More about Calkins
Two responses to Helen Lewis’s Atlantic article, “How Lucy Calkins Became the Face of America’s Reading Crisis.”
The (Lucy Calkins) empire strikes back
I see so much self-mystification and evasion of fact in Calkins’s response to her fall from favor.
The states of reading
Axios surveys states’ approaches to reading.
An overview of the science of reading
From The New York Times.
Investing in reading
“A new study found that California schools got positive results from a targeted investment in the science of reading": from The New York Times.
A mother looks at “balanced literacy”
“RIP Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. You helped turn learning to read into a rich family’s game.”
Reading in Massachusetts
“Lost in a world of words” is the first in a series of articles about the state of reading instruction in the state of Massachusetts.
My proof that I never knew phonics
What’s a schwa?
Gothamist hears from Lucy Calkins
WNYC’s Gothamist reports on the dissolution of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. And Lucy Calkins responds — dishonestly and unconvincingly.
TCRWP LC? LLC!
Lucy Calkins doubles down.
Sold a Story updates
Two follow-up episodes.
Reading in NYC schools
“Over the next two years, the city’s 32 local school districts will adopt one of three curriculums selected by their superintendents. The curriculums use evidence-supported practices, including phonics — which teaches children how to decode letter sounds — and avoid strategies many reading experts say are flawed, like teaching children to use picture clues to guess words.” Right on.
Reading as a civil-rights issue
From The New York Times: “Fed up parents, civil rights activists, newly awakened educators and lawmakers are crusading for ‘the science of reading.‘ Can they get results?” With news about a new documentary, The Right to Read. From the trailer: “This is a civil-rights issue.” LeVar Burton is the executive producer.
Sold a Story : responses
Two responses to the podcast Sold a Story : How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong: a letter signed by fifty-eight teachers, writers, and administrators, “A call for rejecting the newest reading wars,” and a reply to that letter signed by more than 650 current and former teachers, “For the students we wish we’d taught better.”
A last 2¢ about phonics
Imagine trying to learn a new language — Greek, say, in any of its varieties. It would be impossible to figure out words and their pronunciation without knowing the sounds that the letters make. Now imagine being four or five or six and learning to read in your own first language. It would be impossible to figure out words and their pronunciation without knowing the sounds that the letters make. I think that’s the clearest case that can be made for the importance of phonics.
To: Calkins, Fountas, and Pinnell
An e-mail to three prime movers behind the mistaken forms of reading instruction examined in the podcast Sold a Story.
Sold a Story again
Only last night did it occur to me to wonder: when college instructors outline the textbook in class and give out “study sheets” (i.e., questions and answers) for exams, are they merely slacking off, or are they compensating, consciously or not, for their students’ reading deficiencies?
Sold a Story
Coming tomorrow, from American Public Media, a podcast series by Emily Hanford: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong.
Herschel Walker voting
Does he know how to use a voting machine?
Phonics redux
In The New York Times, an article about phonics and reading instruction.
Phonics again
Everything old is new again.
Learning to read
Emily Hanford, education correspondent for American Public Media, asks why we are still teaching reading the wrong way: “To become readers, kids need to learn how the words they know how to say connect to print on the page. They need explicit, systematic phonics instruction.”
“Do you read?”
Joe Scarborough asked Donald Trump a question.
Whose whom?
I’d bet a Happy Meal that Trump didn’t write this statement.
"It must be a strange state"
Illiteracy in Dickens' Bleak House
The most literate American cities
Excerpt from a 2007 study
The Internet and literacy
This is the good news?