Contemplations on 21st Century Reading Pedagogy

By Elly Kalenjuk (2019) Executive Summary This paper has been prepared to address the ‘reading wars’ and urgency to rethink pedagogical practice in the area of reading, specifically on the teaching of phonics. An opening discussion attempts to provide context on contemporary thinking about perspectives of education (POE), including notions of conforming, reforming and transforming approaches for teaching and learning. Included is background information on the concept of multiple literacies and the ‘four resource model’ used as a framework to guide reading instruction in the Victorian Curriculum by the Department of Education. Intentions:

1. to introduce Perspectives of Education 2. to outline a reading framework for 21st century learners 3. to present information about phonics 4. to note Victorian Curriculum expectations on phonics 5. to describe ‘the reading wars’ 6. to summarise 21st century reading pedagogy

Philosophical Views and the Culture of Power

• Perspectives of Education (McNaughton, 2003) Perspectives of Education (POE) include conforming, reforming and transforming approaches. POE elucidates power dynamics between teachers and students in classroom contexts.

POE locates ‘cultures of power’ (Depit 1988) as each relate to beliefs and assumptions held by teachers, parents and leaders in education. POE shoulders views of children and roles of educators in a learning space. Lisa Depit (1988) argues that issues of power are enacted in classrooms, including the power of dominant worldviews.

“There are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a ‘culture of power’. The codes or rules… relate to linguistic forms, communicative strategies, and presentation of self… ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting.” (Depit, 1988, p. 286)

Historically, teachers have assumed conforming perspectives, reflecting societal views of the child as innocent and dependent. In modern classrooms, contemporary educators strive for a more inclusive, anti-biased perspective. Transformational practitioners might still use teaching-tactics from all three perspectives.

Conforming Perspective

Reforming Perspective

Transforming Perspective

Reinforces the status quo.

Dominant discourse Often employs a ‘Deficit

Model’

Reforming the individual from a dependent and developing child to a

self-realized autonomous adult and free-thinker; reforming

society so that there is a greater emphasis on freedom, truth and

justice.

Aims to fundamentally change existing

practices to achieve greater equity and social

justice for all children. Opportunity to employ a ‘Strength-based Model’

View of the child as ‘innocent’ or blank slate;

a vessel to be filled.

View of the child as collaborator who brings ‘funds of knowledge’ to

the learning space.

View of the child as capable, citizens of the

world with rights.

Role of the educator is to transmit information.

Educator holds the power in this dynamic.

Role of the educator is to co-construct the learning. Power is equally held in this

dynamic.

Role of the educator as critical ally. Children

are empowered by enactment of UN

conventions on rights of the child.

Implications for Implications for Implications for

practice Teachers behold all

knowledge. Classroom activities are same for

all and measured against standard developmental

milestones. Tables may be in rows. Teacher usually stands

at the front of classrooms.

practice Students and teachers work together to build shared understanding

and knowledge. Teaching and learning is collaborative. Teacher

facilitates learning. May have open classrooms,

team-teaching, and children sitting in a circle

during mat time.

practice Children act with agency and autonomy. There is strong student voice and

multiple perspectives embraced. Children take

responsibility for learning and are held to account. Children call

out injustices. Community embraces

diversity and inclusivity. Spheres of Influence

Developmental Psychology

Spheres of Influence Social Constructivism

Neuroscience Social Learning Theory

Spheres of Influence Freire (1972), Girous

(1990) and Delpit (1995)

Reference Arthur, L. Beecher, B, Death, E., Dockett, S. Farmer, S. (2012). Programming and Planning in early Childhood Setting. South Melbourne: Cengage. Multiliteracies and The Reading Framework

• Multiple Literacies (New London Group, 1994) and The Four Resource Model (Feebody and Luke, 1990)

A new pedagogical approach, multiple literacies, emerged in 1994 by educators known as the New London Group, responding to globalization and advent of modern technologies. Multi-literacies embrace expansive modes of communication and meaning making in the modern world. Examples include: digital, aesthetic, visual, symbolic and musical literacies.

“…[the use] of language use today arises in part from the characteristics of the new information and communications media. Meaning is made in ways that are increasingly multimodal—in which written-linguistic modes of meaning interface with oral, visual, audio, gestural, tactile and spatial patterns of meaning.

