StupidMayorTrick < Kitchen

29 Apr 2006 - 22:38

stupid mayor trick

Lone Ranger found a new article in New York Magazine about Mayor Bloomberg's mandated constructivism: A is for Apple, B is for Brawl:

In a far corner of the room, a girl named Enami sits cross-legged on a moss-green rug, a floppy paperback in her hands. Her selection is from the Henry and Mudge series, about a boy and his dog.
[snip]
Enami opens the book and bobs her head, the bright blue beads in her cornrows jostling as she starts reading aloud.
“On a sun day . . . ”
It says sunny day in the book. But Enami’s a little tentative. She hasn’t read this one before.
“A man with a collar . . . ”
The teacher has a suggestion. “Sometimes we look at the picture and figure out if it makes sense.”
Enami eyes the drawing of a man walking a dog. She agrees collar doesn’t seem right. After some discussion, it’s decided that collie works better.
“A dog!” says Enami, satisfied.
She continues—and a page later she trips up on the word disappeared. She takes her best guess: “Stepped.”
“Let’s see if that makes sense,” says Kolbeck.
Again, Enami checks the drawing: a man at the end of a street, turning a corner. Her eyes flash—“Disappeared!” And on she goes.
If throwing Enami into the deep end of the pool like this seems a little intense, that’s pretty much the point. What’s unusual about this lesson—and to its critics, flat wrong about it—is what’s not happening. Enami and her seventeen classmates are not sitting in a row, repeating letter and pronunciation drills. They almost never are. There’s not a textbook in sight, or, for that matter, in the whole school. Instead, they’re learning by immersion, reading books of their own choosing, and when they mess up, which is often, they’re told to keep going.
Kolbeck and the other teachers at P.S. 29 are following the dictates of what’s called Balanced Literacy, an equal parts celebrated and maligned teaching technique ordered into the city schools three years ago by Michael Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein. Balanced Literacy is more of a catchall concept than an actual curriculum, interpreted slightly differently in every school system that uses it, but it is invariably rooted in an education philosophy known as whole language.

And there you have it. Constructivism from the top down. Scores are up! Enami can't read Henry and Mudge, but Joel Klein became the brilliant success he is because, back when he was a kid, he once read a book and liked it:

...the only reason he did well in school, and went on to become a successful federal prosecutor, was because a teacher handed him a book about baseball, a book he actually enjoyed and read.

I remember reading the same scene-setting anecdote in an LA WEEKLY article on Bill Honig's whole language initiative in CA schools maybe 20 years ago.^* Little black girl, trying to read a real book not a basal, guessing the words from the pictures. [update 8-2-06: I found it ]

That kid must be a successful prosecutor today, you think?

Lucy Calkins, godmother of whole language learning

How likely is it that the Lucy Calkins's writing workshop model makes more sense than her balanced literacy model?

Balanced Literacy, or at least the way it’s practiced in New York, is largely the brainchild of Lucy Calkins, founder of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, who is looked upon nationally as a godmother of whole-language learning.

I'm beginning to have some doubts as to the wisdom of transferring Christopher to Immaculate Conception for grades 7-8.

stupid chancellor trick

And where hard science once had little to say about how various reading methods affected kids, a series of MRI studies done at Yale starting in the late nineties appeared to show that as many as one in every four children, regardless of class, race, or other demographic factors, needs direct instruction in basic skills before he can read. When kids with learning difficulties read with phonics, their brains light up on MRI scans like a Christmas tree. The conclusion, phonics advocates say, is clear: Kids need technical instruction in the basics before being immersed in the world of literature.
That argument doesn’t persuade Klein. He’s cultivating mindful, curious readers, he’s said, not vanilla word-decoders.^** “I’m quite convinced the curriculum we’re using, with inquiry-based learning, will serve our students throughout the city well over time,” he says. In particular, Klein likes that Balanced Literacy looks a lot like the reading approaches in successful school districts on the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side and in most of the city’s elite private schools.

