The Reading Wars

The reading wars is a hot topic in education involving which way is best to teach children to read: phonetics or whole language. When I was learning to read, my teachers used the phonetic approach. There was a letter to talk about every day. I especially remember going over long vowels and short vowels and making the different sounds. I don't especially remember word walls in my classroom, but I remember having a set of flash cards at home with different sight words on them.

When we are reading, sight words are automatically recognized. I believe that we create our own sight words based on our exposure to certain vocabulary. Simple words such as "the" and "it" are definitely sight words that we do not need to decode because these words are used so often in daily life. The more children are exposed to text, the more sight words will automatically click for students to gain a better understand and become more confident readers.

Symbols have a huge impact on literacy learning. At EBH, we have several picture books that the children look at. These books have the words girl, boy, apple, banana, doctor, etc. and then a picture of what the text is describing. The children recognize the picture, point to it, and identify it. By doing so, they are associating the symbol of doctor with the word doctor. Symbols are so important to literacy learning. I have seen many teachers label everything in their classroom. This association of a symbol with a text plays a huge impact in children becoming comfortable with using words. All of the sudden, it clicks that the letters c-h-a-i-r are symbolic of what the student is sitting in.