"Is a controversial curriculum ... finally coming undone?"
September 4, 2022 4:49 PM Subscribe
Jessica Winter discusses the rise and fall of "balanced literacy." "It’s startling to realize that panels of experts had to argue the case that teaching children to read involves careful attention to the relationships between sounds and letters, or enhancing their vocabulary and knowledge of various subjects. It’s stranger still that, in many school systems and for many years, this was the losing argument."
Dana Goldstein has done extensive reporting on the topic for the NY Times, discussing reading phonics, on Lucy Calkins' curriculum, and the political issues surrounding race and gender inclusivity in the curriculum
Also an interesting Time article that starts with profiling the various reading curriculums used in Oakland Unified and the NAACP petition to bring back phonics it.
Previously and Previously.
Dana Goldstein has done extensive reporting on the topic for the NY Times, discussing reading phonics, on Lucy Calkins' curriculum, and the political issues surrounding race and gender inclusivity in the curriculum
Also an interesting Time article that starts with profiling the various reading curriculums used in Oakland Unified and the NAACP petition to bring back phonics it.
Previously and Previously.
Damn, if this is how they've been teaching kids how to read recently, maybe this explains why all the GenZers are constantly asking for video tutorials instead. Learning to guess words from context is a valuable skill but so's being able to casually translate the individual letters into a sequence of sounds.
That said apparently I mostly learnt to read by myself before I was in kindergarten, and cannot remember a time I couldn't read, so what do I know about what kind of reading education works?
posted by egypturnash at 5:16 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
That said apparently I mostly learnt to read by myself before I was in kindergarten, and cannot remember a time I couldn't read, so what do I know about what kind of reading education works?
posted by egypturnash at 5:16 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
It’s startling to realize that panels of experts had to argue the case that teaching children to read involves careful attention to the relationships between sounds and letters, or enhancing their vocabulary and knowledge of various subjects. It’s stranger still that, in many school systems and for many years, this was the losing argument.
Regardless of the validity of the system, the idea that how to teach reading isn't just intuitively obvious and you will need to test and refine various systems is...not stupid.
posted by praemunire at 5:49 PM on September 4, 2022 [8 favorites]
Regardless of the validity of the system, the idea that how to teach reading isn't just intuitively obvious and you will need to test and refine various systems is...not stupid.
posted by praemunire at 5:49 PM on September 4, 2022 [8 favorites]
Do they still have reading group? God, that was torture. I had one teacher who agreed to exempt me from it and I would have walked through fire for her.
(She was the same teacher who got me a copy of Tuck Everlasting from the high school library, not knowing that some student had painstakingly changed every capital T to a capital F.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:25 PM on September 4, 2022 [29 favorites]
(She was the same teacher who got me a copy of Tuck Everlasting from the high school library, not knowing that some student had painstakingly changed every capital T to a capital F.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:25 PM on September 4, 2022 [29 favorites]
I'm not sure what the best method to teach reading is but I have a soft spot for getting to the good stuff as early as possible. I'm dyslexic and learning to read was horrible, boring and progress was slow until I could finally make it through stuff that interested me at which point I started reading for fun on my own and rapidly became literate.
Learning to guess words from context is a valuable skill but so's being able to casually translate the individual letters into a sequence of sounds.
I'm a pretty voracious reader now but I'm often unsure how to pronounce words I've only ever read.
posted by colophon at 6:29 PM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
Learning to guess words from context is a valuable skill but so's being able to casually translate the individual letters into a sequence of sounds.
I'm a pretty voracious reader now but I'm often unsure how to pronounce words I've only ever read.
posted by colophon at 6:29 PM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
I worked in an elementary school reading lab back in the early 1990s, and the fight back then was "whole word vs phonetics" and "invented spelling vs standard spelling" (for emerging readers).
All I know is, for myself, knowing how to sound things out and learning latin and greek roots as early as elementary school has been vital to my lifelong literacy, and I've been flabbergasted any time I don't see those things being taught.
posted by hippybear at 6:29 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
All I know is, for myself, knowing how to sound things out and learning latin and greek roots as early as elementary school has been vital to my lifelong literacy, and I've been flabbergasted any time I don't see those things being taught.
posted by hippybear at 6:29 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
I'm a pretty voracious reader now but I'm often unsure how to pronounce words I've only ever read.
I'm in my mid-50s and there are still a lot of words I've only read and never heard spoken.
posted by hippybear at 6:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [19 favorites]
I'm in my mid-50s and there are still a lot of words I've only read and never heard spoken.
posted by hippybear at 6:31 PM on September 4, 2022 [19 favorites]
egypturnash: "Damn, if this is how they've been teaching kids how to read recently, maybe this explains why all the GenZers are constantly asking for video tutorials instead."
Nah, I think that's purely coincidental. The Calkins approach isn't used here (not an English-speaking country), and my GenZ kids also go to YouTube for tutorials. It's just a global cultural shift led by the greater use of user-generated video content.
posted by Bugbread at 6:43 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
Nah, I think that's purely coincidental. The Calkins approach isn't used here (not an English-speaking country), and my GenZ kids also go to YouTube for tutorials. It's just a global cultural shift led by the greater use of user-generated video content.
posted by Bugbread at 6:43 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
Video tutorials are generally a very good way to learn most subjects and often much better than their written counterparts.
posted by argybarg at 6:54 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by argybarg at 6:54 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also, “kids sound out words as a way of figuring them out” does not directly translate to “adult-led instruction in how to sound out words is effective.” Even if it does, I wish people would be clear about the distinction between the two.
Learning and teaching are both mysterious and often confound what seem to be self-evident conclusions.
posted by argybarg at 6:57 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Learning and teaching are both mysterious and often confound what seem to be self-evident conclusions.
posted by argybarg at 6:57 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
colophon: "I'm a pretty voracious reader now but I'm often unsure how to pronounce words I've only ever read."
That's pretty common for everyone, even if they're not dyslexic. I remember an embarrassing discussion when I was in junior high in which a college student was speaking with a group of us kids about an organization that was opposed to (among other things) "torcher," and they kept using that word until I eventually raised my hand and said "What is torcher?" and they responded something like "Well, that's a good question, and the lines can be kind of gray between what does and doesn't constitute torcher" and they went on for a few more seconds before I said "No, I mean, what does the word torcher actually mean? I don't know that word."
(Turns out that's how you pronounce "torture," which I had never heard said out loud).
My dad has a similar story with entering college and asking someone about the "surriculum," having never heard "curriculum" out loud.
But I think it's more instructive to notice how many times we guess right. Lots of subconscious stuff, too, unless you've been taught the rules-of-thumb, like how you'd probably be able to guess the difference in the pronunciations of (made up) words "quin" and "quine" because you've either been taught or have subconsciously figured out that an e at the end of the word usually makes the preceding vowel sound like a long vowel. Knowing phonics doesn't guarantee that you can read a word, but it has an extremely high success rate.
posted by Bugbread at 6:58 PM on September 4, 2022 [13 favorites]
That's pretty common for everyone, even if they're not dyslexic. I remember an embarrassing discussion when I was in junior high in which a college student was speaking with a group of us kids about an organization that was opposed to (among other things) "torcher," and they kept using that word until I eventually raised my hand and said "What is torcher?" and they responded something like "Well, that's a good question, and the lines can be kind of gray between what does and doesn't constitute torcher" and they went on for a few more seconds before I said "No, I mean, what does the word torcher actually mean? I don't know that word."
(Turns out that's how you pronounce "torture," which I had never heard said out loud).
My dad has a similar story with entering college and asking someone about the "surriculum," having never heard "curriculum" out loud.
But I think it's more instructive to notice how many times we guess right. Lots of subconscious stuff, too, unless you've been taught the rules-of-thumb, like how you'd probably be able to guess the difference in the pronunciations of (made up) words "quin" and "quine" because you've either been taught or have subconsciously figured out that an e at the end of the word usually makes the preceding vowel sound like a long vowel. Knowing phonics doesn't guarantee that you can read a word, but it has an extremely high success rate.
posted by Bugbread at 6:58 PM on September 4, 2022 [13 favorites]
That said apparently I mostly learnt to read by myself before I was in kindergarten, and cannot remember a time I couldn't read, so what do I know about what kind of reading education works?
I am guessing that on a text-based website, those of us who learned this way might be over-represented. I can slightly remember before I could read, but as far as I know I just taught myself without actual instruction. By the time I was in school, I could read already and the reading classes were torture (or torcher, indeed).
It also meant I had a much larger reading vocabulary than I did knowing how to actually pronounce words, which made for some embarrassing goofs and still catches me sometimes.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:10 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
I am guessing that on a text-based website, those of us who learned this way might be over-represented. I can slightly remember before I could read, but as far as I know I just taught myself without actual instruction. By the time I was in school, I could read already and the reading classes were torture (or torcher, indeed).
It also meant I had a much larger reading vocabulary than I did knowing how to actually pronounce words, which made for some embarrassing goofs and still catches me sometimes.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:10 PM on September 4, 2022 [6 favorites]
"It also meant I had a much larger reading vocabulary than I did knowing how to actually pronounce words, which made for some embarrassing goofs and still catches me sometimes."
This is a sign of being well-read and an autodidact, and when I was teaching community college, I always made that point early on in the semester, and said, "Take your best shot. If I know how to pronounce it, I'll tell you, and if I don't, we'll see if google knows, and if it doesn't, we'll just guess. But congratulations on not knowing how to pronounce words you know how to use! It means you're a voracious reader and great at teaching yourself new ideas!"
Like, it's a little embarrassing when you do it (still writhing over my public mispronunciation of "monotonous" in 7th grade, personally). But we should all embrace that it means that you read A LOT and you read complex stuff outside your personal world, and we should celebrate when someone pronounces a word wrong because it's a sign they're smart, curious people who are eager to learn about the world. And 99% of the time, if you know how the word is pronounced, they're relieved to finally find out so they can feel more confident using it in the future. We shouldn't be embarrassed when we do it, and we shouldn't treat it as a misstep when other people do! It is a 100% normal function of being a curious person in a literate society, and we should be excited we can help each other with words.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:39 PM on September 4, 2022 [60 favorites]
This is a sign of being well-read and an autodidact, and when I was teaching community college, I always made that point early on in the semester, and said, "Take your best shot. If I know how to pronounce it, I'll tell you, and if I don't, we'll see if google knows, and if it doesn't, we'll just guess. But congratulations on not knowing how to pronounce words you know how to use! It means you're a voracious reader and great at teaching yourself new ideas!"
Like, it's a little embarrassing when you do it (still writhing over my public mispronunciation of "monotonous" in 7th grade, personally). But we should all embrace that it means that you read A LOT and you read complex stuff outside your personal world, and we should celebrate when someone pronounces a word wrong because it's a sign they're smart, curious people who are eager to learn about the world. And 99% of the time, if you know how the word is pronounced, they're relieved to finally find out so they can feel more confident using it in the future. We shouldn't be embarrassed when we do it, and we shouldn't treat it as a misstep when other people do! It is a 100% normal function of being a curious person in a literate society, and we should be excited we can help each other with words.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:39 PM on September 4, 2022 [60 favorites]
I cannot remember learning to read because I shocked my parents and my doctor just shy of my third birthday reading a new book in the lobby - my parents had thought I’d memorized the ones at home. That makes me an anti-expert by personal experience. As it turns out, I read shapes really well but I do therefore have trouble reading carefully.
I did however work in a learning centre for two years, and have done volunteer reading buddies and tutoring, and have two kids that learned to read in Montessori, and I can therefore confidently say anecdotally that…kids are different and it’s possible you need a bunch of strategies. Some kids twig to phonics and sound things out. Other kids need the security of some memorized words. One of my children got so stressed out by “guessing in context” that he stopped reading at school until his home reading put him above any unphonetic words. Another child (not mine) threw a chair at me over the word “light” which just proved phonics is a lie. I personally think phonics is a great place to start because other than a whack of crazy words, kids can grow their confidence step by step. But kids learn non- phonetic systems too.
A caring, highly trained, well-suppported professional teacher who doesn’t have to work an extra job to pay bills due to a pitiful salary, with good books and a reasonable-sized class (<20, say) should be trusted to work it out.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:46 PM on September 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
I did however work in a learning centre for two years, and have done volunteer reading buddies and tutoring, and have two kids that learned to read in Montessori, and I can therefore confidently say anecdotally that…kids are different and it’s possible you need a bunch of strategies. Some kids twig to phonics and sound things out. Other kids need the security of some memorized words. One of my children got so stressed out by “guessing in context” that he stopped reading at school until his home reading put him above any unphonetic words. Another child (not mine) threw a chair at me over the word “light” which just proved phonics is a lie. I personally think phonics is a great place to start because other than a whack of crazy words, kids can grow their confidence step by step. But kids learn non- phonetic systems too.
A caring, highly trained, well-suppported professional teacher who doesn’t have to work an extra job to pay bills due to a pitiful salary, with good books and a reasonable-sized class (<20, say) should be trusted to work it out.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:46 PM on September 4, 2022 [15 favorites]
I don't think I would have written this article this way. It's front-loaded with a very long "Lucy Calkins is clueless and out of touch and her method is wishful, softheaded "creative" nonsense that underserves marginalized children" but if you actually read to the last bit, you get first this:
But the reading wars in schools and in the public sphere are very much ongoing, and their cycles, predictable as they are, may persist because they are a proxy for other, more intractable dilemmas. Bryce cited the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which began collecting data on student achievement in various areas of study in 1969. Literacy results, she said, “seem fairly stable, no matter what curriculum is in place. If you look at the data between 1992 and 2019, white and Asian students outperform Black and Latinx and Native American students, and the question is why. I don’t think we can answer the question about children’s progress in school by looking at curriculum per se.” What investigators must examine more closely, Bryce said, “are the social inequities that we have persisting in society.”
and then the conclusion that actually people are against the Calkins method because dumping the Calkins method seems like an easy fix to intractable problems of underfunding, racism, huge class sizes, etc.
