Schools
have an obligation to teach every child to read by using the most efficient and
effective method possible. There is only one way to teach children or adults to
read a language that has an alphabet and that one way is methodical instruction
in phonics. Phonics is the Code in which English speech is written down
using its alphabetical letters to represent the sounds of speech so that the
writer, or another person, can then read back what was written.
This task of teaching a
child to read is best begun once the child has attained a verbal and emotional
age of six (6) years. While
waiting for that magical age to arrive, each child should have listened to live
people…preferably parents, grandparents, and teachers…read aloud and discuss
hundreds of age appropriate stories to provide the child with hundreds of
opportunities to experience characters, events, settings, and plots. Such
mediated book experiences also provide chances for a child to develop precise
speech and sound awareness, a broad vocabulary base, complex concept
comprehension, and vital pre-reading skills such as recognition of the ABCs and
the knowledge that each story has a beginning, middle, and end.
Schools have a responsibility to
bring each child to literacy by the completion of Second (2nd)
Grade. Let me clarify that. Schools have an obligation to have all
children, except those incapable of attaining a 6 year verbal and emotional
level, literate by the completion of Second (2nd)
Grade. I realize that this idea is shocking but, as Peter,
Paul and Mary used to
sing, “The times, they are a changin’.” Yes, in the one room schoolhouses
of yesteryear, children were literate by the end of First (1st) Grade,
but that was then and this is now. Teachers today are no longer equipped
to teach reading skills as they once were.
In fact, most teachers and most instructors training teachers in
colleges and universities (98+%?), do not actually understand what is mentally
involved in the reading process. If they did, they would not continue to
promote the same failing methods that are renamed, repackaged, and reused with
each successive generation of children. Children move through the school
grades without learning to read because each year those children are faced with
the same erroneous, disastrous methods until either the child gives up on
reading, or the school gives up on the child. Typically, both situations occur.
I refer to Third Grade as “The Killer Year” because during
that grade the children begin “reading to learn” and start to locate
information in textbooks. Those children who are still “learning to read”
enter a zone of non-achievement from which few exit. My mother, a
skilled, insightful teacher who taught until she was 74 years old, always said,
“The
only children who learn to read well in today’s schools, learn in spite of the
instruction, not because of it.” If children have not learned to read by
the completion of their Second Grade year, the prognosis is grim……….
(Full text at link below)
BEGIN
HERE: Your first responsibility is to help your child to quickly become a
competent reader. Time is extremely important so unlike the schools and teachers
that failed your child, you need to succeed and do it quickly. Your child
has already wasted enough time and needs not waste more.
If
you have not already found good teaching materials that include methodical
phonetic lessons plus reading practice stories specifically designed for
teenagers, then I suggest that you order a copy of my book, Read Better! For Adults and
Teens. You only need one copy because I designed the book
for you to sit beside your child and serve as the coach.
Just open the book and
begin. Read the brief introductory information then begin the
lessons. Each lesson is brief, followed by short lists of syllables or
words to practice aloud. Do not be afraid because you are not an official
teacher! How well have those certified teachers done? Right!! You
will certainly do much better than they did and you will soon have your child
reading after years of discouraging failure……..