direct instruction again

In 1997, Congress asked NIH to create the National Reading Panel (a commission of academics) to consider the question. The panel took three years to review and scrutinize 1,000 recent academic studies of phonics-related reading programs, eliminating all but the most carefully constructed. In 2000, the panel released its “meta-analysis” and concluded that in order to learn to read, all children must master five separate skills: phonemic awareness (separating words into distinct sounds, like the c, a, and t in cat), phonics (learning the sounds letters and letter combinations make), fluency (the ability to read with speed and accuracy), vocabulary (learning new words), and comprehension (understanding what you’re reading). These basic skills were nothing new to most people who taught elementary-school English. What the NRP added to the debate was the notion that direct instruction of these skills was the only proven method for teaching reading.

in a nutshell

phonemic awareness (separating words into distinct sounds, like the c, a, and t in cat)

phonics (learning the sounds letters and letter combinations make)

fluency (the ability to read with speed and accuracy)

vocabulary (learning new words)

comprehension (understanding what you’re reading)

it's the curriculum, stupid

As a direct result of the NRP, those directing federal educational policy held up phonics as a sort of magic bullet, even though the data, critics say, fell well short of supporting such a blanket conclusion. For example, while the full NRP report acknowledged that “phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in second through sixth grade” and “there were insufficient data to draw conclusions about the effects of phonics instruction with normally developing readers above first grade,” the more widely distributed NRP summary report endorsed phonics without qualification. “Phonics instruction,” it read, “produces significant benefits for students in K through sixth grade and for students having difficulty learning to read.”
The conspiratorially minded likened the NRP study to other Bush-era tactics like payola for columnists or doctoring official opinions on the environment. Was it a coincidence, they wondered, that Voyager Expanded Learning, the company that made a phonics program that fit neatly within the NRP guidelines, was founded by Randy Best, a Texas entrepreneur who raised money for the Bush campaign and whose company Website once displayed a picture of Bush endorsing the program? Best sold the company for $360 million. “This is what I call the triumph of entrepreneurism over evidence,” says Richard Allington, president of the International Reading Association, a 40-year-old professional organization of teachers. “Even the NRP found only a small benefit for systematic phonics instruction—and they could not describe with any specificity what that ‘systematic’ instruction looked like.”

This is obviously what Seigfried Engelmann is talking about when he says isolated 'features' of a good curriculum, such as instruction in phonemic awareness, do not a good curriculum make:

The Dalmatian and Its Spots: Why Research-Based Recommendations Fail Logic 101
Until educators recognize that they are not dealing with physics and that the program-design game is more akin to inventing things than describing using broad and amorphous categories like "phonics," the field is going to progress only with baby steps.
The Wright brothers had to orchestrate hundreds of specific details to make a flying machine. Yet, if any one of those pieces had been out of place or misconstructed, the machine would have failed. So it is with educational programs.
[snip]
About the only ones who benefit from the current research-based criteria are the publishers. They don't have to become concerned with details that make a program superior, just plug in some activities, label them "phonics" or "phonemic awareness" and lo, they will probably be adopted in states like California.

I wonder how Zig feels about data warehousing.

reading is rocket science after all

In the years after the NRP report, phonics racked up more scientific support. In the Yale MRI studies, researcher Sally Shaywitz, a member of the NRP, demonstrated that kids learning the NRP way developed their occipital-temporal parts of the brain (the part responsible for reading) more dramatically than the other children did. (Shaywitz was one of three members of the NRP to co-sign the open letter to the mayor in 2003 lambasting Month by Month Phonics.) “Learning to read used to be catch-as-catch-can, but now it is real science,” she says. “There is evidence now that if you use evidence-based teaching methods, you can really rewire the brain.” Faced with these results, Shaywitz says, it’s foolish to hang on to whole language. “If you had a program that you know works, and something else you just feel pretty good about, would you volunteer your child for the one you weren’t sure worked?”

