Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1st grade teacher here. We definitely teach reading! What frustrates me is when parents don’t support at home and assume that the learning done during the school day is enough. Some kids really do need extra practice at home. Also, we teach phonics and handwriting through FUNdations. I think 3rd grade teaches cursive with another program (handwriting without tears?) this is DCPS.

Baltimore City teacher here and we also use Fundations for phonics and we have the same issues with parents not following up at home. There is a general lack of parent involvement in anything unless it is fun- field day, etc. But even Fundations doesn’t provide everything (little to no phonemic awareness). We are definitely moving in the right direction with reading instruction but kids won’t be able to meet benchmark standards unless we get extra help.

If you can get a hold of a Michael Heggerty book, he has a great program for phonemic awareness. My school has them and if I ever leave, I'm going to photocopy the entire book to take with me. 5-10 minutes a day all year long is all it takes.

Yes’m, we’ve already started the program at our school. It’s sad that the people in charge making the decisions are so ignorant of best practices. Phonics alone will not make a good reader. Another reason why the people in charge should be former teachers with many years of experience to make research based decisions.

You do know that in many districts teachers are told exactly what and how to teach and have zero autonomy to make these kinds of decisions on their own, right?

It's very teacher-dependent, style-dependent, and child-dependent. My daughter's experienced FCPS Kindergarten teacher taught reading the old way, focusing on sight words, which did NOT click for my daughter. She didn't learn anything in K. Her first grade teacher is straight out of school and is up on the newest research, so includes a phonics-based approach in teaching, and provides reading level-appropriate books on a weekly basis. My daughter is still reading below grade level, but catching up. I am 100% planning to teach my younger child to read before Kindergarten.

My kids went into K heavily front loaded. They both had a couple of years of preschool under their belts so they were used to paying attention during circle time, walking in lines to go to recess, taking turns on the playground.

Learning the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case), their numbers, shapes and colors was largely done at home. Handwriting practice was largely done at home. Beginning phonics (sounding out letters/words) was a combination of preschool and home (the Leap videos were awesome). They learned to print their names at preschool.

They were ready to read by the time they entered K and both were reading simple books within weeks of entering K. We did the reading homework their teachers sent home every night and both of my kids advanced rapidly in their reading levels.

Once they were reading well, I started to do group reads with them at home. We read classic children's books (original, not dumbed down versions) along with popular/current children's stories.

When I was a kid, my mom did the same sort of thing with me and my siblings. I have always viewed home and school as a partnership.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1st grade teacher here. We definitely teach reading! What frustrates me is when parents don’t support at home and assume that the learning done during the school day is enough. Some kids really do need extra practice at home. Also, we teach phonics and handwriting through FUNdations. I think 3rd grade teaches cursive with another program (handwriting without tears?) this is DCPS.

Baltimore City teacher here and we also use Fundations for phonics and we have the same issues with parents not following up at home. There is a general lack of parent involvement in anything unless it is fun- field day, etc. But even Fundations doesn’t provide everything (little to no phonemic awareness). We are definitely moving in the right direction with reading instruction but kids won’t be able to meet benchmark standards unless we get extra help.

If you can get a hold of a Michael Heggerty book, he has a great program for phonemic awareness. My school has them and if I ever leave, I'm going to photocopy the entire book to take with me. 5-10 minutes a day all year long is all it takes.

I teach kindergarten in a different state. Every school I know teaches reading intensively. Yes, we teach about 50 sight words in kindergarten. The reason is that some words cannot be sounded out and must be memorized. Also, at least the first most common 100 words make up 25% of all written material any person will encounter in their lifetime. So it makes logical, science backed research sense to memorize some sight words. Not doing this would be very, very stupid. But sight words are only about 5-10% of my reading instructional time. I spend a large amount of time (maybe 40-50%) on both phonemic awareness and phonics. A large amount of time.

Then, I spend a small amount of time teaching kids some of the science based methods that some posters refer to as guessing. Things like cross checking the first letter and the picture or thinking of what would make sense. (10% timewise) Combined with strong phonics and phonemic awareness, these additional skills are things that all good readers do. Research supports teaching these skills explicitly so we do. We also spend time, though less than I'd like because I'm in a half day program, on comprehension, vocabulary and fluency. (The remaining 30% or so)

When I put all these things together as they are meant to work, not in isolation, but in conjunction, I see about 5-10% of my students who still struggle at the end of kindergarten. This is in a very low income area with second language also playing a part. That's a high success rate. And of the kids who struggle at the end of kindergarten, some just aren't ready developmentally but we catch them in first grade. The few we don't, typically have special needs and then those kids are served through IEP minutes.


I cannot imagine the heartache involved in having a child with a disability or a special need. I cannot imagine seeing my own children struggle in school. That is obviously so painful. I might lash out at my kids' schools too if I were in that situation. I wish everyone the best and I do hope every school can reach more kids this year with the help of caring parents.

