I couldn’t believe this when I first heard about it. Crippling children for life is right. If you learn via sight reading versus phonetics, you will only be able to read words that you’ve memorized, very limiting.
I agree with the sight word BS, but fail to see the kudzu connection.
I learned phonics when I was in school, but I’m almost 60 years old. Things were different back then.
Niggardly
Take that for sight words!
Since it grows like weeds with no care required it would appear to be a good candidate for raw material for bio-fuels.
I grew up with the “Look, See, Say” reading program that made words composed from an alphabet into pictograms no different than Egyptian heiroglyphics or Japanese katakana.
At eighteeen I started learning to read again but this time utilizing the philosophy of phonics and of breaking words down into their parts in order to better understand them.
Almost eight years later I’d say I’m a lot further along with my reading and writing than my contemporaries who get stuck if they have to write more than 140 characters at one time.
Grandson is five and in all day kindergarten. He has sight words to learn every night. All day kindergarten, sight words, homework for a kindergartener, all idiocy.
Another import that seemed like a good idea at the time. Like house sparrows. :(
I assume that the oriental languages are all sight-word taught? Any one familiar enough with them to tell me?
Sight words are the reason I pulled my oldest out of school and homeschooled him. Dreadful method for him.
Georgians can blame Jimmah Kahtah for the expansion of the other parasite Kudzu. It was, after all, one of his acts of governor to order the planting of this noxious weed to prevent soil erosion.
Homeschool and ARTH ping.
The stupid Ser and Say approach.
Phonics work just fine when properly taught
When I taught at the elementary level, I taught the struggling readers in my class to sound words out phonetically. As I taught upper el, the damage had pretty much been done, but not entirely. When they would read, they would just stab at words they didn’t know, without sounding out the word. When they realized how easy it was to read by sounding out unrecognizable words, they had more confidence. After awhile, all words become “sight-words” once they’re familiar to them.
The theory behind the rejection of phonics as a legitimate teaching method is that readers will lose the context while wasting time sounding out words. But it was always my belief that in the early grades, 1-3, its more important to learn to read the words off the page fluently. Context isn’t necessarily as important at that level. Nor do readers sound out each and every word phonetically anyway as they become experience readers, just the occasional word. Additionally, if you learn to read phonetically, sounding out unfamiliar words almost becomes a reflex. But the theory that teachers are given is really a ruse. It’s part of the larger goal of dumbing down the population. Sam Blumenfeld always said teaching kids to read English using sight words was like teaching kids to read Chinese characters.
The American Educational establishment (teachers, teachers unions and PTAs) are idiots.
They ruined teaching reading back with Dick & Jane look-say basal readers, back in the 1960s.
I had the last wave of phonics instruction.
My kids in the 1990s has all look-say reading and “creative spelling” instruction known as “Whole Language” education as part of the World Class education initiative, in addition to New Math Mimosa program.
State testing reading scores got so bad that two teachers in the town next to me became famous of promoting their re-branded phonics solution called: Reading Recovery.
American public education is a disgrace.
Teachers and administrators are not held accountable for their malpractice, and our children suffer as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_reader
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
Mimosa math from Australia Destroyed our 1990’s US Intl test scores
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-09-11/features/9409110190_1_love-math-program-teacher
“she said. “We’re trying to get away from paper and pencil and getting into number sense and strategies,” Sladek said. “I love anything new and I’m willing to try anything, and this is nothing to be afraid of.”
To help primary-school-age children better understand math concepts, the program uses terms such as “and, put with, joined and went away” instead of the more traditional “add and subtract.”
Sladek and fellow teacher Jeanne Turnock introduced the Mimosa program last year in their 1st-grade classrooms and recently gave a glowing review of the program to the board of North Palos School District 117. “I have had more children tell me that they love math,” Sladek said.”
American teens’ math scores fall on an international test - LA Times
www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-pisa-2015-story...Proxy
1 day ago ... The U.S. average score was 470, below the overall OECD test average of 490. It was 12 points lower than it was in 2012 and 18 points lower ...
Fast Facts - National Center for Education Statistics - U.S. ...
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1Proxy Highlight
In 2012, average scores in mathematics literacy ranged from 368 in Peru to 613 in Shanghai-CHN. The U.S. average mathematics score (481) was lower than ...
Eff’ing grossly negligent bass turd curiculum director / teachers ought to be sued into dire poverty for the damage they’ve done.
Sight words are the exceptions when it comes to spelling
My oldest son went to a so called top notch private school. At the end of first grade not a single child in the class could read. As parents we were given the glorious story of whole language. Immediately called a Tudor to teach my son phonics.
So much for the brilliance of the educrats. They’re still at it.
I teach high school now, and it makes me sad to see how poorly many of my students read. They struggle to grasp the content in their science books, and they make mistakes on tests because they mis-read questions. From their questions and their mistakes, I can tell that they are trying to match memorized information with key words in the questions without really understanding the questions or the concepts. They have been ill-served by these fads in reading instruction.
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