This is the first time I've seen a cognitive scientist say we have brain scan findings specific enough to guide decisions about teaching methods.

I'm going to hope that's true. The new issue of TRENDS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, which includes an article titled "Bridges over troubled waters: education and cognitive neuroscience," is completely discouraging on this issue:

Recently there has been growing interest in and debate about the relation between cognitive neuroscience and education. Our goal is to advance the debate beyond both recitation of potentially education-related cognitive neuroscience findings and the claim that a bridge between fields is chimerical. In an attempt to begin a dialogue about mechanisms among students, educators, researchers and practitioner-scientists, we propose that multiple bridges can be built to make connections between education and cognitive neuroscience, including teacher training, researcher training and collaboration. These bridges – concrete mechanisms that can advance the study of mind, brain and education – will benefit both educators and cognitive neuroscientists, who will gain new perspectives for posing and answering crucial questions about the learning brain.
source:

Bridges over troubled waters: education and cognitive neuroscience
by Daniel Ansari and Donna Coch
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Volume 10, Issue 4 , April 2006, Pages 146-151

Reading this abstract, it's hard to see the difference between cognitive science blah-blah and edu-blah-blah.

multiple bridges can be built

I say we forget about building multiple bridges and stick to field-testing, revising, and re-field-testing curricula.

back to the future

By the spring of 2004, Diana Lam was gone, but Joel Klein went out of his way to defend Balanced Literacy. He promoted Carmen Fariña, a respected Brooklyn superintendent who had used Balanced Literacy as a teacher and principal. Fariña proudly took up the cause. But behind her bluster, Fariña seemed to understand she had inherited a PR problem.
[snip]
Since then, the New York curriculum under Fariña has moderated a bit, carefully incorporating phonics in a way that doesn’t violate the whole-language ethos.

That's a relief.

Lucy Calkins, Lucy Calkins

“We need to be centrists,” says Fariña, who has even reached out to Sally Shaywitz to study the effectiveness of a particular intervention program called Fundations. “Kids come to us in various sizes with varying needs. None of us are reading the Times on Sunday on the same page at the same pace and with the same interest, and neither should kids be doing that in their classrooms.”
[snip]
To some phonics advocates, of course, this still isn’t enough. “How many schools is Fundations in?” asks Diane Ravitch. "Lucy Calkins has trained about 10,000 teachers."

Is that a lot?

Ravitch is especially angry because she believes New York is spinning its test scores. Advocates like Calkins cite the National Assessment for Education Progress .... to show how New York’s fourth-grade literacy scores have gone up the 7 percentage points since 2002.... But Ravitch notes that the big leap in those fourth-grade scores happened from 2002 to 2003, before the reforms were put in place. “From 2003 to 2005, there was no significant gain,” she says. What’s more troubling, she says, is that the 49 New York schools that Klein allowed to use the evidence-based Trophies program increased their state fourth-grade scores, on average, by 20 percent, double the increase of the rest of the school system.

get the hook

Fariña still believes that a program front-loaded with phonics can lead to rote teaching, which in turn leads to poorer teachers. Most of all, Fariña remains devoted to the proposition that the vast majority of kids just don’t benefit from being drilled. “I want kids not only to learn how to read, I want them to want to read,” she says. “And I don’t think that all the skill and drill that’s happened over the years will lead to that if we don’t do the other piece of it.”

Well, that settles it.

Carmen Fariña believes, remains devoted, thinks, wants, wants, and doesn't think.

That's enough for me!

"Piece" is a HUGE edu-word, btw. Huge. In every meeting I've gone to over the past 5 years people sat around talking about "the strategies piece" or "the transition piece" or "the occupational therapy piece," etc.

Our new interim Director of Pupil Personnel never, ever, says piece. Also happens to be great at his job.

