Chapter 1 - Reading Development as Part of Literacy Development

Summary

Introduction

There are many strong programs and approaches to develop reading skills in the primary grades of today's schools. This chapter reexamines the structure, merits, and caveats of the Language Experience Approach (LEA). We are sensitive to the fact that many professionals consider LEA to be an older approach and used only as a beginning reading program. A major thrust of this chapter is to open up the possibilities LEA might have for different student types at different grade levels. Many “older approaches” are still very much in vogue today, as they are solid teaching approaches that have brought results over decades. LEA originated almost 100 years ago (Davidson 1999). Huey described the concepts behind the theory as early as 1908. Since then, LEA has been adapted, modified, researched, refined, and successfully used to educate children at all levels. The overall theme is that LEA is a multifaceted, reliable, wholistic, and successful instructional method for the teaching of reading and language arts.

The Background for the Language Experience Approach (LEA) and a Description of LEA

Children learn to speak in an unorganized way with little direction except for modeling from parents, caretakers, and others. They begin to write with marks and letters in the same unorganized way. They model what they see. The next natural progression is reading. The child comes to school to learn to read and knows some letters, but anything else about reading is an unorganized set of information. They may know intonation, how to hold a book, and that reading contains either a story or information. This is the extent most children know about reading when they begin preschool or kindergarten. By first grade, they are supposed to be in the first primer level for reading. Traditional phonics instruction is the most prevalent way that reading is taught. This compartmentalizes reading from the other language tasks. The phonic approach is considered just one part of literacy and does not wholly relate to what children know about the literacy tasks of speaking, writing, reading, and spelling. LEA, as designed by Russell Stauffer (1970, Figure 1.1), emphasizes learning to read as part of the literacy tasks involved with writing, speaking, listening, spelling, and reading.