The article spends a lot of time suggesting that there are a bunch of dumb, maybe-liberal (too much talking about feelings and characters, too much student-led stuff and everyone knows that non-punitive student led stuff isn't real learning, just liberal bullshit) teachers who don't want to do the Serious Business of phonics drills and that's why Johnny can't read, which is exactly the same anti-teacher message we always get, and then it changes gears at the end when a lot of people will have stopped reading to say the opposite.
I have no real opinion about how best to teach kids to read because I was an early, fast reader in a home full of books. I surmise that in small, well-funded classes experienced teachers will be able to adjust their methods as they go since, rather than being clueless wishful thinking liberals, most teachers do in fact try, you know, to teach.
posted by Frowner at 7:58 PM on September 4, 2022 [43 favorites]
But the reading wars in schools and in the public sphere are very much ongoing, and their cycles, predictable as they are, may persist because they are a proxy for other, more intractable dilemmas. Bryce cited the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which began collecting data on student achievement in various areas of study in 1969. Literacy results, she said, “seem fairly stable, no matter what curriculum is in place. If you look at the data between 1992 and 2019, white and Asian students outperform Black and Latinx and Native American students, and the question is why. I don’t think we can answer the question about children’s progress in school by looking at curriculum per se.” What investigators must examine more closely, Bryce said, “are the social inequities that we have persisting in society.”
and then the conclusion that actually people are against the Calkins method because dumping the Calkins method seems like an easy fix to intractable problems of underfunding, racism, huge class sizes, etc.
The article spends a lot of time suggesting that there are a bunch of dumb, maybe-liberal (too much talking about feelings and characters, too much student-led stuff and everyone knows that non-punitive student led stuff isn't real learning, just liberal bullshit) teachers who don't want to do the Serious Business of phonics drills and that's why Johnny can't read, which is exactly the same anti-teacher message we always get, and then it changes gears at the end when a lot of people will have stopped reading to say the opposite.
I have no real opinion about how best to teach kids to read because I was an early, fast reader in a home full of books. I surmise that in small, well-funded classes experienced teachers will be able to adjust their methods as they go since, rather than being clueless wishful thinking liberals, most teachers do in fact try, you know, to teach.
posted by Frowner at 7:58 PM on September 4, 2022 [43 favorites]
For virtually everything related to child development, there are multiple competing techniques and it seems intuitive that if one of the techniques were actually much better than the others, it would have won out already and there wouldn't be competing techniques. For example, there is almost no debate about safe ways to put kids to sleep and the incidence of SIDS has shown a sharp decrease. I say "almost no" primarily because there's still a debate about whether cosleeping is safe, and it seems like it comes down to different things that are all called cosleeping and a variety of confounding factors (eg, how exactly the kid is held in/near the bed). I imagine reading is the same way - most kids eventually learn to read well enough and the technique doesn't matter much, and for the cases where it does matter, it's probably not well-understood enough to be done properly at scale.
posted by inkyz at 8:27 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by inkyz at 8:27 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
How Best To Teach Kids To Read:
Have an adult who sits with them while they try to read, who shows caring about the kid, and who will help the kids with problem words. If kids aren't picking up reading on their own, it's just the amount of adult support they get while they struggle until they get it that is important.
I worked in an elementary school reading lab for 5 years and that's the lesson I learned. Kids either get it or they don't, and up until they get it, it's the amount of adult caring about whether they get it or not that matters most. The strategy is unimportant. For struggling kids, it's the adult attention to their struggles that makes the difference.
posted by hippybear at 8:32 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
Have an adult who sits with them while they try to read, who shows caring about the kid, and who will help the kids with problem words. If kids aren't picking up reading on their own, it's just the amount of adult support they get while they struggle until they get it that is important.
I worked in an elementary school reading lab for 5 years and that's the lesson I learned. Kids either get it or they don't, and up until they get it, it's the amount of adult caring about whether they get it or not that matters most. The strategy is unimportant. For struggling kids, it's the adult attention to their struggles that makes the difference.
posted by hippybear at 8:32 PM on September 4, 2022 [20 favorites]
Eyebrows McGee, I'd like your comment ten times if I could. I used to teach fifth grade and had the exact same attitude. And it's often such a foreign concept to so many kids, that when you teach them that idea, they light up, because they realize that a lack of one kind of knowledge might simply mean a superabundance of another kind.
posted by nushustu at 8:36 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by nushustu at 8:36 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
The problem with 'kids will eventually figure it out' is that they would likely not catch up. Foundational reading skills aren't taught in middle and high schools. If your reading is laborious, you're not learning the content you need.
I can't recall offhand where I saw this, but kids that are trained in the three-cueing method don't learn new vocabulary from reading. Imagine that you've been taught to look at the pictures and guess what the unknown word 'hog' might be. There's a picture of a pig pen. You'd probably say pig. A kid that was taught to decode would have a much better chance of figuring out that new word.
Closing the word gap is a significant challenge. We can't ignore or wait for it to somehow resolve itself.
posted by Trifling at 8:45 PM on September 4, 2022 [13 favorites]
I can't recall offhand where I saw this, but kids that are trained in the three-cueing method don't learn new vocabulary from reading. Imagine that you've been taught to look at the pictures and guess what the unknown word 'hog' might be. There's a picture of a pig pen. You'd probably say pig. A kid that was taught to decode would have a much better chance of figuring out that new word.
Closing the word gap is a significant challenge. We can't ignore or wait for it to somehow resolve itself.
posted by Trifling at 8:45 PM on September 4, 2022 [13 favorites]
I have a lot of thoughts on this specifically, but also more generally I'm a bit surprised that children are expected to learn to read in kindergarten. Much like how there is a window for language acquisition between 0-3 years-old, I feel like the expectation should be that kids should enter kindergarten knowing how to read and if they don't they will spend their lifetime behind. This is not based on research at all and I'm certain there are 3 million anecdotes in either direction, so I'm curious if any wise me-fite would have access to or knowledge of research about an early literacy window similar to what we see for language acquisition. How it relates to the article? I'm curious if the issue is not the approach to literacy in elementary school, but rather that we are starting far too late.
posted by Toddles at 8:59 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Toddles at 8:59 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I remember being in 10th grade English class and and mispronouncing the word "disciple" as "disk-i-pull". I got a rather surprised look from the teacher. That's "dis-eye-pull", he said. "Oh, THAT's what that word is!" I said. And I got an even more surprised look...
My parents were well-educated and generally I knew how to pronounce most words that I'd encountered only written, but unlike a lot of my peers we were not at all religious. I don't think I'd ever seen "disciple" in written form before.
The first non-picture book I remember reading was "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". I'm not sure how kids learn to read but having something that engages your attention is pretty helpful, I think.
posted by dougfelt at 9:06 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
My parents were well-educated and generally I knew how to pronounce most words that I'd encountered only written, but unlike a lot of my peers we were not at all religious. I don't think I'd ever seen "disciple" in written form before.
The first non-picture book I remember reading was "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". I'm not sure how kids learn to read but having something that engages your attention is pretty helpful, I think.
posted by dougfelt at 9:06 PM on September 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Toddles: "I feel like the expectation should be that kids should enter kindergarten knowing how to read and if they don't they will spend their lifetime behind. This is not based on research at all and I'm certain there are 3 million anecdotes in either direction"
I don't have research, only more anecdote, but the idea that you generally learn to read in kindergarten doesn't seem at all surprising or unusual to me. I knew how to read a little before kindergarten. Not books, but words. I went to kindergarten for a very short time, and then they recommended that I skip kindergarten and go straight to first grade. There was a test to see skipping kindergarten would be okay, and the only thing I can remember about the test was that there were pictures of a dog, a cat, a cow, etc. and the words "cow, cat, dog" (etc.) and I had to connect the word to the corresponding picture.
That (in the late 1970s) was the threshold for "you already know what you're supposed to learn in this grade". I can't speak to things like if you "should" already know how to read by kindergarten, but, at least in the late 70s, not knowing how to read when entering kindergarten was typical and expected for people in a middle-class suburb.
posted by Bugbread at 9:10 PM on September 4, 2022
I don't have research, only more anecdote, but the idea that you generally learn to read in kindergarten doesn't seem at all surprising or unusual to me. I knew how to read a little before kindergarten. Not books, but words. I went to kindergarten for a very short time, and then they recommended that I skip kindergarten and go straight to first grade. There was a test to see skipping kindergarten would be okay, and the only thing I can remember about the test was that there were pictures of a dog, a cat, a cow, etc. and the words "cow, cat, dog" (etc.) and I had to connect the word to the corresponding picture.
That (in the late 1970s) was the threshold for "you already know what you're supposed to learn in this grade". I can't speak to things like if you "should" already know how to read by kindergarten, but, at least in the late 70s, not knowing how to read when entering kindergarten was typical and expected for people in a middle-class suburb.
posted by Bugbread at 9:10 PM on September 4, 2022
But we should all embrace that it means that you read A LOT and you read complex stuff outside your personal world, and we should celebrate when someone pronounces a word wrong because it's a sign they're smart, curious people who are eager to learn about the world.
I mean, yes, of course it is great when someone is trying. But personally, that happened a lot to me because I liked to read, but I didn't balance it with, say, reading out loud to an audience who would point out incorrect pronunciations, or receiving the kind of classical education where you learn Greek and Latin (and hence, roots of English words which leads you to some of the underlying patterns of English pronunciation). I understood words in context and intuitively, but not necessarily in other ways.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:11 PM on September 4, 2022
I mean, yes, of course it is great when someone is trying. But personally, that happened a lot to me because I liked to read, but I didn't balance it with, say, reading out loud to an audience who would point out incorrect pronunciations, or receiving the kind of classical education where you learn Greek and Latin (and hence, roots of English words which leads you to some of the underlying patterns of English pronunciation). I understood words in context and intuitively, but not necessarily in other ways.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:11 PM on September 4, 2022
Like, it's a little embarrassing when you do it (still writhing over my public mispronunciation of "monotonous" in 7th grade, personally).
My mom used to make fun of me for having mispronounced "arrogant" around that age, but then I said, "Well, whose house was it I grew up in where I didn't hear that word?"
It's a wonder I was not murdered as a tween.
I feel like the expectation should be that kids should enter kindergarten knowing how to read and if they don't they will spend their lifetime behind.
Gen-Xer here: that I and most of my siblings entered kindergarten knowing how to read was somewhat unusual at the time. Very very much not the case that historically children would be reading Western scripts by age five and prior to entry into formal education. (No idea how it works for other scripts.) The heavy academicization of kindergarten is a recent development.
Also, my sibling who didn't know how to read in kindergarten? She's doing just fine.
posted by praemunire at 9:13 PM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
My mom used to make fun of me for having mispronounced "arrogant" around that age, but then I said, "Well, whose house was it I grew up in where I didn't hear that word?"
It's a wonder I was not murdered as a tween.
I feel like the expectation should be that kids should enter kindergarten knowing how to read and if they don't they will spend their lifetime behind.
Gen-Xer here: that I and most of my siblings entered kindergarten knowing how to read was somewhat unusual at the time. Very very much not the case that historically children would be reading Western scripts by age five and prior to entry into formal education. (No idea how it works for other scripts.) The heavy academicization of kindergarten is a recent development.
Also, my sibling who didn't know how to read in kindergarten? She's doing just fine.
posted by praemunire at 9:13 PM on September 4, 2022 [9 favorites]
I learned to read probably by three from a set of the hooked on phonics book/records. I can't imagine not being able to read and write pre-preschool/kindergarten. I don't really remember any of the favorite children's books, don't think I ever read them or had them read to me.
posted by zengargoyle at 9:20 PM on September 4, 2022
posted by zengargoyle at 9:20 PM on September 4, 2022
Gen-Xer here: that I and most of my siblings entered kindergarten knowing how to read was somewhat unusual at the time
Early Gen-Xer here. I could spell my name (just*) upon entering Kindergarten, which I think was typical. But then I had mostly cracked deciphering sentences in the summer between K and 1st grade and wound up being ahead of my peers that year.
I remember the series we used (Jack & Janet) initially showed who was speaking with a picture, and only later used their written names. I suppose because the "Janet says, ... " format was considered an unnecessary distraction early on.
*TBF, it's a long one.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:41 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
Early Gen-Xer here. I could spell my name (just*) upon entering Kindergarten, which I think was typical. But then I had mostly cracked deciphering sentences in the summer between K and 1st grade and wound up being ahead of my peers that year.
I remember the series we used (Jack & Janet) initially showed who was speaking with a picture, and only later used their written names. I suppose because the "Janet says, ... " format was considered an unnecessary distraction early on.
*TBF, it's a long one.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:41 PM on September 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
praemunire: " Very very much not the case that historically children would be reading Western scripts by age five and prior to entry into formal education. (No idea how it works for other scripts.)"
For Japanese, the window is big, perhaps because there's no one-year "kindergarten" to create a clear benchmark. Most kids go to a three-year long "preschool" from age 3 to 6 or nursery school from age whatever-to-6. By the time you enter 1st grade, it would be very unusual for you not to know the Japanese "alphabets" (hiragana and katakana), but there's a lot of variation between kids who learn in their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd years of nursery school.
They still teach hiragana and katakana in 1st grade in elementary school, because that's when compulsory education starts, but the impression I get is that since most kids already know them, it's kind of a "let's review" thing with the idea that 1) any kids who don't know them yet can learn them at this point, 2) any kids who have learned them but are still shaky can get some practice/review and 3) any kids who know them well can improve their handwriting.
posted by Bugbread at 9:46 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
For Japanese, the window is big, perhaps because there's no one-year "kindergarten" to create a clear benchmark. Most kids go to a three-year long "preschool" from age 3 to 6 or nursery school from age whatever-to-6. By the time you enter 1st grade, it would be very unusual for you not to know the Japanese "alphabets" (hiragana and katakana), but there's a lot of variation between kids who learn in their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd years of nursery school.
