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Jan 1, 1440
Printing Press
In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg created the printing press. It was a screw press which allowed a letter/image to be effectively and evenly transferred to paper. This allowed for massproduction of books, which could be aquired more cost efficently.
This changed education as it allowed for instruction through literature. It also allowed for the printing of reading, writing, spelling and grammar instruction materials. -
Jan 1, 1442
The Hornbook
The earliest records of hornbooks are in 1442, but they became widely used in English schools in the 1500s. The hornbook was an ABC "book" which consisted of one page and looked like a wooden paddle. The hornbook was carved with the alphabet, the numbers ranging from zero to nine and the Lord's Prayer.
The lessons would consist of different combinations of the the alphabet, vowel and consonant combinations and a religious verse or the Lord's Prayer. -
Synthetic Phonics
In 1655, Blaise Pascal invented synthetic phonics. This teaches the phonemes (sounds) in association with graphemes (letters) to create (synthesize) words. Essentially, the sounds are fist taught in isolation and later blended together to create words.
Synthetic phonics develops phonemic awareness along with the corresponding letter shape. Children were taught to state the sound of a letter while writing its shape, allowing them to understand how letters and their sounds relate. -
The New England Primer
First published around 1688, the New England Primer was created by Benjamin Harris. He incorporated woodcut illustrations and religious content to teach literacy skills. It included the alphabet, vowels, consonants, double letters and syllabaria of two to six letter syllables. It also contained alphabetical assistants, acronyms, catechism answers and moral lessons. It offered children with an opportunity to increase their literacy skills through a sequence of reading texts. -
Webster's Blue-Backed Speller
Noah Webster was an American school teacher. He wrote the three volume series, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, which consisted of a speller, a grammar, and a reader. It was most commonly known as the “Blue-Backed Speller” because of its blue cover. The Speller was arranged so that it could easily be taught to students and progressed by age. For one-hundred years it was used to teach reading, spelling and the pronunciation of words. -
Teacher Training College "Normal Schools"
Normal Schools, also known as Teacher Training Colleges, were first created in France in 1794. The first normal school in America was founded in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1839. Normal schools were established to train elementary school teachers for public schools. This was a huge step forward from the monitorial system, which assigned teaching responsibilities to the most deserving eighth grade students. -
Elecution Movement
The Elocution Movement began in the nineteenth century. Reading instruction consisted of teachers pronouncing unknown words to students. The focus was on students reading for meaning, with proper pronunciation and diction. Students memorized stories from their readers and recited them in class. The spellers, which had previously been used to teach young students, were used in the upper grades. -
McGuffey's Readers
Publisher Winthrop B. Smith saw the need for a graded series of readers marketed to the American West and South. Rev. William McGuffey, wrote a language-arts curriculum integrating spelling, speech, comprehension, and word studies. The first reader included difficult words and simple sentences. The second consisted of multisyllabic words, and the stories progressively became more complex. The third and fourth included selections from authors such as Byron and Shakespeare. -
Whole word instruction
From 1900 to 1930, the whole word instruction method continued to be used. This was used along with phonics to supplement instruction. This resulted in an increase in students' reading and spelling abilities. -
Teacher's Word Book
Edward Thorndike compiled three different word books to assist teachers with vocabulary and reading instruction. The Teacher's Word Book, the first book, was published in 1921. It contained a list of the most commonly used 10,000 words in the English language. Based on his research, he determined which words, due to the frequency of their usage, should receive emphasis when teaching reading and spelling. -
Dick and Jane
Dick and Jane were a series of popular basal readers which were written by William Gray and Zerna Sharp. The texts were used to teach children to read from the 1930s to the 1970s. The series focused on methodology over content and was conceived as a rebellion against other texts which focused on Shakespeare, the Bible, and American legends. -
Why Johnny Can't Read
Rudolf Flesch published "Why Johnny Can't Read" to advocate a return of phonics to instruction. -
Learning to Read: The Great Debate
After conducting studies of beginning readers over the decades, Jeanne Cahall determined that decoding produced better word recognition and spelling. She also noticed that it made it easier for a child to read with understanding. She published “Learning to Read: The Great Debate”, in which she explained her findings that phonics were more effective than the whole word methods which were being used. -
Why Johnny Can't Read and What You Can Do About It
Rudolf Flesch revisited the topic of teaching phonics and its benefits when he published "Why Can't Johnny Read and What You Can Do About It". -
No Child Left Behind
The No Child Left Behind legislation required that teachers assess student achievement in order to assess teacher quality. Each year students are expected to show an increase in their comprehension of reading, writing, and math skills. In order to meet these requirements, instruction in all core content classes has become more rigorous. The Reading First portion of No Child Left Behind mandates that phonics be taught. -
Response to Intervention
Response to Intervention is a multi-tiered approach to providing struggling learners with early interventions and to idenitfy those who may require Special Education evaluations. It seeks to prevent academic failure through univeral screening, early intervention, frequent progress monitoring, and increasingly intensive instruction or interventions for children who continue to struggle. -
Common Core State Standards
The Common Core State Standards are academic standards that outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each year. This ensures a continuity in education and increased rigor in academic activities including reading comprehension and writing skills. -
The 1990s Brain Research and Focus on Phonemic Awareness/Phonics and its effects
Dr. Reid Lyon, the head of the NICHD branch that directs reading research, explained that research showed that the key to overcoming most obstacles that students experience when learning to read is an early exposure to teaching methods which stress the relationships between the sounds of letters, letter combinations and words. During the 1990s, research studies conducted on the brain found that phonics and phonemic awareness positively impacted children who were learning to read.
