How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers
How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.
He brought up the example of a child who comes to the word "horse" and says "pony" instead. His argument is that a child will still understand the meaning of the story because horse and pony are the same concept.
I pressed him on this. First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse. Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p/ /o/ /n/ /y/ says "pony"? And different letters say "horse"?
He dismissed my question.
Goodman rejected the idea that you can make a distinction between skilled readers and unskilled readers; he doesn't like the value judgment that implies. He said dyslexia does not exist — despite lots of evidence that it does. And he said the three-cueing theory is based on years of observational research. In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.
"My science is different," Goodman said.
It really shouldn't surprise me at this point that people that think like this are in charge of how kids are educated.
“My science is different”
Ahh, a graduate from the Terrence Howard school for kids who can’t science good.
Seems like bullshit to me, but then I was brought up on the phonics system in the 70s. No clue what they're teaching now.
Reality is probably a mix of phonics, predicting, and context.
For example, this bit:
https://www.sciencealert.com/word-jumble-meme-first-last-letters-cambridge-typoglycaemia
Sure, but you're still going to say the fourth word is "research" and not "study" or "reindeer".
There was an example in a story about kids learning to read poorly (I don't think this one) about how a kid reading about WW2 got that "Poland was invited by Germany" because they didn't know the word invaded, so they dramatically misunderstood the history.
This is fascinating.
Tihs is fsnaintacig.
FFTY
I didn't even realize they were out of order until Cambridge.
That's pretty cool.
I have a son that's learning to read right now so I've got some first hand experience on this. This article is making a lot out of the contextual clues part of the method but consistently downplays or ignores that phonics is still part of what the kids are taught. It's a bit of a fallback, sure, but my son isn't being taught to skip words when he can't figure it out.
He's bringing home the kinds of books mentioned in the article. The sentence structure is pretty repetitive and when he comes across a word he doesn't know he tries to look at the picture to figure out what it is. Sometimes that works and he says the right word. Other times, like there's a picture of a bear and the word is "cub" (but I don't think my son knew what a bear cub was), he still falls back on "cuh uh buh" to figure it out.
So he still knows the relationship between letters and sounds. He just has some other tools in his belt as well. I can't say I find that especially concerning.
In many balanced literacy classrooms, children are taught phonics and the cueing system. Some kids who are taught both approaches realize pretty quickly that sounding out a word is the most efficient and reliable way to know what it is. Those kids tend to have an easier time understanding the ways that sounds and letters relate. They'll drop the cueing strategies and begin building that big bank of instantly known words that is so necessary for skilled reading.
But some children will skip the sounding out if they're taught they have other options. Phonics is challenging for many kids. The cueing strategies seem quicker and easier at first. And by using context and memorizing a bunch of words, many children can look like good readers — until they get to about third grade, when their books begin to have more words, longer words, and fewer pictures. Then they're stuck. They haven't developed their sounding-out skills. Their bank of known words is limited. Reading is slow and laborious and they don't like it, so they don't do it if they don't have to. While their peers who mastered decoding early are reading and teaching themselves new words every day, the kids who clung to the cueing approach are falling further and further behind.
These poor reading habits, once ingrained at a young age, can follow kids into high school. Some kids who were taught the cueing approach never become good readers. Not because they're incapable of learning to read well but because they were taught the strategies of struggling readers.
Another reason cueing holds on is that it seems to work for some children. But researchers estimate there's a percentage of kids — perhaps about 40 percent — who will learn to read no matter how they're taught. According to Kilpatrick, children who learn to read with cueing are succeeding in spite of the instruction, not because of it.
Maybe your kid is one of the lucky ones that can read fine regardless of how he's taught. But not everyone will be. That's the point of changing how reading is taught, to be more effective for the highest number of people.
But you could also try giving him a reading test like the ones presented at the top of this website https://readingtests.info/ and see for yourself how well he reads an unfamiliar story.
So I'll preface this by saying I'm a late 20s Canadian who attended elementary school from 2001-2009, but we weren't taught phonics (the actual system), we were taught about word sounds.
A lot of my classmates were on their own if they didn't immediately "get it." Also, it was encouraged to skip words if you didn't know them and then try to guess what they were based on the context of the sentence. Lots of wrong guesses happened and those kids got laughed at.
I found it incredibly concerning as a kid because there were a ton of weaker readers who could barely get through a single sentence. This is still happening, even if it's not in your child's school, and that should concern you. These kids will grow up thinking they're stupid when they just needed different tools like your son has.
I think also one thing to remember is that phonics and word sounds are not reading either due to the fact that English is a Frankenstein language where any letter or combination of letters often has a myriad of ways of being pronounced. You cannot learn to read without a healthy dose of memorization and contextual cluing. Letters are, at best, just another clue as to what the word could be.
My own comment on this is that the article doesn't mention poverty at all, except implicitly by clarifying the example kid is "gifted" and not from a harsh background. Based on my family in the US, some of whom are teachers, I imagine a combination of social stresses and parents working multiple jobs is worsening the issue and destroying generational transfer of reading skills
This is fascinating and very sad at the same time. I'm curious to see how reading is taught here in Germany once we have a school-aged kid.
One thing that sticks out to me is that apparently, teachers in the US tend to stick very close to the teaching materials they are provided (at least, that's how it sounds in this article and others I have read before). Growing up in Germany, it felt like teachers would customize their lessons more.
Depending on the curriculum, teachers don't have time to veer or customize things. It's, unfortunate, but there are companies selling proven curriculum guides to help kids, but the reality is that it is turning away teachers who actually teach (because following a pre designed plan sucks the fun out of it).
It's tough, and I don't know the answer as a parent.
I'd guess it's part of the strategy to have people quit the education system and be less educated overall