Lucy Calkins, Lucy Calkins

The fact is, New York is most likely to remain a whole-language town. Federal mandates and MRI scans aside, progressive education is part of the academic culture here.
Not that this means peace is about to break out in the Reading Wars.
“Lucy Calkins is key in all this,” says Ravitch.

So I guess 10,000 is a lot.

Lucy Calkins, Lucy Calkins

“The big response to Diane Ravitch,” Calkins replies, “is that we’d love to have her visit schools. She’s never visiting schools. You say to her, ‘Which schools have you seen? What do you think about what’s happening in Lauren Kolbeck’s class at P.S. 29?
[snip]
She stops herself. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about reading without getting caught up in the wars.
“We do have a very divided country,” Calkins says. “In lots of ways.”

Why, yes we do, Lucy Calkins!

Just to show how right you are, I'm listening to Beer for My Horses at this very moment.

When the song is over, I'm hitting Repeat.

Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we’ll sing a victory tune
We’ll all meet back at the local saloon
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

stupid mayor trick
Thank you, whole language
guess and check reading
stupid mayor trick part 3: the good news

National Reading Panel (official website)
The Partnership for Reading
(govt website: "bringing scientific evidence to learning")
National Reading Panel report full text (pdf file)

who is Lucy Calkins
having a Lucy Calkins day
Cargo Cult Lucy from Becky

^* Ed worked with Bill Honig on the California Subject Matter Projects, which may have been the first and only educational reform focused on content, not process. Honig was a brilliant guy who later saw the error of his ways on whole language.

^** Because, after all, decoding words is such a useless skill. "Perchlorethylene" should be pretty easy to figure out from context.

-- CatherineJohnson - 29 Apr 2006

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Comments
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Look here for syntax help.

"He’s cultivating mindful, curious readers, he’s said, not vanilla word-decoders."
Because, after all, decoding words is such a useless skill. "Perchlorethylene" should be pretty easy to figure out from context.
"'I’m quite convinced the curriculum we’re using, with inquiry-based learning, will serve our students throughout the city well over time,' he says."
Definitely. The pictures in an appeals court decision should provide all the clues necessary to figure out what it says.

-- DougSundseth - 29 Apr 2006

"He’s cultivating mindful, curious readers, he’s said, not vanilla word-decoders."
Another false dichotomy. (I'm a extremely good word decoder, and I love reading).
-- TracyW - 30 Apr 2006

"Joel Klein became the brilliant success that he is because he once read a book he liked"
Isn't there a fallacy based on this: where you pretend that one person is representative of the whole population?
This is, I find, super-common in discussions of education: "That approach is good/bad for me/my child; therefore, we should/should not use it for everyone."
I can't snark too much about this, as my own dislike of homework limits the amount of it that I require from my students.
-- RudbeckiaHirta - 30 Apr 2006

Ya'all have seen this before, I think, but it bears repeating here.
http://www.illinoisloop.org/anon_thankyouwl.html

-- LesleyStevens - 30 Apr 2006

Rudbeckia
I can't snark too much about this, as my own dislike of homework limits the amount of it that I require from my students.
You are exempted from ALL such considerations.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Doug lolllllllll
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Lesley
no!
I don't think I ever saw that!
MUST GET THAT POSTED!
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Tracy
I just got a copy of LOGIC AND CONTEMPORARY RHETORIC, which I used to teach the freshman writing course back at the University of Iowa, and I'm going to brush up on my logical fallacies.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

The NEW YORK article is pretty offensive.
Ending with an appeal to 'our divided country' - unbelievable.
You know what happens in a divided country that's democratic?
Minority rights.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Lucy Calkins has her 10,000 teachers.
I want my own territory.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

At the moment, of course, my own territory extends about as far as my kitchen table.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

