a fact of life.  What gets, um, I think troublesome, is when people develop their own set of facts.  Facts don’t change.  So you have a different opinion, but facts are consistent.  That’s the problem.”

As the pie chart shows, 65% of 4th graders tested below grade level when they took the 2019 reading test.  Indeed, only 35% of 4th graders could read at or above the 4th grade level when tested in 2019.  Students are failing in reading all across the nation.  Scores did not improve in 8th or 12th grade either.

Please note that all of these test scores were from classroom instruction before Covid-19.  The scores came before the lockdown, before hybrid teaching, before disaster struck.  
 
These scores show that more than half the students in every grade are struggling or even failing in reading.  Reading failure is not a new problem.  These students are often classified as “low performing” or “low achieving” readers.  Although I do not like to place labels on children, knowing how reading specialists classify students does help us make comparisons. 

• for 8th grade only 34% could read at or above grade level
• 12th grade only 37% could read at or above grade level

  
Reading Failure

The Nation’s Report Card shows that reading failure is a long-standing problem. As Peggy Carr from the assessments division for the National Center for Educational Statistics (NAEP) explains:
 
"Since the first reading assessment in 1992, there’s been no growth for the lowest performing students in either fourth or eighth grade….  Our students struggling the most with reading are where they were nearly 30 years ago.”  
 
During these 30 years, whole language, phonics, and even balanced literacy have been the teaching methods used in the classroom. Classrooms across the nation continue to use these teaching methods, and it is these teaching methods that are causing students to fail. 
 
You may be saying, “I don’t believe in test scores.”  Then, how do you explain that reading scores were lower in 2019 than in 2017?  
 
That’s right, we have more students who cannot read today than we did in 2017.  If the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom were working and successfully helping students learn to read, then, even if test scores were biased or arbitrary, you would see an increase, even a modest increase in test scores.  Instead, we see a decline in the number of students who can read at grade level. 
 
Reading failure is a long-standing problem in the United States, and the problem is getting worse.  We need to wake up before it’s too late.  We need to change how we teach reading in the classroom.  We need to stop screaming about the “reading wars” and ask ourselves “Why have we allowed students to fail for over 30 years?”  If phonics, whole language, or even balanced literacy were effective, scores would not have been lower in 2019 than in 2017.  The “reading wars” are ridiculous and should end; they did not help students in the least.  A recent Washington Post article reviewed evidence that all three methods (phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy) are wrong and do not offer a solution to reading failure.
 
Giving an overview of the literacy problem in the United States, Rebecca Lake claims that approximately 20% of high school graduates cannot even read the words on their diploma as they put on their cap and gown and walk across the stage.

Furthermore, the National Center for Adult Literacy states that 85% of adolescents and youth seen by the courts are classified as functionally illiterate and unable to read.  [For more on these statistics, see Chapter 1 in my book, After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read.]  
 
Reading Failure Is a Major Problem That Is Getting Worse.  So, What Are We Going to Do about It?
 
If we simply send students back to the classroom and use the same teaching methods that were being used before Covid-19, we will send them back to a failing curriculum in reading. 
 
Many schools announced that they introduced more phonics into their curriculum in 2019 than in 2017 and are clamoring that the “reading wars” are over and that phonics won.  

If the “reading wars” are over, why did the students not win?  Why are more than half of the students across the nation still failing?

 
Why Does Phonics Education Fail? 

Earlier Post: We Are Using the Wrong Teaching Methods 
 
So, where does this leave us?  We have over half the students across the United States struggling or failing in reading.  We have three teaching methods that have been proven not to work for the students who need the most help.  Be careful.  Do not be like some who claim that the struggling students can’t learn to read, and that regardless which method we use, “low achieving” students will never learn to read.
 
I have personally had the pleasure of helping many students learn to read:
  

• Students who failed under whole language in the school classroom have come to my after-school program, the Reading Orienteering Club, and returned to the classroom reading at their age level.  Even if a student has been retained, we emphasize sending the child back to the classroom reading at their actual age level.  Some children have moved up 4 grade levels in reading in one year.
• A group of students continued to fail after the school placed them in Reading Recovery, but the same students succeeded with my method of vowel clustering.  They returned to the classroom reading at age level.
• Special needs students placed in a one-on-one pull-out program in systematic phonics still didn’t learn to read, but they came to my reading clinic and succeeded.  They learned to read.  I believe that every student can be taught to read.
•  One student failed for nine straight years in reading but learned to read with vowel clustering teaching methods.  The school had tried both balanced literacy and systematic phonics tutoring.  Still, she failed.  It’s never too late for a student to learn. 
• Students who failed under “balanced literacy,” a common school program that combines whole language and phonics, also learned to read at age level using vowel clustering.  We even had two students move up two grade levels in reading after only 48 hours of instruction with vowel clustering.

 
Why did one method succeed where phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy teaching methods had failed?
 
As David A. Kilpatrick explains in his book Equipped for Reading Success:
 
“Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches [like phonics and whole language] presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no “visual dictionary” for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary.” (pp. 59-68)
 
For a child to learn to read, the child must learn to match letters to the sounds they represent.  This is not an easily learned task for some children.  We need to use a teaching method that works with the oral language system and makes it easier for students to learn.
 
Therefore, phonics, whole language, and balanced literacy are never going to succeed with more than half of the students across the nation who cannot read at grade level because they are not being taught how to attach words to their oral language system.  The vowel clustering teaching method that I use at my reading clinic works with the brain and helps struggling children learn to read.
​
We need change. The students desperately need for schools to adopt a new approach for teaching reading.  Will they?  Will the pandemic's end solve all our problems? Chester E. Finn, Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus, Thomas B. Fordham Institute, comments on this very question in his article, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Back in That Old School?”  
 
“If the pandemic vanished tomorrow and all U.S. schools instantly reopened in exactly the same fashion as they were operating last February, how many parents would be satisfied to return their daughters and sons to the same old familiar classrooms, teachers, schedules and curricula?  A lot fewer than the same old schools and those who run and teach in them are expecting back!  Of course there’d be plenty of pent-up anger and frustration over the “lost year,” anxiety about kids struggling to catch up, … But would all that fade into gratitude for being able to resume the status quo ante? Nope.  Some fading would doubtless happen over the months. But how many millions of families would insist on something different instead of docilely accepting schooling as it operated before the plague hit?”
 
Is Finn correct, will parents demand change?  Will parents be satisfied to return to failed teaching methods?  Will parents be content to see their children struggle? 
 
How should we teach children to read?  
We need to change and use a method that works, but will the schools make the change?  Are the “reading wars” really over?  We will continue to pursue this question in my next blog post.  

     A distraught mother brought her third-grader to my reading clinic one fall and said, “He was a good reader in first grade. He struggled in second, but now he’s failing.  They want to send him back to second grade.  They even put him with a tutor doing one-on-one systematic phonics.  Nothing helps.”  After four months in my reading clinic, the third-grader greeted his mother at the door so he could show her a project that he had  just completed and a book he had picked out to take home.  The project used fourth- and fifth-grade words and the book was listed at the fifth-grade reading level.  After four months, learning from a vowel-clustering teaching method, he had moved up from the beginning second-grade reading level to the fourth-grade level and was challenging himself with fifth-grade books.
 
According to the Nation’s Report Card, more than half of the students in the United States are struggling to read. Yet, almost every single student who is now struggling can be taught to read.  We can end reading failure if we use the correct teaching method.  The student’s school in our opening example taught balanced literacy in the classroom and taught systematic phonics in a one-on-one pullout program.  Yet, the student had still failed. These were the wrong teaching methods.
 
Research has shown time and time again that whole language and balanced literacy do not give us an effective way to teach children to read.  Even systematic phonics fails many students, especially the students who need it most.  So, what are we to do?  We need to change the way we teach students to read in the classroom.  Yes, we must change the curriculum and teaching methods that we use to teach reading. 
 
As I have said many times in this blog, the problem is not the teachers, the students, or the parents.  The problem is the curriculum and teaching methods that school boards and politicians have dictated.  We are clinging to old teaching methods that have been proven not to work.  Using the wrong teaching method is causing students to fail in the classroom.

 
What Teaching Method Should We Use?
 
The National Reading Panel, organized by Congress in 1997, studied whole language, phonics, and phonemic awareness.  Note that, despite their similar names, phonics and phonemic awareness do not mean the same thing. In 2000, after analyzing over 100,000 research studies,  the National Reading Panel concluded that lack of phonemic awareness was one of the major causes of reading failure. 
 
One of the clearest explanations comes from the Put Reading First document. This document, produced by the National Institute for Literacy, emphasizes that phonemic awareness is not the same as what we see in phonics textbooks. The group explains: 
 
“Although phonemic awareness is a widely used term in reading, it is often misunderstood. One misunderstanding is that phonemic awareness and phonics are the same thing. Phonemic awareness is not phonics. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words…. Another misunderstanding about phonemic awareness is that it means the same as phonological awareness. The two names are not interchangeable.” 
 
 
What Is Phonemic Awareness?
 
Phonemic awareness is, for example, when a child sees the word cat and immediately begins to break the word down into individual phonemes or sounds. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound, but phonemic awareness is more than just letter sounds.  Phonemic awareness teaches students to break words down into letter sounds (decode) and then put those sounds back together to pronounce or read the word (encode).

As the National Reading Panel explains, “Teaching students to manipulate phonemes with letters yields larger effects than teaching students without letters….  Teaching children to blend the phonemes represented by letters is the equivalent of decoding instruction.”  Be sure to read the full report, not just the summary; see Section 2, Page 41. 

Phonemic awareness enables students -- 

• To hear and recognize letter sounds,
• To match letter-sound relationships, and
• To decode and encode the sounds they hear while looking at alphabet letters and words. 

