This is a must listen/read if you’ve ever wondered what’s going on that so many kids can’t read. It’s a 6 part (now with updates) mini podcast by an investigative journalist about the “reading wars” in schools of the last 20 years. Transcriptions are available if you’d rather read than listen (but I recommend the podcast). It truly explains a lot of the “missing puzzle” pieces.
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Thanks for the recommendation. Fascinating and frustrating and so so so sad. I’ve shared it with a couple young teachers and am interested in hearing their reaction.
The story hits home. I did “very well” reading by rote memorization (Dick and Jane) until my family moved and I didn’t know how to sound out words beyond the simplest single letters. It took me a while to catch up with a missing year of phonics instruction. My kids had a better experience, with phonics at school (not sure they called it phonics, there may have been a newfangled name) and Bob books at home. One caught on to reading naturally and quickly, read voraciously at a very high level as a kid and rarely reads books now. The other had to be taught to read more systematically, rarely read for pleasure as a kid and always has multiple books in process now.
I remember the Dick and Jane books growing up but phonics was VERY much taught. We had to “sound out” the Dick and Jane books–it wasn’t rote memorization.
I also remember “levels”. It was different stories in a big box. You were supposed to choose a story and then answer questions. Fortunately it was just a supplemental activity because they were so boring. Our only “required” reading was our weekly trip to the library to pick out a book to read. At the same time our teacher read us chapters out of books, stories, poems on almost a daily basis.
My D learned with a “hooked on phonics” approach which was at first good but at some point I realized as she was reading aloud that she mixed up words and I had to keep correcting her. I thought at one point she was dyslexic but she didn’t fit the profile really.
I hit on her problem by serendipity by picking up a new book on reading–it was just one paragraph in the introduction–“hooked on phonics teaches looking at the first sounds and last sounds in the word so many kids (especially fast ones) skip the middle entirely”.
Amazing. My best eureka moment ever! Over the next couple weeks when she read to me and missed a word I’d just say “not so fast…try again” and she’d self correct.
When my son came along I wasn’t leaving it to the school system. I couldn’t trust them. I took the book and taught him before he got into school. Didn’t take the whole book before he was reading by himself. We were probably 15 lessons in when he just started reading on his own. I can’t remember the book’s title because I gifted it to his kindergarten teacher. I keep looking to replace it.
The system though was interesting. It’s focus was to NOT teach the ABC’s first. Actually discouraged. You teach the SOUNDS of letters first. And “sound games” were played until your kid was good at them before you ever started lesson one. As an example the letter “F” is pronounce “ef” (it has an “e” sound before it) but in phonics it’s “Fuh” like in “frog”. The “R” isn’t “are” with an “a” sound before it…it’s actually “ruh” in phonics. “G” isn’t “gee” it’s “guh”. And of course there are exceptions but they were very well accounted for in later lessons (sounds were introduced in an organized fashion).
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Yes! Phonemic awareness first. Recognizing and manipulating sounds is the first building block to reading. Then phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Older students that struggle with reading usually have gaps in phonemic awareness and phonics.
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Listen to the podcast if you have not already done so. If you’ve been lucky enough to have you or your kids escape some of the teaching methods in use now you may not realize the impact on the generations affected.
One reason I became interested (and decided to teach my second to read) was “whole word” was the new buzzword. A good (and respected) friend thought it was
wonderful! I asked her how memorizing words helped beyond the very basic word books and she gave some convoluted explanation. I bowed out of the conversation and decided I needed to do my own teaching.
I’m an elementary literacy specialist so I’ve seen the pendulum swing over the last 30 years! The movement away from teaching phonics was definitely detrimental to many students. I’m glad things have shifted back.
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What effect do you think covid (and zoom school) has?
I hear stories about how far behind kids are not only school-wise but socially.
The pendulum may be swinging but I think that is regional in many cases.
The biggest reason I sent my kids to private school was because our local public was teaching whole language when my kids were starting to school.
