Lynbrook District in Long Island, NY is like many districts. It’s not very poor and not very rich. Most of the kids do OK. So, why have the leaders of Lynbrook district decided to take the plunge and ditch balance literacy for systematic phonics? They decided that too many children were not thriving with balanced…
Read MoreScience of Reading
Lynbrook leads the way on Long Island
Over the years, it has become apparent that the Reading Workshop/Guided Reading model of instruction, popular in U.S. schools, does not produce the results promised. Special Education numbers have increased, and many children get labeled, unnecessarily, as having a “reading disability.” It is undoubtedly a huge undertaking to put the brakes on and start fresh.…
Read MoreShould we be rethinking reading instruction? NYC’s new Schools Chancellor thinks so!
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…
Read MoreLittle things can make a big difference
The education researcher Dylan Wiliam has said that “changing what teachers do is more important than changing what teachers know.” But isn’t knowledge power? And what we do is obviously linked to what we know. So, how can that be? In the past few years, there has been a groundswell of interest in the science…
Read MoreWhy ‘structured’ reading instruction is not enough
Why we need to teach ‘structured and cumulative’ reading instruction In the bad old days before I learned how to teach kids to read, I taught kids to read in a structured way. That is, what I thought was structure: Week 1: letters a, b, c, d Week 2: letters e, f, g, h Week…
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