Posted on 07/28/2018 5:06:38 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
Subtitle: Fix reading and half of our education problems disappear
--It's a common problem in the US. Children in the second and third grades, even the fourth and fifth grades, are struggling readers. They guess; they skip ahead; they search for clues from context; they look at pictures to read words. Did I mention they guess? Typically, these children are unsuccessful in most school subjects and very unhappy.
The school may think this slow progress is fine. But perhaps you as a parent know younger children who've already learned to read. You worry that your child Is falling behind. You are right to worry.
The first thing to confront is that teachers and school officials will mislead you. Truth is, they'll lie: "Your child is doing fine. He's getting plenty of phonics." But then your child comes home with a list of sight-words to be memorized. You know phonics is being slighted. But what can you do?
Here's a second problem: finding help is not easy. The media are basically a dead zone. You're not going to find advice on reading in your local newspaper or TV program.
Bottom line, sight-word instruction (that is, learning to name word-designs on sight) is the cause of most reading problems. Ideally, schools stop using them. The good news is that a list of sight-words can be a valuable wake-up call. They tell you that the school has embraced the destructive ideas which have been hurting children for the past 80 years.
Parents should trust systematic phonics where the focus is on learning letters, then the sounds represented by the letters, then the blends of those sounds. (Usually the whole process takes five months. All phonics experts say the same thing: reading is easy.)
So let's say your child is having reading problems; and simultaneously your child brings home lists of sight-words to memorize. Get involved immediately and teach your child the basics of phonics. Namely, letters represent sounds.
To start, parents can read "Preemptive Reading," a quick introduction to phonics. (It includes a list of complete phonics courses.)
YouTube has many helpful videos. A. J. Jenkins in Australia has made some wonderful phonics videos. One of these has attracted more than half-a-billion views! Encourage your child to sing along. Very quickly he'll have the phonics idea in his head.
The main thing is that children get the concept that letters and words are symbols for SOUNDS. When looking at b-words like beach, branch, ball, and block, the child knows that all of them start with the same sound. At that point, language becomes logical and predictable.
Sight-words, on the other hand, are always arbitrary, like a phone number you just committed to memory. (Wait a minute, was that 5271 or 5721?)
Despite all the propaganda we hear, the English language is 100% phonetic. There is no such thing as a non-phonetic word in an English dictionary. Indeed, all the words are arranged alphabetically, which is to say that all the words listed under B start with the same b-sound.
English is an old language that has borrowed many foreign words. So our vowels can be inconsistent. But old tennis shoes are still tennis shoes. Whole Word promoters try to pretend that a small difference means that something is "non-phonetic." No, merely non-consistent. For a word to be truly non-phonetic, it would have to be something like XXFG, which you're told to pronounce "shuffleboard." Fortunately, English has no such words, although the Education Establishment loves to pretend otherwise.
Some children learn to read almost without instruction. The brain figures out the easy way to read, which is to identify the phonics information. Less verbal children seem to need more rules and more practice. But keep in mind that phonics rules are stepping stones to reading, not goals in themselves. Don't hesitate to teach something over and over; on the other hand don't hesitate to move along. It's good to make the learning process as fun as possible. Mix in singing, poetry, knock-knock jokes, and football cheers.
The most important thing of all is helping children find things they want to read. Once reading is easy for children, they'll read everything in sight. The problem in our schools now is that many children never reach that point. Especially make sure that boys find material that is appealing to boys.
Sight-words (also known by many other names) are probably viewed by our far-left as one of the most successful subversive tricks in history. They imposed this incorrect theory on the public schools in 1931. They carefully destroyed phonics books, and since that time they have been conducting a rearguard operation insisting that sight-words are terrific, phonics doesn't work, and kids will read when they are ready. If they don't read, that's because they have a serious problem like dyslexia. Nature caused this problem, so our Education Establishment can claim to be blameless for what it has perpetrated! Phonics experts reject the sophistry, saying that "dyslexia" should be relabeled "dysteachia." That is, a disease caused by classroom instruction.
The simple way to save American K-12 is to eliminate sight-words and return to phonics. Children must learn to read before they can read to learn.
