Guess What?
Through a library class that I am taking, I found out something that shocked me. My district used to use a curriculum called Lucy Calkin's Writing Workshop. We also adopted the Reading Workshop when it came out. For the entirety of the years I spent as an elementary school teacher in 5th and 4th grade (from 2012 to 2017) I was teaching reading and writing with something called Guided Reading. I absolutely loved Lucy's program. I taught mini lessons on reading comprehension strategies and then did reading conferences one on one with students. I taught mini lessons on all sorts of different writing workshop topics and then met with kids one on one for writing conferences. My students showed progress!
But I found out that the curriculum I loved to use never taught the youngest readers phonics to help them learn to read. I am still shocked to find out that if my fourth graders I was teaching had received phonics instruction at all, it was because their kindergarten, first, and second grade teachers had made their own phonics lessons (or found their own resources). Because Lucy teaches a different way to read words, where students who come to a word they don't know, are taught to look at context clues and the first letter of the word and think of a word that would make sense.
When I was a classroom teacher, I thought my students who were identified for reading recovery were getting phonics lessons to catch them up, but it turns out that the reading recovery program merely taught the students the same strategies. To guess the words. It's possible that their reading recovery teachers also taught them phonics, but if they did, it's because those teachers knew they needed to go above and beyond the curriculum and find their own way to teach it.
When I would listen to students read during conferences, if a student came to a word they didn't know, I would encourage them to use a bunch of strategies, including sounding it out. No wonder some of my students couldn't successfully figure out tricky words! They had been taught to sound out words by teachers who didn't have a curriculum to help them.
Now, my school district has the Wonders Reading Curriculum. I was already a librarian by the time the district purchased the new curriculum, but I have had the opportunity to sit in on some trainings where a literacy specialist modeled how to teach the phonics lessons. The curriculum has explicit lessons on phonics! Teachers also have little guided reading leveled books. It's possible that the leveled books resemble the Lucy Calkins books that were filled with words that didn't match spelling patterns taught in phonics lessons, so the only way for kids to truly figure out the words is to use the pictures as context clues. I have subbed in a classroom for teachers at my building and used the Wonders books, which have underlined words that are complex and match the pictures. Since the underlined words were not simple, students wouldn't be able to use their phonics lessons to figure out the words.
I know it's possible that there are teachers in my district who still use old lessons they kept from Lucy Calkins. Her comprehension strategies lessons were great though! I am hopeful that the combination of phonics instruction, reading comprehension, and the leveled books, will all come together to make a successful reading instruction experience for all the students in my school district.
I am relieved that my son will be getting phonics instruction from a full curriculum! He starts kindergarten next school year. But if your children were in school back when we used Lucy Calkins, don't panic. For any parents who are reading this blog post, there is something you can do to try and catch your children up if they are behind because of the old reading curriculum! I have included a whole bunch of links to resources you can use to teach your own children how to read, and most of them are free! I also recommend that you listen to this free podcast to learn more about why it is a good thing that our district has switched reading curriculums.
I hope you find that your students are already becoming better readers thanks to the new curriculum, which we started in the fall of 2020. Since it has been 4 years, we only have 2 grades at our school who didn't start with the Wonders Curriculum. It's possible that fourth and fifth graders at Black Hawk would benefit from the resources linked below, as well as any students who currently struggle to sound out tricky words. Check out the resources and help your child learn to read. And thank you for your help. Your efforts will take your children on an important journey of literacy discovery.
Guess the Word Image Citation: https://www.baamboozle.com/profile/1501271
Reading Resources Image Citation: https://readingresources.us/
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