Lucy Caulkins was wrong about reading

[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.

My child is a visual learning. They learned through sight reading very early. Every child learns differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

? I really don't see this in my daughter's school, and children's and YA fiction is booming.

+1

They read assigned fiction books plus have a ton available for independent reading.

Our school focuses heavily on writing but if they read two books a year in English its impressive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

My child is a visual learning. They learned through sight reading very early. Every child learns differently.

More kids learn via phonics. Your kid would have learned just as quickly and would have had a better understanding of the English language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

My child is a visual learning. They learned through sight reading very early. Every child learns differently.

My kid also learned by sight reading and hated the phonics lessons I gave him. When he got a bit older though he would still sound out longer unfamiliar words - sounding it out is using phonics. English has lots of irregular words but decoding/phonics are the foundation of reading, for everyone. Many kids figure it out on their own - but many others don't. So teachers or parents need to teach them. Or else they won't be fluent readers, ever.

[Anonymous]

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

WTAF?!

My thoughts exactly! I’ve got a 5th grader in LCPS and both her tutor and teacher have both told me horrible this curriculum
has been and lucky us she’s been all through elementary with it and now behind. Both tutor and teacher tell me it’s a crap way to teach and they’re seeing kid after kid struggling with reading and spelling. I wish I’d know sooner… and maybe I should have asked more questions about curriculum along the way but sadly I think a lot of parents had faith these schools weren’t screwing our kids. Especially in these so called “wealthy and highly rated county schools” what a joke!

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isnt news. Maybe i am late to the party but just wanted to share anyway.
And has now incorporated phonics in its revised curriculum. But its too late for the students who struggled because of her. It’s appalling that our kid’s education is just a money making business and mcps continues to pick sub par curriculums over and over again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/22/us/reading-teaching-curriculum-phonics.html

As a mom, I think it’s very important for parents to be paying attention to their little kids’ early reading, writing and math skills. Some of the school fads are ridiculous. It’s pretty easy to see when it’s not working and to help your own kid. It’s also really, really fun and satisfying!!

Of course it is! But the way some of the reading lessons were structured, kids were given books to bring home to read that THEY ALREADY KNEW. So of course they could "read" them! And teachers were saying that the kids were doing great and had learned to read when in reality, all they'd learned to do was memorize the books. So yes, paying attention is great, but parents WERE paying attention and still weren't finding out until later (maybe even multiple years later) that their kids couldn't actually read.

This isn't me blaming teachers, it's me blaming a sh*t curriculum that just made its inventors money and actively harmed students.

[Anonymous]

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.

I assume you're aware that there are students out there whose parents don't speak English? Or if they do, they don't speak it well enough to teach their kids phonics? That's one of the reasons why we have to trust our schools to actually teach kids things like reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

They didn't, really. In education, every time someone points out a problem - usually a real problem - with some method of teaching, then suggests a new way, schools immediately throw out everything they used to do, declaring it "bad teaching," and jump on the new bandwagon. All old knowledge is lost or forgotten or disallowed, as though nothing old is good. It's kind of like fashion, going in and out of style. Then after a while, people realize that the old stuff might have had some good qualities too, and just like fashion that trend comes back in a slightly more modern form, and the trend that displaced it becomes out of style. We call it the pendulum, and good teachers dodge the pendulum.

Phonics had plenty to recommend it. Like, you know, actually teaching kids to read words. But the instruction was often very dry and boring, and sometimes it was all phonics drills and no actual reading. The idea that reading real books could be incorporated into the teaching of reading, even before kids could read the words, was a good one. A lot of the ideas about learning through reading discussions and comprehension strategies were also good additions to reading instruction.

But of course, as education is by far the stupidest industry ever, it was taken to an extreme. Teachers were literally not allowed to teach decoding (phonics), even when it was clear that without it lots of kids just weren't going to be able to read. Dodging the pendulum meant integrating some phonics into the day, but in some districts micro-management made that very difficult. I know I literally felt anxious about it all the time, like I had some dirty secret.

So anyway, that's what happened to phonics, and will happen again. And again. And again.

Then that was just bad teaching. It wasn’t that “phonics didn’t work.” I do think the idea that keeping kids away from books before they can read is just bad, but I thought balanced literacy kept kids away from books not on their level too.

[Anonymous]

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.

I assume you're aware that there are students out there whose parents don't speak English? Or if they do, they don't speak it well enough to teach their kids phonics? That's one of the reasons why we have to trust our schools to actually teach kids things like reading.

That's a good point but if the parents are literate in their native language they could teach their children that and it is much easier to learn English if you are able to read and write another language. If the parents are illiterate completely then they will obviously hope the school will teach their child reading and writing, but that does not represent a huge segment of the US population.

[Anonymous]

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.

I assume you're aware that there are students out there whose parents don't speak English? Or if they do, they don't speak it well enough to teach their kids phonics? That's one of the reasons why we have to trust our schools to actually teach kids things like reading.

That's a good point but if the parents are literate in their native language they could teach their children that and it is much easier to learn English if you are able to read and write another language. If the parents are illiterate completely then they will obviously hope the school will teach their child reading and writing, but that does not represent a huge segment of the US population.

This says 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022. https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/
54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level. Those seem like huge segments to me.

https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you explain this a little bit more. The link takes you to A page that you can only read if you sign up for the new York times.

If you Google, it's been covered ad nauseum in the press. Not a new story.

MCPS doesn't/hasn't used Lucy Calkins Units of Study in Reading in schools.
There are some schools that use her writing curriculum, but that is not what the article or the recent buzz it about.

MCPS used Benchmark, which had the same problem. Only this year are they shifting to really great reading, which follows the science of reading.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.