This means that we need to extend the range of literacy pedagogy so that it does not unduly privilege alphabetical representations, but brings into the classroom multimodal representations, and particularly those

typical of the new, digital media. This makes literacy pedagogy all the more engaging for its manifest connections with today’s communications milieu. It also provides a powerful foundation for a pedagogy of synaesthesia, or mode switching.”

New Learning. (2008). Multiliteracies: Expanding the scope of literacy pedagogy. Retrieved from: http://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies

More information on Multiple Literacies can be accessed at: http://newlearningonline.com/files/2009/03/M-litsPaper13Apr08.pdf The Four Resource Model (see Figure 1) is used to guide reading instruction in all Victorian schools and reflects the New London Group’s summary of the multifaceted literacy backdrop. Figure 1: The Four Resource Model (FRM) Early and late reading includes:

• Code Breaker: mechanics of reading; phonics or decoding • Text Participant: comprehension skills, deep literacy • Text Analyst: author’s purpose and critical literacy • Text User: genre, making meaning, building base-knowledge

Instruction in each of the above areas is complex and interconnected.

Reading success in all four areas depend on multiple factors, for example:

• ‘funds of knowledge’ of child and educator • value systems • home literacies and resources • cultural and/or social capital • technological activity

• exposure to media forms • cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD) • prior experiences and life world of child • oral language proficiency • capacity in memory and attention • health conditions or learning barriers, for example vision, hearing,

physical conditions, dyslexia, anxiety • whole school priorities and data narratives • school resource allocation, including staffing models and funding

There are fundamental differences between ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’. Teaching approaches will differ according to individual successes and barriers to learning. In an inclusive and anti-biased approach to education, flexible and responsive practice is preferenced. Further details about the FRM model from Department of Education can be found at: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/fourres.aspx Examples of what FRM might this look like in practice Code Breaker Text Participant Text User Text Analysis Decoding Strategies: • Look at

picture • Get mouth

ready • Sound it out • Chunk it • Look right? • Sound right? Phonics Symbolic literacies

Comprehension Skills: • Predicting • Making

connections • Summarizing • Inferring • Visualizing • Questioning • Compare &

Contrast

Genre Study • Science fiction • Mystery • Horror • Drama Text structures and features Emotional response Character Study Book response Personal views Diverse opinions Call to action

Author Study Moral Themes Hidden messages Critical Literacy: • Who is

represented? • Where is the

race, class, gender bias?

• Who is advantaged; Who is disadvantaged?

One of the criticisms of the Four Resource Models is that while it appears to include phonics (or code-breaking) as one of the four basic skills that are required for effective reading, it sees phonics in terms of the three cueing model as just one the processes that is used in ‘cracking the code’.

The three cueing system often looks successful in Prep-Grade 1, and perhaps year 2, however, when pictures fade out, and the number and length of words increases, many children ‘hit the wall’ sometimes referred to as the Grade 4 Slump. (Chall 2005 Stanovich, 1986) What is Phonics Instruction? Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or code. The alphabetic code has 44 phonemes in the English language. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. Phonological awareness is an oral language skill and is a predictor of reading success. (Snow & Powell, 2005; Whitehurst & Fischel, 2000; Catts, 1989; Nation, K. and Snowling, M 1998) Phonological awareness is a child’s capacity to:

• hear and manipulate sounds (phonemic awareness) • break up the sounds in words (ability to hear and clap syllables) • identify rhyming words • detect onset and rime, for example, c- (onset) –at (rime) in cat

yes, rime is spelt this way in this context. Phonics is the application of sound to letter connection. For example ,“B says /b/.” A phonogram is a letter or combination of letters to represent a sound, for example, /ough/. A grapheme is the smallest unit of sound in a writing system. Some children find discriminating between sounds challenging and this can impede reading development. This includes non-English speaking children. There are several ways to ‘teach’ phonics. Here are some dominant approaches: • Synthetic phonics In synthetic phonics, children are taught to sound and blend from the beginning of reading instruction, after a few letter sounds have been taught. Synthetic phonics works because it is systematic and sequential; it recognises that certain skills or concepts need to be taught before others, and therefore skills are taught in a specific sequence (Johnson and Watson 2005) For example: c-a-t or /c/, /a/, /t/ know individual sounds to blend and read ‘cat’.

