Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

Parent Cafe
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Exactly! All my kids learned at different ages and with some variation in reading programs, teachers’ methods, and parental help. Looking at them today, their current interests and their academic achievement, you would not be able to guess which kids became independent readers very early vs. which began reading relatively later, or which kids mostly taught themselves with a little help from mom vs. which needed much more structured school-based instruction, or for that matter which kids loved reading immediately vs. which enjoyed other pastimes and toys more as a young child.

Ideally, elementary classroom teachers will have the time and training to recognize their individual students’ needs while also providing appropriate instruction to the whole class. In particular, I have friends whose children struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia and other learning differences for far too long before more experienced teachers/literacy specialists recognized there was an issue. So more important than the exact age in which a child learns (and I agree pushing early reading can sometimes do more harm than good for certain kids), I think it is crucial for a primary school teacher to be well-trained to know the difference between a child is not ready to read yet as opposed to a child can’t read for some other reason.

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Both my kids learned to read in the same way…the closed captioning on our tv ……at least we think that’s how they both started spontaneously reading at age 4. We were bad about reading to them. I loathe reading out loud and my husband doesn’t enjoy reading. At night we’d mostly just look at picture books….ok actually it was the Harry and David catalogue which we called “ food book”. We’d do a lot of math/ counting games with it. But no real reading. We ALWAYS watched tv with captioning When my older daughter started first grade reading very well , the teacher said “ I can tell you read a lot to her at home” and I was like, sure, sure. With my younger daughter when she was tested in kindergarten the teacher said look at the top you tell me what the words say. She meant “ A cat sat” which was accompanied by a picture of a sitting cat. But my daughter read “have the student look at the first picture and try to read the words. If they don’t succeed, ask them what they think the words mean by looking at the picture…” or something like that. She was reading the tiny little directions at the top! The teacher thought this was hilarious.

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This is the scary part. Guessing should not be a teaching method when it comes to one of the most fundamental skills of learning. Unfortunately many kids get caught up in this. Better to have a swim instructor than thrown into the pool and expected to save yourself.

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Yes. I dont under that method at all. I got lucky that my kids were born natural readers and all it took was being exposed to the closed captioning. My sister in law who is a reading specialist noted that if some people were not born with a natural affinity for almost automatically correlating symbols to sounds, written alphabets likely would not exist. Those with this natural affinity were then able to teach others.

My first real memory was being in my first grade classroom and we were just learning phonics for a few weeks and I realized I could read anything including the Time magazine cover on my teachers desk. I went home and told my mother I could really read. “ I can read that newspaper you are reading” she was skeptical but let me try. She will still tell the story of how she was flabbergasted that I could read the entire recipe she was looking at. I remember being almost as surprised as she was. I wasn’t quite sure how I was able to read.

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I learned to read from Sesame Street and The Electric Company when I was 3. Looking back at them, there was a lot of phonics instruction. Songs like ‘G, Grover, G, George’, their letter of the day, those silhouetted heads that that would speak words ‘b-ag-bag’. I used Hooked on Phonics with my own kids, age 3 with my older, 4-5 with my younger based on differences in interest. My older also liked playing with magnet letters and foam bathtub letters. I would call out ‘C-A-N’ and we’d sound it out, and then I’d say ‘Switch the N to a T…now what is it?’. Kid thought this was a fun game, and since I was pregnant and tired and could do it from the couch I was game to play every day. :slight_smile: Younger was less interested in learning to read so we waited a bit, and it didn’t really sink in until partway through K. We homeschool, so once we started K, instruction was an everyday thing rather than a sometimes activity when kiddo wanted to do it. We also used a 1/2 day, 2-3 days/week preschool where they had things like letter of the week, so both kids were exposed to thsoe sorts of activities.

For a decade I’ve volunteered afterschool programs, helping kids with homework. Some kids are clearly being taught phonics because my help involves things like telling them what a picture is of so that they can circle the starting or ending letter, or helping them find all of the ‘ch’ pictures on a page. Some of them are still being sent home with stories that the parent is supposed to read to them the first day, then the kid is supposed to read back each of the subsequent days, or with one kid they are supposed to read the same 1-page story 3 times/day. This kid is a struggling reader, and has real success when I bring in simple phonics-based books (I use the set by Nora Gaydos). He is completely overwhelmed by stories with sentences like ‘It was suppertime, so his parents called for him to come inside.’. Actually, he’s overwhelmed by paragraphs, and the only way that we get through these stories is to take turns reading sentences or for me to read one paragraph and then he reads the next, and the next time through we swap who reads which paragraph. He has genuine joy when we read the short, simple books - I think it helps his confidence, is a better fit for his ADHD, and gives him the feeling of reading a whole book like everybody else. This work is clearly supposed to be extra reading instruction and I’m appalled that this is what it looks like.

