Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

features.apmreports.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 524 posts

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#151

Post by anon291 »

oxfordmale wrote: post #17
lr4444lr wrote: post #2

As someone who's both worked as a teacher and as a software engineer, my feeling is that what happened in reading education is roughly what engineers' jobs would be forced by their CTOs to use software methodologies and languages that came from their university professors who've never really spend much time (at least not in well over a decade if at all) doing actual salaried software development where code had to be…

Phonics-centric reading is the next big scandal waiting to happen. Teaching reading in England may have been less successful since adapting the synthetic phonics approach rather than more. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/jan/19/focus-on-p... The number of downvotes shows that it may still take a few years for people to understand that phonics is not the be all end all solution that it is currently made out…

I am shocked this comment exists, when the counter-example is literally written into it. English uses the latin alphabet which is a phonetic alphabet. It's why english readers can also 'read' Spanish without understanding any of the words. Anyone who says otherwise should be promptly ignored.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#152

Post by tivert »

joelfried wrote: post #86
bregma wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't teach our kids to read. We just read to them. A lot. Every day. By the time they were in kindergarten they could read on their own. By the time they started learning to read in school they could bring their own books to read during lessons so they wouldn't get bored. Kids at that age learn by emulating what they see. If they do not see their parents reading, learning to read in school is going to be hard. N…

We tried that with our first and it didn't work. Some children require more direct support. Knowing what works for those who need it is pretty huge.

>> We didn't teach our kids to read. We just read to them. A lot. Every day.

>> By the time they were in kindergarten they could read on their own.

> We tried that with our first and it didn't work. Some children require more direct support. Knowing what works for those who need it is pretty huge.

Yeah, I think the GP is making the same error has the "whole language" approach people--making the faulty assumption that mere exposure is enough to educate. That works with some, but clearly fails a lot. And even for the kids it works with, I'd be afraid it would leave gaps that would be much better addressed with some explicit instruction.

My kid is tiny and loves to "read" (i.e. memorize and recite books). At this rate, he'll probably learn to read on his own, but I definitely want to make sure he has the tools to successfully tackle difficult and unfamiliar words, so he doesn't self-limit to the stuff he knows well.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#153

Post by rsynnott »

josho wrote: post #126
stuaxo wrote: post #61

I guess you guys in the US could try curriculums from other English speaking countries ?

American exceptionalism leaves some Americans with the mis-guided belief that there is nothing to learn from other countries. I couldn't help but laugh seeing your comment was downvoted at the time I read this. What Americans should consider is removing charter/private schools so that rich kids have to have the same experience as middle class and lower income. In my experience wealthy families have time and resources…

Though, in this case, the problematic technique seems to have been imported from New Zealand.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#154

Post by jerry1979 »

Retric wrote: post #33
bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From friends that have suffered through education degrees, it doesn’t sound like the field sees itself as a part of the scientific community at all. There’s a disproportionate focus on, frankly, ideological indoctrination. Even if you agree with the underlying ideologies that doesn’t seem like an ideal system for producing excellent educators. The little methodological trainings that do take place are often grounded…

There are mountains of education research out there. Some collages actually do focus on it, but the real goal is to prepare people for the workplace by jumping though whatever hoops are mandatory. Research is largely ignored because what actually determines what’s used is politics not some rigorous validation of what works. We do a lot of standardized testing in the US not because it’s particularly useful, but becaus…

I plan to do some volunteer work in teaching. What's the best way to find "the good stuff" in terms of educational research?

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#155

Post by epiccoleman »

freeopinion wrote: post #141
analog31 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of my parents learned to read at home, in poverty. Both had educated parents, who had been displaced by the events of the era. I learned to read at home. Both of my kids, likewise. It didn't even remotely occur to anybody in the family that learning to read was special, or that there might even be any way to teach it other than phonics. English has a phonetic alphabet after all, right? Moreover, learning to read…

Phonics were all the rage when I was learning to read. I'm sure it helped me in some way for a year or two. Then I spent five years unlearning phonics. For the most part, I learned by rote memorization of spelling lists and by figuring out words from context through a lot of individual reading. My children learned from rote memorization and from context. Every English-literate person I know learned this way. Every le…

Even though it's definitely not sufficient for English spelling, I think it's pretty important to start with phonics. It teaches kids how the alphabet is supposed to work, and to be fair, it does work that way for most of the simple words young readers will encounter.

