I feel like so much of this comes back to teachers as professionals. If teachers are able to teach (which they should be and if that is the concern we need to address it head on) we need to let them teach.

Whole language is a philosophy of language learning that recognizes the necessary role context plays in both instruction and assessment. So, “…literacy skills and strategies are developed in the context of whole, authentic literacy events.” (Weaver, 1990)

Workbooks are not generally considered an authentic literacy event. But, of course, publishers wouldn’t profit from this approach to reading instruction. Teachers have to stimulate meaningful “events,” which means that they have to understand more about reading than what the manual tells them to do, and make connections between texts and students lives, like doing whaling-related art projects when they’re reading about whaling. Without developing background knowledge, reading instruction becomes a sterile technical process.

I remember using one of my favorite authors Holling Clancy Holling’s book “Seabird” which takes place mostly on an 1800’s whaling ship. We made marvelous scrimshaw from white plastic Clorox bottles cut into the shape of killer whale teeth (back when the plastic was about twice as thick – we carved into it with sharp nails and then smeared brown Kiwi shoe polish on it that stuck in the crevices we’d carved) – it still works even on the thinner plastic btw. We studied whales and ships and the history of the time and ocean science (we dissected squid and ate them sauteed in butter when we were done) and we learned tons and had a great time learning it … and kids learned to read pretty well (with a few exceptions) and to love reading.

I’ve come to note that those that push the new scripted reading tend to do so as much for the ease of training and planning the same way over and over again and MAINLY the cost effectiveness and the belief that spending money to try to help the “few exceptions” is money down a rat hole – “they probably don’t have a high enough IQ.” Makes me even more angry at them than I was before.

I also remember that unfortunately the whole language training was not done well unless you did extra yourself – and that the reading series during the time were described as “Whole Language Reading Series” – so naturally many teachers thought that if I’m using a whole language reading series I must be a whole language teacher … this was problematic because teachers that were clearly NOT teaching whole language the way it was really designed went around describing themselves as whole language teachers … and often they didn’t like it because they just used the materials in the series which tended to be lean on worksheets and they were not happy. – As an aside I remember about 8 years ago or so we got a new series and it was HEAVY on worksheets, we were at THE 3 hour training done by the publisher – and teacher after teacher expressed to the trainers how thrilled they were to have “enough work” to keep even their fastest workers busy.

I’ve managed to do 1 or 2 books a year in a similar fashion lately … but not enough time to do it as in depth as before … but maybe next year I’ll do a little more … and a little more.
Brian