Letters to the Editor: Readers applaud the return of phonics, but teaching reading shouldn’t stop there

To the editor: In 1970, I was a student teacher and then a second-grade teacher in New York. I later became a learning and reading specialist and taught the teachers.

Throughout my training, I learned (and subsequently taught) that the most effective way to teach both children and adults to read English is a combination of phonics and whole word recognition instruction (“Could phonics solve California’s reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes,” June 2). Roughly 85% of English spelling follows one of multiple recognizable phonics patterns. The remaining 15% of written English words simply have to be memorized or discerned from context.

Sadly, at that time, as New York state adopted a balanced language approach to teaching reading, California politicians chose to buy into a whole word-only curriculum that came out of Australia, abandoning the teaching of phonics. The Australian curriculum itself was excellent and actually part of the curriculum we used in New York. Without the phonics component, however, generations of California students have been rowing with one oar.

Kudos to California for finally correcting this tragic error.

Jane Drucker, Studio City

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To the editor: I had to smile when I read that Gov. Newsom “has pledged his support … to fund teacher training on the new approach” (emphasis mine). It was a “Back to the Future” moment for me. Phonics was one of the tried and true methods that was used to teach reading back in the day (I’m almost 80). Even now, I use it to sound out new words that I come across. For those who are committed to a more holistic approach to teaching reading, I would suggest that one method does not necessarily preclude the other.

I would also add that teaching diagramming should be seriously considered as a means of improving reading skills. When my high school Latin teacher realized that most of us in class didn’t have a solid grasp of English sentence structure (grammar and syntax), he taught us how to diagram an English sentence and then transferred that new understanding to teach us Latin. I joke to my kids that I had to learn English before I could understand Latin.

John Beckman, Chino Hills

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To the editor: As Yogi Berra claimed to have said, “It’s deja vu all over again!” Having taught teachers how to instruct reading and language arts for over 30 years, I’ve come to several conclusions:

1. Teaching phonics is great and absolutely necessary, but beware of non-phonetic words such as those spelled with “ough” (tough, bough, ought, through, though).

2. English is a difficult language to learn to read.

3. It’s not what you teach, it’s how you teach it. Having observed many teachers who said they were teaching phonics, I quickly learned that you can teach it ineffectively.

4. Direct instruction in any reading skill requires step-by-step instruction, modeling and supervised practice. Miss a teaching step and students fail to learn.

5. There is no single effective teaching strategy. We have to use them all.

Diana Wolff, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: I am so happy that phonics will be a focus in California schools again. When I was in second grade in the 1950s, my class spent Tuesday afternoons with a phonics workbook. Then it was a nice change from regular class, but I never imagined how much it would benefit me over the years. I think of those afternoons almost every day and marvel at how much that work continues to help me with spelling and pronunciation. I am a professional writer, and the study of phonics has made me a better one.

Mary Daily, Culver City

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To the editor: Here we go again with the pendulum swing. Thirty years ago, I was the director of a state-funded, university-based professional development program for K-12 on teaching reading and literature. At that time, whole language was the prevailing method of teaching reading. Some parents and educators, however, protested that their children could not read, and that kids were not passing reading tests across the U.S. Members of the California State Board of Education implemented phonics and similar skills as the reading curriculum in California. The Los Angeles Unified School District embraced a new reading series that focused on phonics and direct teaching skills. The program I worked for completely overturned our professional development to comply with the new curriculum, but reading scores did not go up much. And now, 30 years later, we are back to where we were.

Is it possible that there is no one method to teach today’s children how to read? Is it possible that children might learn better if classes were smaller, screens were used educationally and topics in the books were more relevant? Is the pendulum going to keep swinging every 30 years?

Anne Sirota, Northridge