Thus, if a child knows: /m/, /a/, /s/, /t/ /i/, then can decode: mat, it, tim. This assumes (of child) there is:

o discernment between concept of letter, sound, word o neurological connectivity for memory storage and retrieval o adequate phonemic awareness o ability to transfer letter-sound knowledge to word o capacity to blend

The role of the teacher includes building on child’s strengths and locating points of need. It is important to recognise that comprehension is highly dependent on a student’s other reading skills, such as decoding and vocabulary. Students cannot understand a text if they cannot read the words and assign meaning to them (Garcia & Cain 2014; Wagner & Meros 2010; Pressley 2001) However, directly teaching reading comprehension skills is still necessary for most students. This includes instruction about the syntax and rhetorical structures of written language and direct instruction about comprehension strategies. The National Reading Panel’s analysis (National Reading Panel 2000) found explicit or formal instruction using a multiple strategy method is most effective in enhancing comprehension. • Embedded phonics –teaching students phonics instruction whilst reading

text. This is a more implicit approach. A child may point to words to ‘read’ (even if not decoding but accurately predicting based on pictures or by rote/memory). When child becomes stuck, decoding strategies are offered to assist the child to predict words. When child cannot identify letter-sound, teacher will instruct at point of need. For example, “I go to the park.” [picture of playground]. Child points to words and recalls text from memory. When encountering word ‘park’, child may look to educator for support. Educator might prompt child with, ‘look at the picture’ and child will match /p/ with the picture of a playground and say ‘park’. Child may feel level of success and, thus, motivation to persist with reading. • Analytic phonics – teaching students to analyse the letter-sounds of

previously learned words to avoid pronouncing sounds in isolation; to recognise whole words by sight and later to break down the words into small units after reading has begun.

For example, reading big books with words in print underneath and pointing to the words as you go. Children follow along to develop book orientation and confidence until there is an interest in learning the mechanics of reading. Key words are extracted from the text. These are segmented then blended: ‘cat’ whole word, /c/-/a/-/t/ segmented c_a_t blended to read ‘cat’. Level one and two books are generally based on repeated patterning follow this idea. Children’s learning is gradually scaffold with the introduction of one new word at the end of each sentence. For example:

I like the park. I like the swing. I like the slide. I like the fun!

Children rely heavily on the pictures to emphasis the meaning-making (comprehension) element of reading, so there isn’t an over-reliance solely on decoding as ‘reading’. This approach is holistic. It infers that the child is primarily a meaning-maker and that the drive to understand the text will prompt further motivation and foster relevance for learning the alphabetic code. • Analogy phonics Unfamiliar words are learnt by analogy. For example, teach the rime -ack: and then blend with new word onsets: - Jack, Mack, back, slack • Phonics Through Spelling Teaching students to segment (break up) words into phonemes (sounds) and to represent sounds using letters. (ie to spell phonetically). This includes isolating medial and final phonemes. For example, -ea says /- ea/ each beach flea cleaning. Children might write letters in air with finger, use sand trays. Multi-sensory programs, for example Orton-Gillingham, Multi Sensory Learning (MSL) and Spalding (The Writing Road to Reading) use this approach. There is not a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to teaching and leaning phonics. Proponents of synthetic phonics often insist on a systematic methodology to ensure that each student has the full repertoire of sound representation in print for ‘even development’ in both reading and writing. What are decodable readers?

Decodable readers are introduced when letter-sound knowledge and ability to transfer this information to segmenting (break up) and blending (put together) letter-sounds is developed. Decodable readers also draw upon onset and rime patterning, for example -at, cat, bat, mat, sat, rat. The Victorian Curriculum The Victorian curriculum mandates that phonics instruction is included in teaching and learning programs in all Victorian schools. As the frameworks are not prescriptive, individual schools determine the best approach, timing and intensity of teaching phonics in relation to the multiple factors that influence and inform educational pedagogy. For details on the curriculum expectations, these will be located in the English

discipline of study:

English

Language Mode: Reading and Viewing

Strand: Language

Sub-strand: Phonics and Word Knowledge

See English by Modes Level F-6 for the scope and sequence http://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/english/introduction/scope-and-sequence Planning and Assessment Reading programs are developed by schools to account for demographic, school culture, resource management and reading data. Planning frameworks are developed at whole school level for consistency across year levels and classrooms. Ongoing assessment at individual, class and whole school levels measure student progress. Data on student progress will indicate the level of effectiveness of classroom programs and responsive practitioners will adjust programs where necessary. What is ‘reading wars?’ The reading wars refer to an educational debate about which approach to reading best suits the teaching environment. In other words, a dualistic notion of bottom up (skills based or phonics approach) verses top-down (whole language or language experience approach) to reading instruction. More information on understanding this approach can be found in:

Konza, D. (2006). Teaching Children with Reading Difficulties (2nd ed.). South

Melbourne: Cengage, Chapter 1.

