Customer Reviews

Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing: The Evidence-Based Approach to Pinpointing Students' Needs and Delivering Targeted Instruction (Theory and Practice)

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In this book, J. Richard Gentry uses phase theory to explain how beginning readers are neurologically different than skilled adult readers. The first five chapters delineate, in brief descriptions based on phonological awareness and writing skills, how young students' literacy abilities and needs can be categorized into the five different phases. Gentry also briefly provides teaching strategies for each phase so as to help move students finally into phase 4, where they finally begin demonstrating more adult-like literacy skills.

As a teacher of primary readers, I appreciate Gentry's overview of the phases, especially the way he considers all aspects of literacy skills--including phonological awareness, writing, and spelling--and not just reading. However, I would have liked more in-depth descriptions of not only the phase characteristics but also specific learning objectives and teaching strategies within each of the phases.

Unfortunately, Gentry presupposes understanding of not only his previous book, Breaking the Code, but also the work of other literacy experts. For example, Gentry focuses one short chapter on the supposed short-comings of Marie Clay's Reading Recovery model. Although Gentry's arguments are succinct and specific, Clay's eminent reading intervention model deserves more understanding and professional contemplation than a novice reader could derive from this book.

Ultimately, it appears Gentry is trying to revolutionize the instruction of beginning readers. His ideas and theories deserve some attention, and may be helpful to classroom teachers. However, within this short book, I don't think he lands his point.

In his book on primary literacy, Richard Gentry explains phases of children's literacy development and presents reasons for why teachers should frame their teaching based on Phase Theory. The book is written from a research perspective, but as a teacher, I would find it helpful if Gentry would give more advice on how to practically apply Phase Theory to daily teaching.

The first half of the book, describing the phases of development, is a helpful overview for teachers who are working on identifying students. It would be more helpful, however, if Gentry provided more specific checklists or assessments for teachers when they are trying to determine what phase their students are in, for the purpose of providing more specific instruction.

Also, when reading this book, Gentry is assuming that the reader has significant background knowledge of particular reading teaching methods, such as Reading Recovery. He also assumes that his reader knows the work of Marie Clay and Sally Shaywitz. As a teacher of students with dyslexia, I have read Sally Shaywitz's book, "Overcoming Dyslexia" and have met with her in person. In later chapters, Gentry quotes Shaywitz on her work and beliefs on phonemic awareness. However, I believe that Gentry is taking her work out of context. She wrote her book based on research of students with dyslexia and she makes clear distinctions on how these students learn to read differently than students without dyslexia. He tends to quote Shaywitz's beliefs on phonemic awareness as relating to teaching reading to ALL students in the general classroom setting. I found this line of arguing to be out of context and ineffective to his emphasis on phase theory.

Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing discusses Richard Gentry's Phase Theory which is the stages young readers and writers go through during their literacy development. This book is very informative but boring to read! However, I did appreciate his explanations and vignettes for each phase of a child's literacy development. Gentry also included a resourceful chart on page 69 that explains "precise definitions, identification of specific strategic operations for each level, and identification of expected guideposts for guided reading text levels" which is useful to match assessments and instruction for students in kindergarten and first grade (pg. 69). In chapter 7, Gentry provides examples of various children during each of his phases. This is particularly interesting if one is attempting to compare actual classroom work to his theory. Finally, this book concludes with Gentry's proposals for education in the 21st Century. He believes these three things to change in order to advance education in the 21st Century: 1. Overhaul teacher preparation programs to focus more on teaching reading and struggling readers; 2. The U.S. should provide universal preschool; and 3. The best teachers and administrators should be working in the worst schools.

In his book Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing J. Richard Gentry presents his phase theory and the different phases that children progress through as they become accomplished writers. The first section of this book presents the different phases and the attributes that accompany each phase. For someone who is studying primary literacy for the first time or a teacher who is preparing to teach students who are primary learners this book could be extremely helpful. To understand what primary learners are able to do and where you should expect a student to advance in development this book is an excellent guide. One thing that I wish Gentry had done was to put a timeline of each phase. While he lets you know what the expectations of a student are for each phase and what a student in each phase should know he does not say how long a student should stay in each phase. While this may not seem like a big deal later in this book Gentry states the need for the earlies intervention possible. If I were only using his phase theory and this book to guide my instruction and interventions I would not know when I would need to intervene. A timeline for typical development would be helpful.