They still teach hiragana and katakana in 1st grade in elementary school, because that's when compulsory education starts, but the impression I get is that since most kids already know them, it's kind of a "let's review" thing with the idea that 1) any kids who don't know them yet can learn them at this point, 2) any kids who have learned them but are still shaky can get some practice/review and 3) any kids who know them well can improve their handwriting.
posted by Bugbread at 9:46 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't remember learning to read but had the typical hyperlexic experience of figuring it out on my own and surprising grownups with my reading prowess. But I've taught two of my three kids to read at home with a phonics-centric approach, largely because I read articles about modern reading pedagogy and those articles upset me, so I wanted to make sure mine were reading before they started school. I'm looking forward to teaching #3 when she's a bit older, since in my experience parenting gets a billion times easier when your response to "I'm bored and nobody wants to play" becomes "go read a book then".
Having been through this process with two kids, I have no idea how you'd try to teach a whole classroom phonics. It requires so much individual attention and persistence. And young kids really can only focus for so long and the focus they need is so intense. My two could both read music before they could read words so they were at least intuitively familiar with the idea that written symbols could be instructions for sounds. But a schoolteacher can't assume anyone in class even groks that.
So I get why a "context clues" approach might feel better in a classroom situation; it seems like it can be more collaborative and constructive, and less about a bunch of kids sitting around bored as one kid tries to sound stuff out. Buuuut it's pretty important to me that my kids learn to sound out words! So I teach them at home. For most everything else I trust school to get it right but reading is so fundamental I just can't leave it to chance.
posted by potrzebie at 10:03 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
Having been through this process with two kids, I have no idea how you'd try to teach a whole classroom phonics. It requires so much individual attention and persistence. And young kids really can only focus for so long and the focus they need is so intense. My two could both read music before they could read words so they were at least intuitively familiar with the idea that written symbols could be instructions for sounds. But a schoolteacher can't assume anyone in class even groks that.
So I get why a "context clues" approach might feel better in a classroom situation; it seems like it can be more collaborative and constructive, and less about a bunch of kids sitting around bored as one kid tries to sound stuff out. Buuuut it's pretty important to me that my kids learn to sound out words! So I teach them at home. For most everything else I trust school to get it right but reading is so fundamental I just can't leave it to chance.
posted by potrzebie at 10:03 PM on September 4, 2022 [3 favorites]
I was struck by separate quotes that this seems to be a system that works best with both strong students (meaning exposed to reading at home) and with strong teachers. It must be super rewarding for a teacher to watch students get actually excited about a book they are reading in class instead of drilling them.
It must be really tempting to generalize, from that, that you have a good system. Especially in a big class where you just don't have time to try alternate approaches with the weaker students, and they can sort of fake it to get by.
posted by mark k at 10:38 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
It must be really tempting to generalize, from that, that you have a good system. Especially in a big class where you just don't have time to try alternate approaches with the weaker students, and they can sort of fake it to get by.
posted by mark k at 10:38 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
I remember learning how to read. I remember being corrected that it wasn't mott-her but mother (and being absolutely mortified). I remember doing reading recovery with a lovely lady. But a really striking memory is when reading clicked.
how to One day I was looking at a reader and suddenly there was a change: the words began to move quicker and quicker and then sped up to a blur and instead of decoding I was reading.
It's annoying how reading instruction has become political - here in Australia phonics is pushed by the conservatives- hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
posted by freethefeet at 11:08 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
how to One day I was looking at a reader and suddenly there was a change: the words began to move quicker and quicker and then sped up to a blur and instead of decoding I was reading.
It's annoying how reading instruction has become political - here in Australia phonics is pushed by the conservatives- hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
posted by freethefeet at 11:08 PM on September 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
The first time I encountered the idea that not everyone was taught phonics in school like I was was when I started volunteering with an adult literacy program in DC. The whole program was based on phonics. Our adult students (the majority of whom grew up victims of poverty and racism and had spent time in prison) went from sounding out individual letters all the way to reading novels. It worked. The exceptions have to be memorized (and in English there are an awful lot), but after having learned to competently sound out enough words to read quite a lot, students have the confidence to deal with the exceptions. I feel their lives would have been a lot different if they'd have been exposed to phonics as kids. Having a system to do a thing on your own helps a lot when the adults around you don't give you the attention you need.
The way it was explained to me by the literacy program was that not everyone can just pick up reading effortlessly, in the same way that not everyone can learn to read music easily. But there's no stigma to spending time practicing associating the sound of an A sharp with where the note lies on the page the way there is with needing to practice sounding out words while learning to read.
Recently I've been reminded again that not everyone learns phonics in school as my partner and I try to learn Dutch, a language which has similar phonics rules to English (long and short vowels that are controlled by consonants in the same way), and that is maybe 90% spelled like it sounds (they don't have spelling bees here because there would be no point). Except that long vowels are often repeated (CVVC) so they're easier to spot unless the trailing consonant is missing (CV) or there is only one in consonant in between (CVCV), and that's where the confusion can set in if you didn't learn the phonics rules for English growing up. So he'll often mispronounce words and I'm like, "no, that vowel is long" and he's like, "but how do you know that??" and I'm like, "that one consonant isn't enough to shorten that first vowel" and he rolls his eyes because it turns out it's hard to teach phonics to a middle-aged highly-literate (in their first language) adult.
posted by antinomia at 11:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [10 favorites]
The way it was explained to me by the literacy program was that not everyone can just pick up reading effortlessly, in the same way that not everyone can learn to read music easily. But there's no stigma to spending time practicing associating the sound of an A sharp with where the note lies on the page the way there is with needing to practice sounding out words while learning to read.
Recently I've been reminded again that not everyone learns phonics in school as my partner and I try to learn Dutch, a language which has similar phonics rules to English (long and short vowels that are controlled by consonants in the same way), and that is maybe 90% spelled like it sounds (they don't have spelling bees here because there would be no point). Except that long vowels are often repeated (CVVC) so they're easier to spot unless the trailing consonant is missing (CV) or there is only one in consonant in between (CVCV), and that's where the confusion can set in if you didn't learn the phonics rules for English growing up. So he'll often mispronounce words and I'm like, "no, that vowel is long" and he's like, "but how do you know that??" and I'm like, "that one consonant isn't enough to shorten that first vowel" and he rolls his eyes because it turns out it's hard to teach phonics to a middle-aged highly-literate (in their first language) adult.
posted by antinomia at 11:51 PM on September 4, 2022 [10 favorites]
I was 8 when I learned to read — that is, I was 8 when I realized I had somehow learned to read because I heard a voice in my head saying what it took me more than an hour to realize were the words in the speech bubbles of a Classic Comics book I was paging through (The Prisoner of Zenda FWIW). It required at least several days after that to make the voice reliable and louder, because it was quite faint and hard to understand at first. I’m not sure I actually had an inner voice up until then. I don’t remember one before that, and I definitely had one after. That voice also became the voice of my conscience, and it’s no coincidence that the 3rd grade saw the last of the really violent fights I’d gotten in at least several times a year from age 5 onward. That’s one reason I'm inclined to see the invention of writing and the promulgation of literacy as very important for the development of civilized morality and behavior .
How long I 'knew' how to read before that I don’t know, and I’ve often wondered how and why that could have happened. My most recent thoughts revolve around the fact that I had terrible recurrent bouts of strep throat accompanied by high fever multiple times a year until my tonsillectomy in mid 2nd grade, after which they stopped completely, but that’s another story
posted by jamjam at 12:09 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
How long I 'knew' how to read before that I don’t know, and I’ve often wondered how and why that could have happened. My most recent thoughts revolve around the fact that I had terrible recurrent bouts of strep throat accompanied by high fever multiple times a year until my tonsillectomy in mid 2nd grade, after which they stopped completely, but that’s another story
posted by jamjam at 12:09 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
warriorqueen: kids are different and it’s possible you need a bunch of strategies
Frowner: in small, well-funded classes experienced teachers will be able to adjust their methods as they go
Inkyz: if one of the techniques were actually much better than the others, it would have won out already and there wouldn't be competing techniques
Our kids #2 and #3 were home educated on the unschooling end of that spectrum. Both taught themselves to read just after they turned 6. There were A Lot of 9,10,11 year olds in our network who couldn't read. They all learned that skill around that time because some interest lit them up [fashion, cars, gaming] that required reading and . . . they learned to read. We reckoned that the preferred time for learning to read was a normal distribution and home ed allowed a bunch of kids on the late end of the bell-curve to learn age appropriately. In school reading the next pages of The Book is a key strategy where one adult was responsible for 30 kids so it has to be learned in Year One.
Also, some kids are good at patterns and some have well tuned ears and it would be wonderful if innate skills could be matched to method of teaching.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:39 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Frowner: in small, well-funded classes experienced teachers will be able to adjust their methods as they go
Inkyz: if one of the techniques were actually much better than the others, it would have won out already and there wouldn't be competing techniques
Our kids #2 and #3 were home educated on the unschooling end of that spectrum. Both taught themselves to read just after they turned 6. There were A Lot of 9,10,11 year olds in our network who couldn't read. They all learned that skill around that time because some interest lit them up [fashion, cars, gaming] that required reading and . . . they learned to read. We reckoned that the preferred time for learning to read was a normal distribution and home ed allowed a bunch of kids on the late end of the bell-curve to learn age appropriately. In school reading the next pages of The Book is a key strategy where one adult was responsible for 30 kids so it has to be learned in Year One.
Also, some kids are good at patterns and some have well tuned ears and it would be wonderful if innate skills could be matched to method of teaching.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:39 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
I was very good at pattern matching and memorization. Subsequently I finished (the English-medium) kindergarten not knowing I was supposed to be reading. This is after my parents assiduously encouraged me to watch Sesame Street and CTW and we had regular Ladybird book-reading sessions at school.
Anyway, primary 1 in a government school means my language medium is Malay. I'm pretty sure it was a month before a classmate taught me I had to sound out the syllables during reading hour. Not bad for an hour's work, I was just speeding along. It turns out that Malay, with its extremely regular spelling in Latin letters, was what I needed.
BTW, a real standard in "words we're surprisingly bad at guessing the pronunciation of" for non-anglo British c'wealthers is awry.
posted by cendawanita at 4:14 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Anyway, primary 1 in a government school means my language medium is Malay. I'm pretty sure it was a month before a classmate taught me I had to sound out the syllables during reading hour. Not bad for an hour's work, I was just speeding along. It turns out that Malay, with its extremely regular spelling in Latin letters, was what I needed.
BTW, a real standard in "words we're surprisingly bad at guessing the pronunciation of" for non-anglo British c'wealthers is awry.
posted by cendawanita at 4:14 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
As a 60-something, I entered elementary school during the big 60s wave of phonics education, and I am eternally grateful for it. Reading has always been an easy, natural thing for me from early-on, and, to this day, it’s simply effortlessly, enjoyable.
Just don’t ask me to diagram a sentence. I will hurt you.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, elementary school was also the era of “New Math” which embedded a lifelong terror of math of any sort. Heck, I tremble at having to keep score in euchre.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:01 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
Just don’t ask me to diagram a sentence. I will hurt you.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, elementary school was also the era of “New Math” which embedded a lifelong terror of math of any sort. Heck, I tremble at having to keep score in euchre.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:01 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
argybarg: Video tutorials are generally a very good way to learn most subjects and often much better than their written counterparts.
For many people, yes. For many others, they don't work well at all. This is far from universal.
Some of us learn best or easiest from written words, for others that's images, video or spoken words. Or a combination of these.
Personally I always look for a written tutorial, and if available one that has pictures. I really dislike not being able to take instructions in at my own speed.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:27 AM on September 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
For many people, yes. For many others, they don't work well at all. This is far from universal.
Some of us learn best or easiest from written words, for others that's images, video or spoken words. Or a combination of these.
Personally I always look for a written tutorial, and if available one that has pictures. I really dislike not being able to take instructions in at my own speed.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:27 AM on September 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
This review article on hyperlexia and the brain pathways used in reading seems relevant to this conversation.
posted by heatherlogan at 5:55 AM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by heatherlogan at 5:55 AM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Having taken a Lucy Calkins week-long intensive workshop, having taught first grade reading and middle school English, and having a master's in elementary education and a Ph.D. in research on teaching, I can say that this whole argument is misguided and polarized. It's not one method versus another. It's a constellation of methods requiring professional teaching and considerable knowledge of how to differentiate instruction for different needs. It's not either/or. It's both/and.
I was taught to read by my mother using an early phonics text (Rudolf Flesch, Teaching Johnny to Read) but that's how, not why, I learned to read. I learned because my highly literate family was constantly reading, talking, and using word-play (and reciting poetry off the cuff, and arguiing about ideas). I was learning to read by guessing at meaning, and using connections, and playing, because that's what we did in my family.
Calkins is an example of trying to introduce that incredibly necessary literate environment into the classroom. It doesn't work completely because nothing works completely.
My own kid didn't learn to decode until the end of first grade, but as I've said to them many times, they were already reading--books surrounded them, they breathed books, and the decoding came later. They had a perfect verbal SAT and now they have a Ph.D. in English, even though they didn't learn to decode until later than many.
Children who learn to read our complex, baffling, difficult (and substantially non-phonetic) English language using phonics alone often turn into halting, uncomprehending readers who give up reading around third grade or so. I would argue that our problem with adult iilliteracy is not that no one was ever taught to read. Almost all students learn to decode pretty much by second grade. Then they just give it up. They don't have any reason to continue. Children who never learn to decode likewise have problems - I have known enriched, privileged kids who didn't actually know how to decode fluently until they were in middle school, because they were smart enough and motivated enough to fake it.
Everybody hates reading groups but if they are adaptive, varied, and able to be changed, are accompanied by whole group instruction and brief one-to-one work, they are effective for a teacher who can have anywhere from 18 to 33 students and limited time. Because we were students for so long, we think we understand school; I can't tell you how many times beginning teachers have had to say, "Now I understand why they did that," when they start teaching.
The effort to differentiate--to reach all the students where they are--is an intensive undertaking. Our societal emphasis on testing has stolen a huge amount of time from the kind of rich and sophisticated reading instruction that makes all students comfortable. Also, it's harder and harder to get the motivated, skilled teachers we need because the job pays poorly and is a focus of absolute venom and blame in the US,. The profession also attracts people who were "good students" (compliant, orderly, organized, linear) and therefore don't always appreciate the many difficulties most students encounter in the normal course of learning to read.
