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The First Reading "Book."
The first reading book used by Colonial school children was not an actual book. The Hornbook was a thin board with a handle that could be attached to a child's belt. It consisted of an attached piece of parchment paper depicting the alphabet (upper and lower case letters), vowels and consonants to teach syllables, and the Lord's Prayer. (Columbia Encyclopedia). -
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The New England Primer
Reading For The Purpose of Conveying A Culture's Value System
A In Adam's Fall
We sinned all.
B Thy Life to Mend
This Book Attend.
C The Cat doth play
And after slay.
D A Dog will bite
A Thief at night.
E An Eagle's flight
Is Out of sight.
F The Idle Fool
Is Whipt at School. (Smith, 2019).
The Primer was the main textbook used by Colonists and early Americans. It's content centered around religion. -
Colonial Value on Education
The benefits of education were not dispersed equally in Colonial times. Schools in the south were formed to accommodate children of farmers, the wealthy hired personal tutors for their children, and grammar schools had to be available for towns meeting a population limit. Boys were taught Latin and Greek; girls were not allowed to attend college, so their education ended after primary school. (Columbia Encyclopedia). -
Importation of Spellers
"It was not until the 1730s that spellers designed to teach young children were imported, reprinted in the American colonies, and added to the reading instructional sequence between the primer and psalter, where they became the most important text used to teach reading" (Monaghan, 2011). -
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Integrating Speaking and Spelling with Reading Instruction
Noah Webster's Spelling Book -
The American Spelling Book by Noah Webster
"The Spelling book concentrates an enormous
amount of practice in reading and spelling into an exceptionally small space, allowing
students to attain high levels of reading ability in an amazingly short period of time" (Potter, 2014). -
Influence from a Swiss Educator
"Deploring" rote learning, Johann Pestalozzi believed children learned globally and believed teachers should base their instruction around what the child already knew. "Since the alphabet method was the quintessential part-to-whole pedagogical approach, both the method itself and the spellers embodying, it came under harsh criticism from reformers, who emphasized that children needed to understand what they were reading" ( Monaghan, E. 2011). -
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Pestalozzianism and Child Centered Schoolbooks
The parallel shifts in reading and writing materials.
(Monaghan, E., 2011). -
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Progressivism and the Integration of Literacy Instruction
Progressive Francis Wayland Parker stated “Reading should be first of all interesting to the learner" (Monaghan, E. 2011). -
Francis Wayland Parker
Emphasizing that reading should be interesting to a child, Parker opened a school in Chicago in 1899. Reading was taught through a child's interest; beginning with sight words, followed by phonics. (Monaghan, E. 2011). -
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The Whole Word Approach
" Any word of any length that had meaning to children was acceptable"
( Monaghan, E. 2011). -
Disintegrating the Language Arts
Rudolf Flesch proposed that reading comprehension instruction focused too heavily on the whole word. He believed the methodology of phonics was being ignored. ( Monaghan, E. 2011).
He spent much of his life in a frustrating quest to persuade his colleagues that they had made a tragic mistake by favoring look-say over phonics. His “Why Johnny Can’t Read” was a national bestseller in 1956.(ImproveEducation.org.,2005). -
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Reintegrating the Language Arts
"Drawing in part on the insights of emergent literacy research, three movements in the 1980s and 1990s became, synergistically, dominant forces in the discourse and practice of integrating the elementary language arts curriculum: process writing, whole language, and literature-based reading"( Monaghan, E. 2011). -
The Whole Language Movement
"Researchers of the whole language philosophy hold the view that language should not be broken
down into letters or combinations of letters and ordinary understandable message decoded. Instead, they believe
that language is a complete system of making meaning, with words functioned in relation to each other in
context" (Ling-Ying, 2014). -
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"Balanced" Reading Instruction
Emphasizing that whole language and phonics instruction should not be taught exclusively from each other. (Monaghan, E. 2011). -
No Child Left Behind Act
"The NCLB law—which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive—significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students" (Klein, 2015).
Standardized testing to determine whether students were proficient in reading and math drove instruction to higher levels of intensity. -
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Today
"Reading is a multifunctional phenomenon, we can distinguish primary and
secondary reading functions. The main function of reading is informational
communicative, through which the transmission of meanings of culture and connection
of generations in the history of civilization is exercised" (Lazutinaa, 2016). -
Technology as an Intricate Piece of Instruction
Quantitative findings showed that the use of digital texts had
influence on improving fluency and reducing reading mistakes" (Kaman, 2018).
Technology has influenced the educational environment by exposing students to more than the traditional written word and images. Technology has enhanced our students critical thinking skills and has motivated our students to enjoy reading. Technological tools utilized in the classroom provide positive results in regards to reading skills.(Kaman, 2018).
