Posted on 08/29/2022 7:31:52 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
I have a question that I hope someone here can help with – especially if you taught elementary school education in the late 1950s to early 1960s or have knowledge of public education history of that era.
I remember nothing about how I learned to read!
I recall that my parents never really talked ‘baby talk’ to us; as soon as we were able to learn words and speak, they spoke to us in more or less adult language. So, I grew up knowing a lot of words, and probably using a lot of them without really knowing them except by inference.
But I don’t recall having any instruction in the alphabet and spelling until I actually went to school, in September of 1958; and I can’t for the life of me remember how I learned to read!
I recall a little about singing the alphabet in school and learning to write letters (big fat pencils on lined paper almost like newsprint :-), but the rest – for all I recall – was just picked up through some kind of ‘osmosis’.
I know I became an avid reader at a young age, but can’t figure out how I got there.
Is there anyone here who knows the techniques that were used in public schools in those days, or can recommend any old books or manuals about this?
Thanks very much!
-JT.
My husband didn’t like to read in school. (He especially hated poetry and plays, in those classes.)
In college, he began to love reading - and now, he sits like a bump reading all day long, if he’ s off from work.
(Still hates poetry and plays, though...:-)
“Thanks very much. I’ve heard many criticisms of ‘whole language’, and even with my limited memory of how I learned, I think it’s nuts.”
You’re welcome. And yes, it is nuts. I think it all stems from adults who believe they’re torturing kids by making them learn stuff that seems useless. The Left calls it “Rote Memorization”, but obviously some memorization is needed to learn anything - they just want the memorization to be instant gratification, like looking at the word “dog” in a passage and immediately recognizing it, rather than struggling to blend the sounds together. Works great for 100, maybe 200, words - the problem is the next 199,800 or so words.
Yes. Like anything, it has to be learned step-by-step.
Whether intentional or not in every case, today’s educators are dumbing our kids down to oblivion.
I very much appreciate everyone who responded. I’ll look into your recommendations.
(When the subject has come up, my husband has also told me that ‘phonics’ is the way. I just haven’t understood what it really meant. We never even heard the word, ‘back then’.)
Very good, very good.
I think I have one of the Dick, Jane, books from that era, but not the first one.
Also, SRA:
https://bookriot.com/a-box-of-nostalgia-the-sra-reading-laboratory/
Just read that phrase (and, book), with my oldest grand, the other night. :-)
You’re welcome, and a few more comments, from looking at the above:
Just to respond to some other postings:
1. Do not get near anyone saying that Phonics should be mixed with some form of Whole Language (such as Sight Words), for initial learning to read. Once a kid can read fluently, Sight Words are harmless - useless, but still harmless.
2. No one has to be taught Sight Words, if you learn via phonics, you’ll quickly recognize words by sight, so no need to waste time being taught Sight Words.
3. Reading to kids won’t teach them to read, or even help, but is also harmless. I couldn’t read to my kids because I would quickly fall asleep. So I spent my time having my kids read to me, which is VERY PRODUCTIVE for their learning.
4. Every otherwise healthy kid can learn to read fluently before turning 4 years old. The timetables used by the Left only delay the process and thereby worsen the outcomes (obviously their non-use of phonics doesn’t help).
Exactly.
I read at light speed, and have no time to wait for dawdlers.
Eff "Whole Language".
Intelligent teachers.
Books that were fun to read by 3rd grade.
Thanks again to everyone! I greatly appreciate your responses.
First, most kids just pick it up just by being read to.
Phonics is the key to reading. We used Zoo Phonics. We had a CD, but their kindergarten used it too.
I also used this book
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Revised and Updated Second Edition https://a.co/d/8DtvYUS
I used Hooked on Phonics.
My daughter was still struggling to read in 3rd grade, so we put her in a private school that used Barton Reading for dyslexic kids.
Barton Reading is a multi-sensory Orton-Gillingham reading program. That’s when my daughter really started reading and finally caught up to grade level and finally went above grade level
My other 2 kids just picked up reading naturally. They were exceptional way above average readers. My daughter got 35 out of 36 on the ACT. I just read to my kids when they were younger. My kids had lots of access to books growing up. We went to the library often and bought lots of books
You would be surprised the number of classrooms where (even in history classes, etc.) students were taking turns reading.
This is utter crap. But then the HS I attended had a history and geography teacher who literally read the textbook to his classes. As you might suspect he was also a phys-ed instructor, I think he was one of the Slippery Rock State mafia. They seemed to be everywhere in the 50’s and 60’s in the mid Atlantic states. Almost none of the SR grads I encountered then or later teacher were worth a sht.
