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Research Intro
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Childrens Lit
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Curriculum
Overview of Chapter 1
by Jeff Sapp
When we speak about balanced literacy, what exactly are we trying to balance? Most of the general public would probably say it is the balance between those two camps of the reading wars - phonics and whole language. In actuality it has to do with the way in which reading is taught and the way in which the brain processes text.
Every good teacher recognizes the importance of the balance between high-quality, clear, effective modeling and the need for students to process, discover, and organize their own understanding. Social learning theory has told us for years that more is caught than taught. Teachers model the nuances of our symbol system and the process of writing through activities such as interactive writing, shared writing, and experience with language. But teachers can model all day long with little success if students are not allowed time to follow the lead by journaling, writing their own stories, or practicing a new form of expository text. Shared reading and read-clouds launch a demonstration of the strategies of good readers, but they are always followed by practice through silent sustained reading, guided reading, literacy centers, and literature circles. I heard a colleague once state it this way: “I do it. We do it. You do it.” She understood the importance of balanced pedagogy.
Secondly, there is the balance of the use of the reading cue systems. The sources of information used by readers - schema, meaning, structure, and graphophonics - must be developed and accessed by young readers. These tools provide readers with multiple strategies when confronted with unknown words. Learning to break down a word into recognizable parts, check the illustration for information, and reread to check for grammatical patters and meaning are all examples of these cue systems in action. Teachers must continually ask themselves these important questions: Are the literacy processes balanced? Are the receptive processes of reading and writing balanced with the expressive processes of writing and speaking?
Last of all, there is the balance between functional literacy and empowering literacy. We read to exist in a highly print-oriented society, but we also read to contemplate, question, and understand. Too often schools focus upon a literacy minimized to writing correct answers into spaces left by test makers, or a literacy that enables a student or future worker to read directions or complete simple tasks but to do little else. This functional literacy may make us dependable but it does not empower us to make meaningful changes in our lives. Empowering literacy is about helping students make meaning of their lives through text, both consumed and created.
Our look at literacy begins with an important article by Timothy Shanahan and Susan Neuman that addresses literacy research that is making a difference today. At the invitation of Reading Research Quarterly, the authors carried on a dialogue about the last 35 years and 50,000 studies on literacy, noting which ones have most influenced how we teach reading. They also identify what factors have not been influential in teaching reading. For example, they cite assessment as one area more guided by politics than by research. “Accountability is a political issue, not an educational one,” they state (1). They have narrowed the studies not to a “top 10 list,” but to what they have called a “thoughtful 13 list.”
The article by James Baumann and Gay Ivey examines the delicate balances of literacy. Specifically, the article deals with “curriculum balances between literature environment and skill/strategy instruction, and an instructional balance between teacher-initiated instruction and instruction responsive to students’ needs and interests” (2).
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