For Gen Alpha, learning to read is a privilege, not a right

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Good luck to your kid socially. If he is a social kid in middle school and high school he will be playing video games.


If more parents said no to video games and social media so their kids wouldn't "feel left out" then maybe our teens would be happier nowadays.

DS had no electronics or video games, only got a phone after 8th grade.
He has a great social life now in high school. And heading off to a great college next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My neighbors's child is an incredibly strong reader and every time I ask the mom about it, she just shrugs and says "we got lucky." The rest of us in the neighborhood are all struggling to get our elementary age kids to read at all. Meanwhile, this kid reads way above grade level and even did the gospel reading--nearly flawlessly--in church a few weeks ago. Gotta be more than just luck.

Probably not your neighbor, but we say this only to be polite. Our DD reads several grades above grade level and reads chapter books for fun.

We put DD in a Montessori where they were taught letters very explicitly from age 2. By Fall of 3 yr old year, all kids were learning Phonics via explicit instruction. During that year, we taught our DD at home to read using Bob Books (learned about them from DCUM), but honestly her Montessori had all the kids reading well during the 4 yr old year. They all started K as readers with a solid Phonics foundation.

PP you quoted. Here's the thing, in our little neighborhood, most of us send our kids to a public Montessori school! Some of our kids are "fine" readers, but none of us would say they're strong (and some parents lament how poorly their kids read). A couple families go to a public dual immersion, same thing, fine but not strong. And yet this one kid, the only one who goes to a regular public school, is so far beyond everyone else.

You could be talking about my kid. Reads several grade levels ahead, loves reading, loves writing, huge vocabulary, etc. Here are my secrets:

- Read to her every night starting from infancy. Every night. At least 20 minutes. When she was little we traded off nights. Then around age 5 we started doing it as a family. We'd read chapter books, 1-2 chapters a night. DH and I would both read. We did it together because then we'd all be able to connect over the book. Classics, contemporary books, whatever. We read our childhood favorites, things friends recommended. We'd go to the library or bookstore and ask for suggestions.

- Unlimited books. Library once or twice a week. Regular bookstore trips. Books for gifts. No such thing as a shortage of books. If she didn't have something to read, we'd rearrange our schedule to make sure we could pick something up. She got an e-reader when she was 7 and that helped a lot.

- If she asked us to read to her, we'd almost always say yes. Even if it was some book I hated (I learned to read some of those middle reader series books on autopilot while thinking about other things). I wouldn't read the whole thing. I'd be like "okay I'll read a chapter but then it's your turn." This really helped her build endurance because if I read a bit, she'd get into the story and want to read some on her own even if she was tired. Sometimes us reading a chapter or two would give her enough of a rest that she could then go finish the book.

- We strongly encouraged writing. Bought her journals, books about writing stories, wrote each other letters, etc. When she'd write stuff we'd make a big deal about it ("this is so great, I love the words you chose, you're expressing interesting ideas here"). Tons of encouragement. We'd talk about the relationship between reading and writing, how writing more makes reading easier and how reading more makes your writing better.

It was WORK. But it really mattered to us and we prioritized it above other things. There are things my kid is not good at or that you'd look at and think "what, your kid doesn't do XYZ!?" No one can do it all. We prioritized reading and writing and the result is a kid who is an excellent reader, great writer, and loves doing both.

I know how much some parents lament their kids lack of interest in reading, plus I know some kids have learning disorders that make reading harder. So yes I'd tell another parent "we got lucky" if they asked. And regarding LD's we did -- obviously our kid doesn't have dyslexia and if she did, this would be a different story. But also we made reading and writing a central priority in our parenting. It was not an accident.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a mess. That "Sold a Story" podcast was super interesting. However, it didn't address phones and the reluctance of Gen Z/young millennial parents to DO much with their kids.

What do the teachers DO all day with the kids? They are there 6-7 hours and can't read? Come on. If I'm supposed to do all the teaching then give up on the idea of public schools.

Just say you’re a lazy parent. It will save you some typing.

(and I’m a parent, not a teacher — just in case you were thinking of being predictable and calling me a “lazy teacher.” Thanks in advance).

Nice try. But I certainly don’t send my kids to public schools to learn nothing and be babysat all day. This is on those schools and teachers.

