Name : Puspa Sari Wijaya In colonial times, reading instruction was simple and straightforward: teach children the

code and then let them read. At that time, reading material was not specially written for children but consisted primarily of the ible and some patriotic essays. !he most influential early te"tboo# was The New England Primer, published late $%&'s. !here was little consideration for how best to teach children to read or how to assess reading comprehension. Not until the mid($)th century did this approach change significantly. *ducators, in particular +orace ,ann, began to ad-ocate changes in reading instructional methods. +e obser-ed that children were bored and .death(li#e. at school and that instruction needed to engage children/s interest in the reading material by teaching them to read whole words. !he ,c0uffey 1eaders 2$&3%4 were the most popular of these more engaging graded readers. In the mid($)th century, 1ebecca Smith Pollard de-eloped a se5uential reading program of intensi-e synthetic phonics, complete with a separate teacher6s manual and spelling and reading boo#s.