Research Simulation: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

How best do children acquire literacy?  The ability to decode the writing of others in order to access, and interpret the thoughts of others: To read.  The topic of my research project in its broadest form is to study the effect of learning to write, before learning to read.  The idea of learning to write in order to beget reading is not new.  Lev Vygotsky(Berger, K. S., 2009), Maria Montessori (Lillard, A. 2005) (Lillard, P. P., 1972) and John Henry Martin (Parshall, 1987) (Hendrix, 1988)  also understood the vast benefits of learning to write before learning to read.  Montessori and Martin took the idea of writing before reading and designed methodologies to support it.  In the Montessori methodology, the Practical Life, and Sensorial curriculums support the Montessori language curriculum, which emphasizes writing before reading, in the multi-age (3 – 6 years) classroom.  John Henry Martin, in part, recognizing the validity of Montessori’s work also designed a reading program based upon learning to write, before learning to read.  In the early 1980’s Martin presented his idea to IBM in Los Angeles, and together they created a product, using in part computer based phonics tutorials, known as “Writing to Read”.  The “Writing to Read” program was widely implemented in Los Angeles public and parochial schools.  As a first grade teacher in Los Angeles at the time, I had the good fortune of implementing the program with my first grade class.  Later as a Montessori teacher, I recognized the Montessori method of writing before reading as similar to the Martin methodology I had implemented before.  After doing a bit of research, I discovered that Martin indeed did study and implement Montessori ideas in his design of the Writing to Read program.  When implemented correctly, both methodologies demonstrate a great amount of respect for children as highly motivated and independent thinkers, and both methods capitalize on the natural tendencies children have to want to learn and communicate.  In both methods, letters are referred to by their corresponding phonemes rather than the conventional name of the letter.  For example the letter “C” is referred to by its phonetic sound “’c’ like c-at” rather than “cee”.  With experience and knowledge regarding both methods I began to blend the two in my Montessori classroom.  Drawing upon certain aspects of Martin’s methodology and Montessori’s methodology, as well as utilizing aspects of a methodology designed by the North American Montessori Center (North American Montessori Center, n.d.)- which included the use of materials designed by the Primary Phonics (Makar, 1976) program, I put it all together and rounded it out with a song I composed for the phonetic sounds of the alphabet.  My experience implementing the Writing to Read Program in Los Angeles was with a population of poor immigrant English language learners from Central America and Mexico ages 5 – 7 years.  My experience implementing the Montessori method is with children from a variety of cultures, speaking a variety of languages at home, and ages 3 - 6 years.  Although the sample of children with whom I’ve had the opportunity to work is small, their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds along with their special needs were vast.  Because the writing and reading outcomes of the children tended to be high, my curiosity has been sparked in wondering if this methodology could stand up to the rigors of scientific testing.  Refining this topic into testable research studies, I think, will first require a highly descriptive list of all the techniques I would use in designing the environment, training teachers and implementing the method.  The completed list of techniques for implementation would then become the list and sub-lists of variables to be tested.  A full study regarding the combination of methodologies I have implemented, I suspect might be massive, and daunting to say the least.  Hence it is important to further break the topic down into manageable parts for accurate testing.  

References:

Angeline Lillard. (2005). Montessori:  The Science Behind the Genius. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Berger, K. S. (2009). Piaget and Vygotsky. The Developing Person Through Childhood (5th ed., pp. 249–260). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Hendrix, K. (1988, October 9). The wizard of reading:  John Henry Martin brought computers to the fight against illiteracy and is trasforming the way kids learn to read. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 27, 2012, from http://articles.latimes.com/1988-10-09/news/vw-5223_1_john-henry-martin

Makar, B. (1976). Primary Phonics:  Workbooks and Phonetic Story books for Kindergarten Through Grade Four. Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Service. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books/about/Primary_Phonics_Mac_and_Tab.html?id=gp81pqJrkGcC

North American Montessori Center. (n.d.). Montessori training, Montessori teaching philosophy. North American Montessori Center. Retrieved July 1, 2012, from http://www.montessoritraining.net/

Parshall, G. (1987). IBM’s Writing to Read program:  One teacher’s experience. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 3(2), 38–51.

Paula Polk Lillard. (1972). Montessori:  A Modern Approach. New York, NY: Schocken Inc.