Reading train - Improve your reading skills

What reading programs are used to teach elementary schoolers nowadays?

In the 80's, children learned to read using BASAL (Basic Aquisition of Language). In the 90's, BASAL was replaces by Whole Language, which is now obsolete as well. What is used today? Did schools go back to BASAL after Whole Language become obsolete, or do they use something else now? Oops, I meant to say BASAL was replaced, not replaces.

Public Comments

1. Balanced Literacy. This consists of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.. This is taught through whole group (initial instruction, reading aloud, modeled writing), small group (small group instruction, guided reading, literature circles and guided writing) and independent (centers, reading buddy, independent reading and writing, seatwork). Actually Balanced Literacy is nothing new....it is whole language and phonics combined. Students have different learning styles and combining these is much more effective than teaching either in isolation.
2. The good programs use a balanced literacy approach. This combines the best parts of phonics and whole language and encourages the use of real literature. It also allows teachers to look at the way individual children learn and provides for a lot of individual instruction.
3. There is a huge difference between what "they" tell and what is going on. (I speak about IL) A lot of School Districts tell that they teach phonics with some elements of whole language approach. So, back to phonics. No one mentions BASAL reading, however. In reality, as I was told by a highly experienced English teacher, most of the professors who teaches teachers had never been taught phonics. Most of the teachers did not study phonics as well. How can someone teach something that he does not know? More reality. This year I run Math enrichment program in a reach suburban area. Most of my 4-5th graders have difficulties with reading new words due to poor understanding of phonics. And I deal mostly with "gifted". Now about "novelties" in teaching phonics... See: "Words their way" D.R.Bear, M.Invernizzi,. ...2004. These guys teach phonics by patterns. I think that their approach is good for teaching phonemic awareness only. For the later phases, I afraid, it might develop wrong patterns.