But not for long. By the second grade, I was plowing through 200 pages a day. It is a direct transfer of the author’s written words into your brain, without any sounds involved.
Slaves are forbidden to learn to read.
My how the times haven't changed!
I learned on phonics. By the time I was around 2nd or 3rd grade I was able to read just about anything.
While I’m sure I developed a lot of complex vocabulary and understanding after that, I don’t remember spending any amount of time “learning” to read after that point. Learning all the grammar rules of the the English language was a pain but that is different from simply being literate.
In fact, I was bored to tears later on when forced to do spelling exercises in other schools. It was pointless make work since I was at a college reading level by 5th grade and the spelling of most words can be derived from phonics. Only words with a very foreign origin deviate and have to be memorized. Otherwise you can use phonics and grammar rules to work out how a word must be spelled.
I feel terrible for every child who does not learn this. It becomes automatic. A part of how you think that requires no effort. It is a crime not to teach it.
Look up a children’s reading primer from the late 1800s. It will blow your mind. Many if not most adults today would have real trouble reading it.
BTTT.
hmmm... I just heard someone recently say that they couldn’t read when they were in about 6th grade (I think it was Ron Kessler) and he was taught phonics and was able to catch up quickly. Now he’s the author of 20 books
I used McGuffy. It works.
Phonics has been shown to be a superior method of teaching reading for decades. However, the education establishment keeps dabbling with variations of the “look say” method that has failed for decades.
I used Hooked on Phonics for all 3 of my babies. By kindergarten, they were reading at a tested level grade 2 (and with the oldest a grade 3). I read at least one age appropriate story to them every day before nap time as well. IMHO, the see and say method is the lazy way of learning. Cat is not Katt. Wrong is not ronj. The funny thing is the method I used took about 15 minutes a day.
The title is potentially ambiguous. “IS phonics” has nothing to do with the Islamic State. As WJC famously said, it depends on what the meaning of IS is.
I was reading the newspaper and writing cursive before kindergarten.
Thanks! Mom and Dad.
See Sammy the Snake Slither.
Unless it’s French. You’d starve trying to sell “Hooked on Phonics” to them.
My youngest learned to read at 4, and in kindergarten she was going to 6th grade for reading. My husband read stories to the kids every night and my youngest was supposed to pick out every “a” she saw, then every “and,” then every “the.” Before we knew it, she was reading. My grandson learned the alphabet by age 2 from TV, and now he’s reading at 4-1/2. Some kids just pick it up like that, especially if they have good memories.
If I wanted to intentionally dumb down the population by creating masses of illiterates, I couldn’t think of a better plan than what they do in the public system now.
Years ago, I was very vocal in Ontario to bring phonics back into the classrooms, and was mildly successful. The whole language system for teaching reading is clung to like a religion.
I pulled my daughter from the system after 3 months in Kindergarten, home-schooled her and my son, along with a few other children, then started a tutoring business which paid for private Christian schooling for grades 7 onward.
I put together a wonderful program for the step-by-step teaching of reading and spelling, which I am now using to teach my little granddaughter.
I taught all my kids to read using phonics before they his grade school. (I even made a picture book with words labeling the pictures illustrating all the spellings I or my wife could think of for each English sound, with the letters making the sound underlined — some can’t occur as initial sounds, though whenever possible I picked a word where the sound to be illustrated was initial.)