Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 12:06     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:No but the way reading is taught in elementary is by sight words now when phonics based instruction is best. Too many teachers aren’t teaching reading the right way. When they get to high school where I am, it’s often too late. The reading specialist can help a bit but kids by then are reluctant readers at best or can’t comprehend what they read at worst. A lot of remediation is done at that level to help them take and retake SOLs or Work Keys with a hope of passing. When elementary level goes back to phonics based instruction it will help. I have a lot of kids this year who took the 9th grade Iready diagnostic and are at 3rd, 4th, 5th grade reading level. Middle school, frankly, is useless. I have no earthly idea what they do or learn there because the things kids get to high school with unaddressed floor me.


I had no idea. I don't even remember how reading was taught in my classes because my mom taught me to read before kindergarten.

I taught all of my children to read using a phonics book.

I used "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons".

By the end of the book the child is reading short stories.

I recommend every parent try it. Don't wait for the schools to do the right thing.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 08:55     Subject: Re:Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
It's not rare in Baltimore City. Our kindergarten classes usually have around 75% or more students below grade level when they start kindergarten.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 08:39     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Honestly, how do you expect one teacher to teach 28 children how to read?! I taught my kids before they started school. Learning to read is a tedious, time-consuming task that requires one-on-one repetition; the classroom is the worst environment to learn how to read.



It can be done much more effectively than it is now. Ability grouping makes it doable.


If 20 of the kids come into the class knowing their letters and sounds then at least 20 of the kids come into the class ready to learn how to read. Teaching them to read is pretty simple.

The teacher will spend the majority of reading instruction time on the 8 kids that are still learning their letters and sounds.

It's pretty rare for the entire class to enter K not knowing their letters and sounds.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 08:37     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
The OG push at MCPS is all optics. It’s because of the work of decoding dyslexia at the state level and the Friedman’s lawsuit. Nothing more. If MCPS actually cared about dyslexic kids they would offer teachers more than 1 week of training in O-G. Little ol’Frederick County puts MCPS to shame by doing the right thing and spending real money on ASDEC training. Granted Frederick doesn’t offer Level 3 remediation but better than the ‘elite’ MCPS. The latter is living on a rapidly declining reputation and for spending 34,000 per spec Ed student for what exactly? MCPS is in desperate need of an independent Inspector General. (Especially before the Kirwan money flows). That money is going somewhere - but not to benefit dyslexic kids in MoCo.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 08:29     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Cursive does matter. Typing will disappear before cursive.
I went to school with Americans and it was painful to wait til they caught up taking notes. Every single one of them slowed us down. Skip the printing.
Strangely, they also sucked at history, geography, Spanish and math. I have no idea what they did know.


My Canadian husband always says, “Don’t they teach you Americans anything”? ?. He knows so much more history and geography than I do.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 07:41     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
I'm definitely seeing the pendulum swinging towards phonics in my daughter's school. They adopted Orton Gillingham to teach phonics to students
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 07:17     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
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

Cursive does matter. Typing will disappear before cursive.
I went to school with Americans and it was painful to wait til they caught up taking notes. Every single one of them slowed us down. Skip the printing.
Strangely, they also sucked at history, geography, Spanish and math. I have no idea what they did know.
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 06:50     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
My first grader was taught to read in kindergarten in MCPS. Lots of phonics and even spelling tests toward the end of the year. About 50-100 sight words. She made a ton of progress and reads well above grade level now. No complaints here, sorry!
Anonymous
Post 01/14/2020 06:41     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.


I think it’s often denial when those expensive programs are used. A parent clings to a diagnosis like dyslexia and the idea that it can be fixed and the child will all of a sudden be a strong student. But there are kids diagnosed with dyslexia that are going to always be in the first few percentiles of academic achievement even when they are in appropriate special ed classes. That is when, if the parents are rich, the parents pull out all the stops and pay for extensive and expensive tutoring. It’s not fair but that is reality. And then it’s those same parents arguing their kids need intensive supports throughout college and even graduate school.


FYI - 95% of dyslexic children who receive appropriate services in 1st grade will read on grade level. By delaying intervention until 3rd grade the proportion who achieve grade-level reading drops to roughly 25%.

We left public school in 1st grade since they wanted to “wait and see” which translates to “we will never teach your child to read on grade level” regardless of our Child Find and IDEA obligations.


Great you found a place that works for your child- The research I see says phonemic awareness activities can even help improve adult dyslexic’s ability to read. I also see some interventions that worked that were piloted with 8 and 9 year olds- 2/3 grades. Can you link to your data please? Thanks!
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 22:48     Subject: Re:Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Our kids go to a Montessori school, and the school teaches them to read and write very methodically and gradually. It starts with pre-reading skills like rhyming and phonemic awareness games at age 3. By the beginning of kindergarten, it seems to me that most of the kids can at least read basic 3 and 4 letter phonetic reader words, and quite a few are farther than that.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 22:06     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.


I think it’s often denial when those expensive programs are used. A parent clings to a diagnosis like dyslexia and the idea that it can be fixed and the child will all of a sudden be a strong student. But there are kids diagnosed with dyslexia that are going to always be in the first few percentiles of academic achievement even when they are in appropriate special ed classes. That is when, if the parents are rich, the parents pull out all the stops and pay for extensive and expensive tutoring. It’s not fair but that is reality. And then it’s those same parents arguing their kids need intensive supports throughout college and even graduate school.


FYI - 95% of dyslexic children who receive appropriate services in 1st grade will read on grade level. By delaying intervention until 3rd grade the proportion who achieve grade-level reading drops to roughly 25%.

We left public school in 1st grade since they wanted to “wait and see” which translates to “we will never teach your child to read on grade level” regardless of our Child Find and IDEA obligations.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 21:23     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote: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?



This is a pretty big myth. Teachers are told what to teach (standards) but how they do so is largely up to them. Yes, certain principals might want to see specific methods employed such as Daily 5 or Reading Workshop, but for the most part teachers come up with everything on their own.



This is most definitely true in many Title One schools especially. Our every minute is scheduled and we must teach our programs (Fundations, Wit & Wisdom, Eureka Math) to fidelity. Our schedules are the same across many grade levels and we have to be on the same lessons on the same days. We always have visitors coming around to "check."


Same here. The clipboard brigade is annoying as hell. I have to explain why I went over vocabulary words instead of what was listed in the scope and sequence.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 19:15     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:Honestly, how do you expect one teacher to teach 28 children how to read?! I taught my kids before they started school. Learning to read is a tedious, time-consuming task that requires one-on-one repetition; the classroom is the worst environment to learn how to read.



It can be done much more effectively than it is now. Ability grouping makes it doable.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 19:14     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Honestly, how do you expect one teacher to teach 28 children how to read?! I taught my kids before they started school. Learning to read is a tedious, time-consuming task that requires one-on-one repetition; the classroom is the worst environment to learn how to read.


Disagree. It's definitely possible for (nearly) all kids to learn to read and school in a classroom with 25 or 30 or more students.


This. I taught 34 first graders one year--many years ago--under circumstances that were certainly not ideal, but they learned to read. I had a lot of autonomy, though. Did they advance as much as if I had 20? No. But, they learned to read.
Anonymous
Post 01/13/2020 18:17     Subject: Is teaching reading no longer school’s responsibility?
Anonymous wrote:Honestly, how do you expect one teacher to teach 28 children how to read?! I taught my kids before they started school. Learning to read is a tedious, time-consuming task that requires one-on-one repetition; the classroom is the worst environment to learn how to read.


Disagree. It's definitely possible for (nearly) all kids to learn to read and school in a classroom with 25 or 30 or more students.