ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602190051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
ELEMENTARY READING classes have become controversial - and entangled with political ideology.
The first-graders at Roanoke's Forest Park Elementary School can't wait for their daily reading time. On a recent Monday morning, the children in Dianne Sellers' class plopped down on the carpet and watched as she printed on a small easel with a blue marker:
``Today is Monday. It is the first school day of the week.''
Sellers had the first-graders read the sentences aloud in unison. Then she concentrated on letters in the words and had the children sound them out. She began with the letter ``t'' in ``today,'' then moved on to others.
She asked if the children heard the ``s-c-h'' sound in ``school.'' And she asked them to stretch out ``week'' and think of the sounds.
After several minutes of focusing on sounds, punctuation and word recognition, Sellers led the children in other reading and writing activities.
The first-graders wrote sentences, arranged plastic letters to create words, and read aloud as Sellers held up a book and guided them through a story, ``Dan, the Flying Man.''
Near the end of a one-hour reading and writing period, the children took out books and read individually for several minutes. Each child has a box with his own books.
Most read aloud and seemed eager to show off their skills. Cherie Martin read about the zoo, correctly pronouncing the names of such animals as alligators, lions and tigers.
The Forest Park first-graders seemed unaffected by the intense educational and political debate that has emerged in this country over how children are taught to read.
What is happening in reading classes in elementary schools has become controversial - and entangled with political ideology.
In school board elections in Fairfax County and several other Virginia localities last fall, candidates debated how big a role phonics should play in reading instruction. Some national and state politicians have become involved in the ``reading wars.''
Phonics is the traditional method of teaching by having children ``sound out'' letters and letter combinations. It relies heavily on teaching skills through drills and work sheets.
But another instructional philosophy, called whole language, has gained popularity in recent decades. It relies heavily on children's literature and tries to integrate reading, language and writing. There is less emphasis on work sheets and drills.
Some educators are strong proponents of the whole-language approach, saying it makes reading more enjoyable and interesting for children. But many political conservatives, who say discipline is needed in education, advocate phonics.
Conservative groups blame the whole-language philosophy for declines in reading scores; they say it's why some high school graduates can't read their diplomas.
Even Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host, has joined the debate. On a recent television show, he criticized whole language and flashed a newspaper story with the headline, ``Is Whole Language Dead?''
Conservatives Mike Farris, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor in 1993, and Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, House majority leader, defended a phonics program last year when it came under attack by the Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC accused Hooked on Phonics, an instructional program featuring tapes, workbooks and cards distributed by a California company, of using misleading ads. The company claims its approach can ``quickly and easily'' help those with reading problems. The phonics program is used by many parents who home-school their children.
The success of Hooked on Phonics is seen as a threat by an education establishment with a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo, Armey said.
The reading issue has been debated quietly in Western Virginia. Several letters to the editor and opinion columns on the topic have been published in The Roanoke Times in recent months.
Some schools are putting more emphasis on phonics and talking less about whole language.
Lorraine Lange, supervisor of language arts for Roanoke County schools, said the debate has made educators more cautious about terminology when they talk about the method of teaching reading in their school systems.
``Some parents are afraid of whole language,'' Lange said. ``It's interpreted differently throughout the country, but it has become a bad word for some people.''
Until the 1980s, most children were taught to read by the phonics approach. First, they learned the letters in the alphabet; then letter sounds; then small words; and then sentences. Finally, they read short selections or stories. This method emphasizes the parts of language - letter sounds, long and short vowels and consonants.
The teaching is done with ``basal readers'' - books of generally increasing difficulty based on increasingly complex phonics rules, such as the famous Dick and Jane series. The basal readers generally have a limited vocabulary.
In phonics, there is an emphasis on direct instruction in how to sound out unfamiliar words and decode the language. Children are taught to connect words that are part of their spoken vocabulary with the combinations of letters on the page.
Phonics is still part of reading instruction in Roanoke Valley schools, but there are fewer drills and less use of workbooks. Some teachers don't use workbooks at all.
``I do phonics in a more subtle way. We don't sit around and go through long drills,'' said Sellers, the Forest Park teacher. ``I teach letters and sounds in the context of reading and writing - in an integrated literacy program.''
At Oak Grove Elementary in Roanoke County, teacher Mary Alcoke uses a similar approach with her first-graders.
``We have a lot of phonics, but we don't sit and fill out four or five work sheets a day,'' Alcoke said. ``We don't send a lot of work sheets home to parents. I think that's why some people think we don't have phonics.''
On a recent day, Alcoke used several activities to teach letters and sounds to her pupils, focusing on ``a'' sounds in certain words and having her pupils identify words with similar sounds. She reminded them of the effect a silent ``e'' has on some words.
