Lucy Caulkins was wrong about reading

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I taught my kids the sounds letters make starting when they were one or two. It was as basic as teaching them that's a picture of a dog, that's an A, A says ahhh. By the time they got to Kindergarten they could read simple books. Learning how letters and words (and numbers) work was just part of what we talked about everyday. They are not geniuses, probably about IQ 120 or so. I'm not sure why everybody doesn't do this. Even if your child struggles with dyslexia or some other learning difficulty at least you would know that early and could provide extra help.

Some people have multiple small children and jobs and parents who need help, etc etc.

My life is equally busy and I have two children but it didn't keep me from interacting with them about letters, words, numbers, and reading to and with them everyday. Not acceptable to neglect your child's education yourself and then blame the public schools when they struggle.

Ok, great. But the reality is that many parents don't. So what is your solution? We cannot legislate parenting, but we CAN legislate that curriculums used in schools are evidence-based and aligned to science and doing, y'know, their basic function of educating students. If they're not then what is their purpose?

Ha yeah, I didn't teach my kids to read because I thought "they will learn that in school." And they did. Sadly they did Lucy Calkins, but they were in the lucky 2/3 of kids who still learn to read despite balanced literacy.

What percentage of students do you think will learn to read now that schools are using whole group phonics lessons? Do you expect 100%? 90? What is acceptable? 66% is not, so what do you expect now?

I’m not sure. You can look at what the scores were before they started doing balanced literacy though. I would expect they would bounce back to that at least.

Ok, here:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-group-scores/?age=9

Since 1971 (phonics) reading scores on the NAEP (Nations report card on reading) have increased by 12% for third graders and 5% for 13 year olds.

I think phonics is the way our language mostly works and should be taught, but my point is that people spin data to prove their own points.

Every time a school system gets a new program someone makes money if it isn't Lucy Caulkins, then it is Wilson or orton-gillingham (ISME).

The hatred for Lucy Caulkins is kind of ridiculous because this is just the way school systems work: new curriculum every 5 years and someone is always having to prove kids are failing to prove their curriculum is better.

those aren’t too helpful because they don’t show a before and after of the use of balanced literacy. You do get these stats in this APS report. They are sobering, particularly the stats on the racial disparities.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/BZW3SX0855CF/$file/ELAAC%20Executive%20Summary%20March%202021.pdf

Gotcha but was that data taken from the 2019-2020 school year? It is interesting that they don’t mention the year, but have a huge disclaimer on the paper that covid has made things worse. Again, just pointing out that data can be manipulated. Phonics is good. FYI the person who was key to bringing phonics 95 to Arlington left mid year last year to join the company. Fundations i/s better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught my kids the sounds letters make starting when they were one or two. It was as basic as teaching them that's a picture of a dog, that's an A, A says ahhh. By the time they got to Kindergarten they could read simple books. Learning how letters and words (and numbers) work was just part of what we talked about everyday. They are not geniuses, probably about IQ 120 or so. I'm not sure why everybody doesn't do this. Even if your child struggles with dyslexia or some other learning difficulty at least you would know that early and could provide extra help.

Some people have multiple small children and jobs and parents who need help, etc etc.

My life is equally busy and I have two children but it didn't keep me from interacting with them about letters, words, numbers, and reading to and with them everyday. Not acceptable to neglect your child's education yourself and then blame the public schools when they struggle.

Ok, great. But the reality is that many parents don't. So what is your solution? We cannot legislate parenting, but we CAN legislate that curriculums used in schools are evidence-based and aligned to science and doing, y'know, their basic function of educating students. If they're not then what is their purpose?

Ha yeah, I didn't teach my kids to read because I thought "they will learn that in school." And they did. Sadly they did Lucy Calkins, but they were in the lucky 2/3 of kids who still learn to read despite balanced literacy.

What percentage of students do you think will learn to read now that schools are using whole group phonics lessons? Do you expect 100%? 90? What is acceptable? 66% is not, so what do you expect now?

I’m not sure. You can look at what the scores were before they started doing balanced literacy though. I would expect they would bounce back to that at least.

Ok, here:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-group-scores/?age=9

Since 1971 (phonics) reading scores on the NAEP (Nations report card on reading) have increased by 12% for third graders and 5% for 13 year olds.

I think phonics is the way our language mostly works and should be taught, but my point is that people spin data to prove their own points.

Every time a school system gets a new program someone makes money if it isn't Lucy Caulkins, then it is Wilson or orton-gillingham (ISME).

