You're welcome.  I was just reading up on this stuff and I remembered reading about that study several years ago.  I always thought of phonics as monolithic, but it's not - there are fast ways and slow ways to teach it.  In that study, they only spent 16 weeks with the kids (age 5 at the time, I think) and got them reading.  Then they left them alone, other than checking up on their progress.  Most impressive to me was that boys actually did better than girls...which may be why real phonics is so despised by the establishment.

Hi people,

As an FYI, here is a study that was done in Scotland to assess what's called "Synthetic Phonics" versus "Analytic Phonics".  The form of phonics that I used is what is called "Synthetic Phonics", although I had never heard of either term at the time.  I think the word "Synthetic" means "synthesized", as in putting together sounds to make words (rather than meaning artificial, as there's nothing artificial about it).  Basically you teach a few sounds, and then start blending them into easy words, and then build up from that (the report explains it well).

Analytic Phonics appears to be an approach in which the kids use words to try to learn sounds.  Like for the letter "c", they would give the kids "car", "cake", "candle", etc.  Not as direct, and much slower.  They say in the study that the kids are taught one letter per week...which means that they just might get through the alphabet in an entire school year.  I remember they were doing that at David's pre-school (pre-K) and it seemed like a very long, slow, process (obviously it didn't affect David though).   I suspect this approach is used more commonly here than Synthetic Phonic.

In the study, it's not even close, Synthetic Phonics (the way I taught it) wins hands-down - which is no surprise to me - but somehow these studies don't make it into our educational system.


Here's the study:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/02/20682/52383

Here's the easier-to-read PDF version: 
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/933/0044071.pdf

Interesting.  Like I mentioned before, I do remember some things from my early grade school years.  One thing was always being told the following, time after time on my report card:  "Robert is doing well, but should be doing better".  For years I would read that and try to figure out how the teacher would know what I was capable of, as I felt that I was doing as well as I could.  I had no clue where that comment came from - but I learned later that they had access to my standardized tests (some were like IQ tests).  I always did well on those tests and they were judging me against them.  I'm still angry to this day that they were doing that.

"Carol Dweck did a study and wrote a book called Mindset. She talks about how it is best to encourage a child's learning capacity, their patience, their effort etc rather that praising their smarts or the end result. That may help with the lazy attitude.  That way they are encouraged to try rather than be doomed to failure."

I'm not saying it's not possible, but I'm not sure how to encourage learning capacity or patience (there may well be ways, and maybe they're covered in her book - I just don't know what they are).

As to praising smarts, I'm with her her there.  I praised accomplishment, rather than simply telling him he was smart (as that would get to his head - and he's able to figure it out fast enough anyone) - obviously I never called him stupid - in general.  But if he did something stupid, I sure let him know it - simply because I wanted him to remember and not do it again when I may not have been there to keep him out of trouble (and it happened a lot - his common sense developed at a more normal pace).  An example would be when he set up a vacation calendar for his church group.  I asked him if it was password protected - he said no, but they didn't tell any outsiders the website address.  I explained that was dumb to do, and that he needed a password - he pushed back a bit and then agreed - but I will call a spade a spade - and if it's dumb, I'll let him know it, in a way that he remembers.

As far as the end result, which is really what led me to comment, here's my take:  It depends.  If the material is hard and he tries, then definitely praise the effort - and then work with him until he does get it right.  But don't praise the effort if the material is easy, but he gets it wrong.  With David, at least, that was the path of laziness - just do it real quick and don't care about whether it's right or wrong.  If I accepted that, he would have been knocking out Saxon sections every 20 minutes.  So it's a balance, and it's easy enough for a parent to know whether the kid should have gotten the right answer.

Yea, I'm not worried about parents on this site.  And I enjoy watching the little guys...brings back memories!!

To Arvi,

"Just one more question. Most of the child prodigies and accelerated learners that I've read about have ended up depressed and being unhappy during adulthood. There are a few exceptions to this list like your son (great indeed). One common thing about the prodigies/accelerated learners who turned out depressed is the fact that they were accelerated in a super fast pace like graduating college at the age of 12 or less. What is your opinion on this? Did you put special efforts to ensure that your son is happy and did you make conscious effort in making him well-rounded or is it because of his personality that he is happy now."

Good questions Arvi.  I guess a few things here.  First, David had his church group of same-age (or at least very close-aged) kids that he grew up with literally from day 1, so that was probably the most important factor.  Had we moved (for any reason) or sent him away, I suspect he would have turned out completely different (and for the worse).  It's critical for a kid in that situation to have a group like that and stay with them.  Remember, David also doesn't have siblings - and even 'normal' single kids tend to have a lot more problems socially - so he had both going against him.  Next, like I've said, I beat it into him (figuratively, but pretty loud when necessary, which was very rare) that he was nothing special, he was just a kid whose parents started him early.  Without that, he probably will have still been in the top half of his class, but not by much (and I'm not even sure of that).  He knows it himself - he understands that intrinsically.  A number of times after he'd spent hours living it up with his friends I'd ask him whether they talked about him going to college - it never comes up, he's not about to talk about it, and to the other kids, he just went to another school - so they would never feel inferior around him.

