William Holmes McGuffey was an American educator born in 1800 who is best known for creating the McGuffey Readers, a series of primary level textbooks that sold over 120 million copies between 1836-1960. McGuffey aimed to instill his Presbyterian and Calvinist beliefs through the stories and lessons in his readers. While popular for decades, McGuffey's works were later secularized without his permission as societal values shifted towards pluralism. His readers emphasized phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and advanced reading skills and contained stories with clear moral messages. Teachers can utilize McGuffey's teachings by incorporating word study, different genres of text, and activities like readers theater to develop students' reading abilities in line with

1. Reading Researcher
Presentation
Concordia University

2. - Intro -
Born September 23, 1800 near Claysville,
Pennsylvania.
Best known for his McGuffey Readers; a
series of stories, poems, essays, and
speeches intended for primary level
readers (“William Holmes McGuffey”,
1993).
His readers became so popular that “…at
least 120 million copies of [them] were sold
between 1836 and 1960, placing [their]
sales in a category with the Bible and
Webster’s Dictionary” (p. 1) .

3. - Intro (Con’t)-
McGuffey was a theological and
conservative teacher. He wanted to instill his
Presbyterian and Calvinist beliefs onto his
students (“William Holmes McGuffey”,
1993).
His work was generally accepted until the
nation shifted towards unified pluralism.
At that point, his later works were
secularized and republished without his
approval to encompass the character
values of the 19th
century middle-class.

4. - Timeline -
1826
McGuffey becomes
a Professor of
Languages at Miami
University in
Oxford, Ohio.
1837
McGuffey completes
his first four readers.
His brother
Alexander later
completed the fifth
and sixth ones.
1845
McGuffey is
appointed professor
of Natural and Moral
Philosophy atthe
University of
Virginia.
1800
McGuffey is born
near Claysville,
Pennsylvania.
1835
The publishing firm
of Truman and Smith
contact him to create
a four-part series of
readers for primary
students.
1839
McGuffey becomes
president of Ohio
University.
1873
McGuffey dies in
Charlottesville,
Virginia.
1814
McGuffey becomes
a teacher. His first
class had 48
students ranging
between the ages of
6 to 21!

5. - Influence on Literacy -
Helped students with:
•Phonics.
•Letter and word recognition.
•Slate work.
Helped students with:
•Reading comprehension, with
a primary focus on sentences.
Helped students with:
•Word definition at the 5th and
6th grade-level.
Helped students with:
•Advanced reading at the
grammar school-level.

6. - How to use McGuffey’s
Teachings in Class -
• Contains stories written with mostly
monosyllabic words.
• “Nearly every lesson [had] a moral
clearly stated in formal didactic words at
its close” (Vail, 1911, p. 7).
• Examples include the story of the boy
who freed his caged bird and the boy
who drowned his cat.
Davis (as cited in Gambrell & Morrow, 2015)
discovered that “…spelling-based coding
instruction was just as effective as reading-
based decoding instruction for her students,
but more effective for children with poor
phonological awareness” (p. 172).
Use word repetition to help Kindergartners
pronounce consonants and vowels.
McGuffey’s first lesson uses monosyllabic
words such as book, nice, and clean to teach
students these concepts with a built-in moral
of why it is important to keep books clean.

7. - How to use McGuffey’s
Teachings in Class -
• Continuation of the first reader, this time
written with polysyllabic words.
• Again filled with McGuffey’s Calvinist
and Presbyterian morals.
• Examples include the story of George
Washington and the cherry-tree and the
girl who shared her cake with a dog and
an old man.
Nagy and Anderson (as cited in Gambrell &
Morrow, 2015) noticed that most polysyllabic
words were related to bigger words through
their morphology.They hypothesized that if
children knew how to interpret these
relationships, then they could easily
comprehend six or seven more words for
every basic word known.
Goodwin, Gilbert, and Cho (as cited in
Gambrell & Morrow, 2015) recommend
teaching students root words such as isolate
and discrete to help them read derived
words such as isolation and discretionary.
Gambrell & Morrow(2015) recommend
playing a word game called Word Detectives
to help students learn how to spell and
decode big words. To play this game, have
your students focus on one word and ask
them if they can identify any others that
sound like this word or if there are any look-
alike words that are related to it.

8. - How to use McGuffey’s
Teachings in Class -
• Multiple reading selections including five
sections from the Bible; Croly’s
Conflagration of the Amphitheatre at Rome,
and Irving’s Description of Pompey’s Pillar
(Vail, 1911).
• McGuffey also shares his childhood
memories of stories told to him by his father
when he was an Indian scout and hunter.
Based on Mostow and Beck’s (as cited in
Kuhn & Rasinski, 2015) premise that readers
learn words faster when they encounter the
words in a variety of contexts rather than the
same one, use different types of literature to
approach fluency instruction.
Using McGuffey’s Third Reader, which
contains a composite of authors, apply the
Wide FORI method to accomplish CCSS
requirements.This will allow you to
incorporate several texts over the course of
the week and expose students to a broad
range of concepts and help to develop their
fluency.

9. - How to use McGuffey’s
Teachings in Class -
• Continuation of the third reader.
• This time, with 17 selections from the
Bible, extracts from Milton and
Shakespeare and writings from those
who lectured at the College of Teachers
in Cincinnati.
Rehearsal and performance of a script for the
purposes of a “…prosodic and meaningful oral
interpretation of the text” (Kuhn & Rasinski,
2015, p. 280).
Having students model the readings and
providing feedback to them through a cycle of
practice and performance.
Engage in Readers Theater (Gambrell &
Morrow, 2015). Have your students select a
complex piece of literature from McGuffey’s
Third Reader. Based on their selection, have
the student practice and perform a scene
from the text in front of the class. Provide
feedback with positive encouragement.
Repeat this process with another selection
and have the students perform in front of a
larger audience that may include members
of the general public and parents.

10. Questions?

11. - References-