I’m so glad I homeschooled.
Phonics all the way. My son was reading at a college level by 7th grade.
Sounds like a bastardization of route memorization....
Perfect to keep a future generation enslaved and thinking like robots...
They don’t teach critical thinking skills anymore, just mindless repetition.
My grandson is homeschooled. Learned to read with phonics. Reading at a 7th grade level. He is almost 8. Nuff said.
I could read before entering kindergarten at the age of 5 and a half, so I never understood why we were wasting all that time on beginning reading lessons.
Considering the widespread availability of computers that could easily teach children to read at a first grade level without any supervision, it’s really unconscionable that we’re having to teach beginning reading skills to 6 and 7 year old kids in a formal school setting.
I learned to read when I was very young. I even used to go to the library and check out books my self. They were mostly fiction but because I enjoyed reading them I read.
If I didn’t know a word, I asked my mother to pronounce and explain it.
While I was in first grade I was measured at 120 words per minute with full comprehension.
The unfortunate result of all the very young reading was that I needed to wear glasses at a very young age. In fact, I had my first eye exam while in the first grade and the eye doctor told my father that I was so near sighted he should send me to a school for the blind.
I learned to read when I was very young. I even used to go to the library and check out books my self. They were mostly fiction but because I enjoyed reading them I read.
If I didn’t know a word, I asked my mother to pronounce and explain it.
While I was in first grade I was measured at 120 words per minute with full comprehension.
The unfortunate result of all the very young reading was that I needed to wear glasses at a very young age. In fact, I had my first eye exam while in the first grade and the eye doctor told my father that I was so near sighted he should send me to a school for the blind.
You can’t read a book by its pictures.
As the parent of two children who went through public school, and was very active, volunteering in the classroom, on the PTA board, etc. I can say that the schools are designed to NOT teach children to read.
The teachers don’t understand that they are being used to “dumb down” kids, they are just teaching what are supposed to be the “most effective” methods.
What they are actually doing is teaching kids to hate reading. People who read can get lots of different opinions and form their own conclusions. Something the powers that be aren’t always in favor of.
If you’ve never heard of Charlotte Iserbyte - she has a web site with a free download here:
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
I read her book a few years ago, and it stunned me because it confirmed all these weird things I’d been seeing in the classroom but couldn’t understand.
By the way, my kids learned to read before kindergarten using nothing more than Dr. Suess books and a set of phonics flash cards that I happened to pick up at the dollar store. It just isn’t that hard. But if you have young kids, don’t count on the schools to do it!
Thanks for many good comments.
Want to mention this: “...teachers said she was fine because she knew her Dolch words.” All the phonics people say this is cause for great alarm.
Memorizing sight-words actually gets in the way of learning to read phonetically. The brain tries to recognize shapes OR it tries to sound out. Two very different processes.