Finally, from my own research (a qualitative study of elementary classroom teachers) and my own experience (a college educator of teachers who has spent a huge amount of time in many classrooms), I can say that any imposed curriculum is going to be interpreted, modified, and changed beyond recognition (even if and especially if it's tightly scripted) in accordance with what teachers actually believe. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Teachers teach what they believe.
Reading instruction would be better if we treated the teaching job as the highly technical, knowledge-based profession it should be instead of what it's treated like in the US, instead of trying to package curricula so they're teacher-proof. The Calkins approach, oddly enough, is partly an attempt to do just that, but as I just said in the previous paragraph, you can't change teaching by imposing an approach from outside.
posted by Peach at 5:57 AM on September 5, 2022 [47 favorites]
I was taught to read by my mother using an early phonics text (Rudolf Flesch, Teaching Johnny to Read) but that's how, not why, I learned to read. I learned because my highly literate family was constantly reading, talking, and using word-play (and reciting poetry off the cuff, and arguiing about ideas). I was learning to read by guessing at meaning, and using connections, and playing, because that's what we did in my family.
Calkins is an example of trying to introduce that incredibly necessary literate environment into the classroom. It doesn't work completely because nothing works completely.
My own kid didn't learn to decode until the end of first grade, but as I've said to them many times, they were already reading--books surrounded them, they breathed books, and the decoding came later. They had a perfect verbal SAT and now they have a Ph.D. in English, even though they didn't learn to decode until later than many.
Children who learn to read our complex, baffling, difficult (and substantially non-phonetic) English language using phonics alone often turn into halting, uncomprehending readers who give up reading around third grade or so. I would argue that our problem with adult iilliteracy is not that no one was ever taught to read. Almost all students learn to decode pretty much by second grade. Then they just give it up. They don't have any reason to continue. Children who never learn to decode likewise have problems - I have known enriched, privileged kids who didn't actually know how to decode fluently until they were in middle school, because they were smart enough and motivated enough to fake it.
Everybody hates reading groups but if they are adaptive, varied, and able to be changed, are accompanied by whole group instruction and brief one-to-one work, they are effective for a teacher who can have anywhere from 18 to 33 students and limited time. Because we were students for so long, we think we understand school; I can't tell you how many times beginning teachers have had to say, "Now I understand why they did that," when they start teaching.
The effort to differentiate--to reach all the students where they are--is an intensive undertaking. Our societal emphasis on testing has stolen a huge amount of time from the kind of rich and sophisticated reading instruction that makes all students comfortable. Also, it's harder and harder to get the motivated, skilled teachers we need because the job pays poorly and is a focus of absolute venom and blame in the US,. The profession also attracts people who were "good students" (compliant, orderly, organized, linear) and therefore don't always appreciate the many difficulties most students encounter in the normal course of learning to read.
Finally, from my own research (a qualitative study of elementary classroom teachers) and my own experience (a college educator of teachers who has spent a huge amount of time in many classrooms), I can say that any imposed curriculum is going to be interpreted, modified, and changed beyond recognition (even if and especially if it's tightly scripted) in accordance with what teachers actually believe. That's not a bug, it's a feature. Teachers teach what they believe.
Reading instruction would be better if we treated the teaching job as the highly technical, knowledge-based profession it should be instead of what it's treated like in the US, instead of trying to package curricula so they're teacher-proof. The Calkins approach, oddly enough, is partly an attempt to do just that, but as I just said in the previous paragraph, you can't change teaching by imposing an approach from outside.
posted by Peach at 5:57 AM on September 5, 2022 [47 favorites]
Mum taught me to read when I was two; I learned the alphabet by letter names (ay, bee, see) and then learned words using the look-and-say method.
I started school a little late (there were international moves involved), and the class had already been introduced to the alphabet when I joined. I remember looking at the alphabet frieze around the top of the classroom walls and wondering why they'd gone with the cop-out of "fox" for X when "xylophone" was *right there*. I was (briefly) thrown when we started an alphabet lesson and the class started reciting: "ah is for apple, buh is for ball, curly-cuh is for..." - that's not what the letters are called! Then I leapt straight on to wondering how they were going to pronounce X. "ksuh", I concluded. Gravely disappointing when we got there and it was "ex as in fox".
My whole primary school career was spent having to prove over and over that yes, I could read at the level I could read at. That I was really reading the book in my hand. That the books for five-year-olds in the school library were books I'd moved on from long before I'd started school. That I really had read that book that quickly, yes, actually reading the words in it not just looking at the pictures. That I didn't need to plough through the reading-scheme books when I was already reading Narnia and Earthsea and Wind in the Willows.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:57 AM on September 5, 2022 [15 favorites]
I started school a little late (there were international moves involved), and the class had already been introduced to the alphabet when I joined. I remember looking at the alphabet frieze around the top of the classroom walls and wondering why they'd gone with the cop-out of "fox" for X when "xylophone" was *right there*. I was (briefly) thrown when we started an alphabet lesson and the class started reciting: "ah is for apple, buh is for ball, curly-cuh is for..." - that's not what the letters are called! Then I leapt straight on to wondering how they were going to pronounce X. "ksuh", I concluded. Gravely disappointing when we got there and it was "ex as in fox".
My whole primary school career was spent having to prove over and over that yes, I could read at the level I could read at. That I was really reading the book in my hand. That the books for five-year-olds in the school library were books I'd moved on from long before I'd started school. That I really had read that book that quickly, yes, actually reading the words in it not just looking at the pictures. That I didn't need to plough through the reading-scheme books when I was already reading Narnia and Earthsea and Wind in the Willows.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:57 AM on September 5, 2022 [15 favorites]
And like Too-Ticky, I strongly prefer written tutorials. I'm extremely written-language-oriented. I like to be able to skim through something quickly to get the gist, which I can't do with a video; more of a blocker, I like to be able to reread and check details, sometimes immediately, sometimes whenever I come to use the information. I can't do that with a video tutorial unless I take notes (transcripts are well and good, but I've found they're often autogenerated and/or don't really make sense without the context of the visuals). I can't write or type as fast as people talk, so that means stopping it after every couple of sentences to catch up. It's an awful experience.
(The above paragraph brought to you by my pent-up exasperation with the online learning materials we are obliged to use at work: a series of videos that take me ten times longer to get through than it would if they were a series of articles. Everyone else speeds them up and goes through at 1.5x or 2x. I can't, not if I'm supposed to actually retain any of the content.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:58 AM on September 5, 2022 [15 favorites]
(The above paragraph brought to you by my pent-up exasperation with the online learning materials we are obliged to use at work: a series of videos that take me ten times longer to get through than it would if they were a series of articles. Everyone else speeds them up and goes through at 1.5x or 2x. I can't, not if I'm supposed to actually retain any of the content.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 5:58 AM on September 5, 2022 [15 favorites]
ManyleggedCreature I had a similar experience with reading level at school. I was sent to the headmaster's office for punishment when the notebook that I was supposed to use to list all the words I didn't understand in 101 Dalmatians, was empty.
I explained that it was empty because I understood all the words in 101 Dalmatians.
He gave me a lecture about not leaving sports cars to rust in the garage, and told me to "woeker" at my maths. (Afrikaans for "apply yourself vigorously")
So I did learn a new word.
posted by Zumbador at 6:16 AM on September 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
I explained that it was empty because I understood all the words in 101 Dalmatians.
He gave me a lecture about not leaving sports cars to rust in the garage, and told me to "woeker" at my maths. (Afrikaans for "apply yourself vigorously")
So I did learn a new word.
posted by Zumbador at 6:16 AM on September 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
Echoing Peach that there is a massive labor dispute poorly hidden in these articles. Give the teachers what they need to teach if you want better students.
posted by eustatic at 6:29 AM on September 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by eustatic at 6:29 AM on September 5, 2022 [18 favorites]
Thank you, Peach - I, too, have expertise on the subject both on the research side, the teaching side, and the university preservice teacher education side. I came here intending to write a long impassioned comment, but you've already said what I wished to say, and better.
posted by Chanther at 6:37 AM on September 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Chanther at 6:37 AM on September 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
BobTheScientist wrote: "There were A Lot of 9,10,11 year olds in our network who couldn't read. They all learned that skill around that time because some interest lit them up [fashion, cars, gaming] that required reading and . . . they learned to read."
Two of my kids were also homeschooled in a relaxed/unschooly way. One of them basically just had to be introduced to the idea that letters on the page represent the sounds of spoken words, and he was off to the races, at 5 or 6. Another didn't truly read until she was almost 10, and is one of those classic unschooly stories of a kid who went from not-reading to, say, Harry Potter in the space of a few weeks. She remembers reading coming into focus for her and it's very interesting to hear her talk about the experience.
I've always associated reading young with enjoying reading, so if you'd asked me to predict which of those two would be a voracious reader, I'd have picked Mr. Early Reader, but he really doesn't care much for reading recreationally. Ms. Late Reader, on the other hand, devours big fat books all the time.
Our third child attended preschool, a Young 5s program, kindergarten, and first grade at public school, as well as part of second grade before choosing to "drop out." We used to joke that he was the "modal child" because the school's curricula in reading and math hit his sweet spot perfectly. They were teaching him what he needed to know at exactly the time he was ready to learn it.
Those are my anecdotes!
I was struck by separate quotes that this seems to be a system that works best with both strong students (meaning exposed to reading at home) and with strong teachers.
I taught argumentative and expository writing to first-year community college students for many years. During the time I was in the field, we moved from teaching the classic five-paragraph essay to doing a lot of freewriting and process writing, and were expected to answer student questions by deferring to their own judgment. ("Prof, is this paragraph well-enough developed?" "Does it seem well-developed to you?"). I saw two problems with this approach (at least): it was attempting to generalize the way people who have a talent and an interest in writing to students who may have neither; and it threw students into using their own judgment, when they had not written or read enough, or been interested enough, to have any.
I still see people sneering about the five-paragraph essay, but my experience and judgment is: you can teach just about any literate person to put together a halfway-decent five-paragraph essay (intro with thesis statement, three supporting body paragraphs, conclusion). Being able to construct a good-enough essay of this kind will get a student through the writing they'll be asked to do in college classes, and give them a basis for writing memos, emails, and so on when they enter the workforce.
Meanwhile, students who are truly interested in writing, who are big readers, who have whatever that quality we call "talent" actually is, these students will transcend the five-paragraph essay on their own, because they're continuing to take in information and models from the reading they do, and finding new techniques as they're doing their own writing.
This reminds me of the debate about phonics that was raging when my kids were small (and that, I learn from this FPP, is still raging now under slightly different names). The idea that kids can learn to read by immersion in reading, the way they learn spoken language, was big back then. Secular homeschoolers in particular, but not only homeschoolers, tended to view phonics instruction as a joy-deadening drill-and-kill method.
My opinion on this subject as a non-expert, experienced layperson who has read a lot about it is that there are definitely kids who learn to read fluently without phonics instruction. But the idea that you can apply the method used by natural-reading three- or four-year-olds to all kids makes no sense. Kids like my son who needed the merest introduction to the idea that "letters represent sounds" will not be harmed by phonics instruction. At worst, they'll be bored; at best, differentiation in the classroom will allow them to spend their allotted learn-to-read time on books that are suited to their level. But expecting children who don't have whatever it is that in certain kids' brains lets them pick up reading almost effortlessly at a young age to learn using the same process as those early readers can mean that children who need phonics, who need more scaffolding, who need more time and support, are not getting what they need.
posted by Well I never at 7:13 AM on September 5, 2022 [9 favorites]
Two of my kids were also homeschooled in a relaxed/unschooly way. One of them basically just had to be introduced to the idea that letters on the page represent the sounds of spoken words, and he was off to the races, at 5 or 6. Another didn't truly read until she was almost 10, and is one of those classic unschooly stories of a kid who went from not-reading to, say, Harry Potter in the space of a few weeks. She remembers reading coming into focus for her and it's very interesting to hear her talk about the experience.
I've always associated reading young with enjoying reading, so if you'd asked me to predict which of those two would be a voracious reader, I'd have picked Mr. Early Reader, but he really doesn't care much for reading recreationally. Ms. Late Reader, on the other hand, devours big fat books all the time.
Our third child attended preschool, a Young 5s program, kindergarten, and first grade at public school, as well as part of second grade before choosing to "drop out." We used to joke that he was the "modal child" because the school's curricula in reading and math hit his sweet spot perfectly. They were teaching him what he needed to know at exactly the time he was ready to learn it.
Those are my anecdotes!
I was struck by separate quotes that this seems to be a system that works best with both strong students (meaning exposed to reading at home) and with strong teachers.
I taught argumentative and expository writing to first-year community college students for many years. During the time I was in the field, we moved from teaching the classic five-paragraph essay to doing a lot of freewriting and process writing, and were expected to answer student questions by deferring to their own judgment. ("Prof, is this paragraph well-enough developed?" "Does it seem well-developed to you?"). I saw two problems with this approach (at least): it was attempting to generalize the way people who have a talent and an interest in writing to students who may have neither; and it threw students into using their own judgment, when they had not written or read enough, or been interested enough, to have any.
I still see people sneering about the five-paragraph essay, but my experience and judgment is: you can teach just about any literate person to put together a halfway-decent five-paragraph essay (intro with thesis statement, three supporting body paragraphs, conclusion). Being able to construct a good-enough essay of this kind will get a student through the writing they'll be asked to do in college classes, and give them a basis for writing memos, emails, and so on when they enter the workforce.
Meanwhile, students who are truly interested in writing, who are big readers, who have whatever that quality we call "talent" actually is, these students will transcend the five-paragraph essay on their own, because they're continuing to take in information and models from the reading they do, and finding new techniques as they're doing their own writing.
This reminds me of the debate about phonics that was raging when my kids were small (and that, I learn from this FPP, is still raging now under slightly different names). The idea that kids can learn to read by immersion in reading, the way they learn spoken language, was big back then. Secular homeschoolers in particular, but not only homeschoolers, tended to view phonics instruction as a joy-deadening drill-and-kill method.