Teaching phonemic awareness correctly can help failing students learn to read.

 
How Can We Correct The Mistakes That Have Been Made In Teaching Reading And Abolish Reading Failure? 
 
An important step in preventing reading failure is to stop saying that phonemic awareness is just about sounds. That is not what phonemic awareness means. That is wrong.  As stated above, even the National Reading Panel determined that it was important to combine the teaching of sounds (phonemes) alongside their relationship with alphabetic letters.  You cannot separate letter sounds from alphabet letters and be successful when teaching children to read.
 
If we are to bring change to the classroom, we must understand that phonemic awareness and phonics are not the same, and that they do not use the same teaching methods.  Phonics starts with the letter.  Phonemic awareness starts with the oral sound and builds toward the letter and the word. 
 
The final step in preventing reading failure is to understand that teaching phonemic awareness correctly will help struggling students better than trying to teach them using a phonics method.  As explained by Sebastian P. Suggate in his 2016 research comparison between phonemic awareness and phonics, the two teaching methods not only use totally opposite approaches to teaching reading, but they also produce totally different results as well.  
 
Suggate analyzed 71 phonemic awareness and phonics intervention groups and discovered that phonemic awareness had more long-term “staying power” and positive long-term effects than phonics, especially if the phonemic awareness training used letter sound training.  Suggate explains that this difference is because phonemic awareness targets phonemes (sounds) and the process of attaching those sounds to alphabet letters.
 
We must remember , however, that reading is more than just associating letters with sounds.  The teaching method that I use in my reading clinic is called vowel clustering.  Vowel clustering uses the principles of phonemic awareness.  Vowel clustering teaches students to decode or break words down into letter sounds or sound clusters and then to encode or reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words.  Vowel clustering also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading fluency, comprehension, and story writing 

 
Vowel Clustering Works Better Than Phonics for at-Risk Students 

More About Vowel Clustering
 

Vowel clustering has proven to work with struggling, at-risk, and failing students.  I’ve even had struggling students move up four grade levels in one year using vowel clustering.  These were students who had failed multiple years in school. 
 
In my forthcoming book, Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?  Oh, but Wait, We Can! (contact me at the email link above for more information), I outline step-by-step methods as well as reteaching techniques to help parents, tutors, and teachers use phonemic awareness techniques in teaching children how to read.
 
Yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the methods that we use to teach students to read. Next, we will look at ways to teach phonemic awareness correctly in the classroom. 

A parent walked into my reading clinic a couple years ago and asked, “What should I do to help my child learn to read?  My child just isn’t interested in books.”   
 
            My Camp Sharigan reading program, a weeklong group program for helping failing students learn to read, encountered just such a student.  On the first day, the teacher pointed out a student to me and said, “I’ve tried everything. He simply will not read. He won’t even try.”  By the end of the week, the same little boy was sitting outside the door waiting for Camp Sharigan to open.  As I greeted him, he said, “It’s the last day.  I don’t wanta miss anything. Will the same book still be on the bridge today? I found this book yesterday.  Would you help me read it?” 
 
It is sometimes hard to get children interested in reading.  Some children love books, while others are just too active to want to sit and listen to a story.  The problem grows when the child starts school.  In school, some children cannot wait to learn to read, and yet others show absolutely no interest. 
 
Reading is not the same as speaking.  Children learn to speak by listening to their parents and those around them.  Children learn to speak by imitating.  Reading is a totally different story.  Reading is a skill that must be taught.  No child is born knowing how to read.  Teaching a child to read is where the problem becomes complicated.  There are many different theories about the best way to teach a child to read, and new research is released every day.
 

How Do Children Learn To Read?
 
For children to learn to read, they must learn how to identify written alphabet letters or letter clusters and connect such letters to their oral sound system.  The oral sound system is already in place in the brain.  It’s the system that we use to speak. You see, the brain focuses on letter sounds, not words.  The brain does not remember words; the brain focuses on sounds. The confusing part for children learning to read is deciding when a letter uses which sound. 
 
As David Moreau from the Centre for Brain Research and School Psychology at The University of Auckland explains, our alphabet has 26 letters.  Yet, those 26 letters are used to produce 40 different sounds (what researchers call phonemes).  The really hard part is that the English language uses 250 different letter combinations or spellings to make those 40 different sounds. 

Even the most dedicated and hard-working child can become confused when they confront these 250 different letter combinations.  As one student explained to me, “the letters keep changing their sound.”  Not really, but it certainly seems that way.

 
Why Do Some Children Learn To Read And Others Do Not?
 
In school, the most common teaching methods are whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.  Unfortunately, as David Kilpatrick states in his book Equipped for Reading Success, whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics, even systematic phonics do not teach students how to work with the brain’s oral filing system and match alphabet letters to oral sounds.

What Makes a Reading Program Successful? (read more about Kilpatrick's research)
 
Kilpatrick explains that phonics, even systematic phonics, does not teach letter-sound relationships in the same way that the brain processes letter sounds and connects those sounds to the oral language filing system.

Welcome back to a new semester and a new year.  I took a longer vacation than usual because I was finishing a book manuscript, but as I return, not much has changed.  The coronavirus pandemic is even worse this month. Schools are still arguing over whether they should have in-class instruction or online instruction. Neither one is successful, in fact, teachers are being forced back into the classroom in most cases without vaccine or safety precautions. Many people still refuse to wear masks, even though wearing a mask has been proven to be effective in saving lives and reducing the spread of Covid-19. 

 
In the Classroom, We Are Still Using the Same Old, Failed Teaching Methods.  Nothing Has Changed 
​
The only real, positive change that I can point to in 2021 so far is that we have a new President being inaugurated into office this week.  Positive changes lie ahead for our country and hopefully for education as well.  In the meantime, I want us to think about the type of education children are returning to in the classroom. 
 
Were we successful with how we were teaching students before the coronavirus pandemic?  No, we were not. 
 
The Nation’s Report Card in 2019 shows that the methods we were using for teaching reading in the classroom were failing.  Please note that all of these test scores were recorded before Covid-19. 
 
            for 4th grade only --“… 35 percent performed at or above NAEP Proficient….”
            for 8th grade only –  “… 34 percent performed at or above NAEP Proficient….”  
            for 12th grade only – “…37 percent performed at or above NAEP Proficient….”
  
So, what does proficient mean?  Proficient means that students who read at the proficient level are able to read at or above their grade level.
 

What About Students Who Are Not Able To Read At The Proficient Level? 

Students unable to read at the proficient level at 4th, 8th, or even 12th grade are struggling students, sometimes labeled as “low achieving students.”  They are reading below grade level, often struggling to learn to read.  Some are failing.  Some are reading, but far below their age level.  Whose fault is this? 
 
People often blame teachers. However, teachers are not causing reading failure.  Yes, there are good and bad teachers just as there are good and bad doctors, but teachers are not the real problem.  Other people blame parents.  Again, there are good and bad parents, but parents, poverty, or even a low socioeconomic background does not cause reading failure.  Several research studies prove this to be true.  [see Chapter 1 in my book--After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read]  

Still other people blame the students.  Yes, some students work harder than others—just like the rest of society.  Yet, students are not the cause of reading failure, either. 
 
The cause of reading failure is the teaching methods that we use in the classroom for teaching reading.   

From the Nation’s Report Card scores, we can see that neither whole language teaching methods nor a phonics teaching approach has proven to be successful in teaching children how to read.  Students are failing.  Whole language and phonics have both failed.
 So, what are we to do?  Are we just to go on continuing to use failing teaching methods or should we change to something that works? 
 
President-elect Biden says that as a nation we will be focusing on scientific facts this year; therefore, perhaps in reading, we should focus on science as well.  I want to highlight three new studies released in 2020. 
 
New Research in 2020
First, Edutopia lists a new study as one of the 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2020.  Marilyn Jager Adams and her research team stated that systematic phonics is more effective than whole language and balanced literacy.  Indeed, stacks and stacks of research (dating back to the year 2000 and even before) show that systematic phonics is better than whole language.  Yet, if you walk into any classroom, you will still encounter whole language and balanced literacy because those discredited methods are taught each and every day in public school classrooms.  
 
But, wait, is systematic phonics the change we actually want to make? 
Another significant research study of 2020 challenges us to reconsider systematic phonics.  Jeffrey S. Bowers, Professor of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol, conducts neuroscientific research on how word knowledge is coded in the brain and has reviewed the research claiming that systematic phonics is effective.  Bowers found the claims being made about systematic phonics do not match the research results.  I encourage you to read his article. 

Professor Bowers explains that systematic phonics does not work any better than other methods that have been used in the classroom; therefore, switching to systematic phonics would be disastrous.  Students would continue to fail.

“One problem is that the majority of older students (78%) in the various studies included in the NRP [National Reading Panel] analysis were either low achieving readers or students with reading disability, and as noted above, systematic phonics was less effective with both these populations….” Bowers, 2020, p. 687)

Bowers concludes by saying that switching to systematic phonics would be a major mistake.  Systematic phonics simply does not work for the students who need it most.
If we go back and look at the Nation’s Report Card test scores, we see that over half of the students tested were found to be “low achieving” or students unable to read at their grade level.  These are the very students who need a teaching method that actually works.  Bowers is also not the only researcher saying that systematic phonics does not work with struggling students.
 
Even systematic phonics enthusiasts admit that systematic phonics does not work well with struggling students. 

• Jeanne Sternlicht Chall (1967) an advocate for systematic phonics, warned that a purely phonics approach would leave many students failing.
• Linnea C. Ehri, (2001) another strong advocate for phonics, also found that systematic phonics “… did not help low achieving readers.” 
• Even the National Reading Panel (2000)  states that, “… phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades….” (p. 94). 