It's a good little lesson about "ideals" or something too, eventually. It's fun when you get to joke with your kids about how strange the spelling of some words are.

I just watched Megamind for the first time with my two kids yesterday, and some of the humor is based on Megamind constantly mispronouncing words ("school" becomes "shool", "Metro City" is pronounced as one word, like "atrocity", etc). My older son thought that was funny, my younger son didn't get it.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#156

Post by anon291 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #143
camgunz wrote: post #58

All the teachers I know are pretty irritated by Sold a Story, mostly their criticisms are: - if you just teach phonics you aren't actually helping kids to read (they've tried) because reading is more than just sounds - Sold a Story omits basically any nuance for shock facts I also think it's important to point out that APM Reports isn't an independent journalistic outfit. They accept grants for specific research. In…

> if you just teach phonics you aren't actually helping kids to read (they've tried) because reading is more than just sounds Of course, decoding isn't sufficient on its own (I can 'read' Portuguese without understanding it). But for a child who has oral fluency in a phonetic language, decoding is the main thing they need to learn, to allow them to bootstrap additional reading skills.

I have heard many teachers make this same criticism and it's so odd to me. Little children learn to read first by literally reading out loud. It's only later that 'silent' reading develops, and for most of us (I'd venture), we silently read by internally 'hearing' the audio version. At least I do (I'm listening to myself narrate this comment as I type it out silently). How else can you learn to read if not sounding out? I clearly remember myself learning to read, sounding out words and then being like 'oh that word is X'. And I see the same wheels turning with my daughter.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#157

Post by denton-scratch »

Khaine wrote: post #65
soneca wrote: post #40

Can someone please summarize what is this wrong methodology about?

Basically, some kiwi (Marie Clay) looked into how good kids learn to read, but somehow identified all the things bad learners do. Turned this into an approach to help kids, had some apparent success in New Zealand. Basically it got kids to guess what words were based on the context of the statement, the initial letter, pictures accompanying the statement etc, rather than sounding out the word. It got imported to the…

Ah, thanks for that! It doesn't come across in the written section summaries.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#158

Post by mikeryan »

fullstop wrote: post #117
mikeryan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was some bad science that pushed teachers (really administrators) away from teaching phonics as part of the reading curriculum. I have a daughter in third grade who struggled a little with reading (horrible timing too COVID hit at the end of kindergarten so she lost about a third of that year) She fortunately goes to an independent school who, as a result of some of this reporting quickly turned back on “phonic…

I'm wondering if I'm in the minority, but both of my kids learned to read before they started attending school. My youngest was old enough to grow up with Netflix and we always keep the subtitles on, so she learned a ton from that. What she didn't always learn, though, was pronunciation. Some of the shows had no dialogue, but had captions for things which happened. Occasionally she will slip up even today (at ~15) an…

From my experience there’s a pretty wide range of abilities going into Kindergarten. I’d say that your kids knowing how to read would put them into a minority but a decent sized one, may 25-30%?

Also a ton of variation there based on what kids did before kindergarten, at home or, definitely kids from Montessori schools had more reading then kids like mine who did full time preschool at one that didn’t have an “academic” focus.

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#159

Post by tines »

phoe-krk wrote: post #149
analog31 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of my parents learned to read at home, in poverty. Both had educated parents, who had been displaced by the events of the era. I learned to read at home. Both of my kids, likewise. It didn't even remotely occur to anybody in the family that learning to read was special, or that there might even be any way to teach it other than phonics. English has a phonetic alphabet after all, right? Moreover, learning to read…

>English has a phonetic alphabet after all, right? No, it doesn't - if it used IPA, it maybe would, but English has very inconsistent pronunciation for otherwise similar words written in Latin alphabet, a matter that many English native speakers seem to overlook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edPxKqiptw

For an alphabet to be phonetic, it doesn't really matter how complex the rules are for the alphabet, just that the letters carry only phonetic meaning and no semantic meaning, right?

Re: Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong

#160

Post by AlanYx »

patall wrote: post #91
bonthron wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" is an amazing book. I taught my daughter to read before kindergarten. It works.

What does "before kindergarten" mean? In the mornings? Or before she was old enough to go there? I started kindergarten at age 2 (like described in Wikipedia) and I suspect that is not what you mean.

The book itself recommends that most children start the program in the book at age 4, also noting that some advanced students may be ready at age 3.5.
Post reply on HN