My opinion on this subject as a non-expert, experienced layperson who has read a lot about it is that there are definitely kids who learn to read fluently without phonics instruction. But the idea that you can apply the method used by natural-reading three- or four-year-olds to all kids makes no sense. Kids like my son who needed the merest introduction to the idea that "letters represent sounds" will not be harmed by phonics instruction. At worst, they'll be bored; at best, differentiation in the classroom will allow them to spend their allotted learn-to-read time on books that are suited to their level. But expecting children who don't have whatever it is that in certain kids' brains lets them pick up reading almost effortlessly at a young age to learn using the same process as those early readers can mean that children who need phonics, who need more scaffolding, who need more time and support, are not getting what they need.
posted by Well I never at 7:13 AM on September 5, 2022 [9 favorites]
I am really appreciating this thread, though I have no education on the subject, because in the past I have volunteered to help teach adult ESL learners and plan to again. I wonder how well the principles transfer.
Also, it's a real eye-opener for someone who was hyperlexic. Like many of you, I was reading at 3, and I've since come to understand that it was just because I lived in safe, quiet places full of letters, not because I was God's gift to the county. Calkins seems to be trying to graft these conditions for hyperlexia, and I can see why it wouldn't work, as well as why it might for some.
Baffling to me that unschooled kids sometimes get as old as their tweens before starting to read. I don't see how somebody past age 7, maybe, can get along without some reading in the 2010s and 2020s, unless they're in an off-grid situation. Otherwise, how do they work remotes? How do they use Youtube? Play video games? I could see their not reading if they were spending their time playing stickball, helping Mother in the kitchen, or working on the farm, but otherwise I'm pretty surprised.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:46 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Also, it's a real eye-opener for someone who was hyperlexic. Like many of you, I was reading at 3, and I've since come to understand that it was just because I lived in safe, quiet places full of letters, not because I was God's gift to the county. Calkins seems to be trying to graft these conditions for hyperlexia, and I can see why it wouldn't work, as well as why it might for some.
Baffling to me that unschooled kids sometimes get as old as their tweens before starting to read. I don't see how somebody past age 7, maybe, can get along without some reading in the 2010s and 2020s, unless they're in an off-grid situation. Otherwise, how do they work remotes? How do they use Youtube? Play video games? I could see their not reading if they were spending their time playing stickball, helping Mother in the kitchen, or working on the farm, but otherwise I'm pretty surprised.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:46 AM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
I started school in 1964. We had no kindergarten, much less preschool, so no one was expected to read until first grade (I was ahead because of my parents). We had 60 first graders in two classes. It was only years later that I learned we were an experimental grade. My class (A) learned phonics; the other (B) used what I think they called "block learning" at the time. When class separation was suspended in junior high, it became clear to all us students that the A class was way ahead, and many more of my group went to college and more graduated. We didn't know why, but we suspected the B class were just not as smart. My dad told me about the experiment eventually, and they way he told it, I think they may have insisted I be in the phonics group.
posted by Miss Cellania at 8:41 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Miss Cellania at 8:41 AM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
My whole primary school career was spent having to prove over and over that yes, I could read at the level I could read at. That I was really reading the book in my hand. That the books for five-year-olds in the school library were books I'd moved on from long before I'd started school.My whole primary school career was spent having to prove over and over that yes, I could read at the level I could read at. That I was really reading the book in my hand. That the books for five-year-olds in the school library were books I'd moved on from long before I'd started school.
Oh, God, yes. My parents finally paid for private testing (how Mom talked Dad into ponying up for that I'll never know) to prove that I was reading at a high school level in Kindergarten, but the school wouldn't budge. I had to sit there looking straight ahead and blanking out in my brain, pinching myself to stay awake (because I had to pretend to be paying attention instead of doing other work) while the rest of the class struggled over the alphabet "for my social development." (The consonants were all men, and the vowels were women. To this day I have no idea how they got "Sometimes Y" past the conservative small-town school board in that day and age.) That and the playground violence that landed me in the hospital finally convinced my parents to shell out for private primary school.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:42 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Oh, God, yes. My parents finally paid for private testing (how Mom talked Dad into ponying up for that I'll never know) to prove that I was reading at a high school level in Kindergarten, but the school wouldn't budge. I had to sit there looking straight ahead and blanking out in my brain, pinching myself to stay awake (because I had to pretend to be paying attention instead of doing other work) while the rest of the class struggled over the alphabet "for my social development." (The consonants were all men, and the vowels were women. To this day I have no idea how they got "Sometimes Y" past the conservative small-town school board in that day and age.) That and the playground violence that landed me in the hospital finally convinced my parents to shell out for private primary school.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:42 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Frowner’s criticism of the structure of the main article is interesting. The article starts with a criticism of a specific method and of those who cling to it despite extensive research that is doesn’t work as well for kids who need it as a different method (I don’t see this as anti teacher, I see it as anti orthodoxy) and zooms out to the ways that we just continue to allow our schools and our whole society fail children and those not already privileged. The article works, in my opinion, because it is pegged to a news piece (large school districts are abandoning this curriculum), pegged to the start of a new school year, pegged to a controversy people are or can easily get invested in, and then it says, essentially: so, you care about this particular piece of annoyance but have you noticed that our society is fundamentally broken in ways we can repair but do not? I think that’s pretty powerful.
posted by vunder at 8:43 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by vunder at 8:43 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
And like Too-Ticky, I strongly prefer written tutorials. I'm extremely written-language-oriented. I like to be able to skim through something quickly to get the gist, which I can't do with a video; more of a blocker, I like to be able to reread and check details, sometimes immediately, sometimes whenever I come to use the information. I can't do that with a video tutorial unless I take notes (transcripts are well and good, but I've found they're often autogenerated and/or don't really make sense without the context of the visuals). I can't write or type as fast as people talk, so that means stopping it after every couple of sentences to catch up. It's an awful experience.
Same here. Even verbal instructions are OK, but I can't copy something just by watching it. That's why I couldn't go very far in dance class, because at a certain point the teacher expects you to be able to just copy their movements.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:47 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
Same here. Even verbal instructions are OK, but I can't copy something just by watching it. That's why I couldn't go very far in dance class, because at a certain point the teacher expects you to be able to just copy their movements.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:47 AM on September 5, 2022 [6 favorites]
IIRC, Sesame Street made a huge difference in teaching literacy when it debuted in 1969; teachers suddenly didn't have to teach reading as much, since more kids already knew how. (The year I was born! :) ) I have no memory of learning to read, I just went to kindergarten and knew what the words meant. But like many of you, to this day I mispronounce words that I've only read. It was literally a month ago that I learned "gaol" was "jail."
Just don’t ask me to diagram a sentence. I will hurt you.
HA! I was born to do those. I would sit around and do nothing in class while all the other kids tried to figure them out.
My best friend was a textbook editor and at the forefront of the phonics vs. whole-word debate. The whole time, my only reaction was HOW ABOUT TAILORING EVERYTHING TO THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT?? For this and a hundred other reasons, I would make a terrible teacher.
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Just don’t ask me to diagram a sentence. I will hurt you.
HA! I was born to do those. I would sit around and do nothing in class while all the other kids tried to figure them out.
My best friend was a textbook editor and at the forefront of the phonics vs. whole-word debate. The whole time, my only reaction was HOW ABOUT TAILORING EVERYTHING TO THE INDIVIDUAL STUDENT?? For this and a hundred other reasons, I would make a terrible teacher.
posted by Melismata at 8:48 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Oh, and THE SULLIVAN READERS FOREVER!! (Sam and Ann and Walter.) To this day I get warm fuzzies when I see them on eBay.
posted by Melismata at 8:49 AM on September 5, 2022
posted by Melismata at 8:49 AM on September 5, 2022
“This—actual reading time—is the most important part of the reading workshop,” Calkins writes, adding, “Children can’t learn to swim without swimming, to write without writing, to sing without singing, or to read without reading.”
I think it's important to reflect on this quote from the New Yorker article. The early stages of teaching swimming and singing are actually pretty heavy on drills and skills. I don't remember learning to swim breast stroke which presumably my parents taught me very young, but learning front crawl in my first year of school I do remember and we started by isolating the leg kick and arm movements. While a swimming lesson, a singing lesson (or indeed an instrumental music lesson) that was all drills, scales, etc. might be rather boring, and true mastery requires performing the whole activity, early stage learners actually do benefit immensely from decomposing the activity and practicing elements in isolation.
It seems that part of the challenge of making definitive statements about Balanced Literacy is that it can easily be executed both poorly and well. Is it sensible to bore children who are independently reading with phonics drills? Surely not. Does "just read" work if you don't even know where to start? It seems like the answer might be, "not really".
The more mechanical an approach is, the easier it is to compare with other (equally mechanical) approaches because you can be sure that Approach A and Approach B are actually two distinct categories.
So someone could say, "hold on, Fariña had these great results" or "School X is failing to teach reading on a massive scale", both using "the same" method but because the method is inherently a blended / balanced one that relies on professional discretion that also appears to have changed over time and may have been adopted while it was still heavily in flux this makes it impossible to really make definitive statements about it.
It sounds like it isn't a "method" at all but a library of methods intended for use by experienced teachers to use as appropriate.
If teachers are unable to do that because they're so under-resourced that their classes are too large or because they haven't received the right training, then that is a separate challenge than some notional set of standardised techniques not working.
Recently I've been reminded again that not everyone learns phonics in school as my partner and I try to learn Dutch, a language which has similar phonics rules to English (long and short vowels that are controlled by consonants in the same way), and that is maybe 90% spelled like it sounds (they don't have spelling bees here because there would be no point).
The Belgians actually did run a televised national spelling bee which was also shown on Dutch TV, I don't think it's been on in a while but I'm sure you can find old episodes of Het Groot Dictee.
Dutch has also had a number of spelling revisions over the years to make it easier to spell. I inherited all my father's and grandfather's old books from when they were boys and there are a few in there that my grandfather had second hand and are pre-1934 spelling revision. Since then there have been four or five such revisions, including dropping remaining case markings which even at that time existed only in written Dutch.
I learned Dutch and English simultaneously from birth and also cannot remember not being able to read them both so I have no idea how I was taught. However I suspect that Dutch children do learn phonics in school, it's just that in a highly regular orthography, there is no need for an alternative to learning a phonetic system and therefore it doesn't have a special name to distinguish it from those alternatives. In other words, in a language with 1:1 correspondence you just learn to read (using a technique that we call phonics in English) and that's it. [see below where I found a reference to the use of phonics in German].
I do wonder though, where in these popular press discussions are the comparisons with other countries and other languages? There will be an offhand note that English is unusually complex but then... nothing.
Where in the US press coverage is it mentioned even what other English speaking countries are doing?
I appreciate that English is an unusual language because of its highly irregular spelling but it isn't the only one. How is reading taught in other languages?
A range of countries in central Asia has ended up with either Cyrillic or Latin alphabets and have had to adapt those (and sometimes switch between them) to their own languages. Hebrew and Arabic don't have short consonants even written in material that isn't for children and the latter is wildly diglossic such that for some speakers of North African Arabic dialects, the written language is even further from the ordinary spoken than English.
I found this comparative paper on reading in Western European languages. (my emphasis)
The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and nonword reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies.
Languages are split on two dimensions (this is the author's hypothesis, I don't know to what extent this is a standard way of splitting languages):
Orthographic depth - low depth = 1:1 letter to phoneme correspondence, high depth requires knowing more letter combinations and contextual information.
Syllabic complexity - high in germanic languages, lots of initial and final syllable clusters, low in romance languages. Romance syllables are nearly all Consonant-Vowel whereas Germanic languages have CVC and CCVC patterns.
Finnish has simple syllable structure and low orthographic depth, English has complex / high. Adjacent to English on one or more dimensions (see table 1 in the reference) are Danish, French, Dutch / Swedish in roughly that order assuming that the two dimensions are equally important so it would be interesting to understand whether there are equivalent debates in French and Danish education. I suspect that pre-spelling reform Dutch would have higher orthographic depth.
In shallow orthographies, such as German, synthetic phonic methods are commonly used (Wimmer, 1993). Some commentators argue that rates of progress could be improved by using these same methods in English.
They also note that Scottish schools use a mixed approach and that "these approaches are well adapted for deep orthographies in which commonly occurring words contain letter structures which are inconsistent with the principles of simple grapheme-phoneme correspondence"
They note that in terms of orthographic depth effect, Danish and English differed sharply from the other languages and hypothesise that there is a threshold effect. Above the complexity threshold, a whole additional layer of decoding needs to be learned. As well as English and Danish, French and Portuguese are above the threshold. Closely related Scandinavian languages, Dutch, and Spanish were not which creates interesting contrast pairs.
So based on this one paper, and I am by no means an academic linguist so don't know to what extent this reflects the consensus in the field, I would be particularly interested in knowing how Danish children learn to read.
This blogpost by Danish researchers from the marvellously named Puzzle of Danish group. Contrasts Danish and Norwegian language learning and reinforces the relative difficulty of Danish.
This entry: Literacy Acquisition in Danish: A Deep Orthography in Cross-Linguistic Light from the Handbook of Orthography and Literacy is also informative.
Danish orthography was already old when a national norm was first established around the year 1200. From the very beginning, Danish orthography reflected several obsolete pronunciations.
Sounds a lot like English!
Reading instruction would be better if we treated the teaching job as the highly technical, knowledge-based profession it should be instead of what it's treated like in the US, instead of trying to package curricula so they're teacher-proof. The Calkins approach, oddly enough, is partly an attempt to do just that, but as I just said in the previous paragraph, you can't change teaching by imposing an approach from outside.
I guess the reason why what seems to me like quite a technical debate is going on in public at all is that the system isn't teaching children to read well enough. Otherwise the temptation to fiddle with methods rather than leave it to experts wouldn't arise. Ultimately if the system is systematically underfunded, then tweaking a method here or there isn't going to do very much to fix it. Since the political will to change funding dramatically doesn't exist, we get left with the ridiculous spectacle of a debate about nothing which is going on essentially at right angles with reality.
