Balanced Literacy wasn’t even announced until 1999. So they stopped harping on the term Whole Language around 2000 but all the practice is still there TODAY in Guided Reading, etc. Plus, no matter the official nomenclature, they start the kids off on high-frequency words, which is what the article is about. Here is the latest wisdom from the web:
“High-frequency words, often times referred to as sight words, are words that students encounter frequently in reading and writing. It is critical that readers and writers develop automatic recognition of these words. Comprehension begins to break down when students focus on trying to decode or sound out individual words. Learning to recognize high-frequency words by sight is critical to developing fluency in reading.”
This quote and many others are in the referenced article:
“High-Frequency Lie: Some Words Can’t Be Sounded Out”
Starting with sight-words means that you don’t really have phonics, although most schools will throw the word around.
Whole Word, which came before Whole Language, might be what hasn’t been “recognized.” Admittedly, the fads come and go differently in different parts of the country. But your chronology is not the main one.
Here’s a lament from a teacher to me last month about Guided Reading, which she refers to as “whole language.”
http://www.edarticle.com/article.php?id=28475.
I teach high school, Bruce.
Reading taught at the elementary level, from what I can discern is a hybrid of the old Whole Language and Phonics — and is a mess! A lot of students never do pick up necessary reading skills from this his or miss method and struggle with reading as the curriculum moves ahead into the “read to learn” phase.
It is no wonder that I see SO many 11th graders who read at a 4th -6th grade with limited vocabularies and who tell me they hate reading.