Sight-Words: the Kudzu smothering K-12

Education Views ^ | Oct. 20, 2016 | Bruce Deitrick Price

[MamaB]

I am very familiar with good ole kudzu. It can and does take over everything. There is one area by the road I take to go to my brother's in MS where it covers everything. I was going through pictures on my other iPad recently and had pictures of it. I read a few years ago that they were experimenting with kudzu jelly.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

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.

[caver]

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.

[Organic Panic]

Niggardly

Take that for sight words!

[JimRed]

Since it grows like weeds with no care required it would appear to be a good candidate for raw material for bio-fuels.

[MeganC]

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.

[jonathonandjennifer]

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.

[Buttons12]

Another import that seemed like a good idea at the time. Like house sparrows. :(

[Night Hides Not]

I taught my 6 YO grandson "hochgewächs"...does that count? lol

[JimRed]

I assume that the oriental languages are all sight-word taught? Any one familiar enough with them to tell me?

[pinkandgreenmom]

Sight words are the reason I pulled my oldest out of school and homeschooled him. Dreadful method for him.

[JimRed]

Never mind. I read farther down and found the answer.

[donna]

You probably had a teacher that taught phonics on the side.

“Anyone who learned to read in the last century got at least a taste of phonics, but the Dick and Jane stories actually were a calculated attack on phonics: The authors believed children learned to read best by memorizing a small handful of “sight words” and repeating them over and over — the “look/say” method. “

[HomerBohn]

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.

[Calvin Locke]

Wait, kudzu’s plant, and not a comic strip?

[metmom]

Homeschool and ARTH ping.

[roadcat]

If you learn via sight reading versus phonetics, you will only be able to read words that you’ve memorized, very limiting.

Yes. The kids can recognize McDonalds versus Jack-In-The-Box. They're keying in on shapes and logos, without understanding the spelling differences. That's how it was for our granddaughter when she was three. Now she is four, and reading words besides being able to write them. She began to stumble at lower-case versus all upper-case, but has a handle on it now. When she goes to Kindergarten in next September, I cringe to think they would bore her with sight-word crap. She'll climb the walls in boredom. Teach at home, because the schools aren't cutting it.

[Aarchaeus]

Do you get to visit with you Grandson very much? If you possibly can, start teaching him phonics! It will probably be the best gift you co9uld give!

[NEMDF]

Our granddaughter is 5 and in kindergarten. Anticipating that phonics might not be stressed, her parents laid the ground work for her, starting early. She learned all of the letters and letter sounds well before kindergarten, and could read and write many simple words, and they taught her how to sound out. She is one of 3 students, of over 80 in the kindergarten classes in her school, who goes to an advanced reading group twice a week. At Thanksgiving, the kids were all playing “Ad Libs” (game), and the 5 year old was reading all of the cards out loud. Her parents also have read books to her, most every day of her life, as have I when she visits. When she was barely three, I remember telling her that when she learns to read, she can learn ANYTHING.

It is not for all little children, but has given her a freedom and much-reduced frustration, to be able to sound out words.