g in a logical and linear fashion teaching one skill at a time. It worked. It continues to teach children who use it to read.
This approach was followed by the introduction of "see and say" or "look-say" reading type programs where children were taught to read using whole words as the basic unit. If a child needed to learn to read 10,000 words the child would have to memorize 10,000 individual words (Palmaffy, 1997, p. 3). This resulted in repetitive and boring textbooks. Children's reading ability was in decline with this approach. In 1955, Rudolf Flesch published Why Johnny Can't Read. The public outcry, from the book's publication and distribution, caused research into how children learn to read and the best methods to teach them to begin. Even with the research studies being done, the educational community has been slow to embrace the results of these studies. One of the outgrowths of Flesch's book was the experimentation with different and new methods.
Research on reading instruction has show several components are necessary for
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