 
If even the people who support phonics admit that it doesn’t work for the students who need the most help, why are we using it?  Are we causing more reading failure through the use of systematic phonics?  Obviously, we are.
​

Click here for a complete description of my research on systematic phonics
 
 
Does Phonics Work for Students Diagnosed with Dyslexia?

Those working with students diagnosed with dyslexia also contend that systematic phonics does not work for students who need help in reading.  Gerald Hughes, Director of the Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center and author of the book, Gifted—Not Broken:  Overcoming Dyslexia, ADD and Other Learning Challenges, states that long-standing research shows that: 
 
“20% of all children will show little or no lasting improvement in reading ability using phonics-based programs…. using a phonics-based program on this particular group of children, is more than likely doomed to failure because it is focused on the very weaknesses of the child. Experience has repeatedly shown that when subjected to an extensive phonics-based program, many of these children will experience frustration, anger and ultimately continued failure.”
 
Phonics simply does not work for many students, especially the students who so desperately need help.  So, why do we keep demanding that schools switch to systematic phonics?  If it doesn’t work and has been proven not to work with struggling students, why do we keep using systematic phonics?  Schools must change.  Schools must change and adopt a teaching method that works for all students.
 
We cannot afford to give in to whole language advocates or systematic phonics advocates; instead, we must look for a new alternative, a new way to teach all students to read.  The teaching method and curriculum that we use in the classroom is the key.
 
Dr. Mark S Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist for the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Language at the Speed of Sight:  How We Read, Why so Many Can’t, and What Can Be Done About It (2017), said:
 
“How reading is taught is indeed a significant part of the literacy problem in the US and other countries…. In the US, the conflicting and often strongly entrenched interests of various stakeholders—educators, politicians, scientists, taxpayers, labor organizations, parent groups—make it hard to achieve meaningful change within the existing institutional structure of public education.”  (p. 10)
 
So, yes, how we teach makes a difference in whether students succeed or fail.  We need a teaching method that works.
 
We do have research-based, tested methods that actually help students of all ages learn how to read.  We just need to change how we teach and use more effective teaching methods.  Phonics and whole language are not the answer.  It’s not the students who are failing; it’s the teaching methods that are failing the students.
​
I use vowel clustering, and I have actually had failing students move up four grade levels in reading in one year.  So, yes, we can in fact teach failing students to read.  The research data may be found in my latest book--After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation:  Teaching At-Risk Students to Read. 
 
This brings us to a third new research study in 2020, Thomas B. Fordham’s associate director of research Adam Tyner and early childhood researcher Sarah Kabourek concluded that,
 
“Increased instructional time in social studies—but not in ELA [English and Language Arts]—is associated with improved reading ability.”
 
The verdict is still out on this new idea, but you must admit that it is an interesting concept. What if an increased focus on civics, social studies, and world cultures actually helped increase reading scores? 
 
Teaching social studies cannot take the place of teaching students to decoded and encode letter sounds, but it might help increase comprehension.  We will discuss comprehension later in another blog post.  For now, our primary concern is teaching struggling students to read—to decode and encode letter sounds.  Systematic phonics is obviously not the teaching method that we need.
 

I wonder what changes will come to education in 2021 

​Will we finally stop fighting over whole language and phonics and begin to actually teach students to read? 
 
Will we incorporate more social studies into our reading programs? 
 
We must conclude that whole language and balanced literacy do not work.  Even systematic phonics does not work for all students, especially the students who need it most. 
 
In my next blog post, we will look at the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness, and ask, could phonemic awareness solve the reading failure that phonics could not?

Know that reading failure is one of the primary contributors to teenage violence and crime.  The National Council on Adult Literacy found that 85% of adolescents seen by the courts were classified as “functionally illiterate”—unable to read.  [For more about this data, see my book After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation, Chapter 1]

12th Grade Reading Scores for 2019
Twelve-graders have not been doing any better. Peggy G. Carr from the National Center for Educational Statistics stated that "The decline in twelfth-grade reading scores resembles the declines in fourth- and eighth-graders' reading scores, where we saw the largest declines among the lowest-performing students." ​

With this year’s interpretation of 12th grade scores, the Nation’s Report Card also listed a number of 12th graders scoring below the basic level.

30% Below Basic
33%  at Basic—cannot read at grade level
31%  at Proficient—can read at grade level
6%  at Advanced—can read above grade level

Failure does not simply vanish on its own. Reading failure when it goes uncorrected leads to more reading failure.  We must change our teaching methods from kindergarten all the way through high school.  We can teach these students to read. 

Comprehension plays a major role in these low reading scores.  Comprehension means you understand what you are reading and can apply that understanding.  Obviously, many students across the nation are struggling with comprehension. The methods that we are using to teach comprehension are definitely not working. We need a new approach.

The NAEP criteria for a basic score required the student to be able to:

• “Identify elements of meaning and form and relate them to the overall meaning of the text”
• “Make inferences, develop interpretations, make connections between texts, and draw conclusions”
• “Provide some support for analyses”
• “Interpret the meaning of a word as it is used in the text”

 As you can see, the requirements for a basic score were not that challenging.  After 12 years of classroom education, a student should be able to meet these basic requirements.

As Peggy Carr, the Associate Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, stated, “…over the past decade there has been no progress in either mathematics or reading performance, and the lowest performing students are doing worse….” 

Classroom education in reading is in terrible trouble.  No, not just because of the coronavirus pandemic or because students are being taught online, classroom teaching methods in reading are not working.  Methods being used in the classroom right now are failing teaching methods.  They have been shown to be failing for over 20 years.  When will we wake up, stop wasting children’s lives with phonics and cueing methods, and begin to actually teach an effective reading approach?

Our classroom teaching methods should be helping students get ready for college or for whatever type of career job they are planning.  Unfortunately, failure does not help any student get ready to assume a professional position in society.
 
Asking why reforms have not been working, educational policy author, Maureen Downey discusses the poor preparation that our students have been receiving:
 
“The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as The Nation's Report Card, also shows that an estimated 37 percent of 12th-graders are prepared for college-level coursework in each subject. In 2013, the last time the assessments were given, an estimated 39 percent of grade 12 students were prepared for college-level mathematics and an estimated 38 percent for college-level reading.” 
 

Approximately 61% of 12th graders reported on a questionnaire that they wanted to go to college, but only 37% are prepared for college-level work, and the scores are getting worse each year instead of better.  How are 12th graders who cannot read at the proficient level going to succeed in college? 
 
The answer:  they are not.
 
Why Are Students Failing in Reading?
 
Because of the teaching methods we use in the classroom to teach reading.  The approach we use to teach reading must change before scores get worse.  Yes, reading scores will continue to get worse unless we change the teaching methods that we are using in the classroom.
 
Comprehension is one of the major reasons that 12th grade scores were so low.  Comprehension is also one of the reading skills that I want us to examine in detail.
 
Many researchers are beginning to say that comprehension is one of the primary reasons for reading failure.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion over how we can effectively teach comprehension.
 
Comprehension is essential in college classes.  Comprehension skills are essential in many business jobs.  Comprehension is essential just for life.  If you cannot comprehend what you are reading, you also cannot apply critical thinking or basic reasoning skills when reading.  Understanding both literary and informational texts is a very basic skill.  As Maureen Downey goes on to explain, twelth-graders in the United States are weak in comprehension and are not even able to identify important details when they are reading:
 
“The results are based on a nationally representative sample of 18,700 12th-graders from 740 schools. The reading assessment measures students' comprehension of two types of texts: literary and informational. Students earning a score equivalent to the national average were likely to be able to make an inference based on details in a reading text but were not likely to be able to recognize detail related to the purpose of a reading text.”
 
From kindergarten to 12th grade, we absolutely must improve reading and comprehension for all ages.  As this research shows, reading ability does not automatically improve as students get older.  If anything, reading ability gets worse.
 
What Should Be Done to Improve Reading Scores?
 
America’s high schoolers are graduating with a lower ability to read than ever before.
 
Many try to explain away these scores by saying, “testing is just not fair.” “We have too much testing.”  “We should stop testing.”  “Or that’s statistical error.”
 
Stopping the testing will not make reading improve.  Stopping the testing will just hide the disastrous job that is being done in the classroom.  No, what we need to do is change how we teach reading in the classroom. 
 
Rerunning the stats will not make the scores look any better either.  When scores are this low, there is something wrong. 
 
One of the primary focuses for these 12th grade students is comprehension.  Thomas Kane of the Brookings Institution offers one suggestion for improving comprehension. He emphasizes high standards and more time devoted to student writing: “…the combination of high standards and use of many more open ended items on the PARCC and SBAC tests, requiring students to explain their thinking, to write coherently and to demonstrate conceptual understanding, perhaps we will see an acceleration of progress in student achievement, and literacy.” 
 
In other words, we need to quit trying to teach with worksheets and multiple-choice tests.  If we want reading scores to improve, we must actually teach comprehension.  We must also teach critical thinking, as we discussed in my previous blog post. 

As the Nation’s Report Card scores demonstrate, the method that we are using to teach reading and comprehension at present in the classroom is not working.  Yes, the pandemic will make it harder, but I want to remind you that all of these scores are from classroom teaching methods and how reading was being taught in the classroom before the coronavirus pandemic.  No, we cannot blame these low scores on testing nor can we blame it on the coronavirus pandemic.  The cause of failing scores in reading is teaching method—the way we are teaching reading and comprehension in the classroom.
How should we teach comprehension? If the methods we are now using are not effective, what should we do to change?  In my next blog post, we will turn to neuroimaging research to find the answer.

Often, when I tell parents about critical thinking, they will ask, “Why is that included in reading?  I just want my child to learn to read.”  All readers must know how to evaluate the ideas that an author presents.  They must be able to judge whether the information they are reading is accurate, factual, or even logical.
 
