Great+Debates



= Great Debates   =



 Unfortunately there is not one particular program that will help children who find literacy difficult. There are many excellent programs that claim to increase the reading scores of all children, but as all children are different in many ways it is up to the teacher to “modify, weave together and adapt programs” (Hill 2006, p.11).  Over the years there have been many great debates and controversies about the best way to teach literacy. Smith (1965) discovered that literacy instruction seemed to go along quietly then all of a sudden the pattern is abandoned. “Then a new plan becomes popular and we teach according to this pattern until another turning point arrives” (p.424). This demonstrates that for years the instruction of literacy has been changed and adapted on a regular basis according to the most recent information available. In the 1960s there were several different debates on how best to teach literacy. One such debate argued on whether or not it was best to teach children to read with special alphabets invented to make the English language easier to read. I another approach children learned to read with reading machines, where individual children read and answered questions and received immediate feedback about their responses (Hill 2006, p.11)  According to Foorman and Tergeson (2001), in the 1980s the debate was between literature based instruction and skills-based approaches. The literature based reading emphasised the use of authentic literature for independent reading, reading aloud and collaborative discussions. The skills based programs used a commercially available based reading program and followed a sequence of skills ordered in difficulty.  In the 1990s Snow, Burns and Griffin (1998) identified debates between three main approaches to teaching the beginning of literacy, particularly the teaching of phonics and decoding skills in a print rich environment. These three main approaches are implicit phonics, embedded phonics and direct code. In implicit phonic approaches teachers give priority to children’s construction of meaning and phonics is taught opportunistically in the context of meaningful reading and writing. The teaching of phonics is implicit and children read a variety of literature and information books.  Embedded phonics involves teachers using word families where a word containing the target spelling pattern is presented. Children are encouraged to make word families by deleting the consonant or consonant blend and adding a new consonant or consonant blend. For example the word **pip** can be built into a word family such as **clip, snip, rip, lip.** Dr Seuss books and ‘big books’ demonstrate how embedded phonics is used as they often have repeating sentences of built up family words, which encourage children to remember and read along with the teacher.  In direct code instruction children are taught letter-sound correspondence and spelling conventions explicitly and are practised repeatedly. Independent reading is introduced through a graduated series of books and children are encouraged to sound out the words they don’t know.  Despite all debates it is agreed that children require meaningful and enjoyable texts. 