Teacher, mother of dyslexic child decries Manitoba’s new reading-instruction guidelines

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This article was published 26/07/2023 (800 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Against the backdrop of a contentious debate about the best way to teach children to read, Manitoba has published new guidelines for reading instruction that officials say take a holistic approach in lieu of favouring one side over the other.

The Education Department’s principles for developing competent readers prescribe early screening in schools, lessons that are responsive to every student’s unique needs, formal intervention and accommodation processes and professional development for teachers.

The document was released this month to address confusion amid the Manitoba Human Rights Commission’s ongoing investigation into the experiences of students with reading disabilities. It includes a list of complementary links and references.

“This is adding to the reading wars,” said Twila Richards, a mother of a student with a dyslexia diagnosis and private tutor whose advocacy efforts sparked Right to Read Manitoba.

Richards said there is a bias towards balanced literacy and a glaring absence of dyslexia and reading-disability experts — many of whom are outspoken supporters of structured literacy — in the appendix.

The local human rights commission launched a special project in October 2022 in response to instructional gaps reported by dozens of parents, school staff and graduates who have dyslexia and other diagnoses. It is roughly modelled after its Ontario counterpart’s recent public inquiry into reading education.

Ontario’s commission completed the original Right to Read halfway through the 2021-22 school year and ever since, supporters and critics across the country have been arguing about it.

The scathing report challenged Ontario schools’ support for balanced literacy, a popular approach on the Prairies, in favour of explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics.

Simply put, there are two sides of the decades-old debate over the superior way to grow literate citizens.

Structured literacy stresses the importance of teaching reading systematically by focusing on mastering letter-sound associations, recognizing sound patterns and decoding works.

Its supporters, Richards included, have branded their camp as “the science of reading” in reference to a sizable body of developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience research supporting the back-to-basics approach.

Balanced literacy touts the use of context, including visual cues, letters and sounds, and sentence structures, to figure out the meaning of unknown words.

The latter method was born out of criticisms the traditional one was promoting “drill and kill” and a desire to find a middle ground between explicit phonics and reading instruction through memorization.

Given public schools have largely embraced the second school of thought since the turn of the century, and spent millions on Reading Recovery and other programs that embrace it, the 2022 Right to Read reignited the so-called reading wars by challenging the status quo.

The Manitoba Council of Reading Clinicians recently issued a statement in support of the inquiry’s findings that schools are failing students by teaching them to read “based on philosophies or beliefs that are both inefficient and ineffective, such as using cues to guess words.”

“It emphasizes comprehensive literacy instruction that includes phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension within the context of culturally responsive teaching,” states an excerpt from the council’s July 4 post.

Neither Manitoba’s new guidelines nor the eight-page document’s appendix acknowledge the Right to Read.

The province does not recommend a one-size fits all approach to reading instruction, a government spokesperson said in a statement about the eight-page document.

“Teachers use their professional judgment to identify and utilize teaching strategies and practices that are inclusive and responsive to the individual needs of their students, nurturing a joy of reading as their students grow as readers,” the spokesperson said.

The principles focus on classroom teachers being best placed to identify evidence-based strategies for instruction that meet the needs of their students.

Richards, a certified teacher, noted there is significant onus being placed on educators alone and they need support — in particular, phonics training targeted at students who grapple with understanding sounds and spelling rules.

“Where are the supports? Where’s the teacher training? Where’s the appropriate class size?” the mother said. “Teachers need to know how to explicitly teach kids who are unable to ‘crack the code’ of reading.”

There is no doubt existing balanced literacy programs work for “typical readers,” but children who have dyslexia need back-to-basics interventions that are also effective for classrooms at-large, she added.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Reading guidelines