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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

#81

Post by patwolf »

My kids go to a school that teaches phonics. Some of my teacher friends have told me that phonics is antiquated, so it does make me happy to see that perhaps it is the best method of learning to read. It has worked well for kids so far.

I will say though that the school's method of teaching phonics is much more rigorous than anything I ever learned as a kid. They have a long list of graphemes (letters and letter combinations), and they need to be able to recite all the phonemes (sounds) that each grapheme can make. I have a hard time answering their phonics questions, like if they ask me what sounds "ou" makes. It can make at least four sounds, e.g. sour, group, court, country. I can't confidentially help them without a cheatsheet.

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

#82

Post by cpif »

This reminds me of an article in the Atlantic I liked [1], which argued that the real problem for American education is that it places too much emphasis on the mechanics of reading comprehension, leaving content-oriented coursework such as history, science, and sociology on the back burner. Three-cueing or any other inference-based approach to reading isn't going to work when kids don't have enough knowledge about the world to make good inferences.

It's good to hear that phonics are making something of a comeback. But it seems like other things will need to change too. I spent some time teaching freshman English at a state university -- when a kid stumbles over a word like "infrastructure," one senses that the literacy problem goes beyond the sonic properties of printed text.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-rad...

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

#83

Post by rkapsoro »

Me, I stick with Stephen Krashen's hypothesis, borne out by my own experience: compelling, comprehensible input is the key. This applies to both your first language acquired when you are young and any other languages later.

Start with reading to kids, then give them access to wide selection of books to choose from. Comic books are good, too.

I have many criticisms of the education I received as a youngster, but they did get this right.

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

#84

Post by Khaine »

theGnuMe wrote: post #14
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…

In this case the researchers know what works but the teachers aren't taught the science of reading. https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2018/09/10/hard-words-why... https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/12/582465905/the-gap...

Sure, its not great that they weren't taught the science behind it, but on one episode they quoted a teacher who was taught the new way, and she rejected it because 'she didn't like it'

From the transcript:

"She didn’t come away with an understanding of how children learn to read. She didn’t really learn about the science of reading. Other teachers told me they did. They say the training they got during Reading First opened their eyes. Changed their lives even. Some of them still use the materials they were given. But for Christine Cronin and many other teachers, Reading First represented a change they didn’t like. They were told to follow a curriculum. With structured lessons like the one you heard when Bush visited the second-grade classroom in Florida. To Christine Cronin, it felt traditional and old-fashioned."

And from a later episode:

"Like Christine Cronin. She’s the teacher in Boston who tried to get on board with Bush’s Reading First program, but said the curriculum she was given felt old-fashioned. She remembers looking at the pictures in books by Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins and thinking – that’s what I want my classroom to be like.

Christine Cronin: They framed a picture of reading instruction that seemed beautiful. Like, softly lit rooms. Kids were gonna have cozy nooks where they were curling up with a good book. It got your heart, along with your mind."

This teacher wasn't worried about the science, she was sold on the 'look and feel'.

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

#85

Post by michaelcampbell »

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…

> it suggests phonics is only effective for a subgroup of pupils

If that subgroup is 90+%, is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater? (I don't know the % here, I'm making one up as a thought experiment.)

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

#86

Post by joelfried »

bregma wrote: post #64
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…

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.

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

#87

Post by joelfried »

dennis_jeeves1 wrote: post #73
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…

>It didn't even remotely occur to anybody in the family that learning to read was special As usual, it's much fuss about nothing. Same goes for financial discipline. There are no special techniques, unless one are dealing with special needs kids.

> There are no special techniques, unless one are dealing with special needs kids.

You may not know your child is neurodivergent until you are at or beyond this stage of development.

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

#88

Post by tgv »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #46
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…

Psychology works just fine in marketing, advertising, politics, media, and even in game design. If it's not being used in schools it's not because it's ineffective.

> Psychology works just fine in marketing, advertising, politics,

Does it really? I think there isn't even good data on the effectiveness of marketing and advertising, let alone on the correctness of psychological theories used. Marketing and advertising run on common sense and FOMO.

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

#89

Post by KRAKRISMOTT »

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…

The issue is that many schools are expected to teach students at scale. If parents are willing to spend more time coaching their kids instead of outsourcing it, then the problem would be less severe. Good schools generally all have a low teacher to student ratio for a reason. Bloom's 2 sigma problem is very real, spend more time one on one with your kids and even poor pedagogy can yield results.
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