[rawcatslyentist]

How are kids supposed to know what a word sounds like when they wont teach them what the letters sound like to begin with?

Intentional communist sabotage!

Moses and Jesus are illegal, Snoop Dawg and cop killer are 24/7, and we wonder why they behave like they do???

[Reddy]

Not using phonics to teach children to read and write English is insane.

Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

[Ole Okie]

Look-say.

An educational disaster.

[goodwithagun]

I am a public school teacher. I teach 11th grade American literature and 12th grade British literature. I can say that this article is very true. Children who learn sight words or use the see-and-say method do not know how to read. Sure, it gets students through fourth or fifth grade successfully, but they can't function at higher levels without phonics training. Our school system uses a Title I program called Success for All (SFA), which claims that phonics is part of the learning system. Since reading WHY JOHNNY STILL CAN'T READ (sorry don't know how to do italics) I have learned why this is a lie. It is quite frightening to hear 12th graders read, mispronounce words, and then not even recognize that what was read makes absolutely no sense.

[goodwithagun]

I am a public school teacher. I teach 11th grade American literature and 12th grade British literature. I can say that this article is very true. Children who learn sight words or use the see-and-say method do not know how to read. Sure, it gets students through fourth or fifth grade successfully, but they can't function at higher levels without phonics training. Our school system uses a Title I program called Success for All (SFA), which claims that phonics is part of the learning system. Since reading WHY JOHNNY STILL CAN'T READ (sorry don't know how to do italics) I have learned why this is a lie. It is quite frightening to hear 12th graders read, mispronounce words, and then not even recognize that what was read makes absolutely no sense.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

When my younger brother was in grammar school they taught him to read using a new program called the Initial Teaching Alphabet. Instead of normal letters they had a bunch of different symbols, each representing a different sound. Supposedly once you learned these sounds you would have the tools to know every word in the English language. They even learned to read from ITA books instead of regular ones.

My brother could read an ITA book perfectly. The only problem was that in the real world there were no ITA books and he had major problems in the transition from ITA to normal. It took him many years to catch up and recover from the damage done to him by this experiment in modern learning.

[ari-freedom]

My niece is in 2nd grade and can now read on an 8th grade level. Her secret? I gave my sister Sig Engelmann’s “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons” and she followed it.

[Straight Vermonter]

My four year old has been taught entirely with phonetics yet he can read all of the Dolch words through third grade. < /proud dad>

[wtd]

This classic 1986 speech by renowned educator and author Samuel L. Blumenfeld discusses this very subject. The video is one hour and 42 minutes in length and is as fresh today as it was decades ago.

[Lazamataz]

Marie Antoinette, on hearing that French peasants had no bread to eat, suggested, “Let them eat cake."

This quote has been falsely attributed to Antionette for a loooong time.

It's the old-time version of liberal smear jobs in the current media.

[wintertime]

” Experts agree that writing helps reading. (Montessori taught writing first.) Cursive especially helps reading” ( From the article cited at the end of the post)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The boys in our cub scout troop tell me that they are not not taught cursive.

Seriously...After working with the cub scouts for 3 years, I am convinced that the **only** children in our county learning to read and do arithmetic are those kids who have parents that do **tons** of afterschooling.

Who takes the credit for the high standardized test scores after the parents have done tons of afterschooling? The teachers and principal, of course!

Who do the teachers and principals blame when the child fails to learn to read or do basic arithmetic? The parents, of course!

Personally....I would like to see the studies that show exactly how much is learned in the classroom as compared to what is acquired ** at home** due to the parents’ and child's’ own efforts.

[CAluvdubya]

In our school district, we teach and test the kids on each letter and the sound/s they make. We teach beginning blends as well as words with a "bossy 'e' at the end (making the vowel say its name). We also teach them 'tricky words', the ones that don't play fair (can't sound out) like 'said'

I can't imagine that any school teaches kids to read any other way.