Different kids will learn to read at different ages, and they will need different levels of help. Some kids will memorize words quickly and no longer need to sound them out at a very early age while others will still be doing c-at-cat for a couple of years. But I can’t understand how anybody thought that people would just be able to turn any word into a sight word using context clues. Even if it worked for simple kid books, if people are ever going to advance in history and science they are going to start encountering unknown words - Hammurabi, deoxyribonucleic acid - and they are going to have to make a stab at it using the phonics knowledge that they have. They still may not get the sounds or accents exactly right, but it will be close enough for people to know what they are talking about, or for them to relate the word on the page to what the teacher or video is saying.

Sold a Story was disturbing, but also helped explain some of what I’ve been seeing when I volunteer. It also helped me to figure out that the best thing that I could do for some of these kids was probably to help them get through their ‘read it 3 times’ as quickly as possible and then try to entertain them into doing some actual phonics with me so that they actually learn to read. I think all of the homeschoolers that I’ve ever talked to use some version of phonics, so it never crossed my mind that there were entire programs based on not teaching kids their letter sounds and those programs were being used in schools.

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I learned to read in late 1960s with experimental ITA method. It was like phonics, but with some extra characters (like combo a/e for long a sound). My parents were frustrated that they could not read what I’d write.

It was taught by a beloved, experienced teacher. Our first grade class stayed together with same teacher for second grade to unlearn ITA. Interestingly it usually results in poor spelling skills, but I’m an anomaly - it’s my husband (from Catholic schools) who lacks in spelling skills. I became an avid reader, though really math is my strongest skill.

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Me too. My parents were not trying to teach me, it just happened.

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Y’all are youngsters! Sesame Street was after my pre-reading days.

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When DS was in preschool, the teachers would hold up signs with the student’s names on them to have them line up to head outside. DS soon knew everyone’s name. Reading probably started in that time window. Still reads a lot, just completed year 1 of MS/PhD program.

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I was reading at age four and my parents did not try to teach me to read, though my father read the newspaper comic strips to me every evening. I feel that I learned by whole word, though I don’t really know how I learned.

My introduction to phonics came in third grade, which seemed late and weird. I attended a private school, and all the students were reading beyond grade level at that point. Making sounds associated with letters was sort of confusing when we never had done that before (at least not formally - we likely did this on our own for long, complicated words).

Our third grade teacher was young and had some odd teaching techniques for third grade, such as lecturing and then having kids do worksheets, and telling them to just come up to her desk if they had questions. Of course no one wanted to admit they didn’t understand by going up to her desk, so probably lots of us remained clueless about all sorts of things, including phonics.

I did try the Hooked on Phonics with my older two, though I don’t know how much it helped them. They, of course, learned to read, and they read and write quite well. I didn’t use the phonics stuff with my youngest (she is much younger than the other two), though she started to read at about age three or four. She could read signs and posters with little or no context. However, when we pointed out that she was reading, she told us that she could not, because she was too young to do that (we think the day care folks told the kids they were too young to read).

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My D taught herself to read from watching Sesame Street around age 2. When she asked for help we sounded it out. When she got to school it was all about site words but she was heads and tails beyond grade level that they just gave her enrichment packets and the librarian worked with her on picking out appropriate books.

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If anyone has not listened to the podcast please do so. The money tied up in preserving some of these failed systems is astronomical and very detrimental to the present generation of kids. Not all school districts use these systems but many/most do and those kids are getting left behind. You can’t get anywhere if you can’t read.

When you have the resources or ability to teach your kids you do so they don’t get stuck in the system or left behind. It’s the reason I taught my son reading before he started school. Later why I later sent him to private school. You can fight the system but you don’t have the time–your kid keeps growing. All the problems need immediate solutions. Most solutions are private school, tutors, home schooling etc that require money and time that many do not have.

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My D learned to read very organically, like many of the posters on this board. She read early and is a very verbal person.

But my S25 LOVED phonics. His preschool/kindergarten teacher was a hardcore phonics disciple and he would come home reciting letter combos, almost in rhyme, it was kind of weird. He is much more a math kid and I’ve always thought if the decoding part of phonics just made sense to him. Anyway, he learned to read quickly.

I think phonics is especially helpful for those kids for whom reading doesn’t come easily, who aren’t exposed to books regularly, whose parents don’t have the time or knowledge to teach them.

