Posted on 05/29/2015 3:58:26 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Slaves do not need to be able to read, only obey their masters. But these methods come from the best schools of education in the country! Of course we should use them!
Without PHONICS, you cannot even try to “sound out” a word. That’s what phonics are all about. Hence the name...
Also, please forgive my failure to copy-read my response. But just as an addendum, note that every word in the dictionary is couched in phonetic symbolisn. And it is not “whole word” that allows us to distinguish between the noun for the element and the verb whose infinitive is to lead, and whose past tense led has the same sound as the element lead, and which nost journalist are now regularly confusing, being lazy with the text editor’s spell-checker.
This article hardly addresses the issue... middle and upper middle school children have few problems reading. The poor and working class, have more issues in all academic subjects, not just reading.That coupled with social promotion, means these kids get shuffled up the grades without having to learn.
“I don’t have a problem with sight words, and I don’t see an advantage with phonics.”
How many “sight words” did your kids learn? Hopefully 10,000 or so, or they won’t be very good readers. In what fonts? Were they lower case, capitalized, or all capitals? What do they do if they haven’t “seen” a word before?
Figuring out a word just from its shape leaves out a lot of variables. Sight words are fine, after the kid knows how to read.
(sorry, I get pretty damn emotional about this)
“Kids should know how to read even before entering school.”
Kids MUST know how to read before entering school, or they’re basically doomed...as they will never learn it correctly, simply because that’s no longer the goal of schools.
“We had to watch her because we discovered she was capable of reading stuff that was a little too, uh, mature, for a kid her age. It was a challenge. /grin”
Same with our kids - they were plowing through old adult novels (starting at 5 years old). I dread to think of what was in them, but they didn’t seem to get affected.
How can kids learn to read if their teacher can't read? How can a teacher who can't read keep his/her job? Because they can't be fired.
“I could read anything put in front of me when I was three years old thanks to mother. Thanks, Ma!”
Outstanding...my kids say similar. TEACH them to read (as opposed to reading to them) and they appreciate you for life. It’s the single biggest gift a parent can give, and it costs next to nothing.
“But these methods come from the best schools of education in the country! Of course we should use them! “
You may be saying this sarcastically, but, unfortunately the vast majority of people, and even MOST FReepers agree with you. They usually don’t know it since all they do is dump their kids into the government institution and not worry if the people that will shape their kids’ entire lives HAVE ANY IDEA of what they’re doing.
“The poor and working class, have more issues in all academic subjects, not just reading.”
It’s difficult to do word problems in math, or learn science or history, if you can’t read. Maybe behavior issues aren’t related to reading ability (and even that can be argued), but just about everything academic is.
Reading is the gift that keeps on giving, and so many parents I have known did not. Think what would be if every one had done so...
Also, P.S.—good on you!
One for you guys...
Mucho thanks (a little Spanish lingo).
Mom taught me phonics (1960ish)
When in the Second Grade I was checking out “The Wizard of Oz” from the Library, the Librarian didn’t think it was a suitable book for my age (6 or 7) and asked me to read from it, I read her a page and she said “Well I guess I was wrong”
She wasn’t, I was the oldest of *6 and I neglected to keep it from my siblings that proceeded to deface it with color crayons... folks had to buy the book. I had it until about the 8th Grade, then lost it among other things when I discovered Girls.
TT
*Mom had 6 kids in 5 years, (twins) ;^).
When I retire I would like to find a deserving innercity voucher school and help tutor reading.
I wouldn’t mind doing something like that.
NOT ALL KIDS CAN OR SHOULD READ BY AGE 6!!! My son, home schooled, did not read until he was 9. Then again, he was doing Newton and Bernoulli at 7. Many boys’ brains, in particular, are not neurologically developed enough to begin reading until between the ages of 7 - 9. Fast forward - he finished college English at 16 and just graduated from an honors college.
Raymond Moore’s “Better Late than Early” is a fantastic source. Key to language learning is hearing words and stories between the ages of 1 - 5. The Achievement gap would disappear if all children had parents who read and talked with them in something more than monosyllables.
That's pretty impressive!
I started first grade in 1942, two months before I was six. We had no such thing as "kindergarten" and we had never heard of "phonetics." As I said, I had to invent my own.
I had exactly the same kind of experience with the town librarian when I wanted to check out "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper, but later she sarted ordering books for me.
In your day, my oldest son was reading stories to his brothers and sister, reading the text upside down so they could learn to read while he was tutoring them in it. That was about 1965.
He was so far ahead of me, at the equivalent age.
Just sayin' that given the tools, a young child should be permitted/encouraged to rapidly develop while the mind is still inquisitive, expanding asymptotically, and malleable, to find his/her own creative way to deal with a world that wants to put them in a pedestrian straitjacket.
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