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.
Phonics is your friend.
Homeschooling parents learned long ago that the best way to teach reading is by teaching phonics. It’s the least tedious and most natural way to learn to read. There is a wealth of excellent phonics teaching material out there at reasonable prices.
If on the devil’s course, but why does it have to be that course?
One can sound out words to kids while tracing their spelling. Big print words make this easy. Yes, phonics embraces a lot of exceptions. A classic joke is that ghoti is fish.
“Get off your fat, useless, mammon-worshipping “conservative” ass and attend a schoolboard meeting to demand an answer.”
...and get laughed at - after being told that your kid has a ‘learning problem’, since other kids are learning to read (thanks to outside help, of course).
Schools answer to the people who dish out the money, and that ain’t parents, it’s politicians. (and yes, I know that taxpayers ultimately pay, but their money is taken by force)
Start by reading to your children. They will learn to love cozy book time, to recognize words, to want to read. Continue through high school. Don’t bother with the Sight Words; phonics is the tool that enables the kid to decipher anything.
The schools might say they teach phonics, but they barely skim it, and many teachers sneer at phonics! I tutor kids, many of whom are struggling readers. This is what I tell my parents. And then I teach their kids how letters sound and how to sound out words. Before long they are writing long stories and reading up a storm.
Spectrum Phonics workbooks are very good. They are purple/ on Amazon. I use Grades 1 and 2, and I have used them for adults. Look for the old ones; the new ones are prettier but the older versions have about 10x as many pages. Once they learn to decipher sounds, they will have the key. Your student can do it.
“What conservative are you addressing?”
Funny, but any conservative that thinks a public school board will listen to them when they demand phonics or that math be taught WITHOUT calculators is a nutcase.
Always have. Back about 1951 I was pestering my mother to teach me to read. Because of my birth date I would be a full year behind all my peers in entering school. Just about convinced when one day the old dragon that was the elementary school principle showed up. She wanted to welcome me as someone who would start school the next year. The dragon had a chummy talk with Mom and spent most of it convincing her not to dare try and teach me reading or simple math as it would make my ‘seamless integration into the school environment’ impossible. The curriculum was developed by highly educated super intelligent edumacationists who knew far more than some peasant like Mom.
With some reluctance Mom bought this steaming pile. I went to school next year and struggled horribly to read using the see and learn method. Then I got very ill and missed a whole year but the county sent a homebound instructor once a week. Great lady,. Mrs. Brown, a USAF colonel's wife. Hated look see and all I had for a solid year was phonics. Being stuck inside in bed I got good a reading a lot of stuff like the newspaper and could sound out almost any word. Sometimes in the science page I would find a word Mom didn't know. Her response was , “See this book. It is called a dictionary. Lets look this word up.” I to this day love to scan a dictionary. If your kid has academic troubles and he or she is not obviously having mental or developmental issues try and teach him or her yourself. Actually I thin almost any kid would do better with home schooling up to high school if you can just excite his or her natural intellectual curiosity. I know that my expedience with phonics and reading to fill the empty days made me a lot different than my peers. From then on I figured much of what we get told in schools and elsewhere is BS.
To: Inyo-Mono,
It’s a huge country with lots of differences area to area, and year to year. Look-say was crowned king circa 1931. Communities fought back and often won. That’s what we need now: communities fighting back and winning.
Here’s quick history of last 100 years:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/05/k12_history_of_the_conspiracy_against_reading.html
I believe this picture of parent and child side-by-side shows the key ingredient in reading instruction. Parent and child must be looking at the same words so they can discuss them and touch them.
“What conservative are you addressing?”
The fake conservatives who can’t find enough time to attend a schoolboard meeting and stand up for their kids.
You got a problem with that?
Most definitely not Catholic. I actually read and study the Bible.
Not even getting to music. And a second language.
“Schools answer to the people who dish out the money, and that ain’t parents, it’s politicians.”
When was the last time you showed up at a schoolboard meeting in your entire life? I’d bet never.
I agree on phonics, but English is not 100% phonetic. If the author thinks it is, he should see a psychiatrist.
Homeschool them.
spacejunkie2001: Thanks for this comment. It exactly shows the destructive results of an idiotic method.
The older the student, the more difficult it is. But here’s the absolute rule. NEVER GUESS AGAIN. Guessing is not reading.
Just keep saying this: “Take your time, sound out the letters, left to right, no exceptions.”
See “54: Preemptive Reading.” http://www.improve-education.org/id81.html
Especially if you've been told since grade school that a great many (if not all) of the historic and/or significant books and literature are
ALL WRITTEN BY A BUNCH OF OLD (RACIST) WHITE MEN …
In Korea at the beginning of the month, i had a korean gentleman explain that the digraph and trigraph characters are strings of sounds that phonetically spell the words. I never knew that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.