I'm sure that will change.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Definitely. The pictures in an appeals court decision should provide all the clues necessary to figure out what it says.
Hah!
Their aversion to phonics seems to line up with their response to "mere facts" and "computation kill and drill." There's no sense of a possible problem along the lines of putting the cart before the horse in any of these advocates.
But worse, their dismissal of these foundational skills means that the kids will dismiss them, as well.
-- SusanS - 30 Apr 2006

Well....I've reached the conclusion that we really ARE a 'divided country'....this isn't about teaching or learning, it's about power.
If you read between the lines of the NEW YORK article, I think that's the conclusion you have to come to. Whole language won't go away because it's part of the 'culture.'
I love it that we've got a writer, who makes his living writing stuff people pay to read, implicitly endorsing whole language. Maybe he's thinking that if only 1 in 4 kids needs direct instructions in foundational skills (somehow I doubt that's what Shaywitz believes) he's writing for the 3 who don't.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Sol Stern has written a lot about the B&K regime and Lucy Calkins. The regime is spending prodigious amounts of money to indoctrinate teachers in whacko theories.
-- CharlesH - 30 Apr 2006

NEWSWEEK, 1999
Mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. A hundred years ago people didn't need to be good readers in order to earn a living. But in the Information Age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material. These skills don't come easily to about 20 percent of kids. Not all of these youngsters are dyslexic. Researchers now think that dyslexia represents the low end of a continuum of reading ability. The teaching strategies that help dyslexics, those most severely disabled, are also helping kids who require only a little extra attention.
I have a friend who stumbles over words. She's very smart & successful (went into a math-related field, but possibly would have preferred writing & creative pursuits). When she reads out loud she mispronounces multisyllabic words, and not infrequently stops to re-pronounce them or figure them out.
I don't know how or whether this has affected her reading skills, but I'm sure she was taught to read using whole language.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

I read Sol Stern pretty often, but this is the first time I've stumbled across Lucy Calkins (on the website of Immaculate Conception School, no less).
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Do we know whether whole language teaching actually causes dyslexia?
I wouldn't be surprised. The brain is plastic. Period. I've mentioned several times I could 'fell my brain changing' when I spent so much time doing the Singapore Math bar models. I'd bet the ranch my brain did change.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

STRAIGHT TALK ABOUT READING IS A TERRIFIC BOOK:

Susan Hall, now president of the Illinois branch of the International Dyslexia Association and coauthor (with Louisa Moats) of "Straight Talk About Reading," started on that path five years ago when her son Brandon was in first grade. She knew something was wrong because he wouldn't talk about school and seemed much too eager to get home when she picked him up at the end of the day. So she volunteered as a parent aide. What she saw was disturbing. "The children were supposed to read aloud," she recalls. "When I heard the first child, I knew she could read a lot better than my child could read. When his turn came, he was devastated. That enabled me to open the door and talk about what was bothering him."

