CHAPTER ONE : Why read aloud? — continued

Where does phonics come into all of this?

There’s more than enough research to validate the importance of phonics in children’s reading. Children who understand the mechanics of reading—who know that words are made up of sounds and can break the sound code—have a great advantage. But teaching a boy how to scrub his neck is no guarantee he’ll have a clean neck, even if he knows how to use the washcloth and soap. The missing ingredient is motivation. If he knows how but doesn’t want to wash his neck, it's going to stay dirty. But when that boy meets the right girl, he’ll have a clean neck—thus you need the combination of know-how and motivation.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that children who were read to at least three times a week . . .
had a significantly greater phonemic awareness

Phonics drills don’t motivate—they can’t, and no one knows that better than the folks who wrote the phonics chapter in the National Reading Panel (NRP) report,⁹ the one that became the federal "rule book" for reading instruction in 2001. There were more than 100 pages devoted to phonics, which is a story in itself. The NRP consisted of 14 people, independent of each other and without support staff. They included 12 university professors (eight with reading background, two were administrators, one was a physician), along with a parent, a principal, and a middle school language arts teacher. Missing was anyone who might have actually taught a beginning reader. To create this kind of report without the input of reading teachers is, in my mind, the equivalent of NASA redesigning the shuttle program without seeking input from astronauts.

lthough the NRP billed its report as completely "research-based" and "scientific," one of its 14 members, Joanne Yatvin (the panel's principal and subsequently a district superintendent), wrote a withering rebuttal opinion of the report, finding it considerably less than "scientific." The most controversial and famous of the report's topics was "phonics." With five months remaining before the report was to be turned over to Congress, the "phonics" topic was turned over to independent researchers outside the panel. The final phonics report was dropped in the lap of the NRP four days before press time. Yatvin wrote: "Thus the phonics report became part of the full report of the NRP uncorrected, undeliberated, and unapproved."¹⁰ I offer that just in case you ever wondered about the NRP report and its "scientific standards." (Responding to years of complaints, in September 2006 the Department of Education's Inspector General issued a report of its investigation of Reading First, the government agency in charge of implementing and enforcing the NRP report. See IG Report here for the results.)

Nonetheless, the sounds of words are an important part of learning to read, but they're only a part. Equally important are motivation and background knowledge (often enlarged by reading more). If you ask doctors, coaches, even probation officers, about the importance of motivation for the people you're dealing with, they all tell you its crucial. Good classroom teachers agree. Since there appeared to be a diminishing amount of motivation to read among secondary readers in the last 30 years, I was curious what the National Reading Panel's report would recommend to stanch the bleeding. As the document is available as an Internet pdf file, it's entirely word-searchable by computer. I searched for the following words: "library," phonics," "phonemic," derivatives of "motivate/motivation," "book/literature." The chart to the left below shows the search results.

There were an additional 46 uses of "motivation" but all in conjunction with phonics usage in the classroom, not in association with children's desire to read more. Typical was this :

"Future research on phonics instruction should investigate how best to motivate children in classrooms to learn the letter-sound associations and to apply that knowledge to reading and writing."

Drill and skill don't motivate. What motivates fans to come back to baseball games is favorite players and favorite teams. Nobody has a favorite vowel or a favorite blend. What motivates children and adults to read more is: 1. They like the experience a lot; 2. They like the subject matter a lot; and 3. They like and follow the lead of people who read a lot (Oprah-types). Writing a 449-page report on the teaching of reading and devoting seven sentences to literature and one sentence to libraries is like writing a 449-page book on the New York Yankees a devoting only one page to the players. Motivation is the kind of intangible that would be included in Einstein's observation: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Obviously the desire to read doesn't count with the bureaucrats.

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study found that of the children who were read to at least three times a week as they entered kindergarten had a significantly greater phonemic awareness than did children who were read to less often, and were almost twice as likely to score in the top 25 percent in reading.¹¹ That being the case, wouldn’t you figure the National Reading Panel would recommend that reading aloud continue in the classroom, especially for those children who never received the benefits at home? (see chart below right)¹²

The higher the family's income, the more often the child was read to and the higher the child's literacy skills entering kindergarten.¹³

So many read-aloud claims had accumulated in a 30-year period, researchers subjected thirty-three of them to a meta-analysis to see if the concept lived up to its claims. Looking at the impact of frequent household reading to preschoolers, the analysis showed clear positive gains for phonemic awareness, language growth and beginning reading skills. In addition, there was just as much of an impact for lower SES children as higher SES, and the earlier or younger the reading began, the better the results.¹⁴ Even when children reach primary grades, research has shown repeat (3) picture book readings increases vocabulary acquisition by 15 to 40 percent, and the learning is relatively permanent.¹⁵ The international assessment of 150,000 fourth-graders in showed an average 35-point advantage for students who were read to more often by parents.¹⁶

NEXT: What skills does the child need for kindergarten?

Chapter One — p. 1   p. 2   p. 3   Footnotes