Why are we still teaching reading the wrong way?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From edweek.org... Teachers Criticize Their Colleges of Education for Not Preparing Them to Teach Reading...”I find this so interesting that almost all of us were not taught to teach reading in our programs. I thought it was just me. We learned about read-alouds and vocabulary strategies, but were pretty much told if we get the child to enjoy reading, they will read.-- J.D. Ramsey (@writerramsey) October 14, 2018”

Looks like more teachers are figuring out that their programs let them and the kids down.

https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.edweek.org%2Fv1%2Fblog%2F62%2Findex.html%3Fuuid%3D77723&cmp=eml-eb-highered-eml2.1-11012018&M=58651766&U=3022122&UUID=db6154ac12f00bf266bb41975d05b708

Well this explains why my child’s English teacher thinks that reading more for pleasure will resolve DS’s dyslexia. She doesn’t seem to understand that if you lack the ability to decode, it’s hard to read for pleasure. She also objected to audio books and the school discouraged us from seeking remediation to learn decoding and phonic skills. It’s very frustrating for families whose children are struggling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that in the hundreds of years that children have been attending school and learning how to read, that we still need to have this conversation? How did kids manage to learn to read in the past?

Schools are constantly reinventing the wheel and making things more complicated than they need to be.

[Anonymous]

Lol most college students CAN NOT read! And you seriously ask if we teach reading the wrong way....YA THINK !!

[Anonymous]

If I have to spend one more dime of my company money to teach current college graduated applicants how to read i will start hiring exclusive Canadians.
Seriously, are we teaching wrong....wake the hell up!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that in the hundreds of years that children have been attending school and learning how to read, that we still need to have this conversation? How did kids manage to learn to read in the past?

Many didn't, and they dropped out of school to work the family farm or got a job in a factory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I have to spend one more dime of my company money to teach current college graduated applicants how to read i will start hiring exclusive Canadians.
Seriously, are we teaching wrong....wake the hell up!!

I seriously doubt that you are dealing with college graduates who don't know how to read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that in the hundreds of years that children have been attending school and learning how to read, that we still need to have this conversation? How did kids manage to learn to read in the past?

Many didn't, and they dropped out of school to work the family farm or got a job in a factory.

They dropped out of school because they were poor and needed to help out the family, not because they couldn't learn how to read. It's like potty training, everyone who is exposed to it long enough eventually gets it.

[Anonymous]

They dropped out of school because they were poor and needed to help out the family, not because they couldn't learn how to read. It's like potty training, everyone who is exposed to it long enough eventually gets it.

Ummmm. NO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who's this "we"? My kid is in first grade in a DCPS and is getting explicit phonics instruction, along with learning sight words (which aren't pronounced phonetically).

Not case in Arlington

and I had a SPED teacher tell me that my child would learn to spell by "being exposed to texts!" and yes, she said it with excitement. And she is wrong. I've started tutoring my child in phonics at home. I'm sure I am not a great tutor, but it's better than not learning the rules of English at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that in the hundreds of years that children have been attending school and learning how to read, that we still need to have this conversation? How did kids manage to learn to read in the past?

Many didn't, and they dropped out of school to work the family farm or got a job in a factory.

They dropped out of school because they were poor and needed to help out the family, not because they couldn't learn how to read. It's like potty training, everyone who is exposed to it long enough eventually gets it.

Good lord, PP. No. Rich and poor people are dyslexic, and exposing kids to books and words and language isn't enough to teach most dyslexics to read. Do most of us learn well enough to function in society without remediation? Yes, but in the past we suffered terribly, and didn't go as far academically as we could have, and were berated and shamed for being stupid and lazy. Please don't perpetuate that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that in the hundreds of years that children have been attending school and learning how to read, that we still need to have this conversation? How did kids manage to learn to read in the past?

The first mass-produced reading books were based on phonics.

[Anonymous]

Here's a link...not sure it will come out but it's a phonics lesson from the 1800s. (and thank you Pitt for such a fun website!)

https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A00ack2664m/from_search/c1c1e9939d194320c69e5c9baddebd20-2#page/10/mode/2up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who's this "we"? My kid is in first grade in a DCPS and is getting explicit phonics instruction, along with learning sight words (which aren't pronounced phonetically).

Not case in Arlington

and I had a SPED teacher tell me that my child would learn to spell by "being exposed to texts!" and yes, she said it with excitement. And she is wrong. I've started tutoring my child in phonics at home. I'm sure I am not a great tutor, but it's better than not learning the rules of English at all.

I'm an ESOL teacher and just reading this thread.

I firmly believe in the value of teaching children systematic decoding skills. I have found a solid program in this, starting with the basic code and moving as quickly as you can to the vowel teams, consonant digraphs, and then being able to decode multisyllabic words, is extremely effective. And the classroom teachers in our school beyond 1st grade really aren't teaching this, so if my ESOL students didn't get it, or didn't have enough oral language to understand their instruction, by 2nd grade they NEED me to teach them this way, or they will NEVER learn decoding.

And when they see an unfamiliar word like "struck" in a text and they don't know how to wound out words, they will use those stupid strategies they have been taught for reading an unfamiliar word: Look at the picture, look at the first letter, think what makes sense, and ... GUESS! They might say "start" or "stick" or something close. For "house" they read "home" or "horse". It's crazy!

[Anonymous]

I have a feeling that many students are taught to rely on those weak strategies PP. What is the program you are using PP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a feeling that many students are taught to rely on those weak strategies PP. What is the program you are using PP?

I use Phonographix or more recently Abecedarian. Our school district's reading program Reading Wonders, is not bad with teaching decoding and has plenty of decodable texts, but it isn't appropriate for older students who need remedial work, and for some reason teachers really aren't encouraged to focus on the decoding aspect of reading. Kids are tested on how many sight words they know, not how well they decode. So if kids haven't learned to read, teachers will prep them to memorize all the grade level sight words so they will score ok on the benchmark tests.

We are told to use something called "balanced literacy". When I went to training in this, I was explicitly told NOT to teach kids to sound out words. We need to have them "frame" the word with their fingers (i.e. don't have them focus on the sounds each letter makes) and do what "good readers do". Here's a link to all the strategies the kids are taught which basically boil down to "guess the word instead of decoding":

https://www.lexercise.com/blog/how-not-to-teach-reading

I think these strategies are so ineffective. Just teach kids the most common sounds letters make; teach them the consonant digraphs and the "vowel teams" . (oi, er, ow, igh, etc) and make sure they can blend and segment. It takes a while but it doesn't take forever. Teach them to be flexible -- the letters "ow" can make the sound /oe/ or /ou/ so you might have to try it two ways. Sure SOME words are irregular and can't be decoded, and just need to be memorized, but most words are decodable, especially multisyllabic ones. Then teach kids how to decode words with Latin and Greek endings. If they already are strong at decoding they will have no problem with the longer words.

Whereas the kids who never quite learned to decode in 1st and 2nd grade but used these stupid "Lips the Fish" and "Skippy frog" (skip to the end of the sentence to figure out what the word could be) strategies to guess words instead of using the letters that are in the words to read the words -- these kids who can't decode the word "angry" and read it as "achey" or "anger" or "angle" are going to fall apart when they are in science class and need to read the word "erosion" or "thermometer" and no one gives them a picture or Word Wall to help them out.

And don't get me started on Word Walls. Word Walls are not needed if kids can decode and encode. Because if they can say the word, and they know the basic and advanced code, they can spell the word. Maybe not 100% correctly but they can write it phonetically. They shouldn't have to have every word up on a wall somewhere. That's a stopgap measure because too many kids never learned to spell.