Education Review Issue 5 July-August 2021 | Page 23

in the classroom digested by children as they were learning to read .
We know that there are some issues with that whole language approach . We know that a whole group of students would have benefited enormously from intentional teaching around the elements of being a reader . We also know that a lot was left to chance during that process . We also know that some students were very motivated to read , and during that process , they were , I guess , advantaged by that whole language approach . But we also shouldn ’ t be in the stage where we now leave that to chance .
So , the proposals around the teaching of reading that have been contested – and this is what people talk about when they refer to the ‘ reading wars ’ – the differences between the balanced approach , which is an approach I support , and a synthetic phonics approach , which is very structured and usually run through a commercial program . It assumes that phonics has to be mastered in a linear sequence and that the skills around phonics have to come before all the other elements of learning to read .
Now , the approach that sits in the middle of the whole language versus phonics approach is the balanced approach . The balanced approach has as its starting point that children already know a lot about how language works because they ’ ve been able to master the oral language code . They actually are very capable and confident with working with some of the complexities around the English language .
For example , we have letters that don ’ t necessarily make the same sound all of the time . The balanced approach actually prioritises children ’ s comprehension , which we often talk about as making meaning , their ability to use the texts that they read , but also be critically aware around the biases that are within those texts that they read . We believe that children should be developing these skills concurrently , not in a linear sense .
Do you think a large number of teachers are not explicitly teaching phonics in the early years ? All teachers in Australia are bound by the requirements of the Australian Curriculum , and it quite explicitly requires a balanced approach to the teaching of reading . So , the teaching of phonics is definitely a content descriptor within the Australian Curriculum . Teachers assessing students ’ achievements on all of those content descriptions is a requirement of the job of a teacher . So , no , I don ’ t think there are large numbers of teachers who are not explicitly teaching phonics in the early years .
What is different is the resources that the teachers are bringing to that teaching task . Some teachers will default to a commercial program which determines what the reading text is about and the content . We ’ ve got other teachers who will actually take into consideration who their students are , the students ’ cultural backgrounds , their language backgrounds , their areas of interest , and those teachers will bring real texts into the classroom . They won ’ t have a commercial program determining the pacing or the sequencing or what that content is .
Those teachers will use their professional judgement to make decisions about what texts need to come into those classrooms at that point in time and how those reading instructions will happen using those texts . It ’ s really about centring the choices of texts and the reading practices in a very child-centred approach , but it is still an intentional approach in the way that the teacher is planning and assessing what ’ s happening about the teaching of reading .
It ’ s an approach that I really support because it actually helps the school learning connect with the child rather than forcing the child to connect with something that publishers might think would be a standard stage that all children might be at .
Over the last decade it seems there has been a real focus on teaching reading , and writing appears to have gone by the wayside in comparison . Do you agree ? And how can learning to become a competent , informed reader inform excellent writing ? That ’ s a great question . The simple answer is that reading and writing go hand in hand . We ’ re using the same cuing systems to read as we do to write . So we think of reading as being a receptive skill where we ’ re learning how to take in what somebody else has written , and we think of writing as an expressive skill : how we learn to express our own ideas within that form of communication .
We ’ ve seen what ’ s happened with NAPLAN ; the way that it ’ s hijacked the curriculum .
The teaching of writing is actually every bit as complex as the teaching of reading because we ’ ve got to develop those ideas and help children explore a wider vocabulary , explore different – we call them ‘ tenors ’ around their writing – which is writing for different audiences , writing for different social purposes .
What we ’ ve learnt during NAPLAN testing is this fixation on national normalised standardised assessments doesn ’ t work well with writing . What ’ s happened with the NAPLAN assessment is when it ’ s being fed into a particular generic structure around a narrative or a particular generic structure around the persuasive texts , we ’ re artificially imposing genre as the main focus or the main purpose of children ’ s writing , and what gets left out of that whole equation is the development of ideas , the development of multiple forms of expression that might be much more creative than that robotic posturing of a narrative text or the robotic posturing of a persuasive text as well .
So I don ’ t think we ’ ve had the fulsome conversations that we need to have about the teaching of writing , and I think the reason that many people have shied away from those conversations is that the development of writing is actually quite personal . That doesn ’ t mean that we can ’ t intentionally teach writing , it just means that we ’ ve got to think about something else rather than a normalised , standardised , nationalised assessment model .
I think what we ’ ve got to remember at the heart of our teacherly decisionmaking is the child . The child is a human being with background experiences that they bring to their formative years of schooling , and will continue to be a human being that lives in a real world after they leave us . I think if we can recognise that the child is only on part of their journey with us , we will better place our decisions around teaching reading and teaching writing . ■
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