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.
2. Move on to simple words, two- and three-letter words, that are phonetically spelled. Make the child sound out each letter of the word in order, then say the word until the child makes the connection that the letters contain the sounds that make up the word. Once the child has learned to sound out the letters in a word, he or she can learn new phonetically-spelled words by that method.
3. Start linking up the simple words into simple sentences.
4. Introduce books with stories using those simple words... There are lots of good readers out there, but my experience is with the Veritas Press phonics books, a set of intro readers that contain titles like Pan and the Mad Man and Pepin the Not Big.
These can be sourced through Amazon, or on the Veritas Press website.
PHONICS. which was abandoned in the late 60s and early 70s for something called “whole language” which has been a disaster
Thank you. I’ve copied everyone’s suggestions and will look into them.
>>You make a good point that the language parents around children use is important
My wife still tells the story of the time she said to our son, who was probably 4,
“Look at the smoke behind that airplane!”
“No mommy, that’s a contrail.”
I was never afraid to throw vocabulary at him, at a young age. There’s a similar story from bath time when he came up with vortex when still quite young.
It’s always enjoyable to hear that kind of vocabulary come out of a little one.
We had phonics in the early grades 1 and 2. Late 50’s.
I remember the first words I read. I was 2. I was reading to my mother from a Golden Book.
Phonics and golden books.
...best ways to get kids to read is to spend time reading to them.
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I could read by age 4 and became a rabid reader by age 7 with my father’s written permission to check out adult books.
My parents read to me. I watched, listened, and made the connection. In school (1948>>) it was phonics and sounding out words.
To this day, I *know* words I have never heard pronounced. Luckily, now on the internet, you can find audio pronunciation.
Like Jamestown, there were few euphemisms in our home (my mom had a few for bodily functions). Scientific, biologic and anatomical words were used. Slang was forbidden (so, of course, we loved it).
i before e except after c.
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“or when sounded like *a*, as in neighbor or way”
74 years later and I remember those teaching rhymes.
Same with arithmetic and memorized time tables. We played clapping games on the playground to reinforce the times tables.
I remember once when I was a kid and went to the library and checked out a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. The librarian said, ‘Isn’t that a little old for you?’
I came home with that and some other books, and my father said, ‘Looks like you’ve got some nasty books there’. He was referring to Margaret Campbell Barnes’ ‘The King’s Bed’ - (I liked historical fiction) - and he read it and told me it was a very good book.
He wasn’t worried about Shakespeare - he was of a generation when they memorized that in school :-)
I loved the Golden Books.
I think my Minnesotan accent helped me sound Norwegian too.
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On the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi, in Vernon county, is a little town called Westby. The oldtimers speak an almost Medieval version of Norwegian. Modern Norwegians laugh at it. But this has been handed down in families and today, some of their grandkids still have that Norwegian lilt in their English.
My husband is 1st generation American on his father’s side. Dad was Norwegian. It’s a lovely accent in English.
By the way, when you see the term “Sight Words”, think “Whole Language”, as they both assume little kids can recognize a word by looking at it (meaning having memorized it earlier).
I knew an elderly man who grew up in Wisconsin and had a bit of that accent. It is lovely.
Thanks.
...their ability to express themselves verbally seemed relatively retarded in comparison.
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Language, especially speech, is dynamic.
I noticed in the late 60’s that we were all beginning to use single words to communicate a variety of nuances. “Groovy”(back then), “Cool” for the Gen X cohort, now “Awesome” from the next group down the generational ladder. Intonation completely changes the meaning of that single word. There’s more overt body language that amplifies words than when I was young.
I think they communicate effectively and express themselves adequately with their peers. We, on the other hand, aren’t always as attuned to the non-verbal aspects.
‘Isn’t that a little old for you?’
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My mother was appalled when Dad authorized me to take out any book I wanted on his card. He and I would discuss the stories & characters over dinner.
The library had summer reading programs where you could check out ten books/week, but you had to give an oral book report to the librarian to prove you’d read them. It got to the point where I would come in, give one book report and start in on the other nine & the librarian would sort of gulp and say “That’s ok. I know you read them.” to get out of listening to me for an hour.
Good times.
LOL!
Summer reading was the best! I hate it when I hear people say that kids don’t need Summer vacation anymore - that free time to grow and imagine in so many unfettered ways is very valuable!
My grandparents all came from Norway in the early 1900’s.
At the camp in Norway we went on a camping trip and came across this old guy that lived up in the valley. He was coming back from the town perhaps 10 miles away with some groceries and was wearing worn out sneakers. He pointed and laughed at my heavy hiking boots!
The Norwegian instructors could barely understand him as he spoke such a distinct dialect. He had probably lived in that small valley (with no roads) his entire life. The instructors said a lot of the valleys had their own dialect.
I’ll continue with my point - which is that Sight Words serve no purpose in LEARNING to read, and that people who learn phonics will quickly pick up words by sight. They don’t need to be confused by trying to select which method to use. That was the case with all my kids - never, ever, told them to memorize a word by sight, yet they quickly picked that up, AFTER learning to read through phonics.
I realize that others, particularly if trained in a certain way, may claim Sight Words have a place - and I get that, as many will defend decades of their work (in any area), even when their training proves to be totally wrong (such as eating fat makes people fat, when it’s now clear that eating carbs makes people fat) and you see that in many other cases (cops defending cops in cases when it’s clear they shouldn’t, Republicans defending the FBI, etc.) - it’s a “circle the wagons mentality”. Shoot me a PM and I’ll tell you what I really think the purpose of Sight Words is (I don’t want to state publicly because too many here won’t be able to handle it).
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