Hall asked to have Brandon tested at school, but, she says, "they said they couldn't possibly do it because he wasn't a year behind yet"—a requirement in many districts that costs kids valuable time. Finding a good diagnostician proved difficult. After two tutors didn't work out, Hall decided to study on her own. A Harvard M.B.A., she quit working and made fixing Brandon's problems her cause. "The first year, I took three graduate courses in reading at our local teachers college, flew around the country to attend 10 conferences and read 25 books on the subject." She was impressed with the speakers at an International Dyslexia Association conference and took Brandon to a tutor who used their approach. It helped, but Brandon still had problems. Finally, "at a huge cost to my family," Hall took Brandon to a Lindamood-Bell clinic in California, where he finally made a breakthrough. Brandon, now in sixth grade, is a pretty good reader, his mother says, "but his troubles continue in writing, spelling, French and oh, yes—we still have algebra ahead."
Tracking down the roots of dyslexia
I have a friend, Lissa Weinstein, who basically cured her own son's dyslexia. They wrote a book together...Reading David
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Do we know whether black children are more damaged by whole-language teaching?
Unexpected, but very consistent, are findings that slow-downs and error counts for African-Americans with WWD are roughly twice as severe as those for Caucasians. The phenomenon was discovered by Miller in North Carolina, and persists in my NY data, showing that phonics-first teaching is more crucial for African-American children than for other ethnic groups. There are both anecdotal and recorded data that African-Americans succeed well in schools stressing phonics. (See www.noexcuses.org/pdf/noexcuses.pdf)
Though we do not understand the "WHY's," MWIA data are consistent enough to guide attacking the so-called "black under-achievement problem" via initial systematic phonics, plus other remedies, below. Research on inner-city populations on academic gains related to voucher-transfers from public to non-public schools has raised questions that the research teams cannot yet answer: The team of Howell, Wolf, Peterson, and Campbell is at a loss to explain why African-American children make significantly higher gains than other ethnicities. Their initial report (September, 2000) was described in EDUCATION WEEK, 2/7/01, "In Defense of Our Voucher Research."
It is generally known that non-public schools tend to have stronger phonics programs than do public schools. That assumption, taken together with the MWIA data, explains the Howell team's quandary. Also, the late Albert Shanker's column of August 20, 1995, describes an inner-city school adopting a phonics-based curriculum, resulting in what Mr. Shanker termed a "Baltimore Success Story:" Not only did achievement scores soar, but special-ed referrals went DOWN by a factor of 4! Phonics matters crucially for African-American children!
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

This article comes from the The Literacy Council
haven't heard of them...
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

He’s cultivating mindful, curious readers, he’s said, not vanilla word-decoders.
This false dichotomy always annoys me, and it's everywhere.
I have a book about early childhood education which introduces the section on reading by talking about a hyperlexic kid (hyperlexia is a symptom in autism spectrum disorders where the kid becomes a proficient reader early in their childhood, and can do fun things like read, but of course not understand, the New York Times). The book points out that while the child can read very proficiently, he can't figure out how to buckle his own seat belt, or play with the other kids, and you wouldn't want that for YOUR child, would you? So don't teach him phonics!
-- CarolynJohnston - 30 Apr 2006

I have a friend who stumbles over words. She's very smart & successful (went into a math-related field, but possibly would have preferred writing & creative pursuits). When she reads out loud she mispronounces multisyllabic words, and not infrequently stops to re-pronounce them or figure them out.
I don't know how or whether this has affected her reading skills, but I'm sure she was taught to read using whole language."
This is me. I remeber being instructed on the short vowel sounds in first or second grades. Beyond that, I'm not sure of my reading instruction other than lots of exposure. Ironically, I was in the gifted language arts program in 3/4th grades.
I have or had a great sight-word vocabulary. I was pretty good at spelling because I recognized when mispelled words didn't look right.
I read almost all non-fiction books as a child. I remember reading every biography in my elementary school library. I still prefer non-fiction books. I don't know if it's because they don't require much literal analysis.
I too mispronounce multisyllabic words. When I was in the working world, I referred to myself as a Norm Crosby speaker. It wasn't unit my oldest hit a lesson in Explode the Code 4 and I learned along with him how to split up syllables that I figured out why I had this problem.
I have taught both my children using the phonics workbooks and decodable readers. They both read far above their grade levels and don't mispronouce words as much as I do. In fact, my oldest will often correct my pronounciation.
BTW, they have great comprehension skills too. I attribute that to being read to from early on.