The hatred for Lucy Caulkins is kind of ridiculous because this is just the way school systems work: new curriculum every 5 years and someone is always having to prove kids are failing to prove their curriculum is better.

Most of the time curriculum shifts are from meh to meh. Neither is perfect, but both have some attractive feature. LC was special in that it not only didn't teach kids to read (kids were expected to figure it out on their own) but it actively taught them unhelpful habits (e.g., look at pictures and guess). There are many anecdotes of kids regressing in their reading after starting school with LC. It really is far worse than usual and hung on with way more penetration into schools system than it ever should have gotten.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How can somebody say "phonics didn't work?" That is how all phonetic languages work. A symbol corresponds to a sound and then you put it together.

It is possible to teach phonics badly -- excruciatingly slowly, for example.

I have also seen people teach it incorrectly or inefficiently. I knew some 1st grade teachers who taught exclusively by using word families. They did teach the sounds of each consonant and vowel letter, but then did a word family or two a week.

Sat, fat, cat, rat, mat, that, hat...And they taught kids how to blend onset-rime. s- at. f - at.

But kids who weren't independently able to segment the a from the t in the rime, just memorized them together as /at/ and then got confused when the rime switched to -an or -all or -it. They would learn the word families just for that one word family, but not be able to remember which one to use.

Kids who were already able to segment sounds without explicit instruction did OK.

[Anonymous]

PP again -- but teaching phonics badly is better than not teaching it at all.


It really is amazingly simple to teach kids to read.

Step 1) make sure they know a sound for every consonant and know the short and long vowel sounds.
Step 2) teach them to blend and segment sounds. Use continuous blending.

Step 3) Then teach them to blend and segment 3 and 4 sound words. Teach them to "flex" the vowel sound between short and long sound to figure out which one to use. Flexing opens up so many more words than (fat cat sat)

cat
cop
so
me
kind
wind
went
gold
old
I
he
we



Step 4) Teach them th, sh, ch, wh, ng, nk (some people teach these in different ways or order -- it's all good. I use something called Secret Stories which is AWESOME!!). (My Kindergarten ESOL students are at this step right now.)

Step 5) now time for vowel teams and silent -e Lots of different ways to do this. Again I use Secret Stories -- kids learn really fast!

Step 6) Kids now have enough of the code to be able to pretty much decode most of the "Sight Words" or "High Frequency Words" from Grades K-2. They don't have to remember words by memory -- they can actually decode them.

Step 7) use spelling lists to address the rest of the irregular spellings -- tougher words and spellings like "ought" and "laugh"

[Anonymous]

It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught my kids the sounds letters make starting when they were one or two. It was as basic as teaching them that's a picture of a dog, that's an A, A says ahhh. By the time they got to Kindergarten they could read simple books. Learning how letters and words (and numbers) work was just part of what we talked about everyday. They are not geniuses, probably about IQ 120 or so. I'm not sure why everybody doesn't do this. Even if your child struggles with dyslexia or some other learning difficulty at least you would know that early and could provide extra help.

Some people have multiple small children and jobs and parents who need help, etc etc.

My life is equally busy and I have two children but it didn't keep me from interacting with them about letters, words, numbers, and reading to and with them everyday. Not acceptable to neglect your child's education yourself and then blame the public schools when they struggle.

Ok, great. But the reality is that many parents don't. So what is your solution? We cannot legislate parenting, but we CAN legislate that curriculums used in schools are evidence-based and aligned to science and doing, y'know, their basic function of educating students. If they're not then what is their purpose?

Ha yeah, I didn't teach my kids to read because I thought "they will learn that in school." And they did. Sadly they did Lucy Calkins, but they were in the lucky 2/3 of kids who still learn to read despite balanced literacy.

What percentage of students do you think will learn to read now that schools are using whole group phonics lessons? Do you expect 100%? 90? What is acceptable? 66% is not, so what do you expect now?

I’m not sure. You can look at what the scores were before they started doing balanced literacy though. I would expect they would bounce back to that at least.

Ok, here:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-group-scores/?age=9

Since 1971 (phonics) reading scores on the NAEP (Nations report card on reading) have increased by 12% for third graders and 5% for 13 year olds.

I think phonics is the way our language mostly works and should be taught, but my point is that people spin data to prove their own points.

Every time a school system gets a new program someone makes money if it isn't Lucy Caulkins, then it is Wilson or orton-gillingham (ISME).

