[Reading-hall-of-fame] Balanced Literacy

[Douglas Fisher]

I would add the 1996 book Teaching Our Children To Read: The Role of Skills in a Comprehensive Reading Program by Bill Honig, with the first chapter title: The Case for a Balanced Approach.

 

Doug

 

From: Reading-hall-of-fame <reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of "P. David Pearson" <ppearson at berkeley.edu>
Date: Thursday, June 22, 2023 at 5:57 PM
To: reading hall of fame <reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Balanced Literacy

 

Fact-checking my own recollections of history.

 

I was surprised to learn from the Daily in the NYT a couple of weeks ago that Lucy Calkins was the founder of balanced literacy.  I imagine she was also surprised to learn that. And I know that our RHF colleague, Gay Su Pinnell, has sometimes received the same attribution. So I am trying to recall when I first became aware of the common use of balanced literacy.

 

I am a little vague on this, but I do remember that in the early 90s version of the reading wars, which sometimes featured tensions between colleagues affiliated with the Whole Language Umbrella and those aligned with the findings of Marilyn Adams' Beginning to Read volume, there were some researchers and teacher educators and many state and district leader who began searching for a middle ground. And I vaguely recall that some even banded together to ask IRA to authorize the establishment of something like a Balanced Literacy SIG (special interest group).  

 

And then I recall a 1996 book by 

E. McIntyre & M. Pressley, Balanced Instruction:  Strategies and skills in whole language. Boston MA:  Christopher-Gordon.

 

Can others add to the story of who was involved--and how-- in coining Balanced Literacy?  And I bet there are uses of the term as far back as Horace Mann.

 

David

 

 

-- 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow." John Dewey, 1903

“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

P. David Pearson

Evelyn Lois Corey Emeritus Professor of Instructional Science

Graduate School of Education

University of California, Berkeley

 

email:  ppearson at berkeley.edu

other e-mail:  pdavidpearsondean at gmail.com

website for publications:  www.pdavidpearson.org

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