How I Taught My Kid to Read • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#141

Post by timthorn » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

m-i-l wrote: post #87

lordnacho wrote: post #14

I've got school aged kids in the UK, and I've never seen anything other than phonics as the way to teach reading. Seems to work just fine, never came across a kid who couldn't read quite soon after they started being taught. But of course that may just be my particular environment.

Yes, only ever seen phonics taught in the UK - wasn't aware there were alternative approaches, let alone any controversy on the topic. It might not be clear from the original article, but it isn't just single letters, there are also digraphs (i.e. two letters that make one sound, e.g. bee is read b-ee), split digraphs (i.e. where a digraph is split by a consonant, e.g. a-e for cake), and later on things like the magi…

Alphablocks is excellent and is also now accompanied by Numberblocks, which was developed in conjunction with the National Centre for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics.

There was a big push by the Conservative government as soon as they got into power to get all primary schools to teach synthetic phonics. Before then, whole word teaching was quite common.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#142

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

oflannabhra wrote: post #77

Siegfried Engelmann [0] (the author of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons , referenced in the story), developed a pedagogical model he named Direct Instruction [1] in the '60s as a direct result of being focused on at-risk, low-performing children. Here is a video [2] from the 60s of him working with one of his initial kindergarten classes (doing complex math, etc), and using many of the hallmarks of Direct…

This is exactly what I used with my kids. Neither finished the entire course of 100, because they preferred to go to YA novels rather than the structured practice in the later lessons. Both have consistently tested at multiple grade-levels of reading ability above their public school age cohort.

I think I started them at 3 years old, though it took a while to get some traction. You might have to repeat some early lessons.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#143

Post by pushpop » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #59

pushpop wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in the UK. Everybody complains about the public ("state" or whatever) schools. I'd never enroll my kids in public schools here (pre-university), only in private schools, if I had the means. Continental Europe is much better IMO/E.

People moan about a great many things but it doesn’t mean they’re right (hence Brexit, Trump, “Christian values”, racism/homophobia/etc, those who moan about computer security from a lazy ux perspective (eg “why can’t my password be the same as my user name?”).

I take much more stock in the opinions with those who actually have to work under those conditions and see those systems in use first hand.

I agree it’s not perfect and there are plenty of areas it can be improved but some of the comments on here are throwing out the baby water (as others have also pointed out). If you can afford private education then that’s also an option. But you’re still part of the same education system with the same flaws. You are just (hopefully) paying for better teachers (that isn’t always the case - more about that below). For all of its warts, public schools are still a far better option than homeschooling in the vast majority cases.

Its worth noting that I’ve provided IT services for a few private’s schools in my time and frankly some of them were worse than the public school I went to! Both in terms of teaching staff and school equipment. It was a real eye opener for me because up until that point I was planning on sending my (then theoretical) kids to private school too.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#144

Post by Lukeas14 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

725686 wrote: post #118

My kid can read just fine. The problem is that he hasen't learned how to ENJOY reading... that is the hard part.

This is what libraries are great for. Kids will get bored reading a book they're not interested in just like adults would. My son was very picky about what he wanted to read and rarely enjoyed the books that I picked out for him. So every week we'd go to the library where he could pick from 1000s of books about literally any subject he wanted to learn. Once he was ready for chapter books we got him a kindle which has an even bigger library. Reading is now his goto activity before bed and during long car rides.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#145

Post by dang » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

Vrondi wrote: post #107

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…

You are betraying your ignorance of linguistics and dialect by viewing regional accents as defects requiring speech therapy. If children are taught to read by instructors who share their accent, such things are not even noticed at all. The child smoothly learns to read well. They do not sound like a flattened-accent Mid-west TV announcer, but they learn to read quite well. "Linking R" and "Instrusive R" in New Englan…

Can you please omit personal swipes from your posts to HN? Providing correct information neutrally is by far the best way to get it across, and then you won't be breaking the site guidelines or damaging the community either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#146

Post by spraak » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

pushpop wrote: post #143

tomp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the UK. Everybody complains about the public ("state" or whatever) schools. I'd never enroll my kids in public schools here (pre-university), only in private schools, if I had the means. Continental Europe is much better IMO/E.

