Lisa Guernsey on why reading programs must combine playful learning with direct instruction:
Timothy Shanahan, a literacy researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has co-authored reports on the need for explicit instruction on basic skills, recently argued on his blog that “good teaching includes both didactic lessons and opportunities to practice and play.” Child-development experts who plead for more child-centered classrooms are not at all averse to putting early-literacy skills front and center within the games and playtime that are essential to early childhood. Educators shouldn’t have to choose between teaching literacy or encouraging play, says Patricia Cooper, an assistant professor of education at New York University. To her mind, it’s a “false dichotomy.”
