Posted on 07/12/2007 9:47:23 PM PDT by neverdem
Richmond, Virginia In a classroom at Ginter Park Elementary School, a century-old brick schoolhouse on a dreary, zoned-commercial truck route that bisects a largely African-American neighborhood in Richmond, a third-grade teacher, Laverne Johnson, is doing something that flies in the face of more than three decades of the most advanced pedagogical principles taught at America's top-rated education schools. Seated on a chair in a corner of her classroom surrounded by a dozen youngsters sitting cross-legged on the floor at her feet, Johnson is teaching reading--as just plain reading. Two and a half hours every morning, systematically going over such basics as phonics, vocabulary words, and a crucial skill known as "phonemic awareness" that entails recognizing the separate sound components of individual words--that the word "happy," for example, contains five letters but only four sounds, or phonemes.
Phonemic awareness is an important prelude to phonics: learning which phonemes are represented in written English by which graphemes, or combinations of letters. According to the principles Johnson is following, it is the mix of phonemic awareness and phonics that enables children (and adults learning how to read for the first time) to sound out, syllable by syllable, unfamiliar-looking words they might encounter on a page and then link those words to meaning. In the world of forward-thinking educational pedagogy, phonemic awareness is deemed useless, phonics of only intermittent value, and the sounding out of words deadening to a child's potential interest in books.
As her main teaching tool, Johnson is using something that also makes the most advanced minds at America's education schools blanch: a reader. Those fat hardback textbooks that were the staple of grade school until the 1970s are out of fashion these days, replaced in most elementary-school classrooms in America by "authentic literature": illustrated trade-press children's books...
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Bookmark...It’s bedtime lol.
Me too.
One thing that irritated me with the article is that it states that kids from well to do families usually pick up reading naturally, and only poor kids can’t pick up reading naturally because they are not exposed to reading.
Some kids just plain ol’ need phonics instruction no matter what their economic or parental background.
My husband and I are well-to-do, college educated people, and we have a special needs daughter who needs phonics instruction.
Phonics is good for kids who are dyslexic, have auditory problems, etc. Those problems cross socio-economic lines.
One of my problems with the No Child Left Behind is that schools will spend 2 1/2 hours on reading, and will do away with science and history instruction.
I also have a gifted daughter who was so bored with the reading in 3rd grade. She was reading at a junior high level, and did not need that much reading instruction.
We switched my daughters to private school. My special needs daughter is in a multi-sensory reading program (Barton Reading) that teaches phonics/reading. My gifted daughter loves the private school because they actually have science & history (along with Spanish, Bible, Art, Music). My gifted daughter is getting stimulated, and my special needs daughter is getting targetted instruction.
The public schools could easily implement what the private school is doing. Classrooms could be divided up into different reading groups with each reading group being actually taught to their levels. If there are three 3rd grade classrooms, then each teacher teaches a different reading level. Each teacher could teach a different way also.
I’m just my daughters are not a part of it.
Problem for most inner city schools over the last 15 years is that they focused on Ebonics and not Phonics. They felt that cultural diversity was more important then giving children an education.
It was nanny state politics to keep future generations of minorities dependent on the state. NCLB forces teachers to educate because the need for dollars is important to most communities who rely on property taxes to fund education.
Why Intellectuals Like Genocide You can't make this stuff up!
The Congressman from Ground Zero Jerry Wadler would rather you be dead.
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Public schools are all about the next “recent findings” and just seem to never be able to “think outside the box” because someone else is thinking for them. Even with all the negative press for years, not enough has changed. Until their power is severely rattled, nothing will change and their inflated paychecks will continue to roll in.
Our neighbors were going to privately educate their children until the 3rd grade. They put the oldest in 4th grade public school. She spent most ot the year helping fellow classmates with what she had already learned. They tutored her during the last half of the year and summer and got her back in private school. The majority of the wealthy near our neighborhood private school their children. I don’t even think the public school buses go through their neighoborhood now that I think of it! But, does the nearby public school even take note of that? Probably not.
Did anyone see Ted on Hannity and Colmes last night responding to this guy? I fell asleep!!!! Gosh, I wanted to hear Ted’s response. Personally, I would love to hear Ted challenge him, drop us on any 100 acre tract, you can use a gun and I’ll use a bow, lets see who comes out of the woods. Maybe they could film it on Wanted Ted or Alive.
You are exactly right. There is a 5 year difference between 2 of my kids. The curriculum has changed so drastically that my kids can’t even help their brother with his homework.
Anyone else here of an age who remembers being taught to "diagram" sentences?"
Oh, yeah. I remember.
ping
Liberals are revolutionaries. They can only tear down. They can never build anything.
I wonder if there’s a software program that lets you digram sentences. If not, maybe there’s a market for it..
Thoughts?
Waay kewl!!!..Thanks...
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