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How I Taught My Kid to Read

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Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#61

Post by technothrasher »

Did my daughter, as the child of two hyper-literate people with doctorates, have some kind of leg up? I doubt it. Some kids pick up reading with minimal guidance as early as 3; she wasn’t one of them, nor had she given indication of any impending breakthrough. Besides, Engelmann’s book is designed for kids of average intelligence and has worked with legions of them over the decades.

In a word, yes, she likely had a leg up. The credit mostly goes to her, not you or the book you used.

As the father of a boy with an extremely strange developmental reading profile (couldn't read a thing at age seven even after much one on one tutoring, to reading at an eighth grade level at nine) I learned a few things talking to many other parents and professionals. The most important is that no one method works for all children, as they each learn to read in their own way. My boy was definitely a "whole word" learner, and phonetics was a complete disaster for him. Other kids are clearly the other way round, and many kids do a combination of both.

Secondly, intelligence has nothing to do with it. Dyslexia is caused by many factors, but general intelligence really isn't one of them.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#62

Post by foobarian »

freediver wrote: post #31
a-saleh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't envy native english readers, as my teacher said, "I wouldn't be surprised if one day English write Manchester and read Liverpool". I am not sure of all Slavic languages work best with phonics, but one I learned seems it does. Like if you just read the sound of each letter fast after the other, you are 80% saying the word :)

Serbian is a slavic language with 100% letter for letter pronunciation. You can probably learn to read in Serbian in 30 mins and impress your friends. Understanding it is another matter :)

The thing that impresses me about this is that this was achieved intentionally, possibly spearheaded by Vuk Karadžić [1] and continued by others [2] - at least that's what they drilled us on in grade school back home. When we had a choice to write down English (or any foreign) words we could write it down in source form or "po Vuku" - "by the Wolf" - where we would write down the sounds in the pronounced word. It was almost like writing in the international phonetic alphabet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuk_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_Vukovians

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#63

Post by helloguillecl »

mapcars wrote: post #54
helloguillecl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native Spanish-speaker I'm astonished to learn that phonics is not the only way to teach reading in English. It makes sense, since phonics are way more difficult to follow in English than in Spanish (written Spanish maps 1-to-1 to the phonetics)

I know a little Spanish still I would argue about 1-to-1: at least you do not pronounce `h` and there are two different ways to pronounce `g`.

Yes. But they are very few and consistent rules. The sound of "H" will be consistent, unless it is actually a "CH", which is another letter phonetically speaking (some dictionaries would treat it a a separate letter).

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#64

Post by nkrisc »

mapcars wrote: post #54
helloguillecl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native Spanish-speaker I'm astonished to learn that phonics is not the only way to teach reading in English. It makes sense, since phonics are way more difficult to follow in English than in Spanish (written Spanish maps 1-to-1 to the phonetics)

I know a little Spanish still I would argue about 1-to-1: at least you do not pronounce `h` and there are two different ways to pronounce `g`.

Compared to English, I think it's reasonable to unscientifically call it 1:1.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#65

Post by nkrisc »

benj111 wrote: post #45
burfog wrote: post #15

You teach Russian or Spanish with phonics. You teach Chinese with whole-word. English needs a bit of both, since it is mostly phonetic. An on-demand approach to phonics works very well. The rules and exceptions are pointed out as mistakes are made. This avoids the boredom of drilling endless phonics rules and the long-term difficulty of whole-word. A common mistake with phonics is the accidental association of specif…

I don't get your examples. babe, boob, Bob, bib, bub, bye, boo, bah all have the same B sound. It isn't like 'ate' and 'apple'. Or are you saying they will literally think B is 'buh'? But then any one of those examples will disabuse them of that idea???

Try making a pure "b" sound without any vowel sound. You can't really, as you end up making an aspirated vowel sound to make any sound at all.. So we often tell kids that "b" is pronounced like "buh," for example. The point is to tell them "b" with other vowel sounds so they don't associate it with only one.

"B" is buh, bee, boh, boo, bah, bay, beh, bih.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#66

Post by barry-cotter »

pushpop wrote: post #51
spraak wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of who are teachers and all of who state that kids who have been taught outside of the standard educational system are always behind kids who were not. Would you admit that your perspective then is heavily biased? I don't claim to be unbiased, but I myself come from a family of educators, and I chose a different direction (see also John Gatto). That is, I'm very unsurprised that traditional educators would thi…

Just out of interest, which country are you based? I wonder if the reason perspective is so polarised from mine is because our education systems also vastly differ. From the perspective of the UK, most of what you said is completely untrue.

From their perspective the people who are against school are against it for basically the same reason you’re against being hit in the head, because it’s harmful and subjecting children to it is wrong. The difference between being punched in the head, punched in the head by someone wearing boxing gloves, hit with a goofball in a sock don’t change that someone is getting hit in the head and that’s wrong. It’s like a Christian trying to convert an apostate from Islam on the basis that they’ve rejected Allah when they became an atheist because the arguments for God’s existence are insufficiently strong. The atheist will reject the Christian and any other theist as well.

The U.K. system is probably slightly more curiosity crushing and stress inducing than average as school systems go, they certainly start academic instruction well before its age appropriate, but the entire system of child warehousing under the authority of people who are to train children to sit down, shut up and do as they’re told, giving them no or minimal choice in what they do for most of their waking hours is wrong, and he system is Many have tried, they even teach their writings in Ed schools. End result, nothing.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#67

Post by RickJWagner »

My wife and I bought a 'Teach Your Kid to Read' book when the first one was a baby. We'd read to the kids every day, encouraging them to read.

It was a great decision. The kids all do well in school, and they all have benefited greatly from early reading. If you have a baby-- do this!

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#68

Post by helloindia »

"Nothing happened, even though guidelines that govern behavior on the platform explicitly forbid mocking someone’s physical appearance.

Today, Instagram says, the outcome would have been different. More sophisticated reporting tools and moderators would have quickly shut the account down."

--> This is BS. Just two days ago, I came across an Instagram account, which had photos and videos of a friend & with captions making fun of my friend. I reported the account for bullying and got a reply from Instagram that the reported account doesn't violate it's community guideline.

When reporting an account, there is no way to provide a link of the actual account.(from where the bully copied the content)

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#69

Post by mruts »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #40
WA wrote: post #38

On a side note: Please remember that teaching your kid to read should come from a place of curiosity from the kid itself. There is likely no advantage from learning how to read at an earlier age (than school) [1]. [1]: https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/news/otago006408.html

I’d like to use this opportunity to remind everyone that extrinsic rewards and punishment (withdrawal of rewards is also punishment) kills intrinsic motivation and poisons the relationship destroying trust. In other words if you want you child to stop enjoying an activity, encourage or reward the activity. For more, and a ton of research, see the work of www.alfiekohn.com and more specifically Punished by Rewards.

I mean, is this even true? I love programming for example but love it a lot more when I’m being paid a lot of money.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#70

Post by fheld »

helloindia wrote: post #68

"Nothing happened, even though guidelines that govern behavior on the platform explicitly forbid mocking someone’s physical appearance. Today, Instagram says, the outcome would have been different. More sophisticated reporting tools and moderators would have quickly shut the account down." --> This is BS. Just two days ago, I came across an Instagram account, which had photos and videos of a friend & with captions ma…

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