The hatred for Lucy Caulkins is kind of ridiculous because this is just the way school systems work: new curriculum every 5 years and someone is always having to prove kids are failing to prove their curriculum is better.

those aren’t too helpful because they don’t show a before and after of the use of balanced literacy. You do get these stats in this APS report. They are sobering, particularly the stats on the racial disparities.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/BZW3SX0855CF/$file/ELAAC%20Executive%20Summary%20March%202021.pdf

Gotcha but was that data taken from the 2019-2020 school year? It is interesting that they don’t mention the year, but have a huge disclaimer on the paper that covid has made things worse. Again, just pointing out that data can be manipulated. Phonics is good. FYI the person who was key to bringing phonics 95 to Arlington left mid year last year to join the company. Fundations i/s better.

APS should just do fundations and call it a day. Don’t mess around with randos.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

I agree. My DD had some FCPS award winning teachers who did exactly that. And when I expressed concern about her reading, they noted that she seems to have anxiety…. Yes, because she doesn’t know how to read and you aren’t teaching her. She just spent two years at a private school for dyslexic kids learning to read and now reads mostly at grade level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

We knew it was wrong!!! But the curriculum specialists and supervisors insisted this was they way.
I remember being forbidden to tell students to point to each letter and say the sound. They had to be told to “frame the word” and consider the word as a whole, not letter by letter.

I taught systematic phonics in secret for years. I kept it hidden by saying I was doing a mini lesson. Administrators just didn’t want to see us doing a boring whole group phonics lesson for all students… you had to pretend you assessed each students individual need and were targeting that one specific skill they were missing. So I pretended that’s what I was doing. But it’s crazy to teach that way. In reality I just taught phonics in a normal scope and sequence and didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. My students usually advanced very quickly and were able to decode and spell multisyllabic words correctly and then we could use the balanced literacy curriculum more easily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personallye r learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

Plenty of teachers didn’t believe this BS way of teaching but we are required to teach the curriculum. That’s our job. The problem started (like it almost always does) with the higher ups making decisions based on fads. The current fad is equity. Our LA curriculum is based on equity. Once our district heard that the curriculum is a knowledge building curriculum designed to promote equity and they bought it. Does it meet the needs of our students? Nope. Will they listen to us? Nope. So we are stuck with it and have to use it. Don’t assume we don’t what which end is up. We know but unless parents complain, nothing will change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I still can't believe we will have a generation of kids who struggle with reading/writing because of this crap.

WTAF?!

It's not just because of this. Fiction has been downgraded and devalued across the board since all of us went to school.

The big irony of that is that reading and discussing fiction is what develops empathy, understanding different perspectives, writing and critical thinking. The very things we claim are important.

Also science and history, "content", has been devalued. First children are taught how to read (or not taught how to read) and then later they are given interesting things to learn.

When we were growing up, we learned how to read by reading content. No longer.

Huh? My kids have had way more science and history content in ES than I did. I actually think it's too much and they should cut back to do more reading/writing/math.

My kid's reading and science/social studies were almost always integrated with ELA. So they are studying the American Revolution and reading a historical novel set during that time. Or they are studying westward expansion and reading tall tales.

So in this best case scenario, it's an ancillary add on to science and history with no specific discussion and texts chosen more for their topical relevence than their literary merit?

No. They also read other novels in ELA that are chosen for theme, literary merit, or whatever. And I studied tall tales when I was a kid decades ago; I think that's a pretty standard part of an American lit curriculum.

But they don't anymore.

We use fiction to teach history and math to teach english nowadays.

????

Right? I'm saying that right now, this year, my kid is reading primary and secondary sources in social studies, reading novels or stories related to the social studies content, and reading novels or stories unrelated to the social studies content. I have no idea what the "using math to teach english" comment even means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personallye r learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

Plenty of teachers didn’t believe this BS way of teaching but we are required to teach the curriculum. That’s our job. The problem started (like it almost always does) with the higher ups making decisions based on fads. The current fad is equity. Our LA curriculum is based on equity. Once our district heard that the curriculum is a knowledge building curriculum designed to promote equity and they bought it. Does it meet the needs of our students? Nope. Will they listen to us? Nope. So we are stuck with it and have to use it. Don’t assume we don’t what which end is up. We know but unless parents complain, nothing will change.

You have a problem with science-backed LA programs / teaching phonics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

We knew it was wrong!!! But the curriculum specialists and supervisors insisted this was they way.
I remember being forbidden to tell students to point to each letter and say the sound. They had to be told to “frame the word” and consider the word as a whole, not letter by letter.