Beyond that, we never, ever, shopped him to the media or had a blog, or anything.  But keep in mind that the Internet was younger, although still very big - I just had no interest.  I realize that others here have pages, and I completely understand that.  You have relatives, probably out of town (especially grandparents), that just love to read and watch the postings - and that's fine, because I also know that you guys will know be able to figure out when to back off, such as when it could make the kid susceptible to teasing.  Since I haven't done it, I don't feel qualified to say if it's harmful or not.  But back to the media.  My conservative political views don't give me much love of the media to begin with, and I've heard story after story of how they mess up and ruin people.  So it was easy for me to avoid them.  But, in the end, we had Pam at the Community College, that really stuck her neck out to get him enrolled early - and when she wanted to put out a press release when he finished there, so that she could maybe draw more kids in like David, we were fine with it.  And then you had University of Houston that had an 86 year old graduating the same day as David (who was 16 years old), and they wanted to do a story on it, and then TV stations got wind.  We were good there too, as the school also did a great job and we didn't want to let the older guy down.  But all this was done just as he was finishing up both schools.  So while he was in school, there were no distractions, like TV stories, that would have made him an outcast (or gotten to his head).  I know lots of parents do shop their kids - I think some parents just have their own problems and are trying to solve them through their kids, but I suspect many other parents just want the kid's name out there, so the colleges come knocking with offers.  We don't know - because we never gave them that chance (to speak of).  And by the way, the media stories were fine...they weren't out to destroy him.  LOL.


A couple of other things that we did, that may have helped.  First, I never used baby talk with him.  When he was two months old in a basket, I would explain to him that was changing out a washer in the sink, why I was doing it, how I was doing it, and I would talk in exactly the same tone that I would talk to a co-worker in.  Of course he was 2 months, but then he was 6 months, and then 12 months.  When he started talking, he was talking like an adult practically from day 1.  I remember one phone call to my mom when he was probably 5 years old and she said to me (after) that feels like she's talking to an adult.  Where it helps is when they're with older kids in school - they simply sound more mature.  David wasn't actually the first one I tried it on.  When I was growing up, we had a dog and I would talk to him like an adult too.  Needless to say he'd cock his head over like I was a mental case, but he remembered stuff and was brilliant, for a dog - and I think that was part of it.  Back then I figured it wasn't his fault that he was a dog and I wasn't going to treat him that way (that was my rationale).  For David, I saw the results with the dog, so it was a no-brainer.

To Mandabplus3 ,

"Off topic a bit ( but so is the entire thread!)"

Teaches you guys to invite me to someone else's threat.  But I like it better this way, it gives my kid some cover.

No comment on the rest, as it's out of my league - other than to mention again that we just had a marker board and then standard children's books.

"I only taught him lowercase letters and called them by sounds. He actually doesn't say letters. He calls them phonics. He has plenty of time to be corrected. I never taught him the names. And only later did I teach him upper case. My son can not recite the alphabet song, and I am completely okay with that. He does know most, if not all the letter names now I think. Honestly I am not sure how he knows them all. I assume from apps.  We don't do TV, so no Elmo assist. smile Now I think about it he may have learnt them from a little toy laptop that he has. With the exception of a drum and Piano it is the only electric toy he has."

Wow, you're better at it than I was.  We still had David learn letters, but I agree, they're not needed and can be confusing - you might as well just learn the sounds.  You can always pick up the letter names later.


"I like that you used a real book to teach David to read. Centuries ago before primers, children learnt to read with the bible."

Thanks, like I said, it wasn't brilliance on my part, I just didn't have anything else around, so I grabbed the first book that looked potentially doable for him.  The bible would work to...just much slower (and small print) - I could see spending a month to get through the first page, using my technique (of learning the words before attempting to read).  Things would, of course, speed up over time.

To Korrale4kq ,

"Mat, Sam and cat on a mat.
There is little (in those phonics readers) to make the child want to read more. And very little to excite the child to learn to read."

I'm with you 100% there.  I never used them and actually didn't know they existed or how to get them (thankfully).  We started with letters, then blends, then simple words.  From there it was right to children's books.  It was slow at the beginning, but before he read from a page, I made him learn the difficult words.  I knew which ones, and we would work on them separately.  Once he knew them pretty well, we'd go back to the book and read that page (which could still take a while).

I'll be the last person to support "Mat, Sam, and cat on a Mat" - his first book was "Walter and the Tugboat".  It was a real story at least and wasn't trying to teach him phonics at the same time.

