A Phonics Comeback in Ohio

HomeschoolingEducation

Mar 19

Written By Meg Rayborn Dawson

Literacy reforms coming to Ohio classrooms.

By Aaron Churchill, originally posted in the Akron Beacon-Journal

“It appears that another knowledgeable individual is waving the banner for phonics in Ohio.”

Significant changes in reading curriculum and instruction are coming to Ohio elementary schools — and they couldn’t come soon enough.

For decades, ineffective methods have plagued classrooms, leaving too many students struggling to read. A recent survey from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce found that two of the most popular curricula statewide are Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell’s Classroom and Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study. Districts large and small — rural, suburban, and urban — have bought and installed these reading programs in their schools. Yet both are notorious for promoting the harmful practice of three-cueing, a technique that prompts children to guess at words based on pictures or other “cues,” instead of sounding out letters to recognize words (i.e., phonics). Empirical research has clearly demonstrated the vast superiority (our emphasis) of phonics over cueing techniques.

Well, to tens of thousands of successful Alpha-Phonics learners, this is not news!

Ohio

Meg Rayborn Dawson

Meg Rayborn Dawson is a homeschooling mom of 9 and the author of Dyslexic No More: Saved by the ABC’s. She holds an MS in Exceptional Student Education with a focus on Applied Behavior Analysis from the University of West Florida, an MA in Psychology from Grand Canyon University, and a BA from Northwest Nazarene University.