In another exercise, Alcoke asked her pupils to create two columns, with the word ``make'' atop one and ``cat'' atop the other. She gave the children half a dozen words with an ``a'' sound and told them to put the words in the column with a similar sound.
Alcoke said phonics is part of the daily reading and writing time, but it is incorporated into the overall literacy program.
For 15 to 20 years, whole language has strongly influenced the way children have been taught to read across the country. The idea is to expose them to interesting stories and literature, so that they'll learn to read naturally.
Whole language originated in New Zealand 50 years ago. It has similarities to the ``whole-word'' or ``look-say'' method, which teaches children how to recognize entire words at one glance without phonics.
In the whole-language approach, teachers concentrate on presenting whole stories and poems to children - rather than initially focusing on the isolated parts that make up the language - letters, syllables and sounds. They concentrate on the purpose of language - to communicate.
Children are encouraged to write early rather than wait until they have mastered all of the reading skills.
Advocates of whole language contend it teaches children to read the same way they learn to speak: by being exposed to all of a language, not to bits and pieces.
The whole-language philosophy tries to accommodate many styles of learning. Children read more books than under the traditional approach.
Proponents of whole language contend that phonics drills - the part-to-whole approach - make learning to read more difficult. And they say this instructional approach can be boring, turning children off to reading.
Whole language has influenced the way reading is taught in the Roanoke Valley and much of Virginia, but language arts supervisors in the valley said they aren't whole-language purists.
Roanoke County uses an ``integrated'' approach that includes aspects from traditional phonics and whole language, Lange said.
Alcoke favors the whole-to-part approach. The object is to immerse children in real stories and get them writing early so they are experiencing the whole language, she said.
Alcoke said her pupils get excited when they can read stories to their parents and write their own. The county's new series of reading books includes six anthologies of stories for first-graders.
The problem with the traditional ``see Spot run'' reader is that the limited vocabulary bores many children, Alcoke said. By contrast, whole language includes real stories with real meaning that interest children, she said.
Roanoke has a balanced literacy program that incorporates part of the philosophy of whole language as well as phonics and other instructional techniques, said Hillery Callahan, language arts coordinator for city schools.
Callahan said she finds the debate over phonics and whole language somewhat amusing because the most effective teachers use a variety of techniques.
Linda LeFever, a Roanoke teacher, said good reading teachers can't rely solely on one approach.
``Not all children are phonetic readers. Some read words by sight,'' LeFever said. ``Phonics is very important, but not every child can be taught that way.''
Tina Dawson, director of Community School, makes a similar point. ``Phonics don't work for some kids with auditory problems who can't distinguish sounds.''
At the private school in Roanoke County, teachers emphasize the reading and writing philosophy of whole language, Dawson said, but that does not preclude phonics.
Salem uses an eclectic approach that includes phonics and a literature-based curriculum, said Judy Self, director of elementary education.
``A lot of extremists have given all of these approaches a bad name,'' Self said. ``Things are never so black and white.''
Salem children do a lot of reading and writing, but ``we very much teach phonics and other skills,'' she said.
Critics of whole language say low reading scores in California, a leader in the whole-language movement, prove that it doesn't work. California tied for last place among 40 participating states in reading proficiency in the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.
After seven years of whole language, California recently decided to reintroduce phonics.
Virginia's fourth-graders had the sharpest decline in the nation on reading scores in the 1994 national assessment, but they still ranked above the national average.
Virginia ranked 19th among the 40 participating states - better than neighboring West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Maryland.
Rob Jones, president of the Virginia Education Association, believes funding disparities among school systems, rather than teaching methodology, is a main reason for the state's drop in reading scores.
Students in the Roanoke and New River valleys generally score above the national average on standardized reading tests. The highest scores in the region on recent tests were recorded by Radford, Salem, Montgomery County and Roanoke County.
During the revision of Virginia's new standards of learning last year, there was a struggle between proponents of phonics-only instruction and those who support local control of methodology. The new standards place more emphasis on phonics and decoding skills in the primary grades, but they do not endorse or promote any particular instructional approach. Localities are free to decide how reading will be taught.
Researchers say students seem to learn best in a system that combines phonics and whole language. If the primary concern is that children be able to sound out words, researchers say, whole language is not working as well as programs with more direct instruction in phonics. But they say whole language helps children love and comprehend reading.
LENGTH: Long : 217 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. 1. Dianne Sellers,by CNBfirst-grade teacher at Forest Park Elementary in Roanoke, says, ``I
do phonics in a more subtle way. We don't sit around and go through
long drills. I teach letters and sounds in the context of reading
and writing - in an integrated literacy program.'' 2. ``I can fly
over a tree,'' Krystal Wallace writes out in Dianne Sellers'
first-grade class at Forest Park Elementary in Roanoke. color.
Graphic: Chart by staff: Language skills.