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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

#311

Post by legacynl »

gavinmckenzie wrote: post #37

My daughter went through a Montessori education from 18 months old through grade 8. As part of her Montessori experience, starting at age three, she began to learn to write. They trace "sandpaper" letters with their fingers; moving their fingers along the strokes of letters pre-printed on cardboard in a rough texture. From there they learn to write the letters and words, speaking the words aloud. Thus the focus is on…

I don't think it has much to do with learning reading or writing first, but more about learning letters before you progress to words, before you progress to sentences, etc.

I don't think it really matters if you start with writing or reading first, because it's basically the same skill: knowing letter shapes and knowing which sound corresponds. It's that learning really benefits from receiving the same information in different contexts. So as long as you both teach them to write and read, the order doesn't really matter.

One reason for using the cardboard letters for younger children is that the brain regions handling bodily movement are much more advanced, and thus provide more context which (as stated earlier) helps in memorization.

But I suspect the main reason for using the sandpaper letters is because it is way more interesting for the children to have something with tactile feedback, instead of just looking at a flat card.

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

#312

Post by camgunz »

pfedak wrote: post #260
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 inst…

I mean, I guess a good of framing this is yeah, it is "the education institution's side of this argument". I see it as informed by decades of shifting research on how to teach reading and attentive to the tension between "we need regulations to guard against bad teachers" and "we need to give teachers the freedom to apply their expertise". Most of the rest of your argument is just not realizing that those are the actual names of things (e.g. there's actually a thing called "the simple view of literacy").

And to zoom out a little, a big part of educational quality is "do good people want to teach". A heavily prescribed curriculum is one more barrier to retaining good, motivated teachers. I'm not saying phonics shouldn't be taught, and I'm not saying teachers should have the freedom to not teach it. I am saying that all the teachers I know have kids where phonics didn't work (either the kid wasn't getting it, or the kid already knew it and drilling it into them killed their passion for reading, but hey standardized testing), and that's the kind of thing that makes good people quit: you know something is counterproductive, but your boss/the man makes you do it anyway, and in this case you fail a kid.

The problem is complex, which is why my 2nd bullet point was "Sold a Story omits basically any nuance for shock facts". Another way of saying this is "school isn't a restaurant where you pull up and order an education from an unskilled worker". I get that it's high stakes and people have super bad experiences with educators (I have, for sure), but we need to appreciate the nuance here.

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

#314

Post by obscurette »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #300
obscurette wrote: post #289

Teacher, educator and father of three kids here. I strongly disagree that "there is not enough evidence based science in teaching" etc. If there is something really to highlight what's wrong with education systems all over the world, it's too much "evidence based science". Every educational psychologist and his dog has a novel theory how learning works, how something should be taught and have a ton of evidence why. A…

You are saying "the evidence is bullshit", right?

No. I mean that it's not hard to gather evidence to back even very stupid teaching methods if you simply put enough effort and time to it.

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

#315

Post by taeric »

oxfordmale wrote: post #196
michael_j_ward wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an alphabetic writing system where the letters largely correspond to sounds, in contrast to logographic writing system where the symbol corresponds to the entire word (like Chinese or Japan). Yes, there are special rules and outliers that you need to learn in English, but it seems absurd to not classify it as phonetic because it's not purely phonetic. This is doubly so when discussing phonetic vs whole-word lear…

Japanese is phonetic, unlike English. In Japanese spelling is phonetic and pronunciation is consistent. Words sound like they look and look like they sound. Even someone who’s never studied Japanese before could read a text written in romaji and be understood without trouble (unlike someone studying French, for example).

Nit, Japanese has two phonetic alphabets. But, largely Japanese is not phonetic in written language, as they also have a logographic set which makes up a large portion of most texts.

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

#316

Post by uptownfunk »

yowzadave wrote: post #131
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…

We taught our daughter to read at age 3 using the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I remember when we first brought her to kindergarten and mentioned that she was already a competent reader--her teacher seemed oddly insistent about downplaying her abilities, and kept correcting us to say that she was "decoding" the text, rather than reading it. OK, if you say so-…

We're going through it now, the same book 100 lessons. I have two kids, one is almost 6 and one is 3.5. We got the book because the 6 year old was struggling considerably with reading. The book is a real effort to go through and requires a lot of patience with the 6 year old. Thankfully we are 80% of the way through it. The incredible thing is the 3.5 year old sees the older one do it and she wants to do it and she's actually on track to read much earlier than the 6 year old. It's really something to watch. I'm glad we found this book (actually on another HN thread..)

My wife, who is actually an early childhood montessori educator, was vehemently against the book, and I had to tell her, "look whatever we're doing right now isn't working, we need to do something different". Educational methodology is almost something like a religion hence such a strong need for what should be more "experienced-based" teaching. Do what works, tested on children, versus proving of academic scientific hypotheses. Sometimes what works just works and should be continued until something better can be identified. Again, a lot of this is anecdotal, but it was definitely an uphill battle. Frankly I don't think she's still completely convinced, but I refuse to sit on the sidelines and watch my kids not be able to read.

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

#317

Post by sailfast »

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…

FWIW We used the 100 easy lessons book for all of our kids and they read very well for their ages and enjoy reading.

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

#318

Post by Retric »

jerry1979 wrote: post #154
Retric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In general literature reviews are the best starting off point.

However, I don’t know what if anything would be relevant to you. If you’re helping kids with dyslexia learn to read then that’s very different than normal tutoring etc.

Really though research tends to have really narrow focus such as classroom lighting.

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

#319

Post by numeromancer »

dymk wrote: post #305
ch4s3 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally no one is suggesting phonics only, that’s just the language decoding step. The problem is that the “whole language” approach has been shown not to work at all, and we regularly see 4th graders who are functionally illiterate. If your teacher friends are mad, maybe it’s because they’re being called out for using a shitty method that’s ruin the lives of poor children.

You've gotta wonder how a nation's schooling standards shift to something like "Whole language" without, say, at least testing the methodologies to see if it results in better or worse outcomes. Seems like no actual validation was done.

They did test it: see Project Follow Through. They didn't like the results, so they ignored them.

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

#320

Post by numeromancer »

istjohn wrote: post #72
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…

Well, yeah, teachers have been bamboozled.

Homines libenter id quod volunt, credunt.
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