A Critical Stance

We get too caught up in the details. At a meeting earlier this week, I was reminded of this as we discussed the best subskills to impart to struggling readers. It seems to me that we get caught up in all of the little subskills that we never get to the heart of the matter: teaching children to read for understanding.

Of course, that might have been enough 100 years ago, but the world of digital media and the ease at which any self-proclaimed expert can self-publish (even me!) makes me realize that this is simply not enough. I heard it said in one of my graduate classes recently that we have to help kids take a critical stance. Here, here! If we get caught up in all of the sub skills and think that kids are not ready to move on, then we never move them on to actually reading. I think that teaching for mastery is in part to blame for this. If a child must master all the letters, all the sounds, all of the blends and chunks and onsets and rimes, my goodness, we'll never get to reading!