When children first start learning to read, they begin by reading for details in a story or passage.  Later, they learn to summarize or identify the main idea.  Neither of these skills requires critical thinking, but when children begin to draw conclusions or interpret an author’s intent, then they are using critical thinking.  Students use critical thinking each time they ask, “What does this mean?” That is why comprehension requires effective critical thinking.  For a student to make sense of a story or passage, the student must be able to analyze what is specifically said by an author and what is implied but not directly stated by an author.  Critical thinking is a vital step in reading comprehension.  When a student’s reading comprehension improves, reading ability and reading scores also improve. 
 
One of the reasons reading scores were so poor in 2019 is the fact that our classrooms do not emphasize teaching critical thinking.  Why not? 
 
Educational psychologist and critical thinking specialist Dr. Linda Elder states that the reasons that classrooms do not emphasize critical thinking are:  “First, faculty who control and teach the curriculum simply don’t know what critical thinking is.  Second, they think they do.”  Elder goes on to explain that “Most teachers have never been explicitly taught the intellectual skills inherent in critical thinking.” Elder explains that, in education, we confuse rote memorization with learning. In today’s classroom, elementary to college, the emphasis is on memorization, not critical thinking.  
 
What is critical thinking?
 
“Critical thinking is about evaluating data, observations, well-known facts, available research, as well as opinions to draw some conclusions related to solving a problem or taking a decision.” 
  
Critical thinking requires a person to analyze facts objectively before forming a decision or making a judgment.  Critical thinking is based on evaluating evidence to determine whether something is true or not.  Accuracy is essential in critical thinking.  We cannot just assume that students will automatically learn critical thinking or how to analyze, evaluate, and make accurate decisions or judgments.  These are skills that must be taught.  Foremost, a critical thinker needs a willingness to admit that they may be wrong, needs to be able to question their own thinking, needs to recognize their own bias or prejudices, and a critical thinker needs to avoid drawing conclusions before evaluating the facts. 
 
The lack of critical thinking is clear in the question of should I or should I not wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic.  Are people turning to the facts?  Are people evaluating the pros and cons of wearing a mask?  No, critical thinking has not entered the scene.  The question of whether to wear a mask or not is being purely decided by biased opinions, not facts.  Researchers state that 100,000 deaths could be avoided if everyone wears a mask.
 
Yet, people continue to die, coronavirus is still surging with 80,000 new cases a day for an all-time high, and  unfortunately, people continue to refuse to wear a mask. 
 
Critical thinking is a lifelong skill, but if students do not learn critical thinking in school, they most likely will never learn to apply evaluation and analysis to their decisions and problems.  Critical thinking is not only essential for understanding a story; it is also essential for making wise decisions in life.  Critical thinking helps us make intelligent decisions, evaluate the consequences of our actions before acting, and helps us to solve problems.  Critical thinking should be taught when children are young, even as young as first grade:
 
“A child’s natural curiosity helps lay the foundation for critical thinking. Critical thinking requires us to take in information, analyze it and make judgements about it, and that type of active engagement requires imagination and inquisitiveness....  They have to think about how the new information fits in with what they already know, or if it changes any information we already hold to be true….  we evaluate that information to determine if it is true, important and whether or not we should believe it. Help children learn these skills by teaching them to evaluate new information. Have them think about where or who the information is coming from, how it relates to what they already know and why it is or is not important.”
 
Do the Common Core Standards require critical thinking?
 
Yes, the Common Core Standards stress that critical thinking should be a part of the school curriculum.  Unfortunately, education programs are not preparing teachers to teach critical thinking.  The Center for Critical Thinking conducted a study and found that 89% of teachers felt that critical thinking was very important to include in the classroom curriculum, but only 19% could actually explain what critical thinking is and 75% of those interviewed could not explain how they would teach critical thinking to their students.
 
 
How should critical thinking be taught in the classroom?
 
In many schools, critical thinking is neither encouraged nor taught.  Many schools blame this on standardized testing.  Teachers say they do not have time to teach critical thinking; they must help students prepare for testing.  Yet, taking a test requires critical thinking, even a multiple-choice test.  The best way to teach critical thinking is to incorporate it into the curriculum.  Make it part of the learning process.
 
The first step is to encourage questions and to allow students to evaluate and analyze the information they are being taught in the classroom.  Don’t be afraid to have students challenge what you teach; instead, encourage students to explore and discover the truth. Teach students to research and find the answers:
 
“In our rapidly changing technological world more information is available at the touch of our fingers, so critical thinking skills are a must today….  – of all the information we deal with each day-- some is accurate-- but it can be very easy to get pulled into believing something that is propaganda or an outright fabrication….  Social media is a great place to see how few people employ critical thinking skills….  Teaching our children to question facts and research questionable statements presented as facts, is imperative today.  In many schools, kids are not always encouraged to take a critical mindset and question facts.”
 
Teach students how to analyze information, not just memorize facts.  Memorization discourages critical thinking.  Teaching students how to classify and compare information is better than memorization.  Comparing and contrasting two stories or two characters in a story can be an excellent way of teaching critical thinking.  In the middle of the political turmoil all around us, classifying and analyzing the statements made by politicians can be not only an important classroom assignment but it can also be an important life task:
 
“Classification plays an important role in critical thinking because it requires students to understand and apply a set of rules.  Give students a variety of objects and ask them to identify each object, then sort it into a category.  This is a great activity to help students think and self-question what object should go where and why.”
 
Teach perspective taking.  To actually teach critical thinking, we must also teach perspective taking.  Perspective taking is being able to see an issue from someone else’s point of view, not just your own.  Some teachers teach brainstorming with the misconception that they have taught perspective-taking.  The teachers think that they are teaching perspective taking when they teach brainstorming, but that is not how you teach perspective taking.  Brainstorming is a way to generate ideas.  Perspective taking is a way to understand what other people are thinking and feeling--to walk in someone else 's shoes as the old saying goes.  Brainstorming and perspective taking are two completely, totally different things.  Brainstorming is good; it generates ideas, but brainstorming is not the same as perspective taking:
 
“Some of the very best critical thinking exercises for elementary school students involve exploring a concept from multiple perspectives. This tactic not only establishes that an idea should be assessed from different points of view before an opinion is formed, it gives students a chance to share their own viewpoints while listening to and learning from others.” 
  
Encourage decision-making and problem-solving.  Critical thinking requires that students gather knowledge from at least two different perspectives and then learn how to apply that knowledge toward making a decision or solving a problem.  Students should evaluate the pros and cons of a decision or solution.  This enables students to apply what they have learned from the textbook or from classroom discussion.  All students should learn to use a simple problem solution format:  define the problem, brainstorm possible solutions, evaluate solutions, explore consequences of selected solution(s), and implement the best solution.
 
“When children are deeply vested in a topic or pursuit, they are more engaged and willing to experiment. The process of expanding their knowledge brings about a lot of opportunities for critical thinking….  Teach problem-solving skills. When dealing with problems or conflicts, it is necessary to use critical thinking skills to understand the problem and come up with possible solutions, so teach them the steps of problem-solving and they will use critical thinking in the process of finding solutions to problems.”
 
Encourage creativity.  Teaching a student to apply what they learn in the classroom to real-life situations is extremely important in life.  Helping students make that application through hands-on learning ensures that the student will remember what they have learned.  There are many ways to turn a critical thinking lesson into a hands-on learning experience:
 
“Imagination is key to teaching critical thinking in elementary school. Teachers should seek out new ways for students to use information to create something new. Art projects are an excellent way to do this. Students can also construct inventions, write a story or poem, create a game, sing a song—the sky’s the limit.” 
 
What are the advantages of teaching critical thinking in the classroom?
 
The editors at Wabisab Learning, a resource for creative new ideas in teaching, offer six advantages to teaching critical thinking in the classroom.
 
Encourages curiosity.  Critical thinking involves evaluating information in a rational not emotional way.  Critical thinkers check the facts and research to find information that supports or fails to support their ideas.  Critical thinkers are curious and want to learn.
 
“Effective critical thinkers don’t take anything at face value, either. They never stop asking questions and enjoy exploring all sides of an issue and the deeper facts hiding within all modes of data.”
 
Generates creativity.  The best grades in school always go to students who are also creative.  If you are just memorizing facts, you are not really learning.  Finding new and different hands-on ways to learn enables students to generate their own ideas and thoughts on a subject.  Such is a skill that is needed throughout life.
 
“Critical thinking in business, marketing, and professional alliances relies heavily on one’s ability to be creative.”          
 
Teaches problem-solving.  It has been said that Albert Einstein spent five minutes solving a problem and 55 minutes defining and researching the problem.  Critical thinkers do not just throw out opinions or guess at a solution.  Critical thinkers study the problem.
 
“Those who think critically tend to be instinctual problem solvers. This ranks as probably the most important skill we can help our learners build upon. The children today are the leaders of tomorrow….”
 
Fosters independent thinking.  As a teacher, we all strive to help our students learn how to learn and how to think independently.  Students need to ask questions, identify connections between ideas, and formulate their own ideas rather than just assuming something to be correct.  “Getting our learners to begin thinking independently is one of the many goals of education.”
 
Enables students to be successful in and out of the classroom.  Every teacher wants their students to be successful both in the classroom and outside of the classroom.  The question is how do we help students to be successful.  The answer is the way we teach.
 
“Many great educators have said many great things about the importance of lifelong learning skills. John Dewey, however, probably said it best:  ‘Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.’…. The point is that they never stop being learners. This is what it means to be a lifelong learner and a critical thinker.”
 
