The following discussion on Facebook is another excellent example of ‘The human mind is like the human egg’. Once an initial idea or belief gets in—especially about how children learn to read—the mind forms a protective barrier, shutting out contradictory logic, evidence, or real-world success stories, much like a fertilized egg blocks additional sperm. No amount of logic or examples can change a person’s line of thinking once that first “sperm” (a firmly held teaching philosophy) has taken hold. Educators and researchers often cling to their preferred methods despite clear counterexamples from actual teaching.
Luqman Michel
How does a kid read words such as with, one, there, and many other words. Why insist on not memorising when phonics + memorising the Dolch words can get all kids to read in record time.
Luqman Michel the word ‘with’ is completely decodable , no need to memorise at all. w/i/th. ‘There’ is also complete decodable, as is where.
The word ‘one’ has an interesting etymology and is linked to words such as lonely, only and alone.
These words are easily, and quickly explicitly taught, so no need for students to spend significant time memorising large lists of words.
Luqman Michel
I know this but what is the problem with a kid rote memorising these words so he can start reading right from day one. Read the second lesson in my book that includes the word 'with'.
Kylie Hoey
Luqman Michel the problem is that there are better and far more efficient means. I can’t imagine why an educator would choose the more difficult road.
When you can teach a child to decode a word, why would an educator bother relying with a largely hit and miss method such as memorisation. Memorising words has failed far too many students, we don’t need to add to that.
You gave the example of the word ‘one’. I got 100% of my class to spell that correctly within a week, using very little instructional time. I still revise it every now and then. The great news is, they can also correctly spell lonely, alone and only, so that’s the other great thing, instead of memorising one word, they have learnt how to spell several more.
Luqman Michel
Kylie Hoey Thank you for continuing this discussion. Why don't we use all the tools available? Screw drivers are good to screw or unscrew a screw. I won't use it for hammering down a nail. I get dyslexic kids to read the first lesson in less than an hour. They go home pleased with themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment