[Oztrich Boy]

I don't get it. I attended elementary school from 1943 until 1951 in Chicago, learning to read quite well by the late 40s. I don't recall being taught by the "whole-word, look-say method." I distinctly remember first learning the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and then sounding out the first words I read in "Dick and Jane."

Looky-Sayey was there, it was just that your teachers had still learnt by phonics and were still instinctively applying those methods.

But "Dick and Jane" is the whole word system: Books structured to use only those words the child is scheduled to be "taught to recognise". You don't imagine any child would read those books for entertainment, do you?

[luvbach1]

I didn’t realize “Dick and Jane” was the whole-word method because my teacher obviously employed phonetics. And no, we did not read it for entertainment. We shortly reserved that To Edgsr Rice Burroughs and Mark Twain books, and many others, for this was the infancy of TV.