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I taught reading and language arts, and did team teaching stints with teachers in other disciplines who consistently communicated things like, "Don't worry, I won't be grading for spelling or grammar," to the students.
A big favorite of mine was the math teacher who would misspell words on handouts, on the board, in notes, etc., whose disclaimer was that she shouldn't be expected to spell, because "I teach math, not English."
Umm...I teach English, not math, but I can still count change. Tell time. Write basic equations.
Yep. The good principals will emphasize that reading and writing are EVERY teacher’s responsibility. I interviewed at one very highly ranked middle school twice and she said that every teacher contributed to making sure students could read and write. She thought that was a big factor as to why her school did so well compared to some others.
I left teaching, but had a job doing some editing of legal documents from people in the social work field who didn’t seem to know how to write a complete sentence or do basic algebra (both of which were required for these notices). What a nightmare.
I do think phonics is helpful. I taught ESL in Japan and there they use Katakana for English words, and then translate everything from the Katakana alphabet into English and end up with a really messed up spelling- like Rabusta for Lobster or Aisukurimu for Ice Cream. Then when people speak to people who learned Katakana English, they are so confused!
I never felt that teaching phonics was bad. I had a problem with those who thought it was the only way to teach reading or that it would be the best way to teach reading for all children.
That's strange. Those families didn't have children's books of any kind at home? Are they just abandoning their kids to the internet, for reading material and entertainment (youtube, etc.)?
I have a friend who taught first grade in a Chicago inner city school. She tried having the children bring in a book from home one year. The only books the children had were the Bible and/or cookbooks. They set up a program to get the children library cards, but the neighborhood was too scary for parents to bring the children to the library (walking through gang turf). After that we would go to a garage sale and buy books for her classroom and she would *level* them and give each child a book to take home. It took several years of doing this and she taught the grandchildren of her original children and all of them had books and parents who read to them, so it had an effect. They are still living in the ghetto, but many of them now have jobs and she hopes that the next generation will be able to move out if they wish and to have their children be more successful. She is getting on in years and is now a reading specialist, but she has had a good effect on the children she has worked with.
I have a friend who taught first grade in a Chicago inner city school. She tried having the children bring in a book from home one year. The only books the children had were the Bible and/or cookbooks. They set up a program to get the children library cards, but the neighborhood was too scary for parents to bring the children to the library (walking through gang turf). After that we would go to a garage sale and buy books for her classroom and she would *level* them and give each child a book to take home. It took several years of doing this and she taught the grandchildren of her original children and all of them had books and parents who read to them, so it had an effect. They are still living in the ghetto, but many of them now have jobs and she hopes that the next generation will be able to move out if they wish and to have their children be more successful. She is getting on in years and is now a reading specialist, but she has had a good effect on the children she has worked with.
The thread is about the opposite end of the economic spectrum, though; I've never heard of higher-income families not having books at home for kids. That's what I'm having trouble understanding. Great story, though! Kudos to your friend!
"The science of reading is not just phonics. It is about all of the types of knowledge that underlie skilled reading and how they are learned. The “Science of Reading” is a body of basic research in developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience on reading, one of the most complex human behaviors, and its biological (neural, genetic) bases. This research has been conducted for decades in the US and around the world. The research has important implications for helping children to succeed, but it has not been incorporated in how teachers are trained for the job or how children are taught."
-Mark Seidenberg author & researcher
"The science of reading is not just phonics. It is about all of the types of knowledge that underlie skilled reading and how they are learned. The “Science of Reading” is a body of basic research in developmental psychology, educational psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience on reading, one of the most complex human behaviors, and its biological (neural, genetic) bases. This research has been conducted for decades in the US and around the world. The research has important implications for helping children to succeed, but it has not been incorporated in how teachers are trained for the job or how children are taught."
-Mark Seidenberg author & researcher
Understanding the details of what happens in the brain when people read and learn to read is not even remotely necessary to teach the vast majority of children (or adults) how to read. That's a bunch of hooey the education industry perpetuates in order to help justify its existence.
The vast majority of children, if reading is modeled for them as something adults around them do, and if taught the basics about the sounds letters make, can learn to read quickly and with a minimum of trouble. They've been doing so in the US ever since public education became common for most people sometime late in the 1800s.
There are a small fraction of people who cannot learn how to read using normal techniques. The correct approach is not to force everyone to learn using special work-around techniques developed for this small minority; no, the correct approach is to separate them out and teach them according to methods that will work for them, leaving the majority of students to learn in the normal way. This detailed knowledge of the brain processes in learning to read MIGHT be useful in developing special work-around techniques to teach reading to that small fraction of students.
Teaching reading (to children without a learning disability) is really not that complicated. In English, the most efficient way is a combination of phonics with sight words. Phonics is necessary to sound out words, but phonics alone is a long, tedious and ultimately incomplete process because English, unlike most other alphabetic languages, has a mess of rules and exceptions to the rules and exceptions to the exceptions.
Sight words alone (the "look-see" method utilized in Dick & Jane et al.) is undesirable because there are too many words to expect children to memorize them without any phonetic decoding tools. But teaching some sight words is necessary as many common words don't follow phonetic rules ("one," "of," "said"), and it also jump-starts reading as the kids don't have to slowly sound out every single word and lose track of the meaning in the process.
The most important factor in my opinion (speaking as someone who taught her own kids to read) is reading TO children, every day. The more words they hear, and the more advanced the vocabulary and complex the sentence structure, the better. They need to hear books that are far more interesting than what they can manage on their own in first grade or second grade, and stories that can't be finished in five or ten minutes of reading. You're not going to get fluency and a love of reading out of kids if you don't first put it in.
I stopped right here. Phonics is only one tool that can be used to teach kids to read. The look-see method is another tool that can be used to teach kids to read. Reading to kids is another tool that can be used to teach kids to read. Even having them read the street signs as you are driving around or reading labels in the grocery store is a way of teaching kids to read. There is no "one" way to teach kids to read.
Use as many ways as you can. Find out what works best for that particular kid if you can. But there is no "one" best method of teaching kids to read. Some learn better with phonics while others will learn to hate reading if they have to learn it by phonics. These methods go in and out of style and there is nothing new and that's fine. Probably the best way to start them off is TO READ TO THEM and let them learn the love of reading. Don't fall for the lie that one way is better than any other way.
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