My parents taught me to read when I was 5. The school sent home the homework. My parents spent about an hour each evening going over the various reading and arithmetic workbooks.
...And....Even though my parents did 100% of the work, the parochial school took all the credit. I was essentially homeschooled.
My parents used **phonics** and insisted that I memorize all the math facts up to 12 x 12. They taught me the multiplication and division algorithms. In the 5th and 6th grades my parents taught me fractions and decimals.
By the second grade I was an independent reader and well on my way to being self-learner.
Why are you curious about teaching reading? Is there someone in your family that needs help?
Absolutely, and everything else you wrote!
I read that the American literacy rate - the ability to read and write well - was 98% in 1890.
When we started homeschooling I realized this, since I have a complete collection of bound Harpers magazines from number 1 on the 1840s to 1900, when the magazine began its' slide into liberal trash.
From that magazine and other books and magazines I figured Americans were the most literate in the mid to late 1800s.
Realizing that the influence for this must have come in the early to mid 1800s I began collecting more school books from that era.
The reason for the success appeared quickly.
I was taught to read in a one room school in Vermont before the effects of the invasion by the NY, NJ and CT trust fund hippies detroyed the state.
We were taught by an excellent, old rogue teacher who used the phonics she knew. This consisted of the single letter sounds, dipthongs and tripthongs (2 and three letters sounded together).
She (and I) believed there were a lot of words in english you couldn't read using phonics.
There were two sets of phonics rules that fell by the wayside and have been forgotten since the 1840s to 1850s. Those are the silent letter rules and the substitute letter rules.
By using these rules, our younger daughter, who wasn't infected by the public school system was reading at above second year college level at 3rd grade.
This isn't unusual as once you know the rules and have a 1930s or earlier dictionary, you can read anything.
I've had many discussions with so called teachers who use this ridiculous "whole word" program to "teach" reading.
Except for the few rogue teachers, this is a waste of time.
Most are so completely indoctrinated with the propaganda from the colleges that there is no way they will even consider listening to anything a lay person has to say.
There are two books, by Rudolf Flesch, "Why Johnny Can't Read - and what You Can Do About It" in 1955, and "Why Johnny STILL Can't Read" in 1981 that document and explain the sordid money trail that keeps the farce of the whole word program going.
The Whole Word system has kids memorizing 20,000 words like Chinese characters. They are taught to guess at words they don't know by the surrounding context.
Few people are going to remember 20,000 of anything they try to memorize.
When these crippled students hit math, history and science, there are many words not included in the 20,000.
The ignorant reading teachers scoff at phonics as "rote learning". They just look at you like a deer in the headlights when you ask them, well, which would you rather memorize, 20,000 of ANYTHING or 120? There are roughly 120 phonics rules which enable you to read almost ANY word in the English language.
An older dictionary allows you to comprehend it.
I have the complete set of rules in "cheat sheet" form to print out.
Who wants to bother memorizing even 120 of anything?
You begin to remember the most used rules as you use them. When you hit a word with a seldom used rule, that's why you have a cheat sheet!
Eventually you pretty much forget you are using the rules, it's just automatic.
The speedy "sight reading" just comes naturally as time goes on.
Many people learn enough phonics from different sources such as Montessori, reading the Bible (an older copy), re-incarnation from a soul that was alive in the 1800s or just figure it out on their own. The rest are out of luck.
The inability to read unknown words is what causes many people to have to go to classes to learn just about anything new.
They are unable to read the information they need to figure out things for themselves.
This was particularly obvious when computers were being introduced to our school system.
Almost all the teachers were saying they needed classes on how to operate and use computers.
Several of us asked why they didn't just read the manuals and figure it out like we did?
The response was that they couldn't learn that way. Translation, they were unable to read and comprehend the manuals because there were many words they couldn't read.
If enough folks bypass this mess by homeschooling and properly teaching reading, our country may survive.
If not, watch the movie, "Idiocracy". Don't rent it, buy it, you're going to want to watch it several times to catch all the nuances and to show to others.
I started with phonics, then moved on to prefix, suffix, and root words.
By the time my kids were in the 3rd grade, I had them learning to read, spell, and use college level words in a sentence.
I made an extra effort to use as many words as possible, particularly descriptive adjectives and adverbs, in my everyday speech so my children would become accustomed to them.
Finally, I would correct their pronunciation and grammar as needed.
Without question, reading regularly with them and to them was a major factor in their development.
I was born in 1947, and distinctly remember learning to read phonetically. My mother started reading to me before I started school, and she helped me sound out the words she was reading. The schoo! system in Rochester, New York at that time used the Dick and Jane books in their lower grades.
or when sounded as a
as in neighbor or weigh
:-)
But what about leisure and seizure?
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