My wife & I were both former public school teachers. We home-schooled our 8 before it was cool. 5 college grads, 8 degrees, 2- Summa Cum Laude’s, 2 - Phi Beta Kappa’s, 2 - engineers, 1 - Tau Beta Pi (engineer honors society like PBK), 1 - Navy officer soon-to-be pilot, 1 other pilot, all made their own way through college; non-degreed 3 all very successful in their careers - and 4 grand-kids now being home-schooled, reading at 4 years old.........all the grace of God......
Daughter now teaching ESL in S. Korea with degree in Linguistics from UVA explained this to me - Korean a totally phonetic language, very simple. I never knew that.....
get your child on magnesium glycinate and/or malate. we are all extremely depleted in mag and when so, you see ocd, anxiety, depression and a host of other symptoms.
Amen! The day the Scholastic Books order came in was absolutely glorious. We got to sit at our desks and read in peace.
When I was in second grade I was behind in reading so every afternoon my Mom would do a 30 minute flash card session with me. My kid sister who was four and a half at the time would sit behind me and call out the words before I could. LOL!
Awesome! Great job LuckyStarMom.
Mine had a brain injury, and we had a terrible time getting the services we needed.
Having an IEP doesn’t guarantee services. We could either hire a lawyer or go to private school. It was a better decision to go private.
Private schools are required to comply with IEP also. And, they are your best bet. For those in public school they have a holdback rule typically requiring a child to be held back two grades before they provide special ed.
Private schools don’t have to follow an IEP. For example, my daughter needed speech therapy. The private school did not have to provide that.
The public school was required to provide therapy, but we disagreed on type and amount.
Even after we got an independent evaluation at district expense and used the providers the school district picked out, they still would not provide treatments based on those evaluations.
The independent neuropsychologist said it was the worst IEP she had ever been in.
I wanted to move, but my husband didn’t. We opted for private school with a pull out program for reading and then private speech therapy after school.
It was expensive and so much work!
Thats it! Reading is simply decoding. Learn to decipher the code and you can read anything. It does not require eight years of lessons and scores of textbooks to learn the reading code.
Your mother was smart. Teach the phonics well, and sight-reading will come naturally. It will not need to be "taught".
Can you sight-read this garbled speech by the first Republican president?
Fuor srcoe and sveen yraes ago our ftrehas bghurot fotrh on tihs cnnoitnet, a new notain, cnveieocd in Lbetiry, and dateceidd to the ptorooipsin taht all men are cteraed euaql.Now we are egengad in a graet cviil war, tientsg wtheehr taht niaton, or any notian so cvnieoced and so dceitaded, can lnog eunrde. We are met on a garet bttlae-filed of taht war. We hvae cmoe to dcdteaie a protoin of taht fleid, as a fianl rsetnig pclae for tohse who here gvae tiehr leivs taht taht ntioan mghit lvie. It is atgheeotlr fintitg and poperr taht we soluhd do tihs.
But, in a lgerar sesne, we can not dceaitde -- we can not csoetracne -- we can not hlalow -- tihs gnruod. The bavre men, lviing and daed, who sgrluetgd hree, have ctsrencaeod it, far avboe our poor pewor to add or drecatt. The wrlod wlil llttie ntoe, nor lnog reembemr waht we say hree, but it can nveer foergt waht tehy did hree. It is for us the livnig, rheatr, to be dcaideted hree to the uhfsenniid wrok wcihh tehy who fhugot hree hvae tuhs far so nloby acevndad. It is rahetr for us to be hree didtecead to the geart tsak raminneig bferoe us -- taht form tsehe hnoored daed we tkae incareesd doeivton to taht cusae for wichh tehy gvae the lsat full marseue of dietoovn -- taht we hree hhgily rovesle taht tehse daed slahl not hvae deid in vain -- taht tihs notian, udenr God, slahl hvae a new brith of frodeem -- and taht gnvernmoet of the poeple, by the ppoele, for the pleope, slahl not pisreh form the etarh.
Each word in the speech starts with the same first letter and ends with the same last letter. The letters in between are randomly shuffled. But research has shown that normal English speakers can still read the text!
Sight-reading does not need to be taught. It comes naturally. Phonics is what needs to be taught!
Public schools have become indoctrination centers.
JoMa
I know I am a bad person. I am sorry.
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