Coincidentally, we started using this same book a week ago with my son. It is FANTASTIC! We've struggled with other methods but this one is working amazingly well. The best part is that my son's motivation to work on reading went from zero to off the charts. He's constantly on me to do more reading!
How I Taught My Kid to Read
81–90 of 176 posts
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know a little Spanish still I would argue about 1-to-1: at least you do not pronounce `h` and there are two different ways to pronounce `g`.
Compared to English, I think it's reasonable to unscientifically call it 1:1.
Spanish is at least 0.98:1. English probably struggles to reach the 60's.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
From their perspective the people who are against school are against it for basically the same reason you’re against being hit in the head, because it’s harmful and subjecting children to it is wrong. The difference between being punched in the head, punched in the head by someone wearing boxing gloves, hit with a goofball in a sock don’t change that someone is getting hit in the head and that’s wrong. It’s like a Ch…
I've found that very much depends on the teacher and - to a lesser extent - the school policies as well. Each teacher will have their own teaching style. Some do favour "sit down and copy from a worksheet" style of teaching but I'd argue those are the lazier teachers. Others, however, do find more creative and interactive ways for kids to learn the same curriculum. Source: my wife is a primary school teacher and real…
I presume your wife follows the national curriculum. If she does the subjects children study, the content they learn and their progression within that curriculum are mandated. Children have extremely limited freedom to explore within those narrow guidelines. They are not free to pursue their own interests, to decide what they want to do with their time or to spend the amount of time playing that they would naturally. They are not free to socialise across age groups and they learn little to nothing about the deep, abiding interests of other children in the environment where they spend most of their waking hours for the majority of their childhood. They are not in any meaningful way free.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#84I'm always fascinated and curious about language learning. We seem to just pick up our native language so easily as we're growing up, but it seems difficult to pick up a new language with the same ease later on. I don't have kids, and can't remember what my reading ability was at 4 years old, but I thought when I started reading that I started out by identifying individual characters and trying to sound them out piec…
Do we really learn our native language more easily than other languages?
It takes several years for children to learn to speak properly, and they are not exactly busy with other commitments.
Maybe if we dedicated a couple of years to another language and did not have to work for a living, prepare our own food, clean ourselves and so on, we could learn any language.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#85You 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…
>> It is common, particularly in New England, to drop or add an "R".
The dropping and adding of consonants is one of the defining aspects of many accents. It isn't really incorrect, just a mode of speech.
Texas: "Readin."
Canada/Nebraska: "Reading."
UK: "Reading-g." (Really. Every BBC presenter does the double-G ing on everything-g.)
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#86For the child of average intelligence or higher, simply spending time reading aloud while the child looks and listens and eventuate tries to lead is sufficient to teach how to read. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's not rocket surgery.
Time spent listening to hard books is for most children also more marginally useful than time spent trying to learn to read very simple books independently, especially at the earliest ages. Kids who grow up in supportive and highly literate households are going to learn to read sooner or later, without needing any excessive focus on drills. There’s nothing inherently wrong with spending some amount of time on phonics…
"just within reach of the audience" is very hard when there are 20+ children in a class who have very little in common except age.
If the children were carefully separated by ability it might work.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#87I'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 magic e and suffixes with a-y for baby. There's some resources at https://www.gov.uk/education/phonics , and you can look on iPlayer or YouTube for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphablocks .
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#88I distinctly remember that being how I learnt to read. By sounding out the words, I couldn't imagine any other way?
I think the level of "sounding out" can vary. I learned to read "on my own" when I was 3 or 4 by realizing that the story my dad kept reading to me each night had the same exact words spoken on the same page. I realized the words on the page were related, so I would scan ahead and see the symbol "by" coming up, and he would say "by"! I picked out other small words and linked them to symbols and then linked larger sections of words. This ended up like sounding it out, but by word-parts, not by letters. My parents were surprised to learn that I could read when I read aloud a long word on a road sign as we were driving. "Tippecanoe."
With my kids, they did not follow my path and were uninterested in relating words to their sounds as we read books together, so we went with hooked on phonics to solid success, where I first learned rules (as a college educated adult mind you) like the sound of "x" (I had never realized what it was, like "ks" in "ax" - pronounced "ah-ks") and where I learned that a vowel typically says it's name if followed by a consonant and another vowel. I hadn't developed sounding out letters, I only sounded out parts of words in relation to other words I was aware of. I think this could be part of my issues with spelling in school.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Time spent listening to hard books is for most children also more marginally useful than time spent trying to learn to read very simple books independently, especially at the earliest ages. Kids who grow up in supportive and highly literate households are going to learn to read sooner or later, without needing any excessive focus on drills. There’s nothing inherently wrong with spending some amount of time on phonics…
"just within reach of the audience" is very hard when there are 20+ children in a class who have very little in common except age. If the children were carefully separated by ability it might work.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. If kids don’t understand every word or every abstract theme of a book that’s okay. If kids aren’t maximally challenged by every sentence, or if the teacher interjects a definition of a word they already knew for the benefit of less prepared students, that’s also okay. Kids who are a bit ahead or a bit behind will still generally stay engaged if the story is interesting.
Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read
#90You 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…
>> It is common, particularly in New England, to drop or add an "R". The dropping and adding of consonants is one of the defining aspects of many accents. It isn't really incorrect, just a mode of speech. Texas: "Readin." Canada/Nebraska: "Reading." UK: "Reading-g." (Really. Every BBC presenter does the double-G ing on everything-g.)
> UK: "Reading-g." (Really. Every BBC presenter does the double-G ing on everything-g.)
I had a hard time believing this one. It's subtle to my ears, but I'm a believer now. For those who are curious, check out the clip below [1]. You'll hear "hunting" & "willing" shortly after the linked time