Posted on 04/21/2010 4:48:38 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
A reading coach in California sent me this question: “I would like to know how you respond to teachers who are married to sight-word drills and describe their rationale as, ‘Well, there are just so many words that don't follow any rules.’”
My answer is a longish rumination and probably not for the casual reader. But if you’ve wondered what Sight Words, Dolch Words, and the rest are really all about, this is a good place to start.
Remember, our Education Establishment has spent 80 years promoting what I believe is a hoax and a crime, and in the process they’ve done their best to make it impossible for anyone to think clearly about any aspect of reading. In fairness, these are devilishly clever people.
Untangling this mess isn’t easy. But it is fun.
“48: Sight Words??!! You Still Teach Sight Words??!!!”
http://improve-education.org/id75.html
Some kids just pick up reading the way you did.
Two of my kids did the same.
My third child is not like the other 2. She has speech and language problems. She is actually very good at memorizing sight words, but there are too many words to memorize all of them.
First, my daughter couldn’t hear the differences in the sounds the words made. She had to be taught reading rules, so that she could read.
She did a multi-sensory, Orton-Gillingham reading program called Barton Reading. After she did that for 2 years, she became a good reader.
Yes, of course. English is a phonetic language. A little battered and bruised after all these centuries. But as phonetic as ever. The Look-say sophistry was simply to declare that English was NOT a phonetic language and that our words must be learned as graphic designs. A non-sequitur that resulted in 50,000,000 functional illiterates.
Barton is a good program, particularly for teachers who are not necessarily language therapists, but have students who need the Orton-Gillingham method.
It sounds like you and your child worked very hard to overcome the language processing and phonological processing difficulties that are so typical for those possessing language-based learning differences.
Congratulations on finding the necessary resources to help your child learn to read.
Well, as I said, I didn’t know the terminology, but whatever it was, it sure worked.
“Dick and Jane had magnificent? Are you sure?”
Oh, yeah, extremely sure. It was such a guilty pleasure peeking in the back of the book before we were supposed to be ready for it and trying to figure it out!
“If you could figure out that word, you already knew phonics.”
That’s very possible, but because it was so long ago, and they didn’t give a name to what they were teaching us, we just went along with it and learned it. And we DID learn it. That’s the most important part.
mag-ni-fi-cent can easily be coded phonetically.
All the kids need to know is that i in an unaccented syllable is short and the ce ci cy (s) rule.
“i in an unaccented syllable is short and the ce ci cy (s) rule.”
May be. But I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have never heard any of that in my entire life, yet I learned to read really easily. I’m now very curious what all of this means. Is it generational, or is there more to it?
So this is what’s interesting to me - why was it easy for me and not easy for others? How do we fix it and make it easy for everyone? (Cause, really, it isn’t hard to learn to read) And, doggone it, with the internet and everything else we’re dealing with today, how do we bring back even the slightest sense of literacy?
Readers are basically divided into threes...you have those who can learn the alphabet and sounds and start reading two weeks later...you have the second group who needs more practice and rules, but then they learn to read mid-first grade...then you have the third group who needs explicit phonics instruction to learn to read.
Out of that final third, you have a sub-group of our students with language disabilities who must have multi-sensory and explicit phonics instruction with lots of repetition and practice to be able to master reading.
If you’re one of the natural readers, then the phonetic rules can be very frustrating because they “seem” obvious. These are the students for whom the whole language method of reading instruction was originally developed.
So, to answer your question, there are a host of phonetic rules that can be explicitly taught. For example, if a syllable ends with a consonant, the vowel is short. If a syllable ends with a vowel, the vowel is typically long. If the syllable ends with a vowel, but it is unaccented, then the i will be short and the a will be lazy, as in a short u sound (like sofa (u)).
Anyway, the bottom line is that if you and your children have learned to read easily, please say a prayer of thanks. For those who struggle, it is really imperative that they have teachers who understand the foundation of the language and can teach phonics in both an explicit and multi-sensory manner.
:)
I don’t think you can make it easy for everyone.
My daughter that had a hard time with reading is great at math. She just thinks that way. For other kids, it is very hard.
I think schools tend to teach a one size fits all, and that is wrong. I think kids with speech and language issues should be in a multi-sensory classroom room that uses auditory, visual and kinesthetic methods to teach them.
I think kids that are gifted should be moved quickly through subjects and engaged.
I think kids who struggle with math may need more hands on manipulatives to learn.
I think that is why homeschooling works so well is that the parents actually do adapt to the way their kids learn.
I think schools should be testing kids early on to see what kind of learner they are. Once they find out a kids strengths and weaknesses, the curriculum could be modified.
You must be a teacher.
I tell you the multi-sensory reading program was great for my daughter. It’s been so rewarding to see her go from a struggling reader to a very confident one.
The thing that is sad is that the public school did not provide the program.
We had to pull her out of public school and put her in a private school that had the program. It was well worth the money.
The programs are not even that expensive, and some of them could easily be implemented with a teacher overseeing them and aides and volunteers doing some of the work.
You forgot a 4th group. People like me who taught themselves how to read or learned how on their own. I started asking my mother questions about words by pointing at words in a book and then knowing what they were after she told me, for instance "the,and, or" and then more complicated words, words that were already a part of my vocabulary. Then from there I started reading, at age 4 and by age 5 I had my own library card and checked books out of the public library frequently. When I entered 1st grade(not many of us attended Kindergarten at that time)and got the Dick and Jane books I was bored silly with them.
That's the group I was in and I am sure there are many like me. I have no idea if I learned by phonics or sight, but I do know I learned mostly on my own with a little help from my mother, who was a voracious reader in her own right.
You seem to be using a different definition of "phonetic," and I will not argue with your lifestyle choices. I applaud your creativity and wish you success in whatever endeavor you wish to pursue.
My son was also different. In kindergarten, he had trouble with reading. They wanted me to have him tested, but I didn’t.
Then the summer before 2nd grade, reading just clicked with him. When the school did their testing at the end of 2nd grade, he was reading at an 8th grade level. I honestly don’t know what made the difference for him. Just when he was ready to read, he did.
I don’t think it has to do with IQ levels either. Although I have a high IQ, 141, it is not world shaking(such as 160 to 180 or so), my brother has within 2 points of me but he had to learn reading the old fashioned way. He never fell behind but he didn’t learn on his own and went through the Dick and Jane books at the normal pace. I think there is much about learning that our educators(and those of the past)have yet to discover.
My son has a very high IQ, so I know it doesn’t have to do with IQ either. I do think some kids just read when they are ready to read.
What is interesting is that my daughter has a fairly low IQ because of a brain injury.
After she finished her special reading program, she really started doing well in school.
Now in middle school, she gets better grades than lots of kids. She is in honors math, and she had straight A’s the last quarter. (This quarter she has a few B’s, but she has been sick a lot this quarter.)
Italian doesn't seem to be much of a threat. When the emergence of new concepts require the adoption of new terminology, the Italians seem to turn to English. For example, most computer terms in Italian, including the word "computer," are from English.
One word: Kurzweil (Flesch discusss this in IIRC Why
Johnny Still Can’t Read).
P.S. yes I know this is a months old thread but I’ve been
looking up your earlier posts after that amazing Geography
discussion.
It won’t work a bit. Learning a rather minute amount
of spoken Latin helps a lot.
Absolutely. (another late reply)
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