-- NicksMama - 30 Apr 2006

The book points out that while the child can read very proficiently, he can't figure out how to buckle his own seat belt, or play with the other kids, and you wouldn't want that for YOUR child, would you? So don't teach him phonics!
Either I have that same book, or everyone uses this image - the hyperlexic kid who can read but can't buckle his seatbelt.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

Nick's Mama
I too mispronounce multisyllabic words. When I was in the working world, I referred to myself as a Norm Crosby speaker. It wasn't unit my oldest hit a lesson in Explode the Code 4 and I learned along with him how to split up syllables that I figured out why I had this problem.
I have taught both my children using the phonics workbooks and decodable readers. They both read far above their grade levels and don't mispronouce words as much as I do. In fact, my oldest will often correct my pronounciation.
I'm VERY interested in this - did your pronunciation change at all when you started using phonics books with your kids??
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

http://www.illinoisloop.org/rockford.html
Does anyone know what happened to this school?
-- LoneRanger - 30 Apr 2006

The Literacy Council website claims you can actually cause dyslexia by teaching sight words instead of phonics, which apparently is what Joe Orton believed.
That wouldn't surprise me (though I have no idea whether they're right).
Apparently someone put together a remedial program that omits the most common sight words (the 'Dr. Seuss' words) that keep reinforcing reading by sight instead of by breaking the word down in any way.
Christopher still has trouble reading multisyllabic words, and pronouncing them...
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

I don't know how much phonics instruction he had.
-- CatherineJohnson - 30 Apr 2006

I have taught both my children using the phonics workbooks and decodable readers. They both read far above their grade levels and don't mispronouce words as much as I do. In fact, my oldest will often correct my pronounciation.
I'm VERY interested in this - did your pronunciation change at all when you started using phonics books with your kids??
-- CatherineJohnson^? - 30 Apr 2006
Old habits are hard to break.
I have learned that if I pencil in the breaks, I can figure out where the short vowels and long vowels are. I have to concentrate more on this task than my 9.5 yo. I use the pencil in method with my 8yo to help him figure out some words. Also, learning spelling rules help with words like gigantic (g followed by an i, e or y makes the /j/ sound).
My favorite book on phonics and spelling is "ABCs and All Their Tricks" by M. Bishop. A must have for anyone interested in phonics instruction, spelling rules and word origination.
I have seen people on TWTM board recommend a program called "Rewards" by S. West for 4th grad and above students who need instruction on multisyllabic words. I think EPS books sells it.
There is one thing that I did when I taught my kids to read that I think REALLY helped that kinda meshes with the "give your student some success before you move on" idea that has been discussed in other threads. I concentrated on teaching the word sounds in isolation and through phonics workbooks and letter tiles. I didn't encourage my students to read any real books until they were well versed with the CVC words and had learned a set of sight words (Dolch list?). Once they got a good handle on these concepts, I found easily decodable readers (Bob Books, Level 1 library books, McGuffy^? Readers) for them to read. As they advanced, I added higher level (Frog and Toad, Magic Tree House) books that I knew they could read with very little help. They rarely felt frustrated during the whole process (even though I was bored).
Although, repetative reading of texts and timed reading has always been recommended by the experts for fluency, I always felt that was too much like work for my kid's to enjoy and skipped it. They read very fluently and I attribute that to their "domain knowledge" and the natural(?) rhythm of reading that they have acquired by being exposed to decent literature and rich vocabulary during my reading aloud time or through listening to quality books on tape.

-- NicksMama - 01 May 2006

I love the Bob books - I wonder if I can find my copies?
I'm casting about for what to do with Andrew.....
-- CatherineJohnson - 01 May 2006

The pronunciation issue is somewhat of a problem both with irregular words and regional accents.
In Reading Mastery they deal with the issue by having the kids decode the words according to phonics rules but then tell the kids that this is the way we pronounce it.
Seems to be working well enough with my son.
-- KDeRosa - 01 May 2006

Ken
I don't quite follow
You're saying that phonics doesn't automatically transfer to pronunciation (I still know nothing about phonics, etc. I may have to re-purchase Engelmann's book, which I never read)
-- CatherineJohnson - 01 May 2006

You're saying that phonics doesn't automatically transfer to pronunciation
Didn't for me. Reading great. Pronunciation poor.
But then I learnt to read and to silently read fast, so I didn't get much practice.
-- TracyW - 01 May 2006

oh that's interesting
I've been just assuming, without thinking about it, that pronunciation and fluent silent reading were the same thing
sheesh
-- CatherineJohnson - 02 May 2006

