Phonics is Not the (Only) Answer
by Jess Durrett-Hansher
Imagine June, a first grader who can decode any text you put in front of her up to college level, yet when asked comprehension questions cannot accurately respond to a first grade text. Now imagine Andrew, a first grader who cannot accurately decode three letter words but when he is read to, can accurately answer questions about the text up to an eighth grade level. These students are real examples of students who may walk into a first grade classroom, and the teacher is tasked to teach them both. Interpretation of the term “science of reading” is centered on phonics instruction - but phonics is only one part of learning to read.
After the 2022 Sold a Story Podcast exposed how reading instruction in most classrooms was not grounded in research a couple of years ago, many schools that did not have phonics instruction were required to implement it in the early grades. That was a good thing in many ways, but there’s a problem: the assessments and programs being implemented in this new season of the “science of reading” are narrow and will continue to result in lower test scores if not paired with an in-depth understanding of literacy and teacher development.
As a therapeutic teacher at a self-contained special education school on New York City’s Upper West Side for the better part of a decade, I learned about how students learn to read from professional lenses that most teachers don’t have access to. My economically, racially, and neuro-diverse class of eight students was served by two teachers, a speech-language pathologist, an occupational therapist, and a social worker who shared their expertise about every student. We partnered to develop a team approach to teaching academic skills, including reading. This kind of training is rare in the field of education, and as a society, we’re expecting teachers to teach this complex skill without a deep understanding of child development. Most teachers have not had the time, training, or opportunity to understand the neuroscience behind reading.
When I worked at schools in the SF Bay Area beginning a decade ago, neither school used a systematic and whole school approach to teaching decoding. With my leadership, a phonics program was implemented despite some teachers resisting this approach. Teachers had watched many students learn to read without teaching phonics, so it was an experience that needed to be acknowledged - but also evaluated and reworked to include all learners. As a response to the resistance, the English Department was tasked with a book club to read Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by a leading scientist in the field of reading research, Maryanne Wolf.
Through this book club, teachers learned to think beyond only teaching a pattern to explore homophones (words that sound the same), write poetry, tell stories using the words they are studying, deep dive into related words, and have students show they understand the meanings of the words in conversations or drawings. When learning to read the word, bit, students can picture it as the past-tense verb for bite or as the noun when it’s a drill bit and learn related words (e.g. bits, bitten, biter, bite). Making the instruction more dynamic alongside phonics is key to engaging all students and instilling a long-term love of reading. Both the Andrews and the Junes will benefit from the same multi-layered engagement with the word bit for very different reasons.
If we want to raise a literate population, we need to consider more than phonics in the literacy curriculum. Before investing in programs, districts need to understand language and literacy development in early childhood and evaluate which pieces are missing from their programs. I'm concerned that the energy and excitement will be deflated if a phonics only approach pushes out true reading as I watched unfold in some schools in Sacramento. It's true that students need to sound out words in order to read, but that's not what makes a reader. The bottom line is that a singular focus will not help children learn to read and write, but a thoughtful approach to support teachers combined with evidence-based programs will.