Show 10A Satacay Jure Stara1 15 1931 Standard-Examine- Sirr x r Editorials I Physicians’ honors are well deserved The careers of Ogden pediatricians Dr Homer Rich and Dr Grant Way hae run almost parallel courses since they d students at the University of Utah a met as half-centur- pre-me- y ago After leaving Utah for different medical schools military serv ice and medical residencies both returned to Og- den to begin practice in 1948 Discovering early in their separate practices that pediatric medicine can be a job Rich and Way sometimes found themselves responding to house calls at the same house Over the years the two Ogden doctors pioneered in im- munizing against such childhood diseases as polio mea- sles and mumps served as chiefs of pediatrics at the old Dee Hospital and moved their offices into the same building So it’s particularly fitting that Rich and Way will be honored together next week by the Women’s Council of the Stewart Rehabilitation Center part of the McKay-De- e Foundation Way a native of Ogden opened his first office in the Eccles Building with his mother working as a nurserecep-tioni- st and his father handling the paperwork For the past 42 years he has normally spent at least one day a week treating students at the School for the Deaf and Blind Rich already knew what he wanted to be in life by the time he reached junior high school in his hometown jobs and played in Brigham City He worked part-tim- e his for education earn dance bands to money He has served as a Children’s Aid doctor caring for babies to be released for adoption has received the Child Advocacy Award and was chairman of the local March of Dimes for 25 years The dedication of these two physicians has helped improve the lives of many in Northern Utah and we join in offering congratulations on their well deserved honor Catjw The annual banquet Thursday night at the Ogden Park Hotel will raise funds for the pediatric rehabilitation of disabled children Information is available from the 4 Foundation McKay-De- e 625-202- POINTCOUNTERPOINT ’ Students skills flourish with At Chuska school in northern Arizona a second-grad- e story to a visiNavajo girl read her three-pag- e tor Missouri professor Dorothy Watson “That’s wonderful” Watson said “Can all the kids in your class write like that?” “Yes-no- ” said the child “That girl over there has problems but don't worry We all help her” This vignette tells a lot about whole language In e schools and classrooms children are becoming confident readers and writers who would not have had a chance to write or read real books because they were too busy in workbooks and basals learning words and skills Competition never worked in Chuska because it is foreign to the Navajo culture Now each classroom becomes a community of learners Classrooms are noisy with the sound of kids using English and Navajo to learn together Their writing and artwork covers the walls hangs from the ceiling and spills out into the hallways e classrooms learners build on In the culture(s) and language(s) they bring to school so there is no disadvantage to speaking another language There is no disadvantage to speaking a dialect that differs from the teacher's All language all experience are welcome e teachers help children build and expand on their experience They know that children growing up with written language all around them build a basis for literacy betore they start school They understand that both language and thinking are whole-languag- whole-languag- Whole-languag- KEN GOODMAN developed through use So the curriculum is integrated around asking questions finding answers and solving problems which is the way children learn in the real world Whole language is strongly rooted in the intuitions of teachers who care about their pupils But it is also edrooted in a historical tradition of learner-centere- d ucation going back to the great European and American educators of the 19th and 20th centuries And it is solidly based in research on language and learning over the past half century We know how people make sense of and through print as they read and write We understand how human learning depends on language We understand how teaching can support — but not control — learning There are two key differences between whole language and earlier movements in education One is this solid base of knowledge But the other is the extent to which this knowledge has been understood and built on by a rapidly widening circle of classroom teachers In America whole language looks like a sudden revolution It has brought about sweeping changes in classrooms and even shaken the foundations of two of the most change-resistaaspects of American education: textbooks and standardized tests Real books for children and young adults are re whole-langua- approach ge placing Dick and Jane And multiple-choic- e testing is finally being rejected in favor of authentic holistic assessment e classrooms reading Are children in and writing more? In less than a decade sales of children's books in this country increased 500 percent And there’s so much writing going on that there's a fast copy shop on almost every corner But what looks like a revolution here has been a much calmer evolution elsewhere New Zealand has been developing holistic schools since the early 1930s In England and Australia modern scientific understanding of literacy development and the role of language in learning has been gradually incorporated W hat seems radical and new in American schools is common practice there The term “whole language” became popular first in Canada in the early 1960s By the mid-’70- s Canadians needed a term to differentiate their holistechtic integrated education from the nology of US schools On our side of the border we is chopped up language processes into skills and separated the language processes from each other and isolated language from its use This violated what researchers were learning about what made language hard or easy to learn Many American teachers eagerly picked up the term whole language Our teachers go to school longer and meet suffer requirements for certification than any other teachers in the world Yet we have treated them as incapable of making their own pro whole-languag- text-and-te- st sub-skil- fessional decisions The teacher manuals control teachers completely saying: Do this say this ask this question Whole-languag- e