Pet peeve #1: Balanced literacy proponents who don\u2019t tell what\u2019s being balanced or whose idea of balance is woefully unbalanced.<\/strong><\/p>\nMany school districts still brag about their \u201cbalanced literacy\u201d programs. Balance, according to my dictionary, is a condition in which \u201cdifferent elements are equal or in the correct proportions.\u201d That to me means that a balanced literacy program is one in which the elements of literacy get equal amounts of instruction. Or, that the time devoted to each is in correct proportion.<\/p>\n
What elements are balanced in balanced literacy?<\/p>\n
According to one guide, there must be three balances: one between reading and writing instruction, another between teacher-directed and student-directed activities, and a third between skills-based and meaning-based approaches (Frey, et al., 2005).<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the case, then few of these so-called balanced literacy programs are accomplishing balance.<\/p>\n
Many schools, for instance, offer 90 minutes of daily reading instruction and 30 of writing. That obviously fails to strike that reading-writing balance. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The idea of balancing teacher- and student-directed activities is of some concern given the research on the issue. Carol Connor and her colleagues found that students tend to need more of one than the other. Learning is more likely to accrue from explicit teaching than from discovery learning or independent practice (e.g., Foorman, et al., 2006; Gallagher, Barber, Beck, & Buehl, 2019). Rupley, Blair, & Nichols, 2009), and this is especially true for struggling students (Connor, Morrison, & Katch, 2004; Connor, Morrison, & Petrella, 2004). This balance seems like a good way to hold back some kids, particularly the most disadvantaged. That can\u2019t be good.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s that third kind of balance, skills-based and meaning-based teaching. Half the instructional time would be devoted to phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, handwriting, and text reading fluency, with the rest going to guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, writing, oral language and the like.<\/p>\n
With two hours of ELA, kids would get an hour of skills and an hour of meaning\/language. That kind of balance makes sense, but I\u2019ve never seen that much skills in any of the balanced literacy schools I\u2019ve visited. Despite the balanced label, skills tend to get short shrift in those classrooms.<\/p>\n
I hunted up some more recent descriptions of \u201cbalanced literacy\u201d online. One site says a balanced program \u201cstrikes a balance between both whole language and phonics.\u201d I\u2019m not sure what they mean by whole language, but an hour of daily phonics instruction would be excessive (NICHD, 2001).<\/p>\n
That same site claims there are 5 components of balanced literacy: read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, and word study. Kids in a class that balanced those would be unlikely to become very good readers; there is just too little skills time.<\/p>\n
Another site said that the balance is between \u201cexplicit skill instruction and by the use of authentic texts,\u201d while another called for a balance among reading workshop, writing workshop, and word work.<\/p>\n
I gave up at that point.<\/p>\n
It should be obvious that \u201cbalanced literacy\u201d isn\u2019t really a thing. It\u2019s a shell game. No one agrees on the essential components or even on what balance means, it\u2019s just another feel-good term, socially appealing, but without any real meaning. Advertisers like such terms because they \u201ccounter consumers\u2019 negative emotions\u201d while requiring nothing (Labroo & Rucker, 2009). The term may be reassuring to parents, but it camouflages the fact that key aspects of literacy programs will receive inordinate amounts of attention at the expense of other essentials that would greatly benefit their children\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n
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