This is basically the lesson from Finland, right? The idea that an administrator would tell a teacher either that they should do more or less phonics based instruction in Finland is ridiculous as it should be in the US. What is inherent in everything here is the desire by some forces within the US to create a fool-proof curriculum so that they can hire fools to teach and therefore pay teachers as little as possible. Finland takes its intake of teachers from elite scorers on entrance tests, a cohort that in the US is guided inexorably to work in finance, consulting, etc.
Nobody wants to come out and say, "this is a country where you're allowed to teach because you were in the Marines [yes, really in Florida], so an approach that requires the use of professional discretion isn't going to work" because that would be saying the quiet bit out loud.
Finland doesn't have the same kind of income inequality as the US but nonetheless, there is a substantial financial cost to paying people enough that you can be really selective in your teacher training intake even in more-equal Finland. Americans pay teachers badly and are then surprised when the quality is uneven.
This is another instance of a buried moralistic belief that many people seem to apply to "caring" professions like teaching and nursing (both feminine coded, I'm sure just a coincidence) which is that normal economic incentives don't apply. Surely the only good teachers are those who would do it regardless of how well it paid? Obviously this is dumb and we don't as a society believe it applies to literally anything else1. There are probably not many places where someone goes into teaching only for the money but it's surely foolish to imagine that over time, underpaying and disrespecting a profession has no effect. The same people who enthusiastically applaud the proletarianisation of teaching by stripping teachers of money and professional autonomy are then shocked when they find that teachers have become quite left wing.
The US also has a staggering under-supply of teachers which means that any technique that requires 1:1 or small group teaching is going to be dreadfully difficult to successfully execute.
I wonder if in Denmark (probably a better comparison than Finland because of the language) there is a "debate" in the popular press about how to teach elementary reading? I kind of doubt it but I can't read Danish so have no idea.
Calkins is an example of trying to introduce that incredibly necessary literate environment into the classroom. It doesn't work completely because nothing works completely.
Once again we see an attempt to force an already under-resourced system to fix the whole rest of society. I think it's frankly incredible that any teacher manages to instil a love of reading in children who don't come from highly-literate households and I think it's pretty unfair that we treat the cases where it doesn't work as abject failures.
Finally, it strikes me as significant that the New Yorker article is set during the pandemic. The US was almost unique among rich nations in how long it kept its schools shut (at least in NYC where this took place).
(1) Arlie Russell Hochschild writes about this in Strangers in Their Own Land which is an ethnographic study of predominantly poor Republicans in Louisiana where she finds that as part of their "deep story" of how society should be organised, a substantial number of people think that people who work for the government should be like the nuns who taught them at school, self abnegating and that when they're not, they're somehow not authentic in wanting to do their jobs.
posted by atrazine at 9:04 AM on September 5, 2022 [16 favorites]
I think it's important to reflect on this quote from the New Yorker article. The early stages of teaching swimming and singing are actually pretty heavy on drills and skills. I don't remember learning to swim breast stroke which presumably my parents taught me very young, but learning front crawl in my first year of school I do remember and we started by isolating the leg kick and arm movements. While a swimming lesson, a singing lesson (or indeed an instrumental music lesson) that was all drills, scales, etc. might be rather boring, and true mastery requires performing the whole activity, early stage learners actually do benefit immensely from decomposing the activity and practicing elements in isolation.
It seems that part of the challenge of making definitive statements about Balanced Literacy is that it can easily be executed both poorly and well. Is it sensible to bore children who are independently reading with phonics drills? Surely not. Does "just read" work if you don't even know where to start? It seems like the answer might be, "not really".
The more mechanical an approach is, the easier it is to compare with other (equally mechanical) approaches because you can be sure that Approach A and Approach B are actually two distinct categories.
So someone could say, "hold on, Fariña had these great results" or "School X is failing to teach reading on a massive scale", both using "the same" method but because the method is inherently a blended / balanced one that relies on professional discretion that also appears to have changed over time and may have been adopted while it was still heavily in flux this makes it impossible to really make definitive statements about it.
It sounds like it isn't a "method" at all but a library of methods intended for use by experienced teachers to use as appropriate.
If teachers are unable to do that because they're so under-resourced that their classes are too large or because they haven't received the right training, then that is a separate challenge than some notional set of standardised techniques not working.
Recently I've been reminded again that not everyone learns phonics in school as my partner and I try to learn Dutch, a language which has similar phonics rules to English (long and short vowels that are controlled by consonants in the same way), and that is maybe 90% spelled like it sounds (they don't have spelling bees here because there would be no point).
The Belgians actually did run a televised national spelling bee which was also shown on Dutch TV, I don't think it's been on in a while but I'm sure you can find old episodes of Het Groot Dictee.
Dutch has also had a number of spelling revisions over the years to make it easier to spell. I inherited all my father's and grandfather's old books from when they were boys and there are a few in there that my grandfather had second hand and are pre-1934 spelling revision. Since then there have been four or five such revisions, including dropping remaining case markings which even at that time existed only in written Dutch.
I learned Dutch and English simultaneously from birth and also cannot remember not being able to read them both so I have no idea how I was taught. However I suspect that Dutch children do learn phonics in school, it's just that in a highly regular orthography, there is no need for an alternative to learning a phonetic system and therefore it doesn't have a special name to distinguish it from those alternatives. In other words, in a language with 1:1 correspondence you just learn to read (using a technique that we call phonics in English) and that's it. [see below where I found a reference to the use of phonics in German].
I do wonder though, where in these popular press discussions are the comparisons with other countries and other languages? There will be an offhand note that English is unusually complex but then... nothing.
Where in the US press coverage is it mentioned even what other English speaking countries are doing?
I appreciate that English is an unusual language because of its highly irregular spelling but it isn't the only one. How is reading taught in other languages?
A range of countries in central Asia has ended up with either Cyrillic or Latin alphabets and have had to adapt those (and sometimes switch between them) to their own languages. Hebrew and Arabic don't have short consonants even written in material that isn't for children and the latter is wildly diglossic such that for some speakers of North African Arabic dialects, the written language is even further from the ordinary spoken than English.
I found this comparative paper on reading in Western European languages. (my emphasis)
The results confirm that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and nonword reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies.
Languages are split on two dimensions (this is the author's hypothesis, I don't know to what extent this is a standard way of splitting languages):
Orthographic depth - low depth = 1:1 letter to phoneme correspondence, high depth requires knowing more letter combinations and contextual information.
Syllabic complexity - high in germanic languages, lots of initial and final syllable clusters, low in romance languages. Romance syllables are nearly all Consonant-Vowel whereas Germanic languages have CVC and CCVC patterns.
Finnish has simple syllable structure and low orthographic depth, English has complex / high. Adjacent to English on one or more dimensions (see table 1 in the reference) are Danish, French, Dutch / Swedish in roughly that order assuming that the two dimensions are equally important so it would be interesting to understand whether there are equivalent debates in French and Danish education. I suspect that pre-spelling reform Dutch would have higher orthographic depth.
In shallow orthographies, such as German, synthetic phonic methods are commonly used (Wimmer, 1993). Some commentators argue that rates of progress could be improved by using these same methods in English.
They also note that Scottish schools use a mixed approach and that "these approaches are well adapted for deep orthographies in which commonly occurring words contain letter structures which are inconsistent with the principles of simple grapheme-phoneme correspondence"
They note that in terms of orthographic depth effect, Danish and English differed sharply from the other languages and hypothesise that there is a threshold effect. Above the complexity threshold, a whole additional layer of decoding needs to be learned. As well as English and Danish, French and Portuguese are above the threshold. Closely related Scandinavian languages, Dutch, and Spanish were not which creates interesting contrast pairs.
So based on this one paper, and I am by no means an academic linguist so don't know to what extent this reflects the consensus in the field, I would be particularly interested in knowing how Danish children learn to read.
This blogpost by Danish researchers from the marvellously named Puzzle of Danish group. Contrasts Danish and Norwegian language learning and reinforces the relative difficulty of Danish.
This entry: Literacy Acquisition in Danish: A Deep Orthography in Cross-Linguistic Light from the Handbook of Orthography and Literacy is also informative.
Danish orthography was already old when a national norm was first established around the year 1200. From the very beginning, Danish orthography reflected several obsolete pronunciations.
Sounds a lot like English!
Reading instruction would be better if we treated the teaching job as the highly technical, knowledge-based profession it should be instead of what it's treated like in the US, instead of trying to package curricula so they're teacher-proof. The Calkins approach, oddly enough, is partly an attempt to do just that, but as I just said in the previous paragraph, you can't change teaching by imposing an approach from outside.
I guess the reason why what seems to me like quite a technical debate is going on in public at all is that the system isn't teaching children to read well enough. Otherwise the temptation to fiddle with methods rather than leave it to experts wouldn't arise. Ultimately if the system is systematically underfunded, then tweaking a method here or there isn't going to do very much to fix it. Since the political will to change funding dramatically doesn't exist, we get left with the ridiculous spectacle of a debate about nothing which is going on essentially at right angles with reality.
This is basically the lesson from Finland, right? The idea that an administrator would tell a teacher either that they should do more or less phonics based instruction in Finland is ridiculous as it should be in the US. What is inherent in everything here is the desire by some forces within the US to create a fool-proof curriculum so that they can hire fools to teach and therefore pay teachers as little as possible. Finland takes its intake of teachers from elite scorers on entrance tests, a cohort that in the US is guided inexorably to work in finance, consulting, etc.
Nobody wants to come out and say, "this is a country where you're allowed to teach because you were in the Marines [yes, really in Florida], so an approach that requires the use of professional discretion isn't going to work" because that would be saying the quiet bit out loud.
Finland doesn't have the same kind of income inequality as the US but nonetheless, there is a substantial financial cost to paying people enough that you can be really selective in your teacher training intake even in more-equal Finland. Americans pay teachers badly and are then surprised when the quality is uneven.
This is another instance of a buried moralistic belief that many people seem to apply to "caring" professions like teaching and nursing (both feminine coded, I'm sure just a coincidence) which is that normal economic incentives don't apply. Surely the only good teachers are those who would do it regardless of how well it paid? Obviously this is dumb and we don't as a society believe it applies to literally anything else1. There are probably not many places where someone goes into teaching only for the money but it's surely foolish to imagine that over time, underpaying and disrespecting a profession has no effect. The same people who enthusiastically applaud the proletarianisation of teaching by stripping teachers of money and professional autonomy are then shocked when they find that teachers have become quite left wing.
The US also has a staggering under-supply of teachers which means that any technique that requires 1:1 or small group teaching is going to be dreadfully difficult to successfully execute.
I wonder if in Denmark (probably a better comparison than Finland because of the language) there is a "debate" in the popular press about how to teach elementary reading? I kind of doubt it but I can't read Danish so have no idea.
Calkins is an example of trying to introduce that incredibly necessary literate environment into the classroom. It doesn't work completely because nothing works completely.
Once again we see an attempt to force an already under-resourced system to fix the whole rest of society. I think it's frankly incredible that any teacher manages to instil a love of reading in children who don't come from highly-literate households and I think it's pretty unfair that we treat the cases where it doesn't work as abject failures.
Finally, it strikes me as significant that the New Yorker article is set during the pandemic. The US was almost unique among rich nations in how long it kept its schools shut (at least in NYC where this took place).
(1) Arlie Russell Hochschild writes about this in Strangers in Their Own Land which is an ethnographic study of predominantly poor Republicans in Louisiana where she finds that as part of their "deep story" of how society should be organised, a substantial number of people think that people who work for the government should be like the nuns who taught them at school, self abnegating and that when they're not, they're somehow not authentic in wanting to do their jobs.
posted by atrazine at 9:04 AM on September 5, 2022 [16 favorites]
“This—actual reading time—is the most important part of the reading workshop,” Calkins writes, adding, “Children can’t learn to swim without swimming, to write without writing, to sing without singing, or to read without reading.”
My immediate thought on reading this was Harold Hill's "think system" for teaching music in "The Music Man." "If you think the Minuet in G, you can play the Minuet in G..."
posted by dnash at 9:08 AM on September 5, 2022
My immediate thought on reading this was Harold Hill's "think system" for teaching music in "The Music Man." "If you think the Minuet in G, you can play the Minuet in G..."
posted by dnash at 9:08 AM on September 5, 2022
Professional educators should be the only people making decisions about what is learned and how it is learned. I know how wise my thurd grade teacher was about the world. When she finished school, she decided that instead of going out into the world and seeing the fantastic explosion of wonderous awe, she had alreedy seen all she needed to see. She was now ready to teach those who were going out into the world all they needed to know about it, or at least her small part of that.
posted by 517 at 9:08 AM on September 5, 2022
posted by 517 at 9:08 AM on September 5, 2022
Sesame Street! I completely forgot that I probably have Sesame Street to thank as much as anything else. My grandmother liked to tell me that I was counting along with the Count before I was saying much else. And now what do kids have? They can probably watch some Sesame Street somewhere for free, but it's older and swamped with the garbage available.
atrazine, thank you for your comment. We won't get farther with public education in this country until people -- or at least the kind of people who get on school boards and turn up at public meetings -- stop viewing teachers as tentacles of a decadent elite trying to pull their innocent children into Communism at best and unspeakable perversions at worst.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:16 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
atrazine, thank you for your comment. We won't get farther with public education in this country until people -- or at least the kind of people who get on school boards and turn up at public meetings -- stop viewing teachers as tentacles of a decadent elite trying to pull their innocent children into Communism at best and unspeakable perversions at worst.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:16 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
I started reading at 3. I'm pretty sure I got there via listening to my parents read to me while looking at the words on the page and then sort of memorizing what those words looked like, then finding them in context in other sources, like other books, or other magazines, or the newspaper. The phonics angle was always weird for me because English is pretty inconsistent sound wise. And when you're reading it doesn't really matter what "through" sounds like so long as you know that"through"means/signifies something different than "though" or "threw" or "trough."
posted by thivaia at 9:24 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 9:24 AM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I appreciate that English is an unusual language because of its highly irregular spelling but it isn't the only one. How is reading taught in other languages?
