Phonics Information

The Great Reading Debate

Does phonics turn kids into robots? Does whole language leave them dazed and confused? Here are the pros and cons.

Whole Language

Phonics

• ADVANTAGES
  *The early emphasis on literature make reading fun from the start.
  *They learn words in context, with a goal of increasing overall understanding.
• DISADVANTAGES
  *If they "skip" words, they may never learn them.
  *Teachers often don't fully teach kids how to decode the alphabet.
• ADVANTAGES
  *Children learn strategies for decoding words they've never seen.
  *Tutoring may help bring kids with early reading problems up to grade level.
• DISADVANTAGES
  *Teachers may rely on "kill and drill" lessons.
  *The emphasis on decoding practices may turn children off to literature.

Phonics History

Phonics: which stresses teaching children the sounds of words dates to the 1700s. Since then, it has been eclipsed from tie to time by the whole language approach.

1700s - mid 1800s: Children are taught to read through memorization of the alphabet. Primary text: the Bible.

1783: Noah Webster publishes The American Spelling Book, used for almost 100 years.

Mid 1800s - early 1900s: McGuffey Readers prevail. Very phonics oriented.

1910 - 1920: Ginn and Co's Beacon Readers, an efficient and intelligent sequence of systemic phonics.

Late 1930s: Scott Foresman introduces the Dick and Jane series. John Dewey and others promote whole word reading. Emphasis on "site reading" a limited list of words and word guessing .

1955: Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, attacks look-say instruction, urges a return to phonics. "We've thrown 3,500 years of civilization out the window," he writes.

1967: Jeanne S. Chall's Learning to read: The Great Debate endorses direct instruction in phonics.

1981: Twenty-six years after Why Johnny Can't Read, Rudolf Flesch publishes Why Johnny Still Can't Read.

1984: The federal commission on reading issues Becoming a Nation of Readers. "The issue is no longer, as it was several decades ago, whether children should be taught phonics," the commission said.

1995: California's "ABC" laws require instructional materials to include "systematic, explicit phonics, spelling and basic computational skills." North Carolina and Ohio follow suit.

1995 - 1997: "Word Identification" programs in most Maryland school systems include phonics.

A 1996 article in Scientific American reports that 10 years of brain imaging research shows that the brain reads sound by sound.

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