My mom was an elementary teacher and swore by phonics.
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SRA. I don’t recall what it stands for. I absolutely loved it! I could move through them at my own pace, which was quickly.. It’s the only time in early elementary that I was able to move forward when I had mastered the material.
Both of my kids read early, learning at their own pace as they became interested. They first sounded out words, then they began to recognize words. I watched kids who struggled with learning to read, and I always considered us lucky to be able to easily understand the mechanics of reading.
I recognize that for many, it’s not as easy to understand how to read. Brains are quite complex, and what works for one child doesn’t work for all. But what does not work well is to stop teaching one way just because some can’t learn that way - I think it’s better to teach the group using tried and true methods & work individually or in smaller groups with those who need a different method.
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Do you know the program used to learn?
I loved SRA! It was my first introduction to independent learning, and satisfied my competitive nature! When I moved schools to a different county, they didn’t offer it, and I remember being so disappointment.
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My favorite aunt was one of the developers of those SRA boxes!
(But I would have loved them anyway!)
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Not to derail the thread, but in talking about SRA, who remembers the World Book Cyclo-Teacher? My brother and I loved it! We had a full set of World Book Encyclopedias and Childcraft which I remember spending hours on the floor reading the Childcraft as a young child. I had the World Books in my home, and we kept up with the yearly edition until the kids went to college. Tried to donate the encyclopedias when ready to clear the shelf, but I could not find anyone to take them as they were old. My younger cousins got the Childcraft when I outgrew them; need to ask my aunt if she still has them as her basement is where things live forever, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were down there!
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We had a set of the World Book Encyclopedia when I was a kid (never updated). Not sure they were great for history but a treasure trove of stories and poems which I devoured.
No program for either - they were just interested in words and wanted to know how I knew what to say. They both wanted to be read to constantly, do it just sort of naturally developed. I would pick a simple word in the book and talk about the sounds. We would sing made up songs about sounds. Once they started sounding things out, we talked about weird words like laugh - both kids just sort of picked up using context to figure things out.
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My area does not do whole word reading.
I always read with my kids. We sounded out a lot of words when we did bedtime reading.
My oldest has anxiety (born with it) and was too anxious to do one on one reading with the teacher and refused to. Probably took them until first or second grade to realize they already knew how to read. Picked up one Magic Treehouse book and read that and then jumped straight into Harry Potter.
My younger one was not scared of doing reading meetings one on one with the teachers and picked it up really quickly.
Have a great nephew who learned to read on his own at age 2.
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My older daughter wanted nothing more than to learn to read, at age 4, so I got the “Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons” book, and she loved it. She was actually mad that I wouldn’t do more than two lessons a day with her, but I felt like that was fast enough and she needed time to absorb. I discovered that the Bob Books followed roughly the same progression, so I figured out at which lesson she was ready for the next Bob Book, and doled them out accordingly. She probably would have learned without the lessons, but they provided a really nice structure and she devoured them eagerly. Second kid wasn’t as driven or consistent about it, but still enjoyed the lessons at her own pace.
That said, it stands to reason that no one “method” is going to be ideal for every kid. And it’s also clear that learning to read earlier isn’t necessarily better in the long run. Schools taught reading much later in my day (I could read in kindergarten, but nobody even noticed until the following year), and we all ended up with the same level of competency as we would have if we’d been pushed. If kids are struggling, maybe the method is wrong, but also, maybe they’re just not ready, and the struggle is not only unnecessary but harmful.
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How does phonics handle sounding out words like “eye”, “knight”, “tough”, “though”, “through”, and “thorough”?
I don’t know how it’s handled in a structured phonics program. For my kids, those words were tackled after they could sound out competently. At that point, it became a combination of sight words, context and memory. For them, that worked. Just as most kids eventually memorize simple addition facts (and later, multiplication tables), most will eventually memorize those words.
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That worked for our two kids - exception words. Their ability to sound-out most words was impressive at young ages.
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