Critical thinking can be used with any subject.  Critical thinking teaches reasoning skills, how to evaluate a problem, organization, how to decide if a solution is workable or not, and analytical thinking.  It can even be said that critical thinking “… is a cross-cultural activity for the mind, and the mind must be exercised just like a muscle to stay healthy.
 
Dr. Eliza Abioye adds to this list of advantages for teaching critical thinking with a reminder of what happens when we do not teach critical thinking in the classroom.
 
“Critical thinking minimizes the chances of children being brainwashed by what they are told, what they see on TV or even what they read. They can be able to differentiate the truth from hearsay. Through this, children can explore their mind at a deeper level and develop the courage to think for themselves.” 
 
How can we best apply critical thinking when teaching reading?
 
We need critical thinking in school.  There are advantages for students—in the classroom and beyond.  So, how can we apply this concept of critical thinking when teaching reading?
 
First, improve comprehension skills.  My next blog post will talk specifically about how to improve comprehension skills, but, for now, I’ll only emphasize that you cannot have critical thinking if you do not have comprehension or understanding of what you are reading.
 
Encourage children to ask questions.  Children should always be encouraged to ask questions about things they do not understand.  Yes, answering questions can enable students to demonstrate what they have learned.  A test may also show simply how well a student is at taking tests.  In reading, we must do more than simply tack on a list of multiple-choice questions at the end of the story.  Use open ended questions, discussion questions, free writing responses, and other ways to generate thought with your students.
 
Analyze stories or nonfiction passages.  Allow students to compare and contrast stories, characters, or even themes.  When students are reading a story where the hero has to solve a problem, have students stop midway through the story and write how they would solve the problem.  Incorporate research with nonfiction topics.  The idea is that you want students to do more than just read and answer a list of questions.  You want students to work with the reading material.
 
Be creative and use hands-on learning techniques to apply what the student is learning.  I have said before and I will say again the best teaching methods are hands-on.  So, develop some hands-on projects that connect with what your students are reading.  Make a book.  Build a project.  Find a way to help students get involved with what they are reading, regardless whether it be fiction or nonfiction.
 
Comprehension and critical thinking are intertwined.  You cannot teach comprehension without teaching critical thinking.  Critical thinking is essential for effective reading.  How are you teaching critical thinking in your classroom?

For example, the students at my Reading Orienteering Club become excited when we make a Saturn V rocket.  They enter the room and immediately glue 2 two-liter pop bottles together.  While the glue is drying, the students go to eight workstations where they do Read and Spell activities to search for 100 new words that the students cannot read or spell. Each student then uses 4 steps to learn the words “captured.” We capture a word in order to learn the word. No, we do not simply point to a word and tell the student what the word is. Instead, we break the word down into syllables, pronounce each letter sound or sound cluster, and then put the syllables back together and pronounce the word.  Next, we go to the dictionary and look up a definition for the word.  Then, the student uses the word correctly in a sentence.  Finally, the student sits down with manuscript paper and writes the word correctly using manuscript style printing.  Therefore, the student has learned how to read, pronounce, spell, write, and give a definition for 100 new words. No, we do not do all 100 words at one time.  Instead, we learn 5 words at a time. Then, go and glue those five words onto the rocket. After that, we go to the next workstation and learn five more words.  We continue until the rocket contains 100 new words and is ready to be launched. ​
​
The rocket project uses a hands-on teaching approach. The hands-on project combines learning (teaching the short ă vowel sound) and counseling (rebuilding self-efficacy, creating a motivational environment where students tackle challenging learning tasks, and helping students develop completion skills).  The excitement of completing the rocket encourages even reluctant students to push a little harder to finish a challenging task.  Everyone, naturally, wants to see their rocket soar through the air. 
 
One young student was sent to my Reading Orienteering Club after-school program because he was failing in reading.  He never did his homework, scribbled all over his worksheets in class, and rarely finished his in-class assignments— instead, he put his head down and slept.  He repeatedly caused other inappropriate behaviors in the classroom.  The list was long.  Yet, he said to me, “Can't I finish?  My dad's not here yet.  I know I can finish.  Please.”  The student was pleading for extra time to finish his rocket, to finish capturing 10 more words.  I never offer shortcuts. He had to complete all four steps for all 10 words that he captured. He knew this, and he was still motivated to do the work. See what a difference changing the teaching method can make?

What makes this project intrinsic rather than extrinsic?
 
First, making a rocket is not a reward.  Every single student makes a rocket, even if they’ve misbehaved in class.  Making a rocket is the assignment, not the reward.  The students do not need to earn points or complete any other assignments in order to be able to make a rocket. They simply walk in and begin making a rocket. The rocket is the teaching tool being used to teach students new words. 

How can I increase intrinsic motivation in my classroom?

• Build a motivational learning environment in your classroom.  Design classroom assignments to incorporate topics that students are interested in.  This does not need to change the requirements of an assignment.  Offer choices, as with the 3rd grade class example above. Remember, you cannot motivate a student, but you can help them motivate themselves.
• Make sure your classroom assignments are positive, absolutely no competitions.  Competition and conflict destroy intrinsic motivation.

Help students rebuild self-efficacy.  Self-efficacy is not the same as self-esteem.  Self-esteem means I feel good about what I'm doing.  I can feel good about getting in trouble. A student getting in trouble for misbehavior may in fact have a very high positive self -esteem.  Some students delight in causing trouble in the classroom.  Self-efficacy, on the other hand, is having the confidence to know that you can work a math problem, read out loud when requested, or knowing that you can write a paragraph when asked to in class.  Self-efficacy requires skill building.  Students who lack skills will not be intrinsically motivated, even if you offer choices or have a positive classroom atmosphere.  

Reduce negativity in the classroom. Control teasing, bullying, and making fun of other students in any form or fashion.  Intrinsic motivation is not possible in a negative classroom.

Design intrinsic motivational strategies that help students change poor behavior or poor academic results.  Use a method that will help students learn to read rather than one that has failed, such as the rocket building activity described above. 

Teach critical thinking.  Critical thinking enables children to analyze why something worked or why it did not.  By analyzing the success or failure of their actions, students will develop a more positive approach to learning. 

Remove memorization from the classroom. Memorization becomes boring; boredom keeps students from learning.  It is also not an effective teaching method.

Be creative. Do not use worksheets.

Whenever possible, allow choices.  Allow your students to choose writing topics or books to read.  As mentioned earlier, you may provide a selection of topics to choose from or you may supply a collection of books to choose from.  Choosing from a designated group still allows children to have a sense of control and choice.

Incorporate hands-on learning projects whenever possible.  Do not just sit down and learn a list of spelling words.  Turn a list of spelling words into a hands-on project—a rocket or a puppet. 

How can I increase intrinsic motivation with online instruction?
Each of these 10 ideas mentioned above can be transferred to online instruction.  Yes, they really can.  The difference is that you are creating a special kind of environment when you teach online.  You are not in the same room with the student; therefore, you must build a connection between you and the student.  You must create a positive learning atmosphere online.  I'll devote a later blog to talking about how to create intrinsically motivating learning environments online.  It is possible, but it is different than working in a classroom. 

I’ve heard all of the arguments about good and bad stress, but, in the classroom, good stress doesn’t exist.  Oh, it’s true, if stress were just a reaction, then, maybe, you could justify the label “good stress,” but stress is more than just a mere reaction or response.  If for example, I am driving down the street in my car and another driver changes lanes without looking, my reaction to avoid an accident is good.  What if I am still upset hours after the near accident, is that still good?  Also, what happens later if I continue to worry about that near miss or if I encounter more traffic problems?  Let’s say that I travel on down the road and on this particular day have 10 more “almost accidents”—one car almost rear ends me, another car almost takes off the front bumper, and you can imagine other such scenarios.  Is such stress good? 
 
I contend that my reactions are good because I avoided having any accidents, but the stress from worrying about my first near accident to my last was not good.  In other words, I do not believe there is any such thing as “good stress.”  It is important for us to look at this concept of good or bad stress because some people are saying that stress in the classroom is good.  Instead, I want to show why stress in the classroom contributes to academic failure, especially reading failure.
 

What is stress?

Let’s stop and define the word stress.  There are almost as many definitions for stress as there are situations that cause stress. One definition speaks directly to the school classroom.  This is a classic definition from a well-established psychologist, Wayne Weiten, whose book, Psychology Applied to Modern Life, I used for many years when teaching college psychology courses:
 
Stress is “. . . circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and thereby tax ones coping abilities.”   
 
Notice that the definition includes perceptions.  Many people overlook the influence of perceptions on stress.  Perceptions are a key factor in understanding and coping with stress, especially for students in the classroom.  Yes, I can perceive that there is a problem, even when there is not one, but my perception that a problem exists creates stress and thereby creates a problem.
 
If I am sitting all week in class trying to read a passage that I simply do not understand, I become frustrated and stressed.  If I have a test coming up on Friday, then, my stress is multiplied.  My perceived fear of failure blocks my ability to read and learn.  I am panicking, not studying.  The more I try to study, the more I panic.  No, anxiety over the exam does not improve my comprehension, especially if I perceive that I will fail the test.  No, fear of failure does not encourage me or motivate me to work harder.  In reality, it has the opposite effect.  Stress often leads to failure, particularly reading failure.  Yet, many educators actually believe that stress in the classroom improves attention, motivates students to work harder, and improves performance.  Wrong.  Stress does not help students learn.  Stress blocks or destroys learning, especially if students perceive that it is not likely or even possible to pass the test on Friday. 
 
“Cutting edge neuroimaging research reveals significant disturbances in the brain’s information processing circuits in stressful learning environments. Information communication is blocked in the stress states and new learning cannot pass into memory storage.”  
 
This is why I contend that one of our major reasons for reading failure in 2019 was stress and our inability to understand stress in the classroom.  There is no motivation from stress; there is only failure.  Yes, stress is causing failure in the classroom. 