I always found it very interesting how English went through the last couple of centuries with its vagaries fairly intact (the last major reform has to be the American English spelling reform under... Samuel Johnson right? certainly British commonwealthers tend to find words spelled like 'ax' to be quite scandalous). And these days my conclusion is that, at the level that interacts with other foreign influences, it's just another demonstration of its hegemonic nature. Even emergent habits that seem perverse: in other languages, 'language purists' decry the almost daily influx and adoption of foreign words, but it persist because it's also a status symbol (to know these many languages). English has this too.
So then there'd be a move to normalize them into the indigenous grammar. E.g. the continental French with its 'le week-end', the way languages like mine normalizes words like 'universiti' or 'fasiliti' BUT in Indonesia the relations is with the Dutch so it's been 'universitas' and 'fasilitas'. But elites in those places would still insist on using the loan words as-is. SO there's a sense of insecurity here in forcing the adaptation, and thus English had a lot less of that in its colonizing and hegemonic period. I find that it's a consequence of the rate of expansion (so purists can't police it everywhere) but also it becomes a sign of being cosmopolitan. As a result, English is probably one of the few languages (if not the only one) where a spelling bee can be a proper competition.
In every other language I am aware of, eventually spelling reform happens out of a desire to 'keep up'. Mainland Chinese is in simplified script; Malay in Arabic-derived script now has spelling conventions that better fits the logic of an alphabetic system, not a syllabyry one. Japanese at one point seriously had reformists arguing for a transition into Latin script. English was too busy colonizing during all of that, and these historical examples I cite is always partially in response to that encroachment.
posted by cendawanita at 9:39 AM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
I always found it very interesting how English went through the last couple of centuries with its vagaries fairly intact (the last major reform has to be the American English spelling reform under... Samuel Johnson right? certainly British commonwealthers tend to find words spelled like 'ax' to be quite scandalous). And these days my conclusion is that, at the level that interacts with other foreign influences, it's just another demonstration of its hegemonic nature. Even emergent habits that seem perverse: in other languages, 'language purists' decry the almost daily influx and adoption of foreign words, but it persist because it's also a status symbol (to know these many languages). English has this too.
So then there'd be a move to normalize them into the indigenous grammar. E.g. the continental French with its 'le week-end', the way languages like mine normalizes words like 'universiti' or 'fasiliti' BUT in Indonesia the relations is with the Dutch so it's been 'universitas' and 'fasilitas'. But elites in those places would still insist on using the loan words as-is. SO there's a sense of insecurity here in forcing the adaptation, and thus English had a lot less of that in its colonizing and hegemonic period. I find that it's a consequence of the rate of expansion (so purists can't police it everywhere) but also it becomes a sign of being cosmopolitan. As a result, English is probably one of the few languages (if not the only one) where a spelling bee can be a proper competition.
In every other language I am aware of, eventually spelling reform happens out of a desire to 'keep up'. Mainland Chinese is in simplified script; Malay in Arabic-derived script now has spelling conventions that better fits the logic of an alphabetic system, not a syllabyry one. Japanese at one point seriously had reformists arguing for a transition into Latin script. English was too busy colonizing during all of that, and these historical examples I cite is always partially in response to that encroachment.
posted by cendawanita at 9:39 AM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
If I were a teacher, I would want the Calkins method, or framework, because it would give me the structure and time to focus on kids who needed the most attention--the kids who we already reading could self-direct, the kids who needed phonics could drill, the kids who were dyslexic could receive teacher attention.
Making all 40 kids do the same thing does seem to limit the ability of kids to to learn, overall.
Ultimately, everyone is dependent on a teacher s ability to manage a classroom, and instruct based on the different pedagogies they are proficient with, making everything about drilling and testing on phonics or whatever seems to skip this point completely, which only gets us to back to where we started from.
Ultimately, no framework or pedagogical method is going to overcome income inequality in the soc iety. If parents are working for minimum wages, schooling will likely not take.
If the parents are both working all the time, or the kids have to drop out to work / sell drugs, which was the main issue in Georgia where i was part of a study group on these issues, no framework is really going to work, and these debates are just ideological pissing matches that teachers have to learn to navigate by the time the directives roll down from the boss.
The policy studies, I wonder if they control for these economic factors?
Witness the whole education 'debate' over CRT at the moment, educational debates don't seem to include what happens in classrooms, much less outside of them
posted by eustatic at 9:52 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
Making all 40 kids do the same thing does seem to limit the ability of kids to to learn, overall.
Ultimately, everyone is dependent on a teacher s ability to manage a classroom, and instruct based on the different pedagogies they are proficient with, making everything about drilling and testing on phonics or whatever seems to skip this point completely, which only gets us to back to where we started from.
Ultimately, no framework or pedagogical method is going to overcome income inequality in the soc iety. If parents are working for minimum wages, schooling will likely not take.
If the parents are both working all the time, or the kids have to drop out to work / sell drugs, which was the main issue in Georgia where i was part of a study group on these issues, no framework is really going to work, and these debates are just ideological pissing matches that teachers have to learn to navigate by the time the directives roll down from the boss.
The policy studies, I wonder if they control for these economic factors?
Witness the whole education 'debate' over CRT at the moment, educational debates don't seem to include what happens in classrooms, much less outside of them
posted by eustatic at 9:52 AM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
It sounds like it isn't a "method" at all but a library of methods intended for use by experienced teachers to use as appropriate.
It’s a curriculum that costs money. There are other curricula to invest in. In a single classroom, a teacher makes all the difference; at scale, methods and curricula are meaningful.
Finally, it strikes me as significant that the New Yorker article is set during the pandemic. The US was almost unique among rich nations in how long it kept its schools shut (at least in NYC where this took place).
The evidence in favor of phonic instruction over not-phonic instruction has been more or less in place for at least 50 years.
posted by vunder at 10:02 AM on September 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
It’s a curriculum that costs money. There are other curricula to invest in. In a single classroom, a teacher makes all the difference; at scale, methods and curricula are meaningful.
Finally, it strikes me as significant that the New Yorker article is set during the pandemic. The US was almost unique among rich nations in how long it kept its schools shut (at least in NYC where this took place).
The evidence in favor of phonic instruction over not-phonic instruction has been more or less in place for at least 50 years.
posted by vunder at 10:02 AM on September 5, 2022 [7 favorites]
I have vague memories of being taught to read before schooling started.
Use was made of the old Dick and Jane books, but in a reverse fashion, which I'll get to.
First was letter shapes and sounds. "S looks like a snake, it makes an ssssss sound. [prompted to trace the S shape and go ssss] T is like a Tall Tower. Tuh! Tuh! Tee!"
Then it was on to words, with Dick and Jane. I guess this is where the idea of 'shapes of words' comes in? Because rather than being prompted to read the insipid poetry, the game was to find which words went with the pictures, using the shapes of the letters in them.
Which one is Sally? [points to the little girl] No, which word is Sally? [furrows brow] I'll give you a hint; remember L is a Long Line?
Ooh! This one! 'Cause it starts with an S and has Ls! And that word must be Puff, because F Flaps like a Flag, waving in the wind! Pufffffff. Very good!
That gets you to 'sounding out words'. And figuring out words from context and the 'shape' of sentences - this one must be Come, even though it doesn't look like it sounds.
Then came 'word legos', based on the Latin and Greek roots mentioned earlier. Not actually learning those languages, but learning common usages of roots and prefixes and suffixes, and how take them apart and put them back together to figure out big words you didn't know yet.
What's that one mean, kiddo? Well I've never seen that word before, but a torium is a place or a building where something happens or gets done. And audi is usually something to do with sound or listening. So an 'auditorium' must be...a place where you make sounds? Or where you go to listen? Very good!
So I guess it was the elemental Phonics of letters, then the molecular Phonics of letters combined into words. I don't know what to call the chunks of prefix/suffix/root stuff. Hydro means 'water', istic means 'resembles'. Playing the game of - I've never seen that word before, but 'fication' is when you do something to a thing, and 'magna' is big; so magnification must be making something big.
Hey I can read! And figure new things out from other things I already know!
I can't imagine being left alone to just learn by memory and the physical outline of words - this says lettuce and that says cabbage - with no other mechanic, no connection to some other thing or an association with some smaller piece that I know.
I mean i litereally cant imagine it. Because my brain folds differently now, after learning to read the way I did.
I'd always be coming back to "Well I can't spell or even read much, but I at least know the difference between 'le' and 'ca', so I know which sign goes on which box of vegetables."
posted by bartleby at 12:50 PM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Use was made of the old Dick and Jane books, but in a reverse fashion, which I'll get to.
First was letter shapes and sounds. "S looks like a snake, it makes an ssssss sound. [prompted to trace the S shape and go ssss] T is like a Tall Tower. Tuh! Tuh! Tee!"
Then it was on to words, with Dick and Jane. I guess this is where the idea of 'shapes of words' comes in? Because rather than being prompted to read the insipid poetry, the game was to find which words went with the pictures, using the shapes of the letters in them.
Which one is Sally? [points to the little girl] No, which word is Sally? [furrows brow] I'll give you a hint; remember L is a Long Line?
Ooh! This one! 'Cause it starts with an S and has Ls! And that word must be Puff, because F Flaps like a Flag, waving in the wind! Pufffffff. Very good!
That gets you to 'sounding out words'. And figuring out words from context and the 'shape' of sentences - this one must be Come, even though it doesn't look like it sounds.
Then came 'word legos', based on the Latin and Greek roots mentioned earlier. Not actually learning those languages, but learning common usages of roots and prefixes and suffixes, and how take them apart and put them back together to figure out big words you didn't know yet.
What's that one mean, kiddo? Well I've never seen that word before, but a torium is a place or a building where something happens or gets done. And audi is usually something to do with sound or listening. So an 'auditorium' must be...a place where you make sounds? Or where you go to listen? Very good!
So I guess it was the elemental Phonics of letters, then the molecular Phonics of letters combined into words. I don't know what to call the chunks of prefix/suffix/root stuff. Hydro means 'water', istic means 'resembles'. Playing the game of - I've never seen that word before, but 'fication' is when you do something to a thing, and 'magna' is big; so magnification must be making something big.
Hey I can read! And figure new things out from other things I already know!
I can't imagine being left alone to just learn by memory and the physical outline of words - this says lettuce and that says cabbage - with no other mechanic, no connection to some other thing or an association with some smaller piece that I know.
I mean i litereally cant imagine it. Because my brain folds differently now, after learning to read the way I did.
I'd always be coming back to "Well I can't spell or even read much, but I at least know the difference between 'le' and 'ca', so I know which sign goes on which box of vegetables."
posted by bartleby at 12:50 PM on September 5, 2022 [1 favorite]
Well I've never seen that word before, but a torium is a place or a building where something happens or gets done.
But this is wrong! It actually breaks into 'auditor-' and 'ium.'
posted by praemunire at 1:11 PM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
But this is wrong! It actually breaks into 'auditor-' and 'ium.'
posted by praemunire at 1:11 PM on September 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Um, no. Auditor-ium is the primeval substance from which Forensic Accountants are made. (In the UK it's auditor-inium.)
posted by bartleby at 1:15 PM on September 5, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by bartleby at 1:15 PM on September 5, 2022 [13 favorites]
I can't imagine being left alone to just learn by memory and the physical outline of words - this says lettuce and that says cabbage - with no other mechanic, no connection to some other thing or an association with some smaller piece that I know.
It's mostly before I have clear memories, but I am told that I taught myself to read before learning to recite the alphabet. My understanding is that there were some picture books that I liked to have read to me, often enough that I memorized the text, then I would recite them while turning the pages, then at some point I connected the words and the text and was reading.
It is later that I recall learning the "a-b-c" song and for quite a while I remained confused by the whole "elemeno" vs "LMNO" thing.
But just like with the other early readers above, I could do this because I was growing up in a house full of books and people reading, and with parents who were willing to suffer through a child reciting the same stories that they had had to read way too often.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:50 PM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's mostly before I have clear memories, but I am told that I taught myself to read before learning to recite the alphabet. My understanding is that there were some picture books that I liked to have read to me, often enough that I memorized the text, then I would recite them while turning the pages, then at some point I connected the words and the text and was reading.
It is later that I recall learning the "a-b-c" song and for quite a while I remained confused by the whole "elemeno" vs "LMNO" thing.
But just like with the other early readers above, I could do this because I was growing up in a house full of books and people reading, and with parents who were willing to suffer through a child reciting the same stories that they had had to read way too often.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:50 PM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Dip Flash: "It is later that I recall learning the "a-b-c" song and for quite a while I remained confused by the whole "elemeno" vs "LMNO" thing. "
LMNO are four letters. LMNO are not one.
posted by Bugbread at 4:47 PM on September 5, 2022
LMNO are four letters. LMNO are not one.
posted by Bugbread at 4:47 PM on September 5, 2022
Ella Minnow Pea is about a town where letters start falling off a sign and as they fall they get banned from use in the town, and the novel also stops using them. It's an amazing thing to read, if you like books that are also sort of games that you read.
posted by hippybear at 5:35 PM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 5:35 PM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
To this day I have to sing the song in my head when putting anything in alphabetical order.
(I also need the song for remembering all 50 states.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:10 PM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
(I also need the song for remembering all 50 states.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:10 PM on September 5, 2022 [5 favorites]
If you're looking for a little variety in your alphabet song, and "elemeno" has always tripped you up, why not try the traditional Japanese version of the English ABC song?
