bfl
Yea, but since public schools are free, why should I care what goes on there?
Bump...
This sight word hoax has been my own personal crusade against the schools my children attend. I see the very things described here in BOTH my sons. They have vocabulary and comprehension skills two grade levels above their current, and yet they both struggle reading and spelling. I have literally had to deprogram them and reorganize how they read by focusing on phonics and correct spelling/grammar.
I have used you materials repeatedly in my confrontations with school administrators trying to “label” my kids, and say that there is nothing wrong with my kids, it is their faulty teaching and curriculum that is the root of their difficulties.
When the tell me “you don’t understand education” I reply with, “neither do you”.
I have finally won after a long battle against the administrators/psychs and their attempts to label my kids as ADHD/Dyslexic, by exposing them for their malpractice and incompetence, and have forced the district to use phonics based program with my kids and that they are to drop the use of sight words for them.
This sight words BS has to be fought and defeated. English is a phonetic language, and I use BDP’s articles as ammunition against these dunderheaded administrators who are left babbling like fools.
Thank you Bruce, you have been a wonderful resource for me as a father.
Really? I learned to read in the fifties, and while we learned to recognize some words initially, we learned to read by phonics. We learned the alphabet and the sounds of each letter, including when letters were "silent." Then, "Sound it out" was the standard instruction. We also learned at an early age to use the dictionary and the pronunciation guides for words. Everyone of us became effectively literate readers.
One word: Phonics.
Must be the Decabet....
Teach via phonics and those sight words will be memorized along the way while the kids learn to read. The sight word emphasis to the detriment or exclusion of phonics prevents kids from learning to read. If memorizing sight words is the goal it will be achieved (but would be achieved sooner by proper application of phonics) and the kids will not actually learn to read. My daughter is teaching her two boys, ages 5 & 3, to read with phonics. Her neighbor is trying hard to make her kids (6 & 7)learn their sight words for school. The 5 y.o. reads, that’s READS. The three y.o. can sound out all of Martha and Josh’s sight words and can sound out and read a lot more than the two public school kids(Mac and Laz are homeschooled) will be able to read by the time they are in 5th grade.
“Memorizing Sight-Words is not easy”
I remember having to memorize sight words in the first grade. Not that difficult.
In Why Johnny Can't Read (New York: Macmillan, 1955), Rudolf Flesch exposed the shortcomings of whole-word reading instruction, a practice that stubbornly persists six decades later despite the book being a huge bestseller for years.
1) What is motivating these educators?
2) While I agree totally with your education philosophy, you will not see these reforms in the government schools until there is competition in the form of school choice.
I don’t know about this sight thing, but all reading is shape recognition. No one looks at all the letters in a word as they read.
I taught myself to read at age four. once I learned the alphabet, my mom bought me a “Little Golden Picture Dictionary” and I taught myself to sound out the “ough” (especially!)words, and had a moment of TOTAL realization when I recognized the word “Garage” with its multiple G sounds, silent E, etc. How tough could learning to read be, if a four-year-old could do it basically alone??
Another Reason to Homeschool
Read to your kids when they're toddlers, I did. My son is now 18, graduated HS with honors and will be starting college in a few weeks. His education started with me reading Dr Seuss books when he was a baby and that gave him a huge head start. Dr Seuss's ABC's defeats "sight words" and "whole language" by introducing the child to the concept that the letters represent sounds, and from there they go on to sounding out words.
Variations of this look say method of teaching reading have been used for 70 years and have always failed. Phonics works yet the education elite keep going back to this failed look say method. No wonder public schools are failure factories
What they describe as sight words is not what the kids are taught in our little local public school.
The sight words they are given are for words like *the*, and *said*, and *are*, words that are in common usage in books and, yes, do not follow the phonics rules.
Our school still teaches phonics starting in kindergarten.
Although, it seems by the time they are in 5th or 6th grade, it has made little difference in their literacy. But I do know the teachers really do try.
In our district they do as much Common Core as is demanded of them, the minimum amount, and supplement a great deal with their own stuff. And the teachers *HATE* Common Core.