This text is a great example of the various phases of writing development found in children across all levels of elementary education. This book is easy to read and follow as it provides a step by step approach and matches skills with meeting instructional needs to move children from phase to phase to becoming efficient and confident writers. This book is very useful and beneficial when understanding a child's development, Gentry provides numerous examples to support phases and for educators to identify with.

The 2nd half of the book focuses on current reading trends and practices, including Reading Recovery. There is an accompanying DVD which demonstrates how to determine what phase a child is in and how to expand on a child's writing needs to design instruction based on those needs. This book is a great resource for primary and early intermediate teachers.

Gentry provides phases in which literacy development moves through. I found this part of the book very interesting and helpful in decoding where children are developmentally based on their skills. Gentry provides great examples to illustrate these phases of literacy development and presents easy to read bullet points of key operations, goals, and expectations in each phase. The second half of the book looks at phonics-first versus meaning-based approaches. I found the information in this book to be strongly backed research. This book is a great resource for any primary teacher to use to help identify student's developmental stages and needs.

In the book "Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing" J. Richard Gentry provides his reader with a description of student development in reading and writing. He describes a phase theory model in which children move through five phases of development. Gentry explains phases 0 through 4 using bulleted lists, descriptions, and plenty of examples of student work. Although Gentry does not specifically assign age generalizations to his phases, I believe that most children move through these phases between preschool and the end of first grade.

The chapters in part one of this book give clear explanations of what a student in each phase of development is able to do in reading and writing and provide techniques for moving the student to the next phase. As a primary teacher I found Gentry's book valuable in helping me identify expectations and goals for students at each level of development.

The second part of Gentry's book was not as helpful to me as a classroom teacher. Gentry attempts to share his personal opinions on Reading Recovery and phonics instruction. I felt his thoughts on the work of Marie Clay and Sally Shaywitz were somewhat one sided and had not been well thought out. Both Clay and Shaywitz have been influential in the educational field and he was extremely critical of their work. I did appreciate and agree with his desire to see America's kindergarten and first grade classrooms begin to teach reading and writing in tandem, rather than ensuring that children can read before beginning writing instruction. This book was an interesting read that I highly recommend to other elementary educators.

Gentry's Breakthrough in Reading and Writing is a book I may or may not use in the future. I found the information to be valuable as a resource for evaluating a student and deciding next steps for instruction, but I think often times Gentry is too black and white in his description of what to do next.

The phases he outlines for readers and writers was super helpful to me, though. I think any resource educators can turn to when evaluating a student's ability level that breaks it down into bullet form is helpful. Again, I just think it was a little too black and white.

I would suggest this book for educators of primary students who need additional resources for assessing students and figuring out what to do next to further their reading and writing.

Richard Gentry provides a concrete way to approach how children learn to read and write. The book is easy to read and understand. Gentry identifies each stage of beginning readers and writers and provides the key operations, critical aspect, systemic goals, and expectations for each Phase. His bulleted points that define each Phase, along with the examples of student work in each Phase provided me, a primary teacher, with very valuable information and a great resource to use often. Gentry provides ways in which educators can "break the code" and understand where our children currently are along the linear Phases. He promotes that literacy instruction must make some shifts to teach our children not only to know the parts of the system, but the whole system (p.62). In addition, Gentry pushes educators to "focus on the Phase, the Instruction, the Medhods, the Materials, and the Child" (p.68). I found this book very helpful and will continue to use it as a resource in my classroom.

This another book with another great idea of how to instantly become familiar with where students are in the development of their writing. In theory, it seems like a great idea and resource if the teacher has the time to become very familiar with the process to identify the phases. I would like to be that teacher, but with so many other theories and requirements from the district it is would be time consuming to become to a practical phase theory expert, and be able to defend why I think a student is at that phase. As an early child teacher, I do appreciate that whatever phase a child may be in they are considered writers and tips are given to nudge them to the next phase. In part 2 of this book, Gentry takes a more political stance. One that assumes all of his readers are familiar with the reading debate in this country. The first half of the book is a good resource for primary teachers and the second half is good food for thought.