I taught systematic phonics in secret for years. I kept it hidden by saying I was doing a mini lesson. Administrators just didn’t want to see us doing a boring whole group phonics lesson for all students… you had to pretend you assessed each students individual need and were targeting that one specific skill they were missing. So I pretended that’s what I was doing. But it’s crazy to teach that way. In reality I just taught phonics in a normal scope and sequence and didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. My students usually advanced very quickly and were able to decode and spell multisyllabic words correctly and then we could use the balanced literacy curriculum more easily.

The comment was more about the people who ultimately bought it for the districts. But still there were plenty of teachers interviewed in the "Sold a Story" podcast who said they believed the Caulkins/cue-ing system was valid. Some only came to their senses when their own kids couldn't read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

My kid figured it out on their own at age three. Smart kid, not genius. We read to them and pointed out the words and did language apps and videos but, yes some kids just figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's baffling to me that any competent teacher could ever believe that "good readers" look at the pictures and guess and only consider the letters/sounds as a last resort. Did they never reflect on how they personally learned to read? Consider that for centuries people learned to read from books without pictures?

My kid figured it out on their own at age three. Smart kid, not genius. We read to them and pointed out the words and did language apps and videos but, yes some kids just figure it out.

I have a kid like that. And they are certainly the outliers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught my kids the sounds letters make starting when they were one or two. It was as basic as teaching them that's a picture of a dog, that's an A, A says ahhh. By the time they got to Kindergarten they could read simple books. Learning how letters and words (and numbers) work was just part of what we talked about everyday. They are not geniuses, probably about IQ 120 or so. I'm not sure why everybody doesn't do this. Even if your child struggles with dyslexia or some other learning difficulty at least you would know that early and could provide extra help.

Some people have multiple small children and jobs and parents who need help, etc etc.

My life is equally busy and I have two children but it didn't keep me from interacting with them about letters, words, numbers, and reading to and with them everyday. Not acceptable to neglect your child's education yourself and then blame the public schools when they struggle.

Ok, great. But the reality is that many parents don't. So what is your solution? We cannot legislate parenting, but we CAN legislate that curriculums used in schools are evidence-based and aligned to science and doing, y'know, their basic function of educating students. If they're not then what is their purpose?

Ha yeah, I didn't teach my kids to read because I thought "they will learn that in school." And they did. Sadly they did Lucy Calkins, but they were in the lucky 2/3 of kids who still learn to read despite balanced literacy.

What percentage of students do you think will learn to read now that schools are using whole group phonics lessons? Do you expect 100%? 90? What is acceptable? 66% is not, so what do you expect now?

I’m not sure. You can look at what the scores were before they started doing balanced literacy though. I would expect they would bounce back to that at least.

Ok, here:
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/reading/student-group-scores/?age=9

Since 1971 (phonics) reading scores on the NAEP (Nations report card on reading) have increased by 12% for third graders and 5% for 13 year olds.

I think phonics is the way our language mostly works and should be taught, but my point is that people spin data to prove their own points.

Every time a school system gets a new program someone makes money if it isn't Lucy Caulkins, then it is Wilson or orton-gillingham (ISME).

The hatred for Lucy Caulkins is kind of ridiculous because this is just the way school systems work: new curriculum every 5 years and someone is always having to prove kids are failing to prove their curriculum is better.

those aren’t too helpful because they don’t show a before and after of the use of balanced literacy. You do get these stats in this APS report. They are sobering, particularly the stats on the racial disparities.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/BZW3SX0855CF/$file/ELAAC%20Executive%20Summary%20March%202021.pdf

Gotcha but was that data taken from the 2019-2020 school year? It is interesting that they don’t mention the year, but have a huge disclaimer on the paper that covid has made things worse. Again, just pointing out that data can be manipulated. Phonics is good. FYI the person who was key to bringing phonics 95 to Arlington left mid year last year to join the company. Fundations i/s better.

I'm really irritated that I can't find this information since I am pretty sure I saw it before. But I think those numbers are comparisons of APS reading scores since the implementation of balanced literacy, which has been around for decades and I assume APS adopted it long ago. At a minimum a phonics-heavy approach hasn't been around for decades. Here is a letter from the Fairfax NAACP addressing the issue and they say that phonics hasn't been taught in FCPS for at least 35 years.

https://www.baconsrebellion.com/app/uploads/2022/07/httpswww.fairfaxnaacp.orgwp-contentuploads202104FCPS-Literacy-Letter-April-2021.pdf