I want to bring up something that's been really bothering me with my #balancedliteracy and #scienceofreading tweets. It's something I see in comments/mentions all over the place, and I feel it needs to be addressed. Thread:

I see people directly or indirectly blaming childrens' families for their children's inability to learn to read through a guided reading/balanced literacy framework. On Twitter, where I have a Disney princess avi, people do this to me quite frequently.

"Just read to them! Do you read to them before bed? Surely you've read to them since they were a baby? Maybe you should read to them more." There was even a thread recently of *teachers offering to zoom their students at bed time to read to them.*

That's wildly inappropriate for many, many reasons, but it brings up a big selling point of #balancedliteracy: If we just surround children with books and reading they will learn to read. This is a beautiful, terrible lie.

A little bit about me. I'm not actually the Princess Aurora (duh). I'm a stay-at-home parent that left a career in publishing to care for my first-born and has stayed home to care for him and his younger sister. I had five copy-editing internships in college.

I received one of those internships through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund. I graduated magna cum laude. I was the assistant managing editor for a 1 mil+ circulation magazine. I have copy edited magazines, cook books and local newspapers.

I have read bedtime books to my son every day of his life. I read Game of Thrones to him when he was an infant and struggling to breastfeed and we sat for hours on the couch. We are currently reading the graphic novel adaptation of The Last Jedi together.

I model reading by reading novels in front if my children. Before Corona, we went to the library religiously. Let's just say my household is one where reading is cherished and valued. But none of that would help my son learn to read.

He spent 6 years listening to me read to him, and he spent a year and a half in a #balancedliteracy classroom doing things like "skippy frog" and "tryin' lion" and "what makes sense?" and "picture power." And not one bit of either of those things helped him read.

What finally cracked the code for him? Watching me sound out simple CVC words. Learning the rules of our printed language. I never struggled to read; if you tell me "igh says I" I apply it readily. My son requires explicit instruction and repetition in that kind of pattern.

Anecdotes are not data. But there are many studies that show the best way to teach the most kids to read is by teaching them the code that is printed language. Let my anecdote be an example of how even the best reading parents don't necessarily produce proficient readers.

And since I'm on my soapbox, a child should go to school and learn to read no matter the literacy situation at home. My illiterate ancestors sent their children to school for this gift, and the expectation of literacy in all children is not too much to ask.

(There are typos in this thread, please don't take my copy-editing credentials from me; I can't fix them!)