I hope you understand that teachers are making very few decisions (if any) about curriculum, time spent on each subject area, discipline, etc. All of this is dictated to them.

[Anonymous]

So this thread is just going to be a circle jerk about how you did all the right things and now your kid is a voracious reader...nature or nurture?
My own mother read to us every night (and obviously no tablets back then) and she got one daughter who read nonstop and one who did not. I read every book in the house, including all her cookbooks and some very inappropriate adult novels, before I turned 12! Sister in the same house with the same library trips and book availability had to be pushed to read.
I read stories nightly, have books all over the house, take the kids to the library, buy books I think they might like, and they see me reading all the time. They still don't want to read and it's not because they have screens to look at. They like drawing, Legos, board games, card games, and reading comics like Peanuts and Garfield. But it is like pulling teeth to get them to read a chapter book. They are boys 7 and 9.

[Anonymous]

Of course some kids just aren’t into reading, but any kid has more of a chance of liking reading and developing a lifetime habit of reading if their parents make it a family habit. When families don’t read at all, kids are much, much less likely to come to a love of reading at any point in their childhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course some kids just aren’t into reading, but any kid has more of a chance of liking reading and developing a lifetime habit of reading if their parents make it a family habit. When families don’t read at all, kids are much, much less likely to come to a love of reading at any point in their childhood.

Yes. I think part of my reason my kid reads so much is simply that the books are THERE. The iPad is not there (don’t own one). The computer is not there (we keep laptops away when adults aren’t using). He’s sitting in front of a smart tv in the living room right now with a pile of books. I don’t watch tv while he is awake, so he doesn’t watch TV much. And this is a kid who is constantly moving and active. He is still able to sit for hours reading.

When I was growing up pre computers, I played with random stuff because it was there. So yes, parents don’t need to believe all the claims 100%, but do recognize that there is some value in putting a wide variety of books and other reading material around the house and removing screens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Good luck to your kid socially. If he is a social kid in middle school and high school he will be playing video games.


If more parents said no to video games and social media so their kids wouldn't "feel left out" then maybe our teens would be happier nowadays.

DS had no electronics or video games, only got a phone after 8th grade.
He has a great social life now in high school. And heading off to a great college next year.

If he has never played a video game at a friend’s game he is an outlier. There’s always one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do the teachers DO all day with the kids? They are there 6-7 hours and can't read?

Loudoun elementary teacher, here. During that time, I’m expected to teach math, social studies, science, and reading + language arts which includes grammar, phonics, writing, reading, vocabulary.

And I’m expected to remediate in reading/math for low-scoring kids. Also: teach SEL and deal with social/behavioral issues.

Factor in lunch, recess, assemblies, and so on. Sounds like you should come sub to learn all about a typical day!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do the teachers DO all day with the kids? They are there 6-7 hours and can't read?

Loudoun elementary teacher, here. During that time, I’m expected to teach math, social studies, science, and reading + language arts which includes grammar, phonics, writing, reading, vocabulary.

And I’m expected to remediate in reading/math for low-scoring kids. Also: teach SEL and deal with social/behavioral issues.

Factor in lunch, recess, assemblies, and so on. Sounds like you should come sub to learn all about a typical day!

Based on our kid’s experience in a top rated public and my own experience as an assistant sub, only the things you list in your last two paragraphs are getting done regularly. The first paragraph stuff is hit-or-miss, mostly miss.

[Anonymous]

The majority of parents are lazy (myself included) and therefore should be screaming from the rooftops to get screens out of school. 7 hrs a day of reading / writing and creating brain pathways would go a long way to offset the too many screen hours at home. Remember where there were screen limits? What happened to that?!?!?!? lazy teachers and parents offloading time bc kids are annoying. Edtech is edu-entertainment and minimal actual learning. Teachers are PAID to teach and should not be off-loading kid attn to screens. Lazy parents, should be screaming the loudest since they understand the human nature behind ignoring kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The majority of parents are lazy (myself included) and therefore should be screaming from the rooftops to get screens out of school. 7 hrs a day of reading / writing and creating brain pathways would go a long way to offset the too many screen hours at home. Remember where there were screen limits? What happened to that?!?!?!? lazy teachers and parents offloading time bc kids are annoying. Edtech is edu-entertainment and minimal actual learning. Teachers are PAID to teach and should not be off-loading kid attn to screens. Lazy parents, should be screaming the loudest since they understand the human nature behind ignoring kids.

