Why are we still teaching reading the wrong way?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1000 ESOL instructor here as well! I find that I have to re-teach students how to decode words, essentially teaching the fundamentals, which is part and parcel of language teaching.

[Anonymous]

You guys are great. I'm a parent who "afterschools" phonics instruction to the best of my ability and I'm basically doing what ESOL instructor and long-poster point out. I might not be doing it very well, but I'm doing it.

[Anonymous]

Different ESOL teacher here. I just had a heated meeting this week with some higher ups from the district who think I shouldn't spend much time "on that stuff" with my ESOL students. "That stuff" is letter names, letter sounds and phonological awareness. Ha! It is the basis of all reading instruction. I teach kindergarten and first grade. If they don't get this instruction in their first year or two, they won't be able to read. They want me to spend my time teaching students the vocabulary for our ELA curriculum which is WAY over the heads of even our native English speakers. They said it shouldn't take long for them to learn it. Well, it does take a long time because when kids come in with zero English, their first 6 months to a year is just trying to understand what is going on in the classroom. It's hard to learn content at the same time you are learning the language. The students in my school have zero experience handling books so they have no knowledge of the concepts of print. It just annoys me that people in charge of telling us to do things we know are not what students need.

[Anonymous]

This is a really good article too:

https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Phonics doesn’t replace all languages arts- teacher still read stories and have a language rich environment. But they don’t encourage guessing what words might be and thethat don’t expect a kids to just “get it”.

I taught first grade. I don't ever remember being encouraged by any research or program to expect kids to "just 'get it." And, as for guessing what words might be, that is a valid tool. It has never been the only tool for deciphering words. It aids in reading comprehension. It goes along with predicting what will happen next, and then reading to see if you are correct. I don't know why PP thinks teachers are not including phonics in their instruction.

I don’t get it either. My daughter is in Kindergarten and has made a ton of progress in reading. This is in a GS3 rated MoCo school. She’s gotten plenty of phonics instruction along with some “sight words” memorization. They spend lots of time on inventive spelling activities. My daughter wrote me a long note yesterday asking me to help her with some “projexts”! Her teacher is always encouraging the children to “stretch out the sounds” while reading/writing. No complaints here.

[Anonymous]

Phonics is valuable and essential in teaching kids to read. But, if that is the only tool a teacher uses it would be like an art teacher who doesn't let the kids use anything but crayons and drawing paper.

It can be done--but it is limiting on results.

[Anonymous]

Whether elementary schools do or do not teach phonics in the lower grades, don't they teach prefixes, suffixes, and root words in the upper grades? How do children learn prefixes without learning letters, sounds, syllables, etc.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whether elementary schools do or do not teach phonics in the lower grades, don't they teach prefixes, suffixes, and root words in the upper grades? How do children learn prefixes without learning letters, sounds, syllables, etc.?

FACT: they do teach phonics. OP is mistaken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Phonics is valuable and essential in teaching kids to read. But, if that is the only tool a teacher uses it would be like an art teacher who doesn't let the kids use anything but crayons and drawing paper.

It can be done--but it is limiting on results.

Agreed, the article read like phonics is the magic bullet that can save the day and teachers are too dumb to realize it. When in reality reading is a complex process and requires students to do a variety of things (deciding, phonrmic awareness, comprehension, fluency) successfully.

[Anonymous]

Back in 1993, seversl teachers were fired from Glendale Area Public Schools in CA when their principals secretly listened to them and found out they were teaching students how to sound out words. It was a no phonics/no spelling/no sight word/ only inventive spelling instruction phase. This ridiculous “methodology” lasted only a few years punishing kids who were spelling correctly. The principals who fired the teachers were promoted. It was a multi million grant for an experiment that ended up being disastrous for students and teachers who wanted to do their job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Back in 1993, seversl teachers were fired from Glendale Area Public Schools in CA when their principals secretly listened to them and found out they were teaching students how to sound out words. It was a no phonics/no spelling/no sight word/ only inventive spelling instruction phase. This ridiculous “methodology” lasted only a few years punishing kids who were spelling correctly. The principals who fired the teachers were promoted. It was a multi million grant for an experiment that ended up being disastrous for students and teachers who wanted to do their job.

I'd like to hear more about this, but, if it happened, it was likely a "blip" on the education scene. I don't know of anyone who teaches kids to read without teaching sounds at some point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Back in 1993, seversl teachers were fired from Glendale Area Public Schools in CA when their principals secretly listened to them and found out they were teaching students how to sound out words. It was a no phonics/no spelling/no sight word/ only inventive spelling instruction phase. This ridiculous “methodology” lasted only a few years punishing kids who were spelling correctly. The principals who fired the teachers were promoted. It was a multi million grant for an experiment that ended up being disastrous for students and teachers who wanted to do their job.

I was working in an elementary school in Fairfax County a little after this time. Whole Language was really big, and just before I started there, the teachers had been told to get rid of all their phonics and spelling text books. The experienced teachers didn't discard the texts though; they just hid them in a closet and used them surreptitiously!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I don’t get it either. My daughter is in Kindergarten and has made a ton of progress in reading. This is in a GS3 rated MoCo school. She’s gotten plenty of phonics instruction along with some “sight words” memorization. They spend lots of time on inventive spelling activities. My daughter wrote me a long note yesterday asking me to help her with some “projexts”! Her teacher is always encouraging the children to “stretch out the sounds” while reading/writing. No complaints here.

What I have noticed, from having taught in many different types of schools, is that schools that have more poor students often do a much better job of coving the basics than schools with children from families with a higher SES.

Kids from the upper class families often start school already knowing their letter sounds and many are reading. If they aren't parents intervene , get tutors etc. The heavy lifting of teaching letter sounds and decoding has already been done with most of the students; so even if a teacher doesn't know how to teach these basics, it won't be very obvious.

When you are teaching poorer kids, sure some of hem attended preK, but many didn't. Many kids in K do not jave any basic literacy and teachers by necessity have to get good at teaching the basics. They also don't have parents upset with them for not having the kids reading "real literature".

Is decoding the only thing that you need to teach children? Absolutely not. But it is a necessary fundamental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whether elementary schools do or do not teach phonics in the lower grades, don't they teach prefixes, suffixes, and root words in the upper grades? How do children learn prefixes without learning letters, sounds, syllables, etc.?

Yes. When I do my remedial reading groups and have kids in grades 4 and 5 who are poor decoders, sometimes I teach prefixes and suffixes as a pretext for teaching them how to sound out syllables. If you don't, you get kids who read "pre" as "per" or "par" and "tion" as "ting". Or they read the prefix and suffix but skip or goof up the base!

I had a student read "reversible" as "revisible". "Description" became "decaption".

BTW I had a child in grade 5 today try to read the following words:

student (she said/guessed "standing")
hunted (she said "hated")
drawing (she said "drowning")
branches (she said "barches", realized that wasn't a word, but couldn't figure out the correct word).

No, she isn't dyslexic. (Probably). She just never f*@&ing learned to decode. I do this all the time. We get new students to our school who never really learned to sound things out. It just takes time and energy, but almost always we can sort things out and get them decoding close to grade level, at which point they can then read or write anything they want and participate in the classroom curriculum with no hesitations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Phonics is valuable and essential in teaching kids to read. But, if that is the only tool a teacher uses it would be like an art teacher who doesn't let the kids use anything but crayons and drawing paper.

It can be done--but it is limiting on results.

Learning to decode with automaticity is a fundamental basic of reading. Is is not meant to be the end result!

It is like a violin teacher who makes sure her students know how to play the notes correctly and easily, before attempting to play a sonata.