Science of Reading Advocates are Teaching Children to Guess at Words!!!!

Document Type

Podcast

Publication Date

2-15-2023

Abstract

Tim Shanahan, Louisa Moats, Linnea Ehri, Wilson Reading Systems, Orton-Gillingham profiteers, SOR advocates, the International Dyslexia Association, and other plucky little phonics penguins are advocating that we teach children to read by guessing at words. Their skills-first approach to reading instruction is based on the phonological processing model. Sometimes called the simple view of reading, this model defines reading as a combination of decoding (sounding out words) and listening comprehension. Essentially, you sound out words and listen to the speech in the head

If you come to a word you don’t recognize, students are taught to put sounds to each of the letters, then put all the sounds together, then guess what the word is based on the sounds. This is nothing more than a grapheme-phoneme word-guessing game. We’ve got to put a stop to this horrible, horrible travesty of reading instruction.

Department

Elementary and Literacy Education Department

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