What do you think of when you hear the word “scripted” pop up in conversations about teaching reading? For some teachers, the associations are negative. They may think of mindless robotic lesson delivery that strips teachers of their autonomy and creativity and turns them into zombies. The word can trigger worries about limitations in the…
Read MoreLynbrook District in Long Island, NY is like many districts. It’s not very poor and not very rich. Most of the kids do okay. So, why have the leaders of Lynbrook district decided to take the plunge and ditch balanced literacy for systematic phonics? They decided that too many children were not thriving with balanced…
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Many educators in the USA are rethinking reading instruction. In 2019 less than 30% of fourth graders were found to be proficient readers. What has gone wrong for so many children? The core of the problem is that teachers’ approach to reading was based on a misplaced belief system called ‘balanced literacy’. They held understandable…
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