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My state does not use these whole word systems. They do The Science of Reading which seems to have much more momentum than the Balanced aliteracy right now. The push for phonics and “science of reading,” explained - Vox

Most states have passed laws to increase literacy in schools according to The Sxience of Reading method. One article I saw mentioned 38 states. What Exactly Is the Science of Reading? | Harvard Graduate School of Education

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My mother was an inner city kindergarten teacher who started each year with mostly kids who had never held a crayon or scissors. She would stress each year that she did not know how she was going to get that year’s class to even learn letters, but several months later she loved them all and we even knew each student’s name as she talked so proudly about them. She would have the entire class reading soon after the winter holiday. She used a system called OneWay which stressed phonics.

With my own son, I watched and sang with him the Leapfrog phonics videos. He loved letters and was reading shortly after he turned 2. He even tried to drown out “It’s a Small World” at DisneyWorld by singing the alphabet song. He was not a great sleeper and most nights we would take turns reading him an entire Magic Treehouse book from the series before he would sleep.

I think these can be found on Disney Channel or on Youtube

Leap Frog’s Letter Factory - every letter makes a sound

Leap Frog’s Talking Words Factory - sticky letters (a,e,i,o,u we’re the vowels we’re the glue) we stick the words together, silent e makes the other vowel say it’s name

Leap Frog’s Complex Words Complex - th, sh, ch

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I think it’s important to know that there are kids out there who have no skills and don’t have parents to teach them before they go to school.

Bless your mom for doing that every year

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Yes, we did the same thing,World Book Encyclopedia and all the yearly editions when the kids were young.We may have signed up at a booth at our annual county fair.

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My mom was an elementary school teacher from about 1970 through maybe 1995. From watching the pendulum swing back and forth, phonics to whole language, individualized to group work, independent contracts to class lessons, I realized that what was coming out of schools of education theory was mostly total BS fads. With my own kids, i read to them a ton, cuddled in my lap, because we all loved it. I had lots of alphabet and numbers blocks and games, which we played with together, from maybe 12 months old? They knew the sounds by 2 years, because i would say them with them as we identified big and little letters. I wrote them simple rhyming lists that we would read together, cat, sat, pat, mat, etc. One day, when oldest had just turned 4, I said, i think you can read this book. It was 10 apples up on top. To his surprise, he could. He was reading magic tree house within days, Secrets of Droon within a few weeks, and very shortly thereafter, Harry Potter, well before he was 5. Before 6, he was done with that parlor trick, so I gave him Calvin and Hobbes. He loved it. I fed him adventure books that dovetailed with his obsessions - science, sharks, dinosaurs. Oh, somewhere in there he went to school, too, to play with other kids. All my kids had similar experiences learning to read - phonics through play preparation, then reading came all in a rush.

I loved the admonition from the school that 90% of what a child read should be right at his level, so as not to discourage him. Mine always came up to the level of whatever they wanted to read, because the story was compelling. One of them literally went from Magic Tree House to Harry Potter in the same day, because they wanted to read it so badly.

For most kids, reading is taught at school, not at home. We already have programs where kids get a book at their pedi checkups, but i wish we could also give them letter and number blocks, and fun phonics books. I do believe that the moms would use then with their toddlers and preschoolers, to prepare them. Every parent wants their child to learn, just not all of them have the tools to help them.

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The most frustrating thing for my D was when her second grade teacher instituted a rule for students who wanted to read books that the teacher considered too difficult for them. She picked out random words and made the kids explain what the words meant … completely out of any sort of context. D was not happy. She told me that she learns words by reading, and what the heck did her teacher think she was doing with that dumb rule? I couldn’t get the teacher to back down, so I just told D she had to read what she termed baby books at school - and she could read whatever she wanted at home.

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D24 was put in remedial reading in 1st grade and was pulled out of class twice a week because of sub-par test scores on that stupid Dibels reading test…the one where you read a bunch of nonsense words that don’t mean anything. D24 said at the time that she was trying to figure out what each word meant and was wondering why the heck they were giving her a reading test where hardly any of the words actually were real words.

The reading HW all throughout 1st grade was stupid, too. All of the 1st graders were required to read the same 5 stories 5 times each over the course of the week and you had to do it on a website which tracked how much time you spent on it. After the 2nd time through it, D24 was completely bored and it was 45 min of torture each night trying to get her to complete it.

We switched to a charter school the next school year and by the end of September, D24 tested at grade level, whereas at the end of 1st grade, she was still testing behind.

The 1st grade teacher admitted to me in a parent-teacher conference in april that she had no clue how to teach to my child. I thought, “Lady, I figured that out back in September.”

At the end of every school year, school always assigns a summer book to read. School always says that assignments at the start of the next school year will be based on this book. I used to make my kids read it. Until the summer that the assigned book in middle school was “Holes.” D26 truly hated it and ever since, has absolutely, positively hated reading unless she absolutely has to. I tried reading that book and, to be honest, that book really sucked.

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