The reading curriculum varies by school in FCPS.

The first rule of reading should be to keep your eyes on the letters!

Try the Purple Challenge
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/918949.page

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).

Okay there hold your horses. It isn’t really evidence that she has dyslexia- that requires a TON of other evidence as kids can guess many things when reading, but it doesn’t mean they are dyslexia. Though your child may indeed have its

Anonymous wrote:Hey everybody - stop saying, "Um...no" and "Uh...no." it comes across as so holier than thou.

My intention is to reflect the absurdity of the statement someone made.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).

I see your point but you are arguing it too much. Of course that’s not good for a disfluent reader. But I just read with a 2nd grader who is at an 8th grade reading level and he replaced a word with a synonym because he was reading very fluently and understood what he was reading and what word would be there so it is actually a technique of good readers.

Yes though I work with struggling readers who really over rely on this strategy and I have come to see that it’s really not good to give it much emphasis on teaching.

This is fine for people who already know how to read. In fact it’s normal. But it shouldn’t be a strategy for kids who are still learning to read. The way experts and beginners approach something is very different.

Exactly. Some of the strategies probably do have value for higher level reading skills. For example if I've heard the word "queue" said before but never seen is spelled out, I may come across the sentence "I went to the store on Christmas eve and there was a queue for checkout so long it wrapped around the building." I could use context clues to realize it means a line and possibly connect it to the word "queue" I've heard before by realizing "qu" has a "k" sound.

However how my FCPS child used the "look at the shape of the word", "look at the picture", and "guess" techniques taught even in kindergarten was to see a sentence like "Bob gave Mat a quilt" and replace "quilt" with "queen" (or some other same starting letter word that wasn't correct and didn't fit the context) or blanket/gift or some other word that might match the picture but was clearly the wrong word. Like PP's I've had to work hard to undo that training.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).

I see your point but you are arguing it too much. Of course that’s not good for a disfluent reader. But I just read with a 2nd grader who is at an 8th grade reading level and he replaced a word with a synonym because he was reading very fluently and understood what he was reading and what word would be there so it is actually a technique of good readers.

Yes though I work with struggling readers who really over rely on this strategy and I have come to see that it’s really not good to give it much emphasis on teaching.

This is fine for people who already know how to read. In fact it’s normal. But it shouldn’t be a strategy for kids who are still learning to read. The way experts and beginners approach something is very different.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).

I see your point but you are arguing it too much. Of course that’s not good for a disfluent reader. But I just read with a 2nd grader who is at an 8th grade reading level and he replaced a word with a synonym because he was reading very fluently and understood what he was reading and what word would be there so it is actually a technique of good readers.

Yes though I work with struggling readers who really over rely on this strategy and I have come to see that it’s really not good to give it much emphasis on teaching.

It's not about arguing with the teacher; it's about teachers failing to recognize signs of a potential reading problem. This wasn't a second grader reading an 8th grade level book. It was a first grader reading grade level text.

Sure, the word replacement is a sign the child is understanding/comprehending as she goes. And if a child purposefully replaces a word, that's one thing, but if a child isn't even aware of what she's doing (as is common with dyslexia), it's a definite red flag. It's a sign she's not properly processing/decoding the letters/words as written.

Anonymous wrote:
Good readers have a variety of tools, and pictures can be one of them.

Pictures are never a good tool for decoding a word, i.e. reading it.

If you are talking about determining the meaning of a word that the reader has already decoded, then pictures and context clues can be legitimate tools.

For example, if the sentence "Joe showed Bob the scales," is presented in isolation, a picture can help the reader determine the meaning of the word "scales." If the picture shows Joe playing a piano, then the sentence is talking about musical scales. If the picture shows Joe holding devices used for weighing, then the sentence is talking about the other kind of scales. That's fine.

But if the reader is stumbling over the word "scales" in the first place, using a picture to determine that the word is "scales" and not "seals" or "sacks" or "slack," is counterproductive and is not reading.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).

I see your point but you are arguing it too much. Of course that’s not good for a disfluent reader. But I just read with a 2nd grader who is at an 8th grade reading level and he replaced a word with a synonym because he was reading very fluently and understood what he was reading and what word would be there so it is actually a technique of good readers.

Yes though I work with struggling readers who really over rely on this strategy and I have come to see that it’s really not good to give it much emphasis on teaching.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Good readers do a combination of both.

Uh, no. And anyone who studies the (well-established) science of reading would understand that looking at pictures is not reading, and it's a huge disservice to children to suggest that it helps.

Good readers have a variety of tools, and pictures can be one of them.

Bad readers look at pictures. Good readers read words.

Pictures, and guessing, is not reading.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Good readers do a combination of both.

Uh, no. And anyone who studies the (well-established) science of reading would understand that looking at pictures is not reading, and it's a huge disservice to children to suggest that it helps.

Good readers have a variety of tools, and pictures can be one of them.

You really should check out some of the cognitive science on reading and check out what is happening with literacy rates thanks to a emphasis on reading strategies that aren’t decoding. The science on learning to read is surprisingly straightforward, and kids should never have to look at a picture to understand a word or it’s meaning in context.

Anonymous wrote:Hey everybody - stop saying, "Um...no" and "Uh...no." it comes across as so holier than thou.

Yes, that's the meaning that is intended to be conveyed.

Anonymous wrote:Hey everybody - stop saying, "Um...no" and "Uh...no." it comes across as so holier than thou.

This is the first time a comment like this has actually influenced me to change my behavior. You’re right and it does no good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Good readers do a combination of both.

Uh, no. And anyone who studies the (well-established) science of reading would understand that looking at pictures is not reading, and it's a huge disservice to children to suggest that it helps.

Good readers have a variety of tools, and pictures can be one of them.

Hey everybody - stop saying, "Um...no" and "Uh...no." it comes across as so holier than thou.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. My DC told me in 1st grade that "Good readers look at the pictures."

Uh what? Good readers look at the letters/words.

Sure, but why not use other resources such as the pictures? If I read a word as “bag” instead of “box” in a sentence, and it doesn’t match the picture, why wouldn’t I use that picture and switch my reading to “box”? We can still work on the word but the picture helps me make the correction.

Because if you see “box” on the page and come up with “bag”, that’s a sign that you actually can’t read, and need help seeing the letters and connecting those letters to the sounds that they make. It’s a huge red flag that you need help learning to read.

+1,000

My DD's teacher (at APS), describing how she did on an oral reading test, said: "She read this word wrong but replaced it with another word meaning the same thing so that's great."

Uhm, no, it's not. Replacing one word with another that has ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LETTERS is not great.

It was evidence she was a very smart girl with dyslexia (undiagnosed and unacknowledged by APS).