 
What are the major sources of stress in the classroom?
 
Testing.  Stress from trying to figure out the answers to multiple-choice questions.  Yes, some multiple-choice test questions are so poorly written that they actually create stress for students taking the test.  Many multiple-choice tests do not actually measure how well students know the subject matter; instead, they only measure how successful students are at taking multiple-choice tests.  Research also shows that 25% of the variation between test scores is associated with the type of test being given—multiple-choice or constructed format (open ended).  So, tests definitely contribute to stress. 
 
Poor curriculum.  Worksheets do not teach.  Yet, many students spend the majority of their classroom time filling out worksheets.  The quality of the worksheet is also important.  Some worksheets are confusing and badly written; this contributes to student stress.  Students must learn skills to succeed in the classroom.  Worksheets do not teach skills; they merely practice what the student has already learned.  If the student has not learned the concept or skill being taught, then the student cannot practice something they have not learned.

 
Read more: Worksheets Cause Reading Failure  
 

Ineffective teaching methods.  As I explained when I started this blog series describing 20 reasons for reading failure, the major reason so many children fail in reading in school is the method that we use to teach reading in the classroom.  As long as we continue to teach children using whole language, phonics, and balanced literacy methods, children will continue to fail in reading.  Failure definitely causes stress in the classroom.


​Read More: Reason #1 That Reading Scores Have Dropped:  Wrong Teaching Methods Are Being Used in the Classroom

Read More: Should We Pretend It's Okay to Go Ahead and Open the Schools?

 
Learning environment.  Bullying and teasing contribute heavily to academic failure.  Fear contributes to academic failure, particularly fear of social interactions.  COVID-19 is certainly going to be a factor in this school year.  Also, fear of failure is part of a learning environment that leads to stress.  The classroom environment as well as the learning environment at home is going to be very important this year.  As Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician and surgeon general for the state of California, stated:
 
“… the Covid-19 pandemic is a ‘perfect storm’ for this stress to negatively impact children’s mental and physical health and behavior…. the same stressor won’t elicit the same response in everyone….  We might assume our kids miss their friends, but they may appreciate having more time with us. And some who were dealing with bullying or social challenges at school may be relieved not to have to see other kids.”
 
Perceived failure.  Perceptions can create stress.  If I believe that I am going to fail, my perception that I cannot succeed will in effect keep me from succeeding.  Why is perception so important when talking about stress?  Let’s examine this concept of perception.

 
What is perception? 
 
Perception is, according to Robert Feldman, the “sorting out, interpretation, analysis, and integration of stimuli involving the sense organs and brain.” 
 
The student’s perception of their ability to pass a test directly influences their analysis of whether or not they can pass the test.  A test on Friday may not be a major stress event for you, while a test on Friday, may be a major stress event for me as a student.  Such stress does not encourage me to study harder because I perceive that I will fail and that nothing can be done to prevent my failure.  No two students, not even identical twins, perceive or interpret situations or events that happen in the classroom in the same way.  That is why perceptions play a major role in how we combat stress. 
 
Yes, students bring stress from home and their neighborhood with them to school, but some of the most prevalent stressors that students face come from the school classroom.  You might say that stress over the test on Friday is nothing more than a minor stressor or problem that causes stress, but minor stress is more directly related to mental health problems than major stressful events.  Research shows that it is the minor difficulties, the routine problems, and the daily hassles that cause the most stress. Also, as Willis explains:
 
“Despite many changes in our education system over the past century, a significant disconnect remains between the comprehensive cognitive and emotional needs of students and what they actually learn and experience in school. Student levels of stress and depression have been climbing at an alarming rate, and science shows the negative effects of such states of mind and emotions on learning.”
 
To change a student’s perception, a teacher must rebuild the student’s self-efficacy or belief that he/she can pass the test.  You can only rebuild self-efficacy by teaching skills.  Positive words and positive interactions will not change self-efficacy.
​
 
What actually happens in the classroom?
 
Each time a student learns something new in the classroom, the process of learning changes the student’s brain.  This is true for adults as well as children.  The brain is constantly changing as we learn.  Scientists call this neuroplasticity. 
 
The ability to change the brain’s gray matter is critical in reading.  Studies show that the brain’s gray matter changes when children learn to read successfully.  Timothy Keller and Marcel Just from the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated through their research that 100 hours of remedial phonemic decoding training could turn poor readers into good readers.
 
This change is possible even for children who live in poverty. Poverty is not reading failure’s cause.  As I have stated many times before, the method that we use to teach is the primary cause of reading failure, and the belief that stress in the classroom is “good” is part of that failed teaching method.
 
A nine-year-old student came to my reading clinic who had been retained a grade in school, was failing in reading, and read at the pre-kindergarten level even though he was in 3rd grade.  The school said that he was not trying and decided to give him 2nd grade reading material to motivate him to work harder.  What do you think happened in the classroom?  He became a major discipline problem in class and was sent to the alternative school.
 
After joining my reading clinic, however, he began to read.  Through vowel clustering, the teaching method that I use in my programs, I taught the student to read. Nevertheless, First I had to reduce his stress and change his perception that he would never be able to learn to read.  I had to rebuild his self-efficacy, his belief that he could in fact learn to read. Or, as he told me, “I can’t read and never will.”
 
This is what stress in the classroom is doing to our students.  Stress, combined with the lack of an effective teaching method, has created schoolrooms full of failure.  As a matter of fact, the Nation’s Report Card shows that 65% of fourth graders could not read at the fourth-grade level by the end of fourth grade.  Reading failure is a lifelong problem, that unless corrected, will change and alter the lives of those students across their lifespan.
 
Oh, you say, they’ll learn later; they’re just a little slow picking it up.  The Nation’s Report Card also shows that 66% of eighth graders could not read at the eighth-grade level by the end of eighth grade.  The National Center for Educational Statistics has documented that 78% of students who cannot read at grade level by the end of fourth grade never catch up to their grade level.
 
No, students are not learning to read later.  They are failing, dropping out of school, and finding their way into crime and other problems.  Approximately 85% of adolescents and youth in the juvenile court system are classified as “functionally illiterate.”

 
Yes, reading failure is a major problem in the United States today.  So, what should we be doing about it?
 
First, we must realize that the students who are failing in reading can in fact be taught to read. 

Data from my own research shows that:

• A student who failed for nine straight years in public school is now reading.
• A student diagnosed with ADHD and failing in reading moved up two grade levels in one year.
• A failing student diagnosed with dyslexia and whose parents tried everything, including expensive private one-on-one phonics tutoring, learned to read and moved up to beginning chapter books in one year.
• Six children who entered the program reading at the pre-K level ended the year reading at the 2nd grade reading level.  Only one child in the group was a first grader.
• One student started at the pre-primer level (pre-K) and ended the year at the third-grade reading level while a second grader started the year reading below first grade and ended at the fourth-grade level.
• Three students moved up four grade levels in reading, four students moved up three grade levels in reading, and eight students moved up two grade levels in reading in one year. 
• Two students moved up two grade levels in reading after only 48 hours of instruction.

Some people have said this past week that students must return to school because they are bored at home.  Of course, children and teens get bored at home and at school.  One research survey shows that 75% of students say they are bored in school.  The study was conducted before the coronavirus pandemic.  
 
Boredom is not a problem that came into existence only because of coronavirus and the stay-at-home order.  Boredom in school is a well-known educational problem.  I contend that boredom is also one of the reasons that reading scores were worse in 2019.  Yes, boredom.
 
So, if we are sending students back to school for in-class instruction to counteract boredom, we are making a huge mistake. 
 
Another study surveyed 110 schools and found that 2 out of every 3 students claimed to be bored in class.   They also cited lack of interaction with the teacher as the reason for their boredom.  
 
Students are bored.  Why?
 
Amanda Morin, a former teacher who now works as a parent advocate, gives the following reasons for boredom in the schools:  
 
Lack of challenge—It is common for gifted students to feel bored in a traditional classroom because they are not being encouraged to work to the best of their ability.
Lack of interaction or connectedness--Remember, in one of the studies that we mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that students listed for their boredom in the classroom was lack of interaction, especially with the teacher.  When we rely on worksheets as our primary teaching method, boredom results.  If we turn to lecture, boredom results.  It should also be noted that worksheets and lecture are considered to be two of the worst teaching methods presently being used in any school classroom.
 
Read more:  Worksheets Contribute to Academic Failure  
 
Lack of skills—Students often say, “I’m bored” when they do not know how to work a problem or read a story.  If you have weak teaching methods in the classroom and parents are not able to help at home, where should students turn for help?
Lack of incentives or motivation—Rewards or prizes are not the same as motivation.  If you offer a bowl of candy for completing a worksheet, it’s a bribe—not motivation.  We’ll talk more about intrinsic motivation and the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in a later blog.
 
Read more about Intrinsic Motivation in Chapter 6 in my book Group-Centered Prevention in Mental Health:  Theory, Training, and Practice. The publisher enables you to select and read just the one chapter if desired.
 
Did you notice that each of the reasons or causes for boredom resulted from something lacking in the teaching method used in the classroom?  Yes, boredom is a problem for gifted students as well as students who are failing.
 
Is boredom harmful?
 
No, as a psychologist, I can assure you that boredom by itself does not cause any mental concerns.  It is when boredom couples with anxiety that mental health problems arise.  It is anxiety that can lead to depression, not boredom. 
 
Boredom is a state of mind.  As Dr. Alex Lichterman M. D., primary care physician and former professor of medicine, stated: 
 
“There are two important things to note about boredom. First, if something bores us, it’s not because that something is intrinsically uninteresting. Nothing is intrinsically uninteresting…. even without significant external stimulation, internal stimulation can serve as an effective substitute. That is, there definitely exists a mindset in which all experience becomes interesting.  Second, what essentially makes an activity boring is our inability to see a purpose in it.”
 
