Step #6 Learn What NOT To Do for INITIAL Reading Instruction and Why

Estimated time to complete this step: 33 minutes

Many good ideas and inventions came out of the 1960’s but Whole Language, which later morphed into Balanced Literacy with the addition of some phonics, was only partially good. Introducing quality literature and materials better representing all of humanity was the positive part of Whole Language. The three-cueing system, which uses semantic, syntactic, and visual clues in a “psycholinguistic guessing game” as its inventor Ken Goodman called it, has done immeasurable unintended damage over the past fifty years when used as an initial approach to teach children to read. When children learn to guess words, in contrast to sounding words out through a sequential systematic synthetic phonics approach, the orthographic mapping needed for retrieval and automaticity is impeded.

Now that you have gotten this far in this tutorial, I think you can recognize why telling a child who is struggling to read to “look at the picture” is not a good idea. What happens when the books get more complex and there are no pictures to use as clues? Illiteracy, along with all the psychological and social problems associated with it, is what happens for many children who later turn into illiterate adults.

However, as much as I complain about the instructional casualties caused by Whole Language, I concede that it can be useful, just not for early instruction. Later in the learning process, when children are already decoding well and reading fluently, the three-cueing approach could be used to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word. Adults who are good readers do this all the time. But because the use of the three-cueing system for initial instruction has resulted in so much needless misery for students and teachers alike, not to mention that we now have a mounting literacy crisis on our hands, many states have passed legislation banning its use. Now you know why. For an enlightening look at how a child was using the pictures as cues to “read” in contrast with how she was able to read after being taught with a synthetic phonics approach, please watch the two Purple Challenge videos below. The second one even includes a bit of who else but Prince singing Purple Rain in the background. Afterward, please read the article on the three cueing systems and watch the embedded video.

Step #1: The Big Picture

Step #2: Understand How Reading Works

Step #3: Toddlers and Reading

Step #4: Learning About Speech to Print

Step #5: Decodable Text

Step #6: What NOT to Do for Initial Reading Instruction

Step #7: Handwriting & Reading

Step #8: How English Works

Step #9: English Language Varieties

Step #10: For Extra Credit

Video: 
Is My Kid Learning How to Read? Part 1: Purple Challenge
Berrinchuda (October 11, 2020)

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Video: 
Is My Kid Learning How to Read? Part 2: Our Friend “Ur”
Berrinchuda (October 11, 2020)

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Article and Video:
The Three Cueing System
Five from Five MultiLit

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Go to Step 7