The truth about Reading - Nancy Bailey (Part 2)

Here are further comments on Nancy Bailey’s post and my response.

Every child needs to be carefully evaluated as to why they aren’t doing well in reading.

My response:

Yes! This can be done as early as in the middle of grade 1. If a kid is unable to read like a majority of the other kids, then we need to find out why. If the kid has no acuity problems, then chances are he has shut down from learning to read due to confusion.

 

There’s also concern that children are being pushed to read too early. Kindergarten is now the new first grade.

 

My response: I guess that this is a matter of opinion. There are teachers who have used my books to teach kids as early as 4 ½ years old to read.

I, personally, will not want my children to learn to read at this age as our schools here teach the same things to kids regardless of their reading ability. This may make a child bored or even to hate school. I’d rather read books to children and let them acquire general knowledge. They can learn to read when they attend school.

 

Teachers have been teaching children to read for years. And they have worked hard to better understand children with disabilities since 1975 and the passage of the All Handicapped Children Act.

 

My response:

No one will dispute that most teachers have tried their best to teach all kids to decode. I disagree with the words ‘children with disability’ if the children do not have any acuity problem of any kind. Their so-called disability is caused by teachers confusing them by teaching the wrong pronunciation of consonants. If educators dare say on YouTube videos that consonants cannot be taught without extraneous sounds because they are not part of speech then we have a major problem which will never be resolved for decades to come. Link.

 

I have listened to all my students since 2004. As I have stated, I am not a trained teacher and perhaps that is why I could understand why my students could not read in English but able to read in Malay and Han Yu Pinyin. My mind was/is not influenced by what is taught in teachers training college.

 

The trailer and I’m assuming the film, also looks to leave out MUCH history. It’s therefore biased and has an agenda.

 

My response: Of course it is biased and has an agenda. I will come to this in another post.

 

Please read about Reading First which focused on phonics. Students learned to sound out words but they couldn’t comprehend what they read!

 

My response:

This is the same argument put forward by our Pamela Snow from Down Under who thinks that phonics teaches comprehension. Phonics is to help kids to decode. Vocabulary, comprehension and fluency, etc. come at a later stage. Let us not get this confused.

To be continued…