Gail Macklem, certified school psychologist, builds upon this idea by stating that it is the environment that causes boredom.  If your classroom environment is not conducive to learning, then students are bored and do not learn.  

The real problem is curriculum and how it is used.  Regardless of whether we return children to the classroom or teach online until it is safe for students to return, curriculum will determine each student's success or failure.  
 
Yes, the battle continues as the start date for school draws near.  Is it physically sitting in a classroom, or, instead, curriculum and how curriculum is used that determines instructional effectiveness?
 
Education is failing across the nation.  The spring attempt at online classes was, for the most part, a failure, but will simply putting children back in the classroom solve the problem?  No, because just having students physically sitting in a classroom is not the answer.  Schools are arguing, as usual, over what should be taught, but this year they are also arguing over where students should be taught.
 
Some schools are going with totally online classes until it is safe to send children back to school.  Other schools are using an alternate day plan—some students will go one day; others will go the next day.  While still other schools are offering parents choices.  Parents may choose in-class instruction by sending their children to school or parents may choose online instruction and assist with class assignments from home until they feel it is safe for children to return to school. 
 
President Trump demands that students return to school.  Department of Education, Secretary DeVos, says that it’s safe, but is it? 
 
Can anyone truly promise that it is safe to send children back to school?
 
Dr. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 35 years and identified as one of the world’s leading authorities on infectious diseases, spoke recently with Dr. John Whyte, the chief medical officer at WebMD on the program entitled Coronavirus in Context.  This was an excellent interview, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety.  

As Dr. Fauci warned,
 
“…people’s opinions are a fact of life.  What gets, um, I think troublesome, is when people develop their own set of facts.  Facts don’t change.  So you have a different opinion, but facts are consistent.  That’s the problem.”
 
When Dr. Fauci was asked if he thought it was safe for schools to reopen, he said,
 
“… It really is going to depend on what the viral activity is in the place …. There are some counties, … We have 3,007 counties in the United States.… some counties where there’s so little viral activity, you could just say, don’t worry about it. Go back to school. But there are others, … where there’s enough activity where you’ve got to make a choice.  And the choice can either be, don’t bring the kids back or, preferably, bring them back in a way that is very, very geared towards guaranteeing their safety, and their welfare, and the safety and the welfare of the teachers…. To say, we are going to open up schools in the United States or not. That doesn’t make any sense, because we’re such a big, big country, that things are going to be different in one region versus the other.”
 
The school reopening question has been taken over by politics.  Safety is being ignored.  Science is being ignored.  As coronavirus numbers soar, politics reigns, but there is also another problem overshadowing the reopening of schools this fall.  A problem that cannot and will not be solved by simply sending children and teachers back into the classroom.  We have a curriculum problem.  Reading scores were lower in fourth and eighth grade in 2019.  
 
Absolutely no one can guarantee that simply returning children to the classroom will enabled them to learn.  I am writing a series on 20 Reasons Why Reading Scores Were Lower in 2019 than 2017.  That means, we are looking at 20 reasons why more children could not read at grade level in 2019 than could read at grade level in 2017. 
 
Something went wrong in the classroom.  Scores should have been better in 2019, not worse. These test scores were before the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, these test scores come from children who were sitting in school classrooms.
 
Why were reading scores worse in 2019? One major reason is curriculum

Regardless of whether we teach in class or online, one of the main determinants for how much children and teens learn in school is curriculum and how it is used.

Read more: Reason #7 That Reading Scores Were Lower in 2019: The Three Cueing System

First, let’s define what we mean by curriculum:
 
“Curriculum … encompasses the program of instruction ... and related resources (like lessons, activities, units, and textbooks) – that school districts use to ensure students master the academic standards each year in their coursework.  While the standards lay out what students are expected to know in a given subject, curriculum provides an instructional guide for teachers so that their students meet those expectations. Curriculum includes teaching materials such as those that can be found in commercial textbooks and software applications; it also includes the pedagogy for delivering those materials when educators receive guidance on how to teach the curriculum, or when software manages the pacing, prompts, and feedback that students receive as they engage with the materials. Unlike the reading/language arts, mathematics, and science standards, which are created by states, curriculum choices are made at the local level, with varying degrees of state involvement or oversight. For example, some states create lists of approved textbooks that districts must choose from. Moreover, instructional decisions about what to do with that curriculum are made every day by classroom teachers.”  (p. 4)  
 
To clarify, state standards are the expectations of what students should know by the end of the school year.  Curriculum is the means by which children learn or accomplish those standards.  From this definition, we can immediately see several problems that could arise.
 
Why is curriculum a problem?
 
First, research shows that many adopted school textbooks and other curriculum material do not meet state standards. Publishers often advertise that they meet the standards, but when analyzed, the curriculum does not fulfill student needs.  
 
Let’s look at an example in reading.  In one review by Education Reports, only three out of five curriculum choices for foundation early reading and writing were found to be even partially in keeping with the standards.  Yet, these are programs being used by schools. 
 
Research shows that it does not cost schools more to provide high quality curriculum rather than poor quality instructional materials and using higher quality teaching materials can definitely improve learning.  As two different research studies stated:

“Textbooks are relatively inexpensive and tend to be similarly priced…. The marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook over a less effective alternative is essentially zero.” 
 
“…switching to a high-quality curriculum may be a more cost-effective way to raise student achievement than several other school-level interventions.” 

If selecting more effective curriculum doesn’t cost more money and better-quality curriculum can produce higher student achievement, why are schools still selecting poor quality curriculum?
 
Curriculum selection is as politicized as the question on whether schools should reopen for in class instruction this fall.  No one is measuring accuracy, quality, or effectiveness.  It’s all about politics and money.
 
“…politics often dominate the discussion over the adoption of textbooks and other instructional material, and issues such as the teaching of evolution are often center stage. There is also a clear gap between the reality of which curricula are effective or aligned to state standards and the curricula that publishers advertise as such….  When hard evidence on curriculum quality is available, it should supersede the often vague impressions of stakeholder groups that frequently dominate the process.” 
 
Several years ago, I served on a curriculum selection committee.  I was in a university community and there were several of us from the University.  The only guidelines we were given for the textbook selection were to “look at these books and see which ones you like.”  Unfortunately, this is how many textbooks are selected. 
 
How can schools tell the difference between high-quality curriculum and low-quality or inaccurate curriculum material?
 
Independent testing is needed.  Most curriculum textbooks and/or teaching materials are never tested to make sure that they are effective; instead, schools just take the publishers word for it.  We need to test what makes one curriculum more effective than another.  We need longitudinal effectiveness studies covering 4 years of student progress or more.  We also need to know the effective of curriculum in different school settings.  Actual research comparing textbooks and other curriculum is very rare.  When we consider that the curriculum chosen by schools or states can determine the success or failure of students in the classroom, this is a major problem in our educational system today.
 
When schools select a textbook, they also select a teaching method
 
In reading, the battle over teaching method has often been referred to as the “Reading Wars.”  At present, the most common teaching methods being used in public school classrooms are whole language, phonics, and blended literacy. 
 
Whole language is a teaching method that emphasizes recognizing whole words, includes cueing, memorizing sight words, and guessing.  This method was proven to totally not work in 2015 through neuroimaging research by Yuliya Yoncheva’s research team as reported in the Brain and Language journal.  Yet, whole language and cueing are still being taught in classrooms today and on the Internet.  When schools buy textbooks that teach the whole language approach, they are buying and teaching a teaching method that has been proven ineffective.  This creates reading failure.
 
Phonics is a method of teaching reading that groups letter sounds together and teaches rules that predict when these sounds will appear in a word.  Unfortunately, these predictions are only accurate about half of the time.  This leads to major problems with students who struggle in reading.  I have several blogs citing research on why phonics fails, but probably the best summation on phonics comes from Dr. Sally Shaywitz. 
 
“Children do not learn to read by memorizing a word list. Most children, especially those who struggle in reading, do not learn to read by memorizing phonics rules.”   (p. 78)

More: Reason #5 for Reading Scores Being Worse in 2019: Incorrect Phonics Rules and Explanations
 
Blended literacy is nothing more than a name for whole languagee with phonics tacked on.  No, it doesn’t work either.    
 
Will sending children back into the classroom guarantee quality education or that children will learn?
 
No, just sitting in a classroom is not what enables students to learn.  Research shows that the selection of curriculum can be one of the most important ways that schools can help students learn.  
 
When schools select a failed or disproven teaching method, they are contributing to reading failure.  Reading failure leads to academic failure.  If a student cannot read, they cannot excel in social studies, in science, or even in math.  Reading is essential; therefore, schools must select curriculum that will enable teachers to teach children to read, all children.
 
Textbooks are not the only problem
 
Quality standards are needed for online curriculum materials.  Teachers change or add materials to the adopted curriculum.  The Internet is often a primary source for additional classroom curriculum material.  The quality of the material found on the Internet is not guaranteed to be good or to meet state standards.  Some online sources provide quality educational materials; unfortunately, some online sources offer poor quality materials or in some cases inaccurate curriculum material.  Some teachers develop very high quality self-developed materials, some do not.  What should schools do?
 
At present, anyone can add anything to the Internet and call it curriculum.  We need to establish scientific testing for online curriculum materials.  We need to test the effectiveness of teacher selected and teacher created resources as well as school selected curriculum.
 
Independent research needs to be conducted and posted, grouping Internet curriculum materials into effective curriculum choices and poor choices so educators selecting curriculum from the Internet can incorporate high-quality teaching materials back into the classroom.
 
