Rebecca Powell and Nancy Davidson wrote an article about the effectiveness of situated literacy. They did a case study involving a 2/3 classroom in which students put literacy into practice by constructing a donut shop. I learned and agreed with many of the authors' notions.
I do agree that literary practices used in school can become very boring, causing students to lose interest altogether in reading. I taught a 3rd grade SIPPS group for a month and am relieved to discover that some changes have been made since I was in elementary school. The teacher used popular snack names to teach blended sounds and incorporated body movement into spelling out sight words. Most importantly, the books were interesting and illustrated for each reading level. However, I still think that the focus was on "learning to read" because they used a scientific approach.
I found the authors' explanation to the scientific approach interesting because it mirrors the teaching styles found in today's public schools. I do think that students are mislead to believe that reading means word decoding and comprehension means answering questions. Yes, literacy is a set of skills, yet students are continuing to acquire these skills through mundane exercises, worksheets, and prepaid packagaes. If I was acquring skills on how to play the piano, I wouldn't be reading about great pianists or only practicing scales, I would be learning songs, the main reason why I became intersted in playing piano. Just like how students read to learn, why does their learning process focus on reading for the sake of reading?
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