"Korrale4kq "

I have thought about reading a lot with the whole word and phonics debate and initially I thought I was a phonics reader because that is what I was taught with but the more I think about it, I thought I was a whole word reader.... But now I have decided that I am a chunking reader. I don't sound out words anymore.

I doubt any parent on this sounds out words much - we're all sight readers now - the only question is initial learning, and how was that done.  I think in many cases, parents simply don't remember how they learned, so they think it's how they're doing it now.  I'm taking a Russian class at work.  It's a voluntary class, and it's all phonics, they don't dream of throwing us a bunch of weird looking words and expecting us to remember them by sight, without knowing the sounds of their alphabet - and if they tried it, I'd get up and walk out, and so would everyone else.  In fact, they don't even have names for letters - just the sounds (at least the way we're being taught).  Backwards "R" (я) is not called "Backwards R-ski" or something, it's called "ya", because that is its sound.  It's all phonics.

To MummyRoo,

"Yes, thankfully they start phonics straight away in school. There are sets of phonics readers - hundreds and hundreds of them - and in most schools, the kids *have* to read every single one, whether they are easy or not. So even the good readers make slow progress, which turns reading into a boring and tedious part of early schooling for them.  It seems that the government targets are to finish phonics by the end of Y1 (age 6) but there are still lots of children failing to learn to read - I would have thought that phonics taught correctly should prevent this!"


That's half the game, the other half is how serious they are at it.  When David was in pre-K, at Age 4/5, his class was covering one letter-sound a week.  They didn't even make it through the alphabet that year, much less blends, much less words.  That was it.  It was  a good school overall, but they simply were not interested in teaching 4/5 year olds  how to read...so it's still understandable that kids can be taught phonics but at such a slow rate that they likely forget what they already learned, when they have to apply it.

To Korrale4kq,

"This thread has had me thinking a lot. And I actually think I personally like learning the traditional algorithms, becoming competent, if not to mastery, THEN being mind blown when I see how it works. I have been watching a lot of math videos lately and actually been seeing how stuff works and feeling wowed and loving math even more. But, I don't think some of the things I have seen would have helped me learn or have made an impact if I didn't know the traditional way of doing it."

If that's  the case, I shall vaporize from this site, as my job is done.  Just kidding.  I think you hit on something very much at the root of our problems.  The case for Whole Language was made by saying if the kids (that can't read) are exposed to the great works of the past, they will pick up reading by assimilation.  We also know that's simply BS, but that was foundational basis on which Whole Language was pushed - that kids would appreciate the great works and learn to read just from that.  Millions of kids later, we know that simply doesn't work any better than explaining to a kid how a car works and then expecting him to design and build one on his own.


"Edited to add: I honestly think that teachers who learnt thing traditionally are having the same reflections that I am having. They are seeing HOW and WHY the algorithms actually work. And they are being seduced by it and thinking, wow it is so easy."

I know you're talking math, but the reading analogies are what keep popping into my mind.  In the case of reading, adults simply say:  "I read by sight, I don't sound out words, so why should my kids have to".  To answer that, THEY DON'T have to sound out words.  Once David knew a word by sight, I never, ever, dreamed of making him still sound it out.  But it takes time to get there, and that's where I diverge from these people.  I simply wanted to give him the tools to either sound out words, or get very close to that (for the tougher words)...rather than guessing.  Most adults simply don't remember how they learned to read.  I did, but only because my speech was so bad (only my mother and brother could understand me through first grade), that they were stuck having to start from scratch and teach me sounds.  So I learned phonics, but only be sheer luck.


"I know that breathing is an automatic thing, but I can't think of a better analogy now. Walking or running or hitting a baseball might be a better one. "

There are plenty of analogies.  Yes, I can appreciate (to an extent) a great work by Picasso, but being shown those works, for years, will not get me any closer to be a great artist.

PokerDad,

Agree, and I had mentioned it also in an earlier post, regarding who now goes into teaching, and what is expected of them.  Just from a political end, I'm an engineer, so I'm able to do math.  There are millions of engineers in this country - and there are likely hundreds of thousands who are either retired or unemployed.  The vast majority of us could teach early math in our sleep - but we don't, because we're not 'qualified' to do so (i.e., don't meet cert standards) - and those that are qualified would never be trusted to teach in a way they think would work (i.e., memorizing more than just counting) - so we don't.  We leave it to the 'professionals', like you just described.

Is it any wonder regarding the results we're getting?

