My kids' school use what they call a mixed approach. I'm not sure what to think about it, as my own kids do very well reading, but my oldest has told me there is at least one girl in the sixth grade who can barely read at all. Now, this could be an anomaly (there will always be), or it could be she has some disability (dyslexia), or it could be she's getting zero support at home. Any number of things.


I recently wrote a letter to the superintendent of our schools to tell him how happy I am at the school- and grade-wide support for reading instruction at my kids' school. Specifically, they have this program called DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) nearly every day in which for about 20-25 minutes near the end of the day, nearly every class in the school stops what they're doing and the students read. Great idea. They also hold read-a-thons once or twice a year in which the students bring blankets, pillows, and a stack of books in to read. My favorite is the classical parents program. Two or three classical books are selected for the year and the parents read those books to the kids over the course of several weeks. I was already doing this with my kids and it's nice to have a way of sharing this with the other parents and kids. Each sixth grade class does a play every year. This year was Julius Caesar - severely edited, but still a lot better than Dick and Jane. Amy got to play Marc Antony she loved the words - the way he said exactly the opposite of what he said. ("I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" "Brutus is an honorable man" "I come not, friends, to steal your hearts away" "I am no orator")


I don't support or oppose any particular method of instruction. Instead, I think what's really important are individual, motivated teachers who really want to teach and not just stand up and blabber or follow some script.

k