MEASUREMENT PAPER

Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition

Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition

At various times in U.S. educational history, developmental theory has been set in sharp contrast to behaviorist theory. A case in point is the meaning emphasis instruction of another early twentieth-century reform, the whole word or look-say method of teaching reading, in which students learned a substantial body of words before attempting to analyze words into lettersounds(Levin, 2008). Behaviorists contended that the reason for low reading performance in the 1940s and 1950s was the failure of teachers to teach phonics, due primarily to predominance of the look-say method in schools and reading textbooks. Look-say instruction was usually combined with analytic phonics after students had learned about 100 or so sight words, though it did not break each word into its component letters but rather used a more focused analysis of specific patterns in words and groups of words. This combination was used from 1930 to 1970(Levin, 2008).

Another meaning-emphasis instructional approach, the language experience approach, described 50 years ago by Nila Banton Smith and other reading experts, is one in which reading, writing, listening, and speaking are intertwined. The experience chart was introduced as early as 1900, but the modern language experience approach, which gathered momentum after World War II, is much broader than that early predecessor. In explaining the language experience approach in the 1960s, Roach Van Allen said that what children could think about, they could talk about; what they could say, they could write (or have someone write for them); what they could write, they could read; and what others wrote for them to read, they could read. This approach builds language through interactions with reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking(Levin, 2008).

Until very recent years, rather than speaking of the teaching of literacy, educators referred to the teaching of reading and writing , treating them as discrete subjects and teaching them as separate skills. Historically, educators first taught students to read, and then they taught them to write. Reading was more important in the elementary years, while writing gained prominence in the secondary years.

Literacy expectations have changed drastically over the years. For example, early in U.S. schooling, individuals who could sign their names were considered literate, while now literacy is seen as a complex set of structures that allows individuals and communities to process meaning and communicate at high levels of competence within social and cultural frames. Reading and ...