Case
2: THE GREAT PERIOD OF
EXPERIMENTATION IN INTRODUCTORY
READING INSTRUCTION
(1826-1883)
Readers: New style-the Focus on Meaning
The old spelling books, with long lists of incomprehensible words accompanied by long essays, came under criticism. In response, educators created a series of books, also called "readers," which graded material according to its difficulty. Additionally, the readers included instructions to the teacher: prereading activities, comprehension questions, stories that were interesting for children, and the suggestion that teachers teach complete words before analyzing them. The best known series from this genre of new readers was the Eclectic series of William Holmes McGuffey (first published in 1836). Total sales of the McGuffey Readers are estimated at 120 million.
By the 1830's groups of educators began to advocate change. One group was interested in presenting words as wholes. They argued that children learned from whole to part (not from part to whole, a feature of the alphabet method) and began to experiment with the introduction of whole words with pictures and concrete experiences.
In addition, several different types of "phonic" readers were emerging. They all adopted the use of letter sounds instead of letter names. Four main categories emerged: (i) phonic/spelling approaches; (ii) refined, augmented or invented alphabets; (iii) diacritical markings on the traditional alphabet; (iv) synthetic phonics.
WILLIAM H. McGUFFEY. McGuffey's Newly Revised Eclectic Fourth Reader. New York: Clark, Austin & Smith, 1849.
"The reading exercises are selected from the best compositions of the model writers in our language" (p.2). The fourth reader includes rules on elocution, words to be spelled and defined, and comprehension questions.
EDWARD G. WARD. The Rational Method in Reading. Second Reader. Boston: Silver, Burdett & Co., 1896.
Ward produced a popular set of readers at the turn of the 20th century that made extensive use of diacritical marks. The tale of "Little Silver-Hair" and the three bears is recognizable.
ELLEN M. CYR. The Children's First Reader. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1898.
Cyr used a synthetic phonics approach, marking the new words diacritically before each story. She was the first woman to have a major series marketed under her own name. The Children's Readers were soon retitled the Cyr Readers.
G. S. Hillard and L. J. Campbell. The Franklin Third Reader. New York: Taintor Brothers, Merrill & Co., 1878.
According to the authors, the stories were a mixture of "entertaining narratives" and "valuable information" (p. iv). Children were to pronounce the words listed at the beginning of the story and also those defined at the end of it. In the "Boy and the Crow," Carl's cheese is stolen by the crow while he is chasing a butterfly: this is a lesson against taking what is not yours (p. 23).
REBECCA S. POLLARD. Pollard's Synthetic Speller. Chicago: Western Publishing House, 1894.
In this series, children were taught all the sounds of the letters before moving into text. The pronunciation chart associated letters with sounds that had no relation to a word: the pronunciation of ch/tch is shown by a picture of a train ("ch, ch, ch"); A woman who is hard of hearing says "eh?" (short e) (pp. 9-10).
A MEMBER OF THE ORDER OF THE HOLY CROSS. The Metropolitan Fourth Reader: Carefully arranged, in Prose and Verse . . . New and rev. ed. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1873.
At one point it was said that one child in every seven attended a Catholic school. Readers designed for these children differed in content, but not in methodology, from the mainstream texts. Here a lesson on extreme unction is followed by a poem in which a mother is using birds as metaphors for Christian characteristics (p. 209).
LYMAN COBB. Cobb's Juvenile Reader No. 3. Baltimore: Joseph Jewett, 1831.
The reader includes factual materials, such as short accounts of chocolate, opium, printing, and the porcupine.
DAVID B. TOWER. The Gradual Speller and Complete Enunciator. Boston: Sanborn, Carter, Bazin & Co., 1845.
The Spelling Book was formerly the only text used in teaching a child to read. This Spelling Book now appropriately gives the learner the spelling and pronunciation of the language (p. 7).
JAMES BALDWIN. School Reading by Grades: First Year. New York: American Book Company, 1897.
"The earlier lessons in this book relate to objects which are familiar to every child." Words are presented in both type and script, and the series is an early user of full color in many illustrations.
SWINTON'S WORD PRIMER. New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, [1883]. (title page missing)
The first month of the school year was to be spent learning useful "sight" words such as parts of the head. In the second month children were asked to pronounce and spell words on the basis of their phonic similarity.
REGENTS OF THE DESERET UNIVERSITY. The Deseret Second Book. n.p., 1868.
Several 19th-century educators believed that the only logical and scientific way to begin instruction to reading was with an alphabet that had a one-to-one correspondence of letter to sound. There are several explanations for the introduction of the 36-character Deseret alphabet to Utah in 1852. The Mormons wanted to make it simpler for children to learn to read and spell; they wished to address the needs of converts converging on Salt Lake City from many different countries; and Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, was reportedly a terrible speller. Page 5 reads as follows:
Lesson II. The Pen.
We rit with a pen. The pen iz ov grat yioos. We kan mak non owr thawts, bi th yioos ov the pen. Hwen we wish too tawk with our frendz hoo liv far awa, we ma sit at hom, and tawk with them bi menz ov the pen, and tel them al we wish them to no. Hwen we hav lurnd to red, we shud also lern to rit.
