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

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

#251

Post by bcrosby95 »

naasking wrote: post #107
Ajedi32 wrote: post #80

I just listened to this podcast a few weeks ago. What really struck me was just how obviously wrong the Guided Reading curriculum and three cueing theory was even just on its face, and how many people went along with replacing phonics with Guided Reading despite that. For example, the podcast recounts a Guided Reading lesson where the teacher covers up the words the kids are supposed to be reading with a piece of tap…

I think they've extended the meaning of "reading" to include a certain level of "understanding what you just read". Your nonsense sentence can't pass the latter test because there is no understanding to be gleaned, but it's not at all obvious that that should how we view reading exactly for that reason.

Correct, but I don't know if they've extended anything. When you say someone reads at the 12th grade level, it has never meant that they can superficially sound out every word, it means they can understand what the text is trying to say.

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

#252

Post by dragonwriter »

WeylandYutani wrote: post #245

We've been teaching kids to read for 200 years so why does anything need to be changed? Invest in more teachers not new fancy methods.

> We've been teaching kids to read for 200 years so why does anything need to be changed?

We've been gathering and making food for much longer than 200 years, and we keep changing that, too.

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

#253

Post by TRiG_Ireland »

phoe-krk wrote: post #210
michael_j_ward wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out a few outliers in such a large system like the English Language and using them to justify reclassifying the entire thing is braindead.

If that is the case, how would you describe the act of comparing English to languages which actually have consistent letter-phoneme pronunciation throughout the language (starting with e.g. the same number of available letters and phonemes and a 1:1 mapping between them)?

I would say that English has a greater level of orthographic depth than some other languages (but far less than, say, Thai).

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

#254

Post by sdwr »

troupe wrote: post #179
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…

> Lucky? Yes, but we also felt that letting our kids learn to read at school was leaving too much to chance. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Your preparation gave your kids an opportunity they wouldn't have had otherwise. There is quite a push to make parents feel that they are unable to teach their kids and that it needs to be left to "professionals." When COVID sent kids home and gave parents a view int…

Yeah, I see this helpless, "leave it to the experts" attitude in a few places, and absolutely hate it.

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

#255

Post by brodouevencode »

setgree wrote: post #223
Khaine wrote: post #181

Again from the podcast: Hanford: So much of this research isn’t new. And this idea that readers use context, multiple sources of information to solve words, identify words as they’re reading, that was really taken on by researchers back in the 70s and 80s, as an interesting question. Like, is that what we do? And they showed quite definitively that that wasn’t the case. I mean, were you sort of aware of that research…

> These people belong in gaol. Luckily in the US, being very wrong about something, even when it's very consequential, is not illegal. We'd have a much less entrepreneurial society, and a lot less open, free debate, if it were. Lucy Calkins did not force people to follow her methods, she persuaded them through teaching and advocacy. FWIW I think a lot of affected students would have a reasonable civil case against Te…

Nit:

> If medical doctors were routinely taught something wrong and contrary to the published research at medical schools, we'd probably be thinking about a similar suit

But we don't see one with respect to popular nutritional advice, which is in a very dismal state with the old food pyramid being promoted as the way and no one can agree on anything because nothing is reproducible.

So, maybe not the best analogy.

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

#256

Post by tdekken »

Vanderson wrote: post #9

Here's a video of Siegfried Engelmann, who is mentioned in this article, demonstrating how he had taught inner city grade school age kids that were considered "unteachable" (I can't recall the exact label I was told) doing algebra... live. (about 20 min in) I think they are about 4th or 5th grade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9SjFsimywA Many people didn't like the strict requirement of his reading methods, from w…

Hi Vanderson, I am surprised to hear mention of Engelmann here on HN :). I would love to connect and learn more about how you discovered DI. FWIW, I am a former principal engineer at a FAANG company turned educational researcher / edtech founder. I am working to revive Engelmann's Theory of Instruction and democratize access to the explicit, systematic teaching of the skills of reading (e.g., phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition).

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

#257

Post by Aeolun »

barrkel wrote: post #68
jrochkind1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I did not learn to read at home, I learned to read in school, in the early 80s, starting with basic alphabet in kindergarden (not before), and serious reading in first grade, which was standard then -- and by third grade was a huge nerd spending many hours a week reading recreationally, and reading "adult" novels like George Orwell. Your story is a good reminder that there may be more than one way…

Starting X early is IMO a bit of a red herring with child development, especially when they're in the low single digits. Their minds grow in power recognizably on a weekly basis (particularly noticeable when you spend a week apart) that an amazing uphill achievement at time t can be a trivially picked up thing at time t+1. I think you're right on the culture thing. My kid loves new books and understands that they con…

Yeah. Tried to get mine to ride a bike at 3.5 and he kept falling over. Now he tries again at 4.5 and he just immediately drives away.

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

#258

Post by pitaj »

hitgeek wrote: post #232

I heard of this story years ago, and was very dismayed. (There is no date on this website is this something new?) however the last 2 years I've experienced kids being taught to read in US public school kindergarten and the curriculum was nothing like was described in this series. They were taught phonics and memorized common non-phonetic words the same way I was taught 30 years ago.

It's likely you got lucky or your state / school district already changed the curriculum.

The podcast goes into how over the past few years, there has been a lot of activism to shift schools from cueing back to phonics. At various levels of government, including state laws.

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

#259

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #217
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…

I can also personally vouch for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It accelerated my ability to teach my kiddo to read by doing exactly what I wasn't an expert in - designing a reading pedagogy. We worked though the book in pandemic kindergarten and I can't help but attribute his current reading success to the work we did back then. It was a silver lining in a time of uncertainty and the memories I have of…

I've tried this book. My son won't follow the instructions exactly. And the book makes it clear they must be followed exactly. i don't know what to do.

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

#260

Post by pfedak »

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…

I'd dispute your characterization of the NEPC summary as well-reasoned. It's definitely a different perspective, but it's clear in a preference for valuing the experience and beliefs of "literacy scholars" over any sort of evidence that could contradict them. It does seems like a good view of the education institution's side of this argument.

It is careful to point out even minority criticism of phonics-centered instruction, while suggesting that disagreement with cueing approaches is a result of misunderstanding. It explicitly devalues "narrow" "experimental and quasi-experimental research" in favor of "decades of classroom-based and other forms of qualitative research" (how long has the experimental research been going on?). Even the naming feels slanted: the cueing approach gets called "whole language" or "balanced literacy" while opposing views start with "simple view of literacy". The "structured literacy" section ends with "although literacy researchers caution there is still much to learn about the brain and learning to read", while the cueing summary is free of similar caveats and emphasizes that it can adapt to individual students, as if other methods couldn't.

Ultimately it makes no actionable recommendations for what should actually be taught, except that no particular method should be mandated or banned, and that education should be "student-centered" (curious about the alternative...).

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