teachers said "No more! I'm a professional I have a lot of responsibility I must have the authority to make decisions on behalf of my pupils I won’t accept the manuals and the mandated skill drills” As a long-terresearcher teacher educator and advocate for teachers and children I had always hoped that scientific knowledge would lead to improved teaching and learning But I am still delightfully surprised at what is happening in American classrooms m e classroom I Every time I visit a come away with new insights I am overwhelmed at the knowledge displayed by in Tucson or Caryl Crowell's bilingual third-gradein Calexico by the poElena Castro's second-grader- s middle-grader- s at the etry and prose of inner-cit- y Dewey center in Detroit and PS 183 in Manhattan whole-languag- But don't take my word for about whole language visit a it To learn more class- whole-langua- room You'll surely find a knowledgeable teacher who will be happy to share whole language with you whole-langua- Ken Goodman is a professor at the L’mversitv of Arizona and author of "What's Whole in H hole Lan“ guage 7966 Seripps Howard Yeas Service Children who learn phonics test better in reading ability a controversy about beginning 10 years For the past several have received about two telephone calls a There has been reading for nearly years 1 week from reporters writing stories on the approach These have dropped off whole-languag- e — the re- porters now want to know about phonics Another hint about the possible future reconciliation of the reading debate comes from reports that reading scores in several of the largest urban school systems that adopted whole language early have declined England is undergoing a similar debate on whole language They call it whole word They too report lower scores after whole language is adopted In such a state of flux I think it helps to take a historic view What has happened in American reading instruction over a period? Why the frequent debates on how to teach reading? What is the research evidence on the most effective procedures? First we must make clear what whole language is and how it ditfers from traditional or classic ways of teaching reading Here there is much difference of opinion Some reading scholars say whole language uses whole literature books instead of reading textbooks which contain short selections Still others say that whole language means no teaching of skills particularly phonics as opposed to just reading I or others it means empowering teachers to teach reading as they wish lor still others it means integrating the 70-ye- ar t JEANNE S CHALL teaching of reading with writing speaking and listening And for a growing number it means a philosophy of education and of life not merely a method of teaching reading ll is difficult to discuss whole language because it means vastly different things to different people and even includes in some schools the teaching of phonics and skills and use of reading textbooks as a part of a whole language program There is a further problem in discussing whole language — the tendency of its proponents to claim novelty for the use of many good practices that have been used by traditional programs e lor example many proponents claim that their use of “authentic” literature is a unique feature of their program Yet literature has been a part of reading instruction since the 1790s in Noah Webster's Spelling Book Although proponents tend to blame phonics instruction lor the lack of literature in reading textbooks it is important to realize that during the past two decades alone the amount of literature in the reading textbooks increased as the leaching of phonics increased laris writing also came with more phonics I urther the combined use whole-languag- whole-languag- e of reading writing language and speaking has been the basis of instruction since the Greeks and Romans in the United States since colonial times and in remedial instruction at least since the early 1920s There is however a theoretical difference between whole language and classical approaches to teaching e proponents view learning to reading read as essentially the same as learning to talk — a natural process that grows and develops and is highly related to the child’s richness of language The ability to reeogme words and to sound them — the alphabetic principle — comes from being read to and from reading It need not be taught systematie theorists claim cally Indeed some that teaching the alphabetic principle systematically results in reading problems view of reading is that the The traditional-classi- c first task in learning to read is to recognize and "sound out” words Beginners already know when they hear them thousands of words Systematic instruction in phonics or the alphabetic principle makes it possible for them to learn to read earlier and thus able to read difficult literatuie earlier What is the research evidence on these two Whole-languag- whole-languag- ap-pio- lies’1 I here is considerable icsearch evidence — from evpei iments in laboratories classrooms and dimes and fiom language studies born horn practice and from theory approach Most of it supports the traditonal-classi- c Several analyses and syntheses of this research have been published over nearly a century I did a synthesis in 1967 and updated it in 1983 (Jeanne S Chall "Learning to Read: The Great Debate” (New 1967 and 1983) and found sysYork: McGraw-Hil- l tematic phonics (learning the alphabetic principle) along with the reading of stories to be superior to the natural approaches (whole word sight whole language) which propose story reading only — for all children and especially for those at risk — children from families and children predicted to have reading and learning disabilities These findings have recently been confirmed bv the synthesis of Marilyn Adams “Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print” (Cambridge M A: MlT Press 1990) low-inco- There is also considerable evidence that if the alphabetic principle is not learned early the later mote advanced stages of reading development — such as reading and comprehending difficult texts — will be held up Thus the methods used to teach beginning reading aflect not only reading at the beginning but also reading at more advanced stages Jeanne S ( hail i proUwsur ot education at the llananl (oaduaie Sshool duration Sirtpps Howard Sews Scrne |