Anonymous wrote:
Many schools systems, public and private, have fallen into the “whole word” method, because it’s less work for overburdened teachers with large K and 1st grade classes.

So this is essentially a resource problem, where school systems thought the kids would learn to read without explicit phoneme instruction and they could get away with inappropriate teacher:student ratios. It would be very difficult to implement phonetic instruction with one teacher and 25-30 kids in lower elementary classes!

It is not a coincidence that the number of students with reading difficulties has shot up, and that MCPS, among others, refuses to consider dyslexia as a learning disorder they need to accommodate, despite the fact they accommodate many other common learning disorders!

People should demand implementation of a more phonetic-based reading method, with much smaller classes in lower elementary.

My kids read early and never had these issues, but we come from a country that made the same mistake as the US. It had to return to phonetics when it saw entire generation of kids had reading challenges. School systems here should learn from other countries’ experiences.

What country is this? I would love to have more data to support smaller class sizes and better reading instruction.

Anonymous wrote:1st grade teacher here. We definitely teach reading! What frustrates me is when parents don’t support at home and assume that the learning done during the school day is enough. Some kids really do need extra practice at home. Also, we teach phonics and handwriting through FUNdations. I think 3rd grade teaches cursive with another program (handwriting without tears?) this is DCPS.

Baltimore City teacher here and we also use Fundations for phonics and we have the same issues with parents not following up at home. There is a general lack of parent involvement in anything unless it is fun- field day, etc. But even Fundations doesn’t provide everything (little to no phonemic awareness). We are definitely moving in the right direction with reading instruction but kids won’t be able to meet benchmark standards unless we get extra help.

I am confused, both my kids in mcps and I believe they taught reading, writing, phonics etc
I remember showing them leapfrog videos before k and they learnt quickly ( how’s kids in high school still struggling???) and I think they teach similar way at school ie letter sound
My kid even learned cursive in 3rd grade, she is 14 now..
What school are your kids in??

Many schools systems, public and private, have fallen into the “whole word” method, because it’s less work for overburdened teachers with large K and 1st grade classes.

So this is essentially a resource problem, where school systems thought the kids would learn to read without explicit phoneme instruction and they could get away with inappropriate teacher:student ratios. It would be very difficult to implement phonetic instruction with one teacher and 25-30 kids in lower elementary classes!

It is not a coincidence that the number of students with reading difficulties has shot up, and that MCPS, among others, refuses to consider dyslexia as a learning disorder they need to accommodate, despite the fact they accommodate many other common learning disorders!

People should demand implementation of a more phonetic-based reading method, with much smaller classes in lower elementary.

My kids read early and never had these issues, but we come from a country that made the same mistake as the US. It had to return to phonetics when it saw entire generation of kids had reading challenges. School systems here should learn from other countries’ experiences.

Anonymous wrote:A dyslexic child is just a child who has trouble reading. Depending on severity a dyslexic child may not have 100 percent of her needs met by a public school reading curriculum. That’s why there is special ed, pullouts, special schools, and tutors.

Dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading in children of average or above average intelligence. I agree that the general education curriculum may not be sufficient for effective instruction. But I do think that special education instruction needs to be sufficient to teach dyslexic children to read. Private tutoring and schools are very expensive and out of reach for many families.

A dyslexic child is just a child who has trouble reading. Depending on severity a dyslexic child may not have 100 percent of her needs met by a public school reading curriculum. That’s why there is special ed, pullouts, special schools, and tutors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I put my younger DD through private ES because MCPS didn’t teach her older sibling phonics or cursive. I’m a teacher myself, but secondary and honestly, have no idea how to teach either of those. Why would I expect the average parent to be able to?

You’re a secondary teacher but you think cursive actually matters? Weird

DP: it does matter. I never thought it did, but now that my kids are older and can't read or write in cursive, it is a problem. There have been some seriously embarrassing moments and they are at a disadvantage. I'm still trying, but honestly, it seems like it is too late.

Anonymous wrote:NP- I think there is a theme of teachers saying things that are basically if whole language doesn’t work for your kid then you need to teach phonics yourselves. The teachers who weren’t trained in more modern teaching methods don’t get that without good systemic phonics instruction that reading skills will fall apart later.

I have a neurotypical kid and a dyslexic kid so I pay attention to that stuff. I was happy to see that DCPS have a solid plan.

And my kids weren’t taught proper letter formation at school. Dyslexic child was taught cursive by tutor and in private school. I taught them cursive myself.

I taught my kids cursive too, but since they never, ever use it at school, it didn't become a habit and stick. It is slow and laborious because they have to think too much to use use, so they don't.

Anonymous wrote:There's no mention of handwriting in the common core standards, so it's rarely taught anymore.

It was dropped long before CC. None of my pre-CC kids were taught handwriting.