just out of curiosity, how many children do you have and how many of them learned to read symbolically??? because that's what it isI disagree with nearly everything the good conservative freepers have posted in this thread. Whole word memorization is the best way to teach kids to read. They learn phonics on their own once they memorize enough words.
The problem with whole word memorization is that it needs to be initiated prior to the age of 3 (earlier the better). Whole word method probably sucks for school age kids. The fact is the method advocated by the NEA is the best except - they start it at an age when it may not be useful.
Don’t let the liberals see my post or they will use it as justification to put kids in public school at the age of 2.
just out of curiosity, how many children do you have and how many of them learned to read symbolically??? because that's what it isI homeschooled my kids for some years and tutored or taught several handfuls of other kids. I did it purely by phonics. I read a book I found somehwere:
http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloomfield/dp/0814311156
That looks like it. I couldn’t afford any of the manuals or classroom stuff so I made my own little lists and reading booklets for kids and they all learned how to read very easily.
Copying the first review:
I have joyous memories of learning to read from Lets Read when I was three, and my mother, who taught one of my brothers and me, still speaks of it fondly. So when I went on line, without much hope, to try to find a copy for my small niece, I was thrilled to see that it was still in print.
What a shock, however, to discover that it was written by the linguist Leonard Bloomfield! It appears that he devised the method and materials for his young son, who wanted to learn to read.
Looking at it now, as an adult (and, coincidentally, a one-time linguist), I find the book’s approach fascinating. It is based, seemingly, on a simple assumption: that if you give children carefully controlled examples that demonstrate specific rules of written English, they will extrapolate and internalize those rules on their own without too much conscious effort. Bloomfield went systematically through the English language, figured out the rules of representation of sound in our occasionally bizarre writing system, and grouped words together in ways that demonstrate the rules automatically to an absorbent young mind.
There is no commentary for the child, no lesson as such, merely words combined to make them easy to master as one acquires a broader and broader knowledge base. The heavy use of rhyme adds to the pleasure, for the child, and is part of the system at first. The text advances from two, three or four word sentences at the beginning (”Nan can fan Dan. Can Dan fan Nan?”) to a complex “big kid” story at the very end. It is a relaxed and enjoyable program and very accessible to a child who wants to learn to read but is still too young to go to school. It assumes an eager child and a mild schedule of perhaps 15 minutes per day for several months. A patient and willing teacher (I was extremely fortunate in mine) is also a necessary part of the deal.
Bloomfield’s introduction remarks: “Purely formal exercises that would be irksome to an adult are not irksome to a child, provided he sees himself gaining in power.” The phrase reflects precisely the sense of empowerment that I as student and my mother as teacher vividly remember coming with each successive chapter.
Of course, it is more than 50 years now since Bloomfield and his colleague Clarence Barnhart (who learned of the materials when he mentioned to Bloomfield that he was looking around for a text to teach his own child) first began to look for a publisher. The reading samples in the Let’s Read text, once you move beyond the “Dan Nan fan” stage, are unmistakably dated. It’s startling to remember that in 1949 textbook mothers ironed and cooked while fathers took trains to work. The Nans and Dans would probably divide up their activities differently now, but I did not see anything in a quick glance-through that made me terribly worried of fostering an anti-feminist brainwashing of the next generation. If one is bothered by the stereotypes in the old texts, however, one can easily take the words from each chapter - a useful index is included — and use them to write little stories of one’s own.
I am not a teacher and know nothing of the other systems of teaching reading, but I suspect that Bloomfield’s approach may be a good one. It may lead to practices of analyzing language that go beyond simply learning to read English text. At any event, it should certainly do the latter. And it was wonderful for us.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
The first school I attended (mid ‘60’s) used the “whole word” method. Then we moved halfway through the school year and the new school taught the phonics method.
In both schools, my teachers were quite impressed by my verbal vocabulary and grammar and how well spoken I was.
I learned to read fairly easily but was then was somewhat confused by the shift in methods until I caught on to “phonics”.
The problem I have, and still have, having learned to read by the phonics method, is while I can read very well; I’m a lousy speller even to this day. I want to spell everything phonetically and English often just doesn’t work that way. Thank G-d for spell check! LOL!