I say "traditional" because about a decade ago there was a rapid switch to the American version. In fact, the Hello Kitty version I posted isn't even quite the traditional version because "w" is pronounced "double yoo" instead of just "double" and "z" is pronounced "zee" instead of "zed", but because the transformation happened before YouTube really boomed, I simply couldn't find a pre-2010 version.
posted by Bugbread at 6:31 PM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I say "traditional" because about a decade ago there was a rapid switch to the American version. In fact, the Hello Kitty version I posted isn't even quite the traditional version because "w" is pronounced "double yoo" instead of just "double" and "z" is pronounced "zee" instead of "zed", but because the transformation happened before YouTube really boomed, I simply couldn't find a pre-2010 version.
posted by Bugbread at 6:31 PM on September 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I would just like to share with the thread that the most reassuring fact I learned in my five years on school board is:
There is no difference in reading skill or academic achievement, at age 10, between children who learn to read at age 2, and children who learn to read at age 7.
Little kids have wildly uneven development! Some kids are skipping around the playground while others are struggling to two-foot jump; some kids are reading whole-ass books while others are struggling with letter shapes. Some kids hit physical milestones faster; others hit mental milestones faster. BOTH ARE OKAY, and they start evening out a bit after second grade (/age 7). This is also why assessments of academic giftedness before second grade are HOT GARBAGE and a sign your school district isn't evidence-based (but is giving in to the loudest, most-demanding, wealthiest parents). There simply isn't any correlation between "giftedness" testing before age 7 and actual academic giftedness.
Anyway. If you started reading when you were two, and your first-grader is still struggling to read, like, definitely keep an eye on it! (I know you will, you're a good parent.) But don't WORRY about it. It will almost certainly sort itself out. And if your kid's school is super-chill about the fact that your child isn't yet reading in first grade, talk to the teacher! Find out what they see, and where your kid needs support! But the fact is that the best schools won't start serious reading intervention until near the end of first grade, because IT ISN'T A PROBLEM until at least then.
And if you have multiple kids and they have differential development, that IS NOT YOUR FAULT. That is your kids! It's not that you gave one a lot of attention and phonics, and you failed another. It's just that kids develop at very uneven rates, in ways that have to do with THEM, and not you. (And honestly, I come from a very bookish family where everyone reads constantly, and three of us started reading before kindergarten, but my youngest brother didn't read until he was 6 1/2, and then had to be BRIBED to read until he was 12, and now he reads fiction for fun non-stop and has two advanced degrees including an MBA from Booth and has a reading-intensive job. IT WORKS OUT.)
Read to your kid, let your kid see you reading, share the joy of books. But don't worry about reading achievement before they're 7!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:39 PM on September 5, 2022 [16 favorites]
There is no difference in reading skill or academic achievement, at age 10, between children who learn to read at age 2, and children who learn to read at age 7.
Little kids have wildly uneven development! Some kids are skipping around the playground while others are struggling to two-foot jump; some kids are reading whole-ass books while others are struggling with letter shapes. Some kids hit physical milestones faster; others hit mental milestones faster. BOTH ARE OKAY, and they start evening out a bit after second grade (/age 7). This is also why assessments of academic giftedness before second grade are HOT GARBAGE and a sign your school district isn't evidence-based (but is giving in to the loudest, most-demanding, wealthiest parents). There simply isn't any correlation between "giftedness" testing before age 7 and actual academic giftedness.
Anyway. If you started reading when you were two, and your first-grader is still struggling to read, like, definitely keep an eye on it! (I know you will, you're a good parent.) But don't WORRY about it. It will almost certainly sort itself out. And if your kid's school is super-chill about the fact that your child isn't yet reading in first grade, talk to the teacher! Find out what they see, and where your kid needs support! But the fact is that the best schools won't start serious reading intervention until near the end of first grade, because IT ISN'T A PROBLEM until at least then.
And if you have multiple kids and they have differential development, that IS NOT YOUR FAULT. That is your kids! It's not that you gave one a lot of attention and phonics, and you failed another. It's just that kids develop at very uneven rates, in ways that have to do with THEM, and not you. (And honestly, I come from a very bookish family where everyone reads constantly, and three of us started reading before kindergarten, but my youngest brother didn't read until he was 6 1/2, and then had to be BRIBED to read until he was 12, and now he reads fiction for fun non-stop and has two advanced degrees including an MBA from Booth and has a reading-intensive job. IT WORKS OUT.)
Read to your kid, let your kid see you reading, share the joy of books. But don't worry about reading achievement before they're 7!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:39 PM on September 5, 2022 [16 favorites]
I get that phonics may work much better on average across a population and that kids with dyslexia will have a very rough go at learning to sight read. But learning to read visually has so many advantages for those for whom it "takes" that every kid should at least get a shot at. I think that success generally falls off rapidly after age 3, and that best chance of success requires laying the groundwork by around age 2. So, for schools, phonics is a better choice. But for chrissakes, if a kid shows up in school already able to read visually, don't confuse them by teaching them phonics! If you can read visually, phonics is inferior in every respect.
The advantages:
1. perfect, or close to perfect, spelling, with no effort.
2. rather higher "natural", comfortable, reading speed
3. easier to read contextually
4. vastly easier to scan text for key phrases or words
5. much easier to read out loud with good phrasing & intonation (although this can be a disadvantage: I can actually read out loud while thinking about something else, and have no comprehension of what I just read out loud with perfect phrasing)
So, do the flashcards with 2-3 year olds, if it works, yay, another visual reader, if it doesn't, don't worry about it and let them learn with phonics in kindergarten.
posted by lastobelus at 10:32 PM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
The advantages:
1. perfect, or close to perfect, spelling, with no effort.
2. rather higher "natural", comfortable, reading speed
3. easier to read contextually
4. vastly easier to scan text for key phrases or words
5. much easier to read out loud with good phrasing & intonation (although this can be a disadvantage: I can actually read out loud while thinking about something else, and have no comprehension of what I just read out loud with perfect phrasing)
So, do the flashcards with 2-3 year olds, if it works, yay, another visual reader, if it doesn't, don't worry about it and let them learn with phonics in kindergarten.
posted by lastobelus at 10:32 PM on September 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Well I Never: ...these students will transcend the five-paragraph essay on their own,...
Exactly! That's a framework fr them to use like training wheels: some people need that stabilization for a long time, and others zoom away quickly.
A couple of my kids weren't taught this format, and we happily imparted the "secret" because it was such big organizational aid. Once they developed some writing style, they could loosen up -- but at the beginning, it was the best way to have the meet the rubric (e.g., "include five quotes from the text" or "use three data points to support your argument").
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Also: speaking of LMNO, I am reminded of this old SNL sketch...
posted by wenestvedt at 11:41 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Exactly! That's a framework fr them to use like training wheels: some people need that stabilization for a long time, and others zoom away quickly.
A couple of my kids weren't taught this format, and we happily imparted the "secret" because it was such big organizational aid. Once they developed some writing style, they could loosen up -- but at the beginning, it was the best way to have the meet the rubric (e.g., "include five quotes from the text" or "use three data points to support your argument").
--
Also: speaking of LMNO, I am reminded of this old SNL sketch...
posted by wenestvedt at 11:41 AM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Our four kids were early readers: like many of you, there's a lot of talk and quips and chatter around here, so they had good vocabulary and an urge to keep up.
We hung up words from the Dolch list in the kitchen and during meals we practiced with whoever was the youngest child at the time. They all did that thing where they memorize the story and pretend to read, so we knew they understood the connection between "shapes on the page" and "words you hear."
They all read early and are very verbal now. Would it work for every kid? *shrug* Dunno: it's impossible to isolate this effort from all the other supports we gave them...which is the heart of what drives academic success, isn't it?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:46 AM on September 6, 2022
We hung up words from the Dolch list in the kitchen and during meals we practiced with whoever was the youngest child at the time. They all did that thing where they memorize the story and pretend to read, so we knew they understood the connection between "shapes on the page" and "words you hear."
They all read early and are very verbal now. Would it work for every kid? *shrug* Dunno: it's impossible to isolate this effort from all the other supports we gave them...which is the heart of what drives academic success, isn't it?
posted by wenestvedt at 11:46 AM on September 6, 2022
Our eldest learned to read on his own by the time he was three. We put some of those alphabet magnets on the fridge and taught him the names and sounds of the letters and read picture books to him. The next thing we knew he taught himself how to read and was soon reading anything and everything he could get his hands on. His reading speed is incredible -- he can read much faster than anyone I know, and absorbs everything he reads. Our house is full of books and we are big readers, so there is lots for him to read.
Our youngest struggled and struggled and struggled, and was clearly just making up what he thought was on the page based on the pictures and the first letters of the words. We finally got him tested in Grade 3. He had an excellent teacher that year, and during a parent-teacher meeting she told us what she was seeing and her concerns. All his previous teachers always said "don't worry about it" whenever we brought up our concerns about his difficulty reading. Ends up he has "surface dyslexia". It took a few years of one-on-one private tutoring with the Orton-Gillingham system, but now he reads novels for fun. He will never be a fast reader, but he loves to read now. I think he would still be barely able to read if we couldn't afford to pay for the tutoring and had to rely only on what is offered by the school system.
The current system in use by the public school does not work for kids with learning disabilities, and there is not enough staff or resources to support all the kids who need help. Hopefully that will change now that the Ontario Human Rights Commission has released the findings of the Right to Read public inquiry.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:21 PM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Our youngest struggled and struggled and struggled, and was clearly just making up what he thought was on the page based on the pictures and the first letters of the words. We finally got him tested in Grade 3. He had an excellent teacher that year, and during a parent-teacher meeting she told us what she was seeing and her concerns. All his previous teachers always said "don't worry about it" whenever we brought up our concerns about his difficulty reading. Ends up he has "surface dyslexia". It took a few years of one-on-one private tutoring with the Orton-Gillingham system, but now he reads novels for fun. He will never be a fast reader, but he loves to read now. I think he would still be barely able to read if we couldn't afford to pay for the tutoring and had to rely only on what is offered by the school system.
The current system in use by the public school does not work for kids with learning disabilities, and there is not enough staff or resources to support all the kids who need help. Hopefully that will change now that the Ontario Human Rights Commission has released the findings of the Right to Read public inquiry.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:21 PM on September 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
Probably too late for anyone to read this, but,
I stopped reading the article because there is a balance and nuance between phonics and meaning that she didn't seem to get. Phonics can teach kids to sound out words, but I have had kids read passages to me, pronounced perfectly, who could not remember anything from what they just read.
The biggest determinant of literacy, is, according to a favorite study of mine, is reading to kids at home from the time they are babies. Phonics can work really well after they understand what a book, and book language, and story and word relationships, etc, are.
I would hate to see things swing back to all phonics.
posted by olykate at 3:34 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
I stopped reading the article because there is a balance and nuance between phonics and meaning that she didn't seem to get. Phonics can teach kids to sound out words, but I have had kids read passages to me, pronounced perfectly, who could not remember anything from what they just read.
The biggest determinant of literacy, is, according to a favorite study of mine, is reading to kids at home from the time they are babies. Phonics can work really well after they understand what a book, and book language, and story and word relationships, etc, are.
I would hate to see things swing back to all phonics.
posted by olykate at 3:34 PM on September 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
I have had kids read passages to me, pronounced perfectly, who could not remember anything from what they just read.
I've experienced this, too. Kids who are really great with the words and letters on the page and rendering them into speech, but there is no meaning there. The entire exercise is in the reading and not in the meaning of the words.
I don't know how to bridge that gap for children who get stuck there.
posted by hippybear at 3:41 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've experienced this, too. Kids who are really great with the words and letters on the page and rendering them into speech, but there is no meaning there. The entire exercise is in the reading and not in the meaning of the words.
I don't know how to bridge that gap for children who get stuck there.
posted by hippybear at 3:41 PM on September 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
It seems like whole language learning is designed to make children engaged, passionate readers, which is wonderful! I approve!
But not everyone is going to be an adult who is an engaged passionate reader and that’s ok. Those people will still need to do things like read street signs, medication bottles, and follow assembly instructions.
posted by bq at 1:21 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
But not everyone is going to be an adult who is an engaged passionate reader and that’s ok. Those people will still need to do things like read street signs, medication bottles, and follow assembly instructions.
posted by bq at 1:21 PM on September 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Phonics can teach kids to sound out words, but I have had kids read passages to me, pronounced perfectly, who could not remember anything from what they just read.
This happens to me as a very literate adult! If I'm reading something I haven't seen before, I can get through a paragraph and remember nothing. I've talked to other people about it and I'm not alone.
It has nothing obvious to do with phonics. Anyone reading smoothly is sight-reading words, not sounding them out. I think for people this happens to, it has to do with the amount of cognition spent on the public act of reading, voice and breath control, nervousness about the reactions, and so on.
I've learned if I pause a second or two when I finish a sentence or phrase, and do a quick rescan of the sentence, I can consistently retain the meaning just fine. I didn't figure this out until well until into adulthood (partly of course because you don't do much cold reading aloud as an adult.) For a kid I find it very understandable that they want to just move on to the next word and read that aloud--that is the assignment after all!
posted by mark k at 6:11 PM on September 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
This happens to me as a very literate adult! If I'm reading something I haven't seen before, I can get through a paragraph and remember nothing. I've talked to other people about it and I'm not alone.
It has nothing obvious to do with phonics. Anyone reading smoothly is sight-reading words, not sounding them out. I think for people this happens to, it has to do with the amount of cognition spent on the public act of reading, voice and breath control, nervousness about the reactions, and so on.
I've learned if I pause a second or two when I finish a sentence or phrase, and do a quick rescan of the sentence, I can consistently retain the meaning just fine. I didn't figure this out until well until into adulthood (partly of course because you don't do much cold reading aloud as an adult.) For a kid I find it very understandable that they want to just move on to the next word and read that aloud--that is the assignment after all!
posted by mark k at 6:11 PM on September 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
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To me, learning about reading has been full of surprises. I almost think I'm positioned to be more open to the data because I didn't learn to read in school. I would never have thought that being able to sound out words was so important to comprehension, but if that's what the data shows, by god let's teach systematic phonics.
I've no idea why Calkins thinks that teaching students how to sound out words will cause them to hate reading. Using a controlled reader with low-performing students, you can see some visibly perk up. Once they have a taste of success, then they are so much more motivated. Anything can be taught well or poorly.
posted by Trifling at 5:08 PM on September 4, 2022 [8 favorites]