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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

#51

Post by jononomo »

soneca wrote: post #40

Can someone please summarize what is this wrong methodology about?

It became fashionable in early childhood education circles to teach children to read by looking at the accompanying pictures in the book instead of by deciphering the letters and sounding out the word.

This led to many parents thinking that their kids must have dyslexia because they weren't learning to read.

You should listen to the podcast -- it is fascinating. I listened to the entire series three times because I couldn't get over it. It blew my mind that some people think that reading is not about deciphering letters and sounding out words, and that these are the people in charge of teaching kids how to read.

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

#52

Post by nradov »

noirscape wrote: post #21

What intrigues me here is if the same might have gone wrong with teaching people secondary languages. It's often seen as this big barrier to overcome, but you look at tools like Duolingo and they do this same "whole language" method instead of teaching people the phonics and letting them use that to fill out and learn how to read a foreign language using their skills to put words together, and instead they fall back…

I think your experience is atypical. Most students who learn a new language with a fairly "reasonable" alphabet like Korean or Russian find that to be the easiest part and remember most of the letters within a few days. I don't speak Greek but I've been there a few times and learned the alphabet just so that I could sort of read signs (forgot it now).

As for Duolingo, is there any independent evidence that it's actually effective? Some of my friends have been using it consistently for a long time and yet don't seem to have learned much. The gamification features are effective at driving user engagement but I'm skeptical whether it's actually a good educational tool.

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

#53

Post by oxfordmale »

camelite wrote: post #23
oxfordmale wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://www.pedagogynongrata.com/a-response-to

It clearly is still a controversial opinion to hold that phonics is not the "end all be all" it has been made out to be.

Despite challenging the statistics in the original paper, it doesn't provide evidence that phonics actually is better than the teaching techniques prior to that.

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

#54

Post by robertlagrant »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #38
tgv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology is already quite lousy as a science, which has hardly made progress in 100 years, but educational sciences bungle somewhere below even social psychology. There's no reproducability, there's no idea of how the learning process works, let alone how to organize a curriculum. They've got no idea what they're doing, yet populate the school boards and ministeries, and mandate methods and topics. We should take t…

One of the downsides of credentialism seems to me that in squishier fields you can end up creating false-credentials where none should exist.

I think this comment should be removed, as it ranks below 7 on the Rob-Grant scale.

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

#55

Post by tristor »

I was very lucky and my mother was a teacher at a private school when I was young, so I got to attend for free. I had phonics-based reading instruction, and learned to read acceptably in first grade. By fourth grade I was one of the best readers in the school, and ended up in a gifted program.

I still remember and feel appreciation for my first grade teacher, Mrs. Drown, for teaching me to read. It opened an entire world for me.

The public schools where I lived did not use phonics, and when I entered the gifted program I shifted to public school. I met people in high school who were considered average students that had less literacy than I did in fourth grade. The overall literacy rate in our small city was lower than the national average as well.

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

#56

Post by jimmar »

I'm by no means a perfect dad, but one thing I've done well is reading to my kinds. In the past 14 years, I've read to my kids almost every night. They both tested in the 99th percentile for reading comprehension and vocabulary. I'd often be shocked when I'd read a complicated word and ask my 5th grade what it meant and she'd give me a great definition.

Read to your kids.

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

#57

Post by Khaine »

kleiba wrote: post #4

I seriously doubt that 75% of fourth graders read as bad as the examples at the beginning. But what troubles me more is that people go to universities to study education, and yet after all these years, they still seem to have no clue about how to teach a diverse group of young kids. Yet, they're often very confident in their teaching methods. I'm not very familiar with the field, unfortunately, but it is my understan…

Did you listen to the episode where the teacher said, the theory might be true (phonics) but I ain't teaching it because fuck bush?

This is the problem.

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

#58

Post by camgunz »

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 particular Sold a Story was funded by The Hollyhock Foundation and others. I'm not saying this model is bad or impugning anyone's motives here; on the contrary I would say people are acting more or less in good faith. I'm just saying there are definitely agendas here.

For a more well-reasoned, academic look at the science of reading (SOR), have a look here [0].

[0]: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading

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

#59

Post by bonthron »

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…

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

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

#60

Post by zaphar »

oxfordmale wrote: post #36
mattmcknight wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. That is absolute bullshit. You can tell, because they cite exactly zero studies showing some other way is better. They are looking at scores over time with no control, which can be decreasing for any other reason. Phonics based reading instruction is response to the massive scandal that already happened in the US where they tried the whole language approach, balanced instruction, three cueing, and the like wi…

The UCL researchers are among 250 signatories to a letter which has been sent to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi, calling on the government to allow for a wider range of approaches to teaching reading, which would allow teachers to use their own judgment about which is best for their pupils. It doesn't say phonics doesn't work, it suggests phonics is only effective for a subgroup of pupils. Everyone has their own l…

There is pretty strong evidence[0] [1] [2] that phonics is a critical part of learning to read for everyone no matter who they are or what their personality is. It's not the only piece of the puzzle but if you leave it out you will handicap the student intended to or not. Without phonics when you encounter a new word you can't pronounce it. If you can't pronounce it you can't use it in conversation. You can't use it in your mental processing. If you aren't taught it you may pick up the rules of thumb eventually but you'll have done so the long hard way.

You might be justifiably angry that no one showed you or your child the easy way.

1: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Advantages-of-the-...

2: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ameliorating-Early-Rea...

3: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-effect-of-phonics-...

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