Teacher Ed: Developing a Watch List of Practices and Replacements for Literacy Ed

I'm teaching a graduate college class called Literacy Acquisition: Process and Pedagogy. GEEKING OUT and loving it.

In our main project, we develop a position statement on an important topic in literacy acquisition. Then we write a Watch List of what to look for in materials and in instruction that doesn't match the population we serve, the research, or the outcomes we seek for learners. 

The following is the example I provided for dyslexia instruction. 

Composing the Watch List: I'm focusing on problems I'm seeing in dyslexia instruction in the middle school age group. 

1. Students experiencing difficulty with dyslexia in middle school, and have already had science of teaching reading interventions in elementary school don't need more of the same stuff such as Read Naturally. If phonics didn't work the first time, then what makes us think it will work the next time? It's been my experience that kids who have to do tasks from early school time feel like they are being treated like babies and end up chunking any form of engagement out the door. Research tells us this is true as well: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED582893.pdf 

2. Carefully consider materials for inaccuracies and mismatches to the population you serve. 

Example one: The word is few. In the program, they code the word /f/ /yoo/. Um. Have you met a middle school kid? I'm not sure that eff you needs to be a part of our distractions during reading intervention. 

Example two: A common program asks learners to box off affixes and underline roots or base words. Prediction and minimum are the examples provided. The program coded prediction as: pre dict ion. Minimum was coded as min i mum.

SOOOOO many problems with this.

First - there is a misunderstanding of what root words are and how they are employed in words. If you use the meaning of "to say" in a word, you can use -dic- or -dict- depending on the Latin or Greek rules that govern the use. If you are wanting to say "small, limited, or short" the form is both -min- and -mini- depending on Latin and Greek grammar. The way the program divided and categorized the word messed up the meaning. 

Second - if we are teaching kids to read words - tion is a unit of meaning that makes a word a noun (which is also a Latin, Greek artifact). You really wouldn't ever divide the word without using the tion in the last syllable. For minimum, the root is -min- or -mini- depending on the grammar from the language of origin. Just like we had in prediction. The program also calls the /i/ syllable an affix by the coding. Ridiculous. There are no affixes in minimum. 

Third - What the heck are kids supposed to do with this information? Is it a reading activity? A vocabulary study? A syllabication activity? A distinction without a difference in application? An activity more suited for a person studying advanced linguistics? The activity is just a hot mess and should be avoided altogether unless the point is to cause confusion and develop a theory of reading that isn't altogether helpful. 

Basically - the program is flat out wrong in content and approach. Dangerous stuff. It's unlikely to reach the goals of supporting kids who already struggle with the code by asking them to code more stuff. This kind of junk HURTS kids. They score worse when they are through with the intervention than before they had the "support."