ABSTRACT
Influential research and policy documents on early literacy from the UK and the US (e.g., the Rose Report [Rose 2006]; the National Early Literacy Panel Report [NELP 2008]; and the National Reading Panel Report [NRP 2000]) have stressed that when it comes to early reading instruction, preparing teachers to implement ‘the principles which define high quality phonic work’ (Rose 2006: 4-5) is of critical importance. Though all of these reports take pains to acknowledge that there is more to literacy learning than phonics and phonological awareness skills, issues related to learning and teaching the code represent the core message that they deliver to policy-makers and practitioners involved in early childhood education. As a result, their practical impact in schools (and especially in US urban contexts with the highest concentrations of children at risk for reading difficulties) has been to center early literacy curriculum and instruction on the skills of phonological awareness, decoding, and reading fluency. This chapter supports fully the importance of teaching these ‘word-related’ skills but also addresses the shortcomings of such an approach when the resulting instruction neglects other equally, if not more, important components of literacy instruction for young twenty-first century learners.