You're saying that phonics doesn't automatically transfer to pronunciation
Right
Here's an example: His by phonics its /hhh/ /iii/ /sss/, but it's pronounced /hhh/ /iii/ /zzz/
-- KDeRosa - 02 May 2006

I'm wondering how much of the fascination with whole language comes from observations made about kids who learn to read languages, like Chinese, where the only option is whole language.
I remember reading an article in Science News about this, but it is for subscribers only:

(This is a screen shot of my search results; the truly interested can try to look this up in their own library.)
I, myself, learned to read by watching Sesame Street.
-- RudbeckiaHirta - 02 May 2006

You're saying that phonics doesn't automatically transfer to pronunciation
Right
Here's an example: His by phonics its /hhh/ /iii/ /sss/, but it's pronounced /hhh/ /iii/ /zzz/
-- KDeRosa^? - 02 May 2006
Yes, but a single "s" at the end of a word is pronounced /z/ as in has. If it's doubled, then it's pronounced /s/ as in mess. If it appears in between two vowels, it has is pronounced /z/ as in rise or raisin.
"How To Spell" (available from EPS Books) teaches these type of rules.
A great program that combines phonics and spelling rules is "Spell to Read and Write" by Wanda Sanseri.
I have a vast library of phonics and spelling resources. But I'm sure most teachers have access to this same information.

-- NicksMama - 02 May 2006

I picked a bad example.
Many phonics programs do teach the final s = z as a rule. Other do not. This is because there are so many exceptions (plus, us, many plural words like cents, grapes, flakes, shakes, beets) that the exceptions practically swallow up the rule.
Here go a few more irregular words that don't follow common phonics rules:
was, have, friend, yacht, eye, shoe, said
-- KDeRosa - 02 May 2006

I'm wondering how much of the fascination with whole language comes from observations made about kids who learn to read languages, like Chinese, where the only option is whole language.
I think there is a lot of truth to this, though it must have taken a giant leap in faulty logic to ignore the fact that English is a code-based language and not a pictographic one. Of course, this was before we learned that expert readers do in fact break down words as the read them, even though it is at a tremendously fast speed.
-- KDeRosa - 02 May 2006

I picked a bad example.
Many phonics programs do teach the final s = z as a rule. Other do not. This is because there are so many exceptions (plus, us, many plural words like cents, grapes, flakes, shakes, beets) that the exceptions practically swallow up the rule.
Here go a few more irregular words that don't follow common phonics rules:
was, have, friend, yacht, eye, shoe, said
-- KDeRosa^? - 02 May 2006
Yes, and you will find was, have, said and sometimes even the word friend all appear on most "sight word" lists. Of course, there are exceptions - but not enough to dismiss the use of spelling and pronounciation rules.
Mary Bishop's book "ABCs and All Their Tricks" addresses the plural issue (as well as the other "exceptions"). In her book, "S" is a suffix for what she calls "Native English Words" and she goes on in great depth about the "rules" that apply. These aren't what you'd call "common phonics rules" but they are helpful. I think most students get their pronounciation of plurals down quickly because of exposure.
Most of my own pronounciation problems stem from not knowing where to break up multisyllabic words and not having an understanding about open and closed syllables. ETC 4 was a real eye opener for me. I had one of those light bulb moments.

-- NicksMama - 02 May 2006

will read the thread later, but if you're interested, here's an excerpt from the SCIENCE NEWS article Rudbeckia posted.
-- CatherineJohnson - 03 May 2006

WebLogForm

Title: stupid mayor trick

TopicType: WebLog

SubjectArea: ConstructivistTeaching, EducationResearch, LanguageArts, TeachersTeachingKids

LogDate: 200604291837

Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment

readchinese.png manage 29.2 K 02 May 2006 - 10:27 RudbeckiaHirta

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