In general, most classroom teachers recognise the need for both bottom up and top down approaches for building reading capacity. Teachers who place an accent of value on phonics as the primary learning mode of reading can inadvertently communicate to children that reading is fundamentally about mastering decoding skills. This can lead to children being highly skilled decoders but who have poor comprehension skills. However, if explicit phonic instruction is neglected, then this has implications for later reading capacity, so must take precedence in early years classrooms to build capacity; If an accent of value is placed on comprehension development, this can lead to poor decoders and stagnated, static readers. A balanced approach is required to enable even development. In optimal learning conditions, this enables accuracy, fluency and skillful comprehension to occur simultaneously. Many classroom teachers do not subscribe to a particular program or approach due to several factors, including: • individual differences between students, including culturally and

linguistically diverse learners (CALD) • classroom dynamics • teacher self-efficiency • teacher training • cognitive bias • internal working models or schemas derived from personal experiences • personal philosophies • school expectations • culture of the learning space • parent expectations • crowed curriculum • student-teacher ratio • funding models

Suffice to say there are multiple barriers to reading consistency across Victorian classrooms. There are many approaches to teaching reading. Reading success is dependent on both the type and quality of reading exposure, instruction at home and school as well as the general capacity for reading at the individual level. In some case, the dynamics of the classroom and level of supportive leadership and resource allocation can either impinge on or optimise reading achievement.

Children with learning difficulties or learning disabilities generally require explicit reading instruction. The nature and type of instruction will be dependent on the underlying causes for reading impairment. Transformational teaching practices are inclusive. Educators are mandated to cater for individual differences to enable equity and access for all. Funding models and government policies do not necessarily reflect nor support schools and educators to fulfill obligations to the extent that necessities these adjustments. Reading wars may challenge current practices in classrooms but generally provide a simplistic and dualistic view that may or may not improve long term reading proficiency. Proponents of synthetic phonics may refer to evidence-based research demonstrating its effectiveness in controlled conditions. However, advocates may not necessarily appreciate the range of classroom factors that enable or inhibit the execution of such conforming programs. In this instance, classroom teachers are better situated to accommodate ‘learners in context’ to make informed decisions about reading and best practice. Summary: 21st century reading pedagogy In sum, contemporary educational practice positions transformational perspectives at the fore with expanding notions of literacies, including multi-modal forms of communication and meaning-making. The Four Resource Model (FRM) has been use to enable educators to facilitate reading instruction in this light. Reading instruction involves a complex set of skills and strategies to enable effective reading and literacy capacity. A transformational perspective on education takes into account the ‘funds of knowledge’ that individual students bring to the learning space and customizes reading instruction to match individual and group needs, building on learning successes. Critical literacy plays a key role in reading development. Phonics training is an important area of reading access. The curriculum mandates that phonics be included in all classroom programs F-5. Students will develop phonic knowledge and application at different rates. Children with learning barriers can achieve reading success, albeit at a slower pace and necessitating additional support. Planning reading programs is largely determined by multiple factors and schools customize the learning dependent on context, resource allocation, economic facility and other relevant factors. References Arthur, L. Beecher, B, Death, E., Dockett, S. Farmer, S. (2012). Programming and Planning in early Childhood Setting. South Melbourne: Cengage.

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Freebody, P. & Luke, A. (1990) Literacies programs: Debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect, 5, 7–16.

Fountas, I.C. & Finnell, G.S. (2001). Guiding readers and writers: Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. NH: Heinmann Harvey, S. & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension for understating and engagement (2nd ed.). Portland: Stenhouse Publishers. Konza, D. (2006). Teaching Children with Reading Difficulties (2nd ed.). South

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Saplding, R. (2012). The writing road to reading: The Spalding Method for teaching Speech, Spelling, Writing and Reading (6th ed.). NY: Collins Reference. Owocki, G. (2003). Comprehension: Strategic instruction for K-3 students. NH: Heinemann. More information on Multiple Literacies can be accessed at: http://newlearningonline.com/multiliteracies http://newlearningonline.com/files/2009/03/M-litsPaper13Apr08.pdf