People moan about a great many things but it doesn’t mean they’re right (hence Brexit, Trump, “Christian values”, racism/homophobia/etc, those who moan about computer security from a lazy ux perspective (eg “why can’t my password be the same as my user name?”). I take much more stock in the opinions with those who actually have to work under those conditions and see those systems in use first hand. I agree it’s not p…

> I take much more stock in the opinions with those who actually have to work under those conditions and see those systems in use first hand.

Check out John Taylor Gatto's works [1]. He was a public school teacher for 30 years, but later advocated for homeschooling.

[1] E.g. Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#147

Post by adrianN » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #55

adrianN wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good teachers with autonomy get better results than good teachers without autonomy, but bad teachers with autonomy get worse results than without autonomy.

It is impossible for teacher "to wait or push as needed" without having enough autonomy. If you give teachers no autonomy, you will turn teachers who want to wait or push based on situation to the ones who don't. Or they will simply leave. Just like with any other job, you either command details or you have people doing own decisions. Cant have both.

Like most decisions in education, it's the question of what you want to optimize for, minimum, average, or maximum success. That dictates whether you want to separate smart pupils from average pupils, how big your classes should be, how much memorization you require, how much autonomy teachers should have, and many more aspects. The PISA studies provide really interesting data on this.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#148

Post by andrei_says_ » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #136

andrei_says_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Skinner-ian techniques were derived from. But we’re not rats nor birds and thus such attitude is not effective long term. Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them hate reading even more because of the humiliation a…

> Incentivizing human beings means treating them like the rats and birds Not at all. Incentivising means to motivate. How many people work because they want money rather than because they like to work? > Apart from being condescending, humiliating, degrading and destructive. You're being a tad over dramatic :) > Rewarding a child for reading makes them read for the external reward (for someone else) and makes them ha…

I appreciate the conversation but don’t have the bandwidth to engage your points. If you’d like to explore the research, check out the resources I mentioned. It’s possible you’ll arrive at a different opinions... different from mine but also maybe different from your current ones.

I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#149

Post by sudosteph » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #145

Vrondi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are betraying your ignorance of linguistics and dialect by viewing regional accents as defects requiring speech therapy. If children are taught to read by instructors who share their accent, such things are not even noticed at all. The child smoothly learns to read well. They do not sound like a flattened-accent Mid-west TV announcer, but they learn to read quite well. "Linking R" and "Instrusive R" in New Englan…

Can you please omit personal swipes from your posts to HN? Providing correct information neutrally is by far the best way to get it across, and then you won't be breaking the site guidelines or damaging the community either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Was the comment above edited or something? Because I don't get how it's interpreted as a personal swipe as is.

That the parent comment would make such sweeping statement and dismiss regional accents as "untreated speech problems" is incredibly offensive, and in fact does indicate that they have not done much study on linguistics. Literally the first chapter of a Linguistics 101 book explains how dialects are a natural and healthy part of language and the existence of a dialect is not relative to someone's communication ability overall. As a person who had actual speech problems that required years of speech therapy - it's incredibly frustrating to see someone try to equate learning to read with speech therapy and then see you say that it's a "personal swipe" when that person is correctly called out as ignorant on the specific subject matter it relates to.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#150

Post by hutzlibu » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #58

Phonics will always be unpopular with teachers for at least 3 reasons. 1. Teachers are typically from good middle-class backgrounds, and will naturally assume children will just learn to read because their parents basically tutored them for hundreds or thousands of hours and they just magically taught themselves. 2. It's hard for an individual practitioner to have any idea whether their methods are wonderful or absol…

Well, a good teacher could (and can) indeed see, what methods he use are effective or not. As he gets new data with new "fresh" kids who are individuals, but usual still average. So you could experiment. In real life you probably can't as (at least in germany) it is pretty strict and fixed what is about to be teached in class, when and how. That kills all creativity and creates boredom in the teacher and his class.