Balanced Literacy
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Balanced Literacy
Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called "reading wars". Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading. Some proponents of balanced literacy say it uses research-based elements of comprehension, vocabulary, fluency, phonemic awareness and phonics and includes instruction in a combination of the whole group, small group and 1:1 instruction in reading, writing, speaking and listening with the strongest research-based elements of each. They go on to say that the components of a balanced literacy approach include many different strategies applied during reading and writing workshops. On the other hand, critics say balanced literacy, like whole language, is a ''meaning-based'' approach that when implemented does not inc ...
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English Language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples that Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, migrated to Britain after its End of Roman rule in Britain, Roman occupiers left. English is the list of languages by total number of speakers, most spoken language in the world, primarily due to the global influences of the former British Empire (succeeded by the Commonwealth of Nations) and the United States. English is the list of languages by number of native speakers, third-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish language, Spanish; it is also the most widely learned second language in the world, with more second-language speakers than native speakers. English is either the official language or one of the official languages in list of countries and territories where English ...
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Evidence-based Education
Evidence-based education (EBE) is the principle that education practices should be based on the best available scientific evidence, with randomised trials as the gold standard of evidence, rather than tradition, personal judgement, or other influences. Evidence-based education is related to evidence-based teaching, evidence-based learning, and school effectiveness research. The evidence-based education movement has its roots in the larger movement towards evidence-based practices, and has been the subject of considerable debate since the late 1990s. However, research published in 2020 showed that there is still widespread belief amongst educators in ineffective teaching techniques such as learning styles and the cone of learning. History The English author and academic David H. Hargreaves presented a lecture in 1996 in which he stated "Teaching is not at present a research-based profession. I have no doubt that if it were it would be more effective and satisfying". He compar ...
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The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area and has a national audience. As of 2023, the ''Post'' had 130,000 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers, both of which were the List of newspapers in the United States, third-largest among U.S. newspapers after ''The New York Times'' and ''The Wall Street Journal''. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. In 1933, financier Eugene Meyer (financier), Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy and revived its health and reputation; this work was continued by his successors Katharine Graham, Katharine and Phil Graham, Meyer's daughter and son-in-law, respectively, who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post ...
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ...
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Irene Fountas
Irene C. Fountas (born 14 August 1948) is an American educator. She teaches at Lesley University as the Marie M. Clay Endowed Chair for Early Literacy and Reading Recovery. Fountas was a prominent figure featured in Sold a Story, a podcast by APM Reports, that investigates the way reading is taught in schools, specifically focusing on the influential authors and a publishing company that promote a disproven approach to reading instruction. The reporting highlights the experiences of teachers who felt misled by what they were told was the correct way to teach reading. It also investigates the company, Heinemann, and the authors, including Fountas and Pinnell, who have been instrumental in promoting this approach. These authors and their materials have been widely adopted in schools, leading to significant financial gains for the publishing company Heinemann. The report also explores the concept of "balanced literacy" and how it has been criticized by those advocating for "The Science ...
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Whole Language
Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. Whole-language approaches to reading instruction are typically contrasted with the more effective phonics-based methods of teaching reading and writing. Phonics-based methods emphasize instruction for decoding and spelling. Whole-language practitioners disagree with that view and instead focus on teaching meaning and making students read more. The scientific consensus is that whole-language-based methods of reading instruction (e.g., teaching children to use context cu ...
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Synthetic Phonics
Synthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches letter-sounds (grapheme/phoneme correspondences) and then how to blend (synthesise) these sounds to achieve full pronunciation of whole words. Overview Synthetic phonics refers to a family of programmes which aim to teach reading and writing through the following methods: * Teaching students the correspondence between ''written letters'' (graphemes) and ''speech sounds'' (phonemes), known as “grapheme/phoneme correspondences” or “GPCs” or simply “letter-sounds”. For example, the words ''me'' and ''pony'' have the same sound at the end, but use different letters. * Teaching students to read words by ''blending'': identifying the graphemes (letters) in the word, recalling the corresponding phonemes (sounds), and saying the phonemes together to form the sound of the whole word. * Teaching students to write words by ''segmenting'' spoken wo ...
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Reading Education In The United States
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling), alphabetics, phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, and motivation. Other types of reading and writing, such as pictograms (e.g., a hazard symbol and an emoji), are not based on speech-based writing systems. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations or tactile signals (as in the case of braille). Overview Reading is generally an individual activity, done silently, although on occasion a person reads out loud for other listeners; or reads aloud for one's own use, for better comprehension. Before the reintroduction of separated text (spaces between words) in the late Middle Ages, the ability to read silently was conside ...
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Dual-route Hypothesis To Reading Aloud
The dual-route theory of reading aloud was first described in the early 1970s. This theory suggests that two separate mental mechanisms, or cognitive routes, are involved in Reading (process), reading aloud, with output of both mechanisms contributing to the pronunciation of a written stimulus. Routes Lexical route The lexical route is the process whereby skilled readers can recognize known words by sight alone, through a "dictionary" lookup procedure. According to this model, every word a reader has learned is represented in a mental database of words and their pronunciations that resembles a dictionary, or internal lexicon. When a skilled reader sees and visually recognizes a written word, he/she is then able to access the dictionary entry for the word and retrieve the information about its pronunciation. The internal lexicon encompasses every learned word, even exception words like 'colonel' or 'pint' that don't follow letter-to-sound rules. This route doesn't enable reading o ...
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Analytic Phonics
Analytic phonics (sometimes referred to as analytical phonics or implicit phonics) refers to a very common approach to the teaching of reading that starts at the word level, not at the sound (phoneme) level. It does not teach the blending of sounds together as is done in synthetic phonics. One method is to have students identify a common sound in a set of words that each contain that same sound. For example, the teacher and student discuss how the following words are alike: ''pat'', ''park'', ''push'' and ''pen''. Analytic phonics is often taught together with levelled-reading books, look-say practice, and the use of aids such as phonics worksheets. Analytic phonics can also help with spelling. For example, a student learns that the initial sound in ''pig'' is the same as that in ''pen'' and ''pat'', so they conclude that they must write that sound with the same letter (grapheme) "p". Sometimes, analytic phonics is referred to as ''Implicit phonics'' because the understanding ...
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Phonics
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing to beginners. To use phonics is to teach the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters (graphemes) or groups of letters or syllables of the written language. Phonics is also known as the alphabetic principle or the ''alphabetic code''. It can be used with any writing system that is alphabetic, such as that of English, Russian, and most other languages. Phonics is also sometimes used as part of the process of teaching Chinese people (and foreign students) to read and write Chinese characters, which are not alphabetic, using pinyin, which is alphabetic. While the principles of phonics generally apply regardless of the language or region, the examples in this article are from General American English pronunciation. For more about phonics as it applies to British English, see Synthetic phonics, a method by which the student learns the sounds represented by letters and letter combina ...
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Timothy Shanahan (educator)
Timothy Shanahan is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker focused on literacy education. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Education, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and he has held a visiting research appointment at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was elected president of the International Literacy Association in 2004. He operates the popular informational websiteShanahan on Literacy He was recently recognized as one of the top 2% of scientists in the world, according to a recent study published by Stanford University scholars (Ioannidis, Boyack, & Baas, 2020). Shanahan previously served as Director of Reading for the Chicago Public Schools under Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan. He was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the board of advisors of the National Institute of Literacy, and he completed his term under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Ob ...
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