A ‘student’ has surpassed his ‘teacher’

A teacher who has more than 50 years’ experience in teaching decided to use my books made available to her.

She started teaching a 6.5-year-old kid and then a 5-year-old kid and has recently started teaching a 4.5-year-old kid.

I have only taught kids who were 8 years old and above. As such, she has surpassed me in teaching kids using both phonics and sight words to learn to read.

I must say that when it comes to teaching kids in years 11 and 12 I can’t hold a candle to her. Of course, being a qualified teacher, unlike me, and having taught for more than 50 years it did not take her long to surpass me who taught her how to teach kids to learn to read.

Here is a video of the 4.5-year-old kid reading the second lesson in the book. This kid was born on 23.12.2015 and speaks Tamil at home in Australia. She is in pre-kindergarten.

The lesson starts with teaching the kid word family 'an' using phonics (Not recorded). The lesson uses pictures as cues. At the end of the lesson, the kid reads the lesson with no picture cue. Finally, she is taught a few Dolch words which are memorized by rote memory. 

The Dolch words, also known as frequently used words, have to be explained to the child as the child is a Tamil speaking kid.


I mentioned on of my previous posts found here that my job is done. Yes, many educators on Twitter are now writing on the importance of teaching phonemes correctly.


NSW Education Standards Authority has already stated that it is going to start teaching a number of things by rote memory which is the most sweeping change in education in NSW in 30 years as stated in the Daily Telegraph Australia on 21.6.2020. Here is an extract of the first few paragraphs.

I will not post on my blog on a daily basis commencing tomorrow and I will not be spending as much time, as I have been, on other social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.