The Whole Language Wall

I wish I knew before we got in this mess what I know now.  My daughter is in first grade, and I've recently discovered that her teacher and actually the whole school is teaching reading based upon the whole language method.  In fact, I had no idea that such a thing existed until my daughter hit the reading "wall," which I will describe further herein.  I'm sure if I asked the teacher, I would be told that it is not really whole language but really a balanced literacy program.  But the phonics instruction is pretty much non-existent and it is evident from the fact that my daughter pretty much could not work out any words on her own.

On to how we got there.....My daughter started kindergarten with some basic phonics: sounds for each letter and ability to sound out 3 and 4 letter words.  I trusted that the school would continue to progress her.  And, it seemed to me like they were. 

It all started out innocent enough, and a potential recipe for success (although admittedly somewhat different) or so it seemed.

First there were the sight words that were on the word wall to be memorized.  At that time, I thought, what harm could there be with that - after all these were the most common words and knowing them would jump start reading.  Then there was the invented spelling in which the kids could write the words any way they thought they were spelled with no correction, because that would give them confidence and an early start and love of writing.  Then there were the picture books with one word per page with a picture, followed by the easy readers with pictures and sight words.

It all seemed like it was going along very well.  But it did seem a bit strange.  I spoke to several other parents with older kids who told me that the methods might seem strange but they do somehow work.  So, I was patient and I went along with it.  And, after all, my daughter was seeming to me to be progressing in reading.

But it changed when in December of the 1st grade year, my daughter started bring home books with guided reading levels of I and J.  Reading quickly became a nightmare as my daughter would come across a word she could not identify quickly and for which the pictures were little or no help.  She started to tell us with frustration that she was stupid and that she could not read.  When I tried to help her sound out words, something I thought she knew how to do but hadn't seen evidence of because prior to this she seemed to be able to read every word, I started to notice that when my daughter came across a word she did not know, her eyes darted all over the page instead of looking at the word, and then she would start wildly guessing coming up with pretty much any word that started with the same letter.  One example that sticks in my mind is when my daughter read the word biting as bringing.

If my daughter thought her guessed word made sense, no matter how little resemblance her guess bore to the real word, she would move on without even knowing just how wrong she was and she would get mad at me for calling her attention back to the word.  She would also add words and substitute different words frequently - she often interchanged "the" with "a" and vice versa and would read the words out of order.  I quickly began to realize that what appeared to be a promising level of reading was merely a facade - a deception and a disservice to my daughter.

I began to research methods of teaching reading online and discovered that the whole language method and the balanced literacy approach were the likely culprits causing my daughter to hit the wall - and I don't mean the word wall.

My early efforts in addressing the problem with sounding out words based upon phonics was frustrating as it seemed that my daughter was already programmed in the whole language bad habits.  I had a terrible time getting my daughter to actually look at the letters in the words.  And, without being able to do that, sounding out was difficult, if not impossible.  I searched the Internet looking for strategies to best overcome the focus on the pictures and the context and the word as a whole instead of its components; and to help my daughter to focus on sounding out.

I realize from my research that the reading wars can be intense and if they find this page, I will probably get some passionately negative comments from whole language proponents. I would rather, however, only hear from others who have had to address the same problems I am addressing and hear from them about their phonics-based strategies so that I can best help my daughter.