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TEACHING APPROACHES

ABC METHOD

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—An approach to teaching

—Students read the stories they learned when learning their ABC’s from the Bible.

—After learning and reading, students knew the Bible stories and the concepts of right and wrong.

PHONICS APPROACH

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—Historians attribute alphabets (symbols that represent sounds) to Phoenicians (11th century BC), race of commercial traders who needed easier way to communicate and conduct business

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Traced back to 1655 Blaise Pascal created synthetic phonics

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Letter-sound correspondences, basic patterns of English spelling

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Supporters: Rudolf Flesch, Jeanne Chall (Learning to Read: The Great Debate, 1967); National Reading Panel report (2000)

NOAH WEBSTER and SPELLING REFORM

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Introduced American English spellings (1806) by changing patterns

 

Dropping the “u” and “k”

    - color for colour

    - humor for humour

    - Public/publick; music/musick

 

Adding/Dropping additional letter

    - waggon/wagon

    - cancelled/canceled

    - travelled/traveled

 

Changing letters

    - defence/offence/pretence

    - defense/offense/pretense

 

Rejected spellings: wimmen/women, tung/tongue, soop/soup

WHOLE WORD APPROACH

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—Traced back to 1826, during Elocution Era

—1844, Horace Mann (father of American public schools) wanted to change from bottom up (letters and sounds learned before words) to top down approach (words learned first)

—“reading wars” (contest between phonics and whole word approaches)

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Also known as “look-say” approach produced “Dick and Jane” readers (1930)

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From this came the most popular book on education: Why Johnny Can’t Read, by Rudolf Flesch (1955) which reignited the “reading wars,” it was against the whole word approach

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Reminds me of braille contractions (ex: grt = great, brl = braille): students learn the shape of the word

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