Even high-quality curriculum does not always guarantee effective education
 
“Curriculum plays an important role in how students are taught, and there is a strong body of evidence that shows that putting a high-quality curriculum in the hands of teachers can have significant positive impacts on student achievement.”
 
Is curriculum change enough?  First, we need high-quality curriculum.  Curriculum that has been tested and proven to be successful, but actual effectiveness is often measured by how curriculum is used.  So, we also need to train teachers to use curriculum correctly.  For even the best curriculum can be used incorrectly and thereby made to be ineffective.
 
In my reading clinic, I use vowel clustering.  I teach students to match letter sounds to the oral language system.  There are no rules to memorize, and students are never allowed to guess at a word.  Vowel clustering teaches students to break words down into individual letter sounds or clusters and then reassemble those sounds back into pronounceable words. Vowel clustering also teaches spelling, handwriting, oral reading, fluency, comprehension, and story writing.  Vowel clustering has eight years of research data showing its effectiveness.  Vowel clustering works with struggling, at risk, and failing students.  A student, who had failed for nine years using balanced literacy and phonics, learned to read in 3 ½ years using vowel clustering.  I have even had struggling students move up four grade levels in reading in one year using vowel clustering.  These were students who had failed multiple years in schools that used curriculum for whole language, balanced literacy, and phonics.  So yes, we can teach students to read, but to do so, we must change the curriculum and teaching methods that we use to teach reading.  Curriculum makes a difference in success or failure in reading.
​

My book After-School Programming and Intrinsic Motivation: Teaching at-Risk Students to Read presents the data showing how group-centered education, vowel clustering, and psychologically sound teaching methods can improve student learning. 

Yes, I know that we are still embroiled in a massive argument over whether schools should open in the fall, but at present, science is being ignored and foolish political decisions are ruling.  Therefore, I’ll set the debate aside till next week.  Yes, I’ll return to the argument, but for now, let’s look at a change that needs to be made in reading education.  This change is essential regardless whether we return to in-class instruction or online instruction.  If students are to learn to read, we must abolish the three-cueing system.  It is wrong and should never have been instituted in any school classroom.
  
What is the three-cueing system?
 
If your children are taught when they have trouble reading a word to (1) look at the picture, (2) reread the passage and see if they can figure out a word that might fit, or (3) to look at the first letter in the word and guess what the word might be, then your child has been taught the three cueing system or some derivative of that system.  Many reading programs include curriculum that specifically tries to teach students how to make better “guesses.” 
 
The idea originated from a descriptive study published by Kenneth Goodman in 1965. Notice that this was a descriptive study, not a research data-based study.  However, there isn’t scientific research to support the three-cueing system.  Yet, it continues to be taught and most likely will even be taught this fall, either in class or online. 
​

Why is the three-cueing system bad?
 
The three-cueing system is bad because guessing doesn’t work. Guessing teaches students to ignore letter sounds and concentrate on the word as a whole (more in keeping with whole language techniques).  Instead, of learning to break words down into sounds, students focus on guessing.
 
Children often come to my reading clinic completely and totally confused.  They cannot guess the correct word.  Oh yes, they guess, but 99.9% of the time they guess wrong.  That is why the first thing I teach students when they arrive at my reading clinic is:  “We never guess; we sound it out.”
 
Students should also not be taught to skip words.  In my after-school reading program, a student is never allowed to skip a word.  We say that the word is tricky; therefore, we “capture” the word and learn it.  We learn how to pronounce the word, what the word means, how to spell the word, and how to write it correctly, and we learn how to use the word in a sentence.  Then, we go back and return to our reading passage.  A student cannot comprehend a passage or story if they do not understand the meaning of the words in that passage or story.  Therefore, guessing and skipping do absolutely no good. 
 
So, how do we get rid of cueing?
 
I have no idea.  Publishers and curriculum writers make massive amounts of money by selling teaching material that focuses on cueing.  No, they don’t want to change.  Education has entered the world of politics and money; education is no longer just about learning. 
 
Prof. Kerry Hempenstall, a psychologist, from the University of Australia, explains that cueing is so popular because it allows teachers to avoid using phonics. 
 
“Perhaps the three-cueing system is ubiquitous in education training courses, and popular among teachers because it appears to reconcile the long-standing conflict between a phonics-emphasis curriculum and a literature-based curriculum [whole language approach].” 
 
Phonics enthusiasts are certainly very vocal about wanting to get rid of cueing.  Yes, they want to replace cueing with phonics.  The only problem with that is that phonics doesn’t work for every student.

Would phonics work as a replacement for cueing?

Cueing doesn’t work, but phonics doesn’t work for all students either.  Yes, we need change, but I do not see how dropping three-cueing system and adopting phonics will help.  Phonics is, at best, a mediocre teaching method that is plagued by problems.  Let’s look at some of the research.  
 
Phonics is not universally supported by scientific research
 
Even though the strongest critics of cueing suggests that phonics would be better, their claims of compatibility with the “science of reading” are not universally accepted, even by many phonics enthusiasts.

• Jeanne Sternlicht Chall (1967), an advocate for systematic phonics, visited over 300 classrooms.  While she concluded that systematic phonics was superior to “look say” whole language in 90% of the classrooms, she also clearly warned that a purely phonics approach would leave many students failing.   
• Linnea C. Ehri studied 66 phonics vs. whole language groups and again found systematic phonics to be superior to whole language but also found that systematic phonics “… did not help low achieving readers that included students with cognitive limitations.” 
• As the National Reading Panel (National Reading Panel, 2000)  clearly stated,  “…systematic phonics approaches are significantly more effective than non-phonics [whole language]…. However, phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades….” (p. 94).  Phonics simply does not work for many students.     
• In 2013, Tunmer and associates also stated from their research that Reading Recovery (often used to teach struggling students from the classroom) was also not effective with failing, struggling students.  As they stated, “Students with phonological difficulties did poorly [in Reading Recovery].” 
• Sebastian P. Suggate’s 2016 study compared 71 phonemic and phonics intervention groups and found that “… phonemic awareness interventions showed good maintenance of effect… phonics tended not to.”  

 
So, what are we left to conclude? 

Phonics is better than whole language, and phonics is better than cueing, but phonics is not the answer we need in the classroom. 
 
Remember, phonics was first introduced in 1690; so phonics is neither a new approach or a new teaching method.  Phonics uses a list of rules that predict when a letter of the alphabet will use a particular letter-sound.  As Sarah Forrest, reading specialist with the Easyread System, explains—such phonics rules are only successful 60% of the time. That means that, almost half of the time, phonics rules give an inaccurate prediction or the rule is simply wrong.  What are struggling and failing students supposed to do the rest of the time?
 
Read More:  When Phonics Fails
 
Forrest is not the only reading specialist pointing out problems with the phonics teaching method. Gerald Hughes, Director of the Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center and author of the book, Gifted—Not Broken:  Overcoming Dyslexia, ADD and Other Learning Challenges, states that long-standing research shows that
 
“… 20% of all children will show little or no lasting improvement in reading ability using phonics-based programs…. Using a phonics-based program on this particular group of children, is more than likely doomed to failure because it is focused on the very weaknesses of the child. Experience has repeatedly shown that when subjected to an extensive phonics-based program, many of these children will experience frustration, anger and ultimately continued failure.”    
 
So, why do the schools keep teaching phonics? 
 
 “Until recently, almost everyone thought that we store words by having some type of visual image of every word we know….  Many teaching approaches [like phonics and whole language] presume this. We assume that if students see the words enough, they will learn them. This is not true…. I believe this assumption that we store words based on visual memory is a major reason why we have widespread reading difficulties in our country…. The big discovery regarding orthographic mapping is that this oral “filing system” is the foundation of the “filing system” we use for reading words. We have no “visual dictionary” for reading that runs alongside our oral dictionary.”  (David A. Kilpatrick in Equipped for Reading Success,  pp. 27-43).
  
We must stop letting old worn-out ideas and theories stand in the way of teaching methods that improve learning in the classroom.  We need change, now.
 
Is there any hope for changing teaching methods used in the classroom?  I personally do not hold out much hope for change in the public-school educational system.  Public education is caught up in a quagmire of political haggling.
 
I’m a psychologist.  I must teach students how to read in order to help them correct the mental and psychological problems they are facing.  I can’t use a failing system.  In many instances, I am working with struggling and/or failing students.  Students come to my program because they have failed in the classroom using whole language, balanced literacy, and even phonics.  They have lost confidence; they no longer believe it’s possible for them to learn to read.  I need a teaching method that restores their self-efficacy (belief that they can learn again) by teaching them to read effectively.  I use vowel clustering.
 
Vowel clustering works with the brain and the way the brain processes phonemes or letter sounds.  Vowel clustering uses visual, auditory, and hands-on teaching techniques.  As you can see from the examples on my blog, I use art therapy to help heal the sense of failure.  
 
Vowel clustering teaches students to match vowel sounds with their corresponding letter symbols.  This emphasizes the oral letter-sound relationship.  Remember, we are training the brain, building “pathways” in the brain.  When these neural pathways are developed, reading can take less than half a second.   Therefore, it is important to organize how we teach so students can organize how they learn. We want to work with the brain, not against it. The vowel clustering teaching approach presents a visual and oral picture that struggling students can immediately identify with.  Visually, students match words by how they sound not by how they are spelled.  This teaches children that words can be pronounced one way but spelled another.  This visual-auditory learning technique allows students to both see and hear letter sounds (phonemes).   
 
Read More: Vowel Clustering Works Better Than Phonics
 
Vowel clustering also teaches handwriting because it is very important for students to write words correctly as they practice reading, spelling, and matching written letters to oral sounds.  For more information on how vowel clustering works, watch for my forthcoming book, “Why Can’t We Teach Children to Read?  Oh but Wait, We Can.”  ​

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