I had to look it up, because I don’t have kids. “Whole Word” sounds like a horrible approach to me. Seems to me, and I am just going by my gut so perhaps I am no help at all to the question asked, but seems to me that teaching people phonics is the better approach. Whole Word will come once people know their phonics.
I have said for a long time, again this is just anecdotal from what I have observed, that if people don’t learn the stuff they are supposed to teach in Kindergarden and 1st grade at an early age, then those people will have a hard time learning how to learn. When kids are young, they learn how things associate. They learn letters and phonics. They learn colors - primary, secondary, tertiary. They learn simple math. If you don’t learn that stuff early on, you can’t learn more complex issues. You don’t learn how to make associations, you don’t learn how to learn. But perhaps I am off track for what this thread is about. Don’t mean to derail it.
“Whole word” reading is also known as “whole language” reading. I call it guess-reading and my youngest son was really bad at it. The eldest learned phonics and knew how to read before the first grade. I had to teach the youngest to read myself or he would not have learned.
When I got upset that he was not learning read in second grade they tried to push drugs on him and name him learning disabled. We cleared out and did homeschool for some years.
“I had to look it up, because I don’t have kids. “Whole Word” sounds like a horrible approach to me. Seems to me, and I am just going by my gut so perhaps I am no help at all to the question asked, but seems to me that teaching people phonics is the better approach. Whole Word will come once people know their phonics.”
Your “gut” is MUCH BETTER at judging educational materials than the nearly $1 Trillion educational establishment...unless they KNOW what you sense (which is what I strongly suspect), and why I’m so contemptuous about them).
“But perhaps I am off track for what this thread is about. Don’t mean to derail it.”
With your instincts, I wish you did have kids, it would have been a blessing to the country.