I don’t understand screens in elementary schools. We are basically zero screens at home because he plays video games and watches movies at school. And this is a top rated public where the commonly repeated advice to house hunters and transplants is “you can’t go wrong” with any of the school districts within 10-15 miles of here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It really does have to do with whether a child was taught phonics systematically or not. I have 4 children and all but one were given phonics instruction. The other, poor child, was not and still struggles to decode text and spell properly

The Reading Wars have been going on for decades, swinging back and forth between phonics and whole language (or similar) approaches. This is probably because the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Phonics is a piece of the puzzle, but systematic phonics instruction alone might get you 90% of the way to decoding (because English isn't phonetically regular), but decoding is only a part of reading. Give it a few years, and you'll hear people complaining about how their phonics-instructed kids have no fluency or comprehension, and the pendulum will start swinging back again.

Girl what the hell can they comprehend if they cannot decode? How does one "fluently" guess the meaning of a word?

Context. Which you can’t get if you’re so busy sounding out each letter that you lose the meaning of what you’re reading.

Fluency tends to require at least some amount of memorizing sight words (what a previous poster described as “popcorn words”) because so many of the most commonly used words in English are phonetically irregular. Also, it’s next to impossible to get any fluency or comprehension when focusing on small bits of text, which phonics instruction tends to do (mainly because it’s hard to write anything meaningful while focusing on a single phonics rule.)

I don’t know why we tend to go all or nothing on reading strategies, but the best bet is likely a mix of strategies that includes sone phonics-based instruction.

Actually, its more like one and then the other. Phonics absolutely wins hands down at the beginning. Students must learn their letter sounds, then to put those sounds together to make words before sounding out words through actual reading. Memorizing words that early teaches them the bad habit of not actual reading and only guessing through pictures and context before learning to read phonetically. Its easier to do than decoding and encoding, so kids will ONLY take guesses if they are allowed to do that. That's why the words and stories should stay simple at the beginning, with no pictures. Paired with a few sight words (10-15) just to get them reading sentences and stories. But after that point, once they have mastered phonetic reading and are learning vowel teams, etc., they can learn more irregular sight words to memorize. By this time, they will already start memorizing the words they phonetically learned to read (like "cat" and "stop") and will know how to shift to phonetic reading when they come across new words they don't know ONLY. That's how they take off with reading. They should never be learning to guess at words from a picture unless they need it to remember a phonics pattern they might have forgotten (what sound does "ai" in the word "rain" make again? Oh, the picture shows rain so it must be "ayyy"-- the word is "RAIN!"). And they certainly should never be memorizing words--there are literally too many words to memorize!

Phonics advocates are not saying that its the only way to read, they are moreso saying that its the foundation of reading before you learn other skills. The other skills like cueing must come later or you will set your kid up with a lifetime of bad habits, where they will look like they can read a book they have memorized from the pictures but will feel intimidated and confused at chapter books and just plain give up once they become a teenager required to read novels. It will be unnecessarily laborious and of course, they'll end up hating reading.

BTW, a good amount of sight words are also regular and phonetic, they are only taught as sight words to memorize because they are common (like the words day, and, or not). They really shouldn't be taught this way. But kids will naturally "remember" words they read once they have read a lot. The point of phonics is to free them up to be able to advance on their own when they encounter NEW words, which they will as they get older. Sight words are extremely limiting in that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My neighbors's child is an incredibly strong reader and every time I ask the mom about it, she just shrugs and says "we got lucky." The rest of us in the neighborhood are all struggling to get our elementary age kids to read at all. Meanwhile, this kid reads way above grade level and even did the gospel reading--nearly flawlessly--in church a few weeks ago. Gotta be more than just luck.

Probably not your neighbor, but we say this only to be polite. Our DD reads several grades above grade level and reads chapter books for fun.

We put DD in a Montessori where they were taught letters very explicitly from age 2. By Fall of 3 yr old year, all kids were learning Phonics via explicit instruction. During that year, we taught our DD at home to read using Bob Books (learned about them from DCUM), but honestly her Montessori had all the kids reading well during the 4 yr old year. They all started K as readers with a solid Phonics foundation.

