A few weeks ago someone mentioned the book Read Right! by Dee Tadlock. They said they used it for intervention ideas. I purchased the book and have been reading it. It makes a lot of sense to me. The premise in the book is that we create some reading problems in students because they actually do what we teach them to do, read word by word and pay only attention decoding, comprehension for these children is secondary because they program their brains for the word recognition they are doing. Dr. Tadlock started by studying kids that teach themselves to read and looked at what good readers do. I believe in teaching kids decoding...but as soon as a student doesn't need that crutch and begins reading for the meaning why would we keep insisting that they point to each word and decode word by word or sound by sound. Isn't that what directed instruction does. It doesn't take into account individual differences, doesn't it put emphasis on the wrong thing...decoding...not meaning? When I worked with 1st graders we always stressed working with meaning and used the phonics for one way to figure out an unknown word...not the end all. Isn't direct instruction oral exercises in sounds...couldn't that better be taught within meaning at different levels as needed by students. Some kids learn to read without any formal phonics instruction, yet they know sounds of letters, etc. How? Isn't that what we should be looking at. I would really question why direct instruction would be needed...practice, repeated readings, guided reading to scaffold, yes...but how can you make decisions for each child by following a script. Then we might as well be robots. Kay Kuenzl-Stenerson Literacy Coach Merrill Middle School Are all our students exceeding at the highest level they can succeed at? If, not, we have work to do. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
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