Pete's Log: Decodable Stories
Entry #2604, (Parenthood)(posted when I was 46 years old.)
During one of the orientation sessions before the start of Kindergarten, a parent asked which reading curriculum the school district uses. I don't recall what the answer was, but the parent seemed satisfied with it. At the time I figured maybe they're in education themselves or something, since I assumed any curriculum the school district might choose would be broadly equivalent, and thus the answer to the question would only be relevant to someone in education.
Until recently when I discovered the Sold a Story podcast. And thus I learned that there are "reading wars" going on. The approach that the podcast criticizes discourages sounding out words and instead emphasizes teaching kids to "guess" which word might come next based on other cues such as context and accompanying pictures. This approach became pretty widespread, and George W. Bush was apparently pretty focused on swinging the pendulum back towards phonics before we all became distracted by other events.
The "wars" appear to be ongoing, and I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate things, but the podcast to me made compelling arguments and I found myself wishing I had remembered what the answer to that reading curriculum question had been.
Jamie and I are in agreement that JB does seem to be getting good at sounding out words, and recently she's brought home "decodable readers". Decodable being lingo meaning it includes only words that the reader should be able to sound out given their current level. I.e. our school district appears to fall on the pro-phonics side of the reading wars.