Hot or Not, International Reading Association Edition

Reading Today from the IRA is a great publication. It comes out bi-monthly, and each edition is a superior overview of not only what’s going on in literacy but in the world of education as a whole.

The front-page headline for the February/March issue is the IRA’s annual survey of their “What’s Hot, What’s Not” survey of literacy trends. The hottest issues, as judged by their panel:

• Adolescent literacy
  
• Direct/explicit instruction
  
• ESL and ELL
  
• High-stakes assessment
  
• Informational texts
  
• Literacy/reading coaches
  
• Evidence based research and instruction

What’s interesting to me is two areas that weren’t labeled hot: preschool literacy instruction and phonemic awareness. On them the article says,

Until last year, phonemic awareness was “very hot” or “extremely hot.” Last year, for the first time since 1996, most of the respondents still agreed that it was a “hot” issue, but it was no longer “very hot”. This year most of the respondents felt it was “not hot.”

Both PA and preschool literacy instruction are associated with very young children. One would hope that the attention now being paid to adolescent literacy does not mean a corresponding decrease in attention being paid to the reading needs of young children.

As a first grade teacher, phonemic awareness is still a big part of what I do every year. Odd to see it downgraded, especially since it was so stressed in the National Reading Panel report.