Phonics vs. Whole Word

A quick guide to the Reading Wars. Find out why Whole Language and Sight Words don't work; and why we have so much illiteracy and dyslexia. Also see related videos: "The Reading Wars Explained" and "Phonics vs. Whole Word--Take 2." (Bruce Deitrick Price)

http://www.Improve-Education.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Dolch
• words
• Whole
• Language
• phonics
• literacy
• sight
• balanced
• progressive
• education
• reading
• theory

[MoonshineNL]

By the way, your religious overtones are quite apparent, evidence of a....

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@MoonshineNL Viewed it again; can't see religious overtones. Main flaw is that some numbers are inflated: "Whole Word aims for a mere 800 words a year." Maybe that was true many decades back. Reality was that most kids couldn't reach even 200 sight-words a year. Many kids never reach 1,000 total! That's why we have 50,000,000 functional illiterates.

[GrokAntipathy]

it's just common sense that whole word alone would not be helpful to children

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

@GrokAntipathy

Common sense???....It’s important to remind ourselves just how insane this theory was in its pure form from 1935 to 2000. That’s 65 years when the official dogma was that children should learn to read by memorizing the graphic shapes of words, the same way we memorize currency symbols, electrical symbols, flags, etc.....

That is, Whole Word alone.

[TheJacolyte]

I'm not seeing any numbers, purely opinion and dogma. Your video is useless without numbers.

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

Video has many numbers. The only one I should correct occurs at 2:46 when it says Whole Word aims for 800 words a year. An early goal that everyone now knows is absurd. Many kids can't manage 200 words a year. QED: Whole Word is even dumber than this video suggests.

I've since added "42: Reading Resources" to Improve-EducationDOTorg. This is a good entry point for learning more about reading.

[abcwritestartread]

PS TC is Teachers College Reading and Writing workshop by Lucy Calkins. It is now being used as the prevailing method and its simply a repackaging of the failed whole language method. Waste of time garbage in our schools. NYC forced it on all schools Diana Lam was friends with Lucy Calkins the author so they cut a deal.

[abcwritestartread]

How many times have I had to tutor or teach ( reteach) kids who can't read due to whole language. 1000's of students have come my way. If the schools were to use direct, systematic phonics everyone would be better off. Ask any teacher in NYC our kids cannot read with TC.

[faville]

Ahhh, googling "50,000,000 functional illiterates" gives me a much better idea of where you are coming from. I should have been able to guess purely by the tone of your rhetoric.

[faville]

Hard to get past the crappy music choice and the decision to relate whole language to criminals within the first forty seconds. Also, what is this "education establishment" you are referring to? You do know that every individual town's school systems get to choose how they teach things, and there is no Grand Overlord saying "You Must Teach Whole Language," right?

[MoonshineNL]

@BruceDeitrickPrice i really don't care about phonics or whole word... i didn't learn english through either. you seem to think there are only two possible ways of learning english. anyway, if you believe that phonics is good then thats all good with me. if you want to prove to other people that phonics is better you might want to be less bias.

[NewYorkFlavour]

I have no doubt that the removal of phonics from the education system has contributed directly to the rapid spread of the cot-caught merger over the past few decades.

[alfievsgoo]

stop clogging youtube with this bias garbage. its reading not a 9/11 conspriacy. waste of time.