PP you quoted. Here's the thing, in our little neighborhood, most of us send our kids to a public Montessori school! Some of our kids are "fine" readers, but none of us would say they're strong (and some parents lament how poorly their kids read). A couple families go to a public dual immersion, same thing, fine but not strong. And yet this one kid, the only one who goes to a regular public school, is so far beyond everyone else.

You could be talking about my kid. Reads several grade levels ahead, loves reading, loves writing, huge vocabulary, etc. Here are my secrets:

- Read to her every night starting from infancy. Every night. At least 20 minutes. When she was little we traded off nights. Then around age 5 we started doing it as a family. We'd read chapter books, 1-2 chapters a night. DH and I would both read. We did it together because then we'd all be able to connect over the book. Classics, contemporary books, whatever. We read our childhood favorites, things friends recommended. We'd go to the library or bookstore and ask for suggestions.

- Unlimited books. Library once or twice a week. Regular bookstore trips. Books for gifts. No such thing as a shortage of books. If she didn't have something to read, we'd rearrange our schedule to make sure we could pick something up. She got an e-reader when she was 7 and that helped a lot.

- If she asked us to read to her, we'd almost always say yes. Even if it was some book I hated (I learned to read some of those middle reader series books on autopilot while thinking about other things). I wouldn't read the whole thing. I'd be like "okay I'll read a chapter but then it's your turn." This really helped her build endurance because if I read a bit, she'd get into the story and want to read some on her own even if she was tired. Sometimes us reading a chapter or two would give her enough of a rest that she could then go finish the book.

- We strongly encouraged writing. Bought her journals, books about writing stories, wrote each other letters, etc. When she'd write stuff we'd make a big deal about it ("this is so great, I love the words you chose, you're expressing interesting ideas here"). Tons of encouragement. We'd talk about the relationship between reading and writing, how writing more makes reading easier and how reading more makes your writing better.

It was WORK. But it really mattered to us and we prioritized it above other things. There are things my kid is not good at or that you'd look at and think "what, your kid doesn't do XYZ!?" No one can do it all. We prioritized reading and writing and the result is a kid who is an excellent reader, great writer, and loves doing both.

I know how much some parents lament their kids lack of interest in reading, plus I know some kids have learning disorders that make reading harder. So yes I'd tell another parent "we got lucky" if they asked. And regarding LD's we did -- obviously our kid doesn't have dyslexia and if she did, this would be a different story. But also we made reading and writing a central priority in our parenting. It was not an accident.

WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT??? Oh, I did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The majority of parents are lazy (myself included) and therefore should be screaming from the rooftops to get screens out of school. 7 hrs a day of reading / writing and creating brain pathways would go a long way to offset the too many screen hours at home. Remember where there were screen limits? What happened to that?!?!?!? lazy teachers and parents offloading time bc kids are annoying. Edtech is edu-entertainment and minimal actual learning. Teachers are PAID to teach and should not be off-loading kid attn to screens. Lazy parents, should be screaming the loudest since they understand the human nature behind ignoring kids.

I don’t understand screens in elementary schools. We are basically zero screens at home because he plays video games and watches movies at school. And this is a top rated public where the commonly repeated advice to house hunters and transplants is “you can’t go wrong” with any of the school districts within 10-15 miles of here.

Believe it or not screens are not evil. If your child ends up in a high tech job their career will be almost all working on screens. There are very few jobs in businesses where there isn’t a screen on every desk. It’s not 1985.

What would you change in the course of a school day.

[Anonymous]

NP, but the skills a person needs to use computers in the workplace are not something they need to practice from age 5 to develop. Technology in the schools is not, by and large, helpful. Our kids spend hours playing "learning games" that don't lead to increased knowledge. During the literacy block, they should be reading print books and writing about what they think/feel. During the math block, they should be using math manipulatives and writing to explain their answers. During science and social studies, they should be having books read to them by teachers and writing about what they have learned. That's how you develop strong readers and writers: by actually reading and writing.

I am a literacy specialist and I am so tired of my administrators trying to find the next great technology tool to improve our scores. We should look back at when our scores were better: we were reading and writing in every content area, every day.