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Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching

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Defining whole-language or for that matter the skills-emphasis approach to literacy has been as elusive to many in the teaching profession as the recovery of the lost ark. In Michael Pressley's newest book Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching, he makes a gallant attempt and a plea to stop the confusion and start the process of a constructivist "balanced approach" to literacy. It is a must read for any professional who desires to understand the current trends that have shaped literacy programs across the country in the last thirty years. Pressley shakes his ink-stained finger at whole-language zealots and skills-based robotrons with commendable due process as he clearly explains the foundational constructs that have developed in each "camp" over the years, and the political feuding it has caused and will likely continue over the next decade. But Pressley goes further by logically and diplomatically identifying the roots of the literacy controversy and lack of proper teacher training that stems from instructional deficits on the university level. He makes his case for a balanced approach to literacy with the idea that taking the best of both literacy philosophies will lead to an end of the squabbling and result in much more time focusing on the imperative instructional needs of children. Simple as this sounds, it is not. Frank Smith: "A word can not be recognized until its meaning has been comprehended....The first alternative is-to skip over the puzzling word. The second alternative is to guess what the unknown word might be. And the final and least preferred alternative is to sound out the word." (page 66, Reading Without Nonsense)

Ken Goodman: "Reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game." (Pages 115-16, The Reading Process: Cycles and Strategies)

Constance Weaver: "It's not necessary. Just as they learn patterns of oral language, so most children will unconsciously learn common phonics patterns." (Page 197, Reading Process and Practice)

What do all of the whole-language princes and their queen have in common? That is a rhetorical question that requires little thought, indeed. What has been stated has resulted in a credibility problem-one that is not readily admitted nor easily abandoned by the promoters of an incomplete philosophy. On the other hand, Pressley is quick to point out with another ink-stained finger the shortcomings of a skills-emphasis approach without regard to comprehension. Reading and comprehension are two very distinct features of literacy and must be addressed as Pressley states:

The skills-emphasis model...fails because the skills that are the focus of the skills-emphasis enthusiasts, especially decoding skills, are not all there is to literacy. The skills-emphasis model is an incomplete model of literacy development, one that does not even acknowledge as important many defensible whole-language practices that are embraced by those who control the elementary schoolplace- elementary teachers. (Page 268, Reading Instruction That Works: The Case for Balanced Teaching)

Pressley goes on to identify what happens in excellent classrooms and provides mountains of research evidence and sources from his personal longitudinal studies to decades old research that is still verifiable. He also manages to include a nice child development abstract and a well-summarized appendix of "Landmarks in Development of Literacy Competence from 0 to Beyond the Elementary Years". As a final kick in the "hoo-haa," Pressley includes a Dave Letterman style "Ten Dumb and Dangerous Claims about Reading Instruction" that would almost be funny if they were not so pathetically damaging. He does make a good case for reading instruction that works-balanced reading and comprehension practices that need to be implemented by all teachers who instruct children in literacy as a matter of course.