Learning to read: The unofficial scripts of succeeders and strugglers

Brown, Tammy B. H. (2010). Learning to read: The unofficial scripts of succeeders and strugglers. The Reading Teacher, 64(4), 261-271.

My overwhelming reaction to this article was sadness. This case study compared the perceptions about reading and reading instruction of two successful first grade readers with those of two struggling first grade readers in the same classroom. The school was implementing multiple reading programs simultaneously in an effort to help all readers. The intentions were obviously good here, but I saw deleterious effects on both the successful and struggling readers (not to mention the teacher, but she was not the focus here). The multiple programs were all heavily code-based, and classroom instruction included a heavy dose of explicit phonics instruction. It was so explicit that children were doing things like naming digraphs and putting macrons atop long vowel s (and calling them macrons!). There was also some meaningful text reading, including daily read-alouds, but comprehension was seen as something separate from decoding, which was given priority. Comprehension could wait until the children reached higher grades. This quote from “Mrs. Parks” horrified me: “We’re building up to comprehension, but I think phonemic awareness is the important thing in first grade. Developing fluent readers. . . and hopefully the other grades build on that and you get the comprehension” (p. 263). I do believe phonics and phonemic awareness are important, but comprehension must be the main focus from Day One, and must be developed simultaneously with the other components of reading. In my view, reading is a seamless, whole process of meaning-making, and meaning is the bottom line. Skills like phonics and phonemic awareness are the means to that end, not ends in themselves. Many strong beginning readers already realize that, like case study student “Jenna”, a successful reader. One quote from her is pretty telling: “I’m not too big on reading (referring to phonics-centered reading instruction), but I love books” (p. 267). Other successful readers, even as early as the first grade, figure out that reading instruction that is code-based is a game they have to play, and they learn to play it well, as did “Mark”, the other successful reader profiled here. Somehow, these young readers manage to stay focused on meaning, however, in spite of the obvious disconnect created for them by the instruction they receive. One wonders how they might soar even further if they did not have to deal with the conflicts set up by these programs. The struggling readers do not seem to be able to manage that disconnect so well, and their story is the saddest. I winced when reading about “Alyssa”, who tried to make meaning from the nonsense words she was asked to read as part of a supplemental literacy intervention that she, as an identified “at-risk” reader, experienced in addition to the regular classroom instruction. This child somehow knew that meaning comes first and is paramount, but the instruction she was receiving confused her, and actually undermined her conception of reading as meaning-making. The fourth child, Luis, struggled to find his own ways of meaning-making (through kinesthetic modalities and body movement), but those ways were not valued in this classroom, which widened the disconnect for him. All four of these stories were sad, and I wonder what the ramifications will be for each child’s future reading motivation and development. I also wonder about this teacher, as she tried to juggle all of the competing agendas and still maintain some sort of professional integrity. Yes, this is a very sad little story.