To Poker Dad,

Wow.  I looked up "TERC Investigations Suck"  on Google (always a good way to get to see the dark side of anything), and I got this video:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/1YLlX61o8fg&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/1YLlX61o8fg&rel=1</a>

I was about to cry for this poor girl, but the video has a very happy ending, as her parents took her math education into their own hands.  If you look hard at the TERC technique, you'll see the intent of it was to avoid forcing the kids learn anything beyond single-digit counting, in order to do large arithmetic problems.  In other words, to use their method to add 8 plus 7, she draws out 8 shapes, then 7 shapes, then counts them all to get 15 shapes.  She never needs to actually know that 8 plus 7 equals 15.  So they make the problems an order of magnitude more complex (and thus more subject to failure), in lieu of having the kids learn their number facts.

Obviously I'm trusting whoever uploaded the video to be honest about it, but nothing in it surprises me.

To Arvi,

"Robert, Maybe I am asking a very controversial question but I want to understand your perspective on this
question. I truly appreciate your son's efforts and yours."

Thank you for the required bow, now on to your question.  LOL.


"But I feel that rather than going to college early, if your son had put lots of effort few more years then he could have got entry in Ivy League colleges or the ones like MIT or Stanford. My understanding is that  colleges like those provide so much scope and rigor that would put a student in the top few % of talents which is more beneficial for the student in the long run. I know very little about universities in USA and very little about Houston university, so excuse my ignorance if Houston univ. is also in the top tier."

Great question, and as long as you don't dig into his medical history (of which there is none, thankfully), or ask for his Social Security number, feel free to ask just about anything.  Nee1's answer did cover half of my answer, which was the location and keeping our family together.  My wife doesn't work (which is fine by me as Texas is a very low-cost place to live, especially with our life style, and I make plenty for all 3 of us), so, yes, she could have moved out with him, possibly to an Ivy League school, and believe me, she reminded me of that option.  As it is, we have Rice University in Houston, which is near-Ivy in quality and probably the best school in this part of the country.  David tried to take a math class there, my wife talked to them, and they still told him to take a hike - and not the first time.  The private school that I mentioned earlier, the 'best' one in Houston for K-12 years, also told us to get lost after they interviewed David for Kindergarten - it wound up that they didn't care whether he could read fluently or knew math, or whatever, they just didn't want him.  In both cases I was relieved, as Rice and the private school are across town, which would have been a pain.  We also looked at the Texas Academy of Math and Sciences (TAMS), which is a bit north of Dallas, making it a 5 hour drive for us.  He would have been 14 when he enrolled, while everyone else is 16.  The idea there is that you start college classes during what would be your junior year of high school (i.e., age 16) and get dual credit - then you can finish college at Age 20 (would have been 18 for David), rather than Age 22.  We never applied there, as I couldn't make it work in my head.  They had the kids live in a dorm and they just seemed to give them too much freedom for David to do well in, which leads to the next parts of my answer, which is that I'm not a typical dad and David is a typical American kid (i.e., tries to get away with as doing as little academic work as possible).

But first, my job.  It's not going anywhere.  The Space Station program is managed in Houston, my company's work is based in Houston, so that's where I need to be.  My value in a new area would not be as great, if I even got work elsewhere.  In other words, I just wasn't interested in starting my career over, so I would be staying put, regardless.  Next is my wife - being an immigrant and not having an engineering background, her ability to ride on David's back to make him study was limited.  In other words, he could fool her any time he wanted by saying "Of course I'm studying".  I was tougher to fool, and took some significant steps to make it tougher for him to get around me (such as opening up his laptop and removing the wireless antenna from his laptop when he was picking up the neighbor's internet...something he still doesn't know I did).  So, I needed to be with him, just so he would study (and his nightmare semester that I mentioned earlier proved me right) - and I knew all that because I was (is) no different.  So that limited us to the Houston area.  Also, I like doing stuff with my hands, particularly relating to cars and our house, and I have decent skill level at it, to the point where we don't need auto mechanics and tradesmen.  I wanted to pass that on, as no one can predict the future and those skills can save people a lot of agony and money (in the case of our air conditioner once, it stopped working, and I had it fixed in 45 minutes - it was a capacitor that went bad, and I had a spare - it was summer so it was nice have it back on line that quick).  So I needed him around to learn that.

Finally there's the money end, and that is partially political for me, and partially greed (I admit).  The political part is that the private schools simply charge huge amounts of money for what is now a sliding tuition scale.  They have a "sticker price" which is probably double their cost for your kid.  They then make you fill out a federal form and they go run it through a program that weighs your income and assets, and gives spits out what your cost will be, and it's a combination of maybe tuition grants, loans, and work (for the student).  It has nothing to do with whether your kid is bright.  In fact, the Ivy League announced publicly that they were through will all merit-based scholarships about 2 years ago - so all financial aid is now need based.  In reality that means that what you pay in tuition at these schools is based exclusively on your income.  I don't buy a car that way, or a house, or a can of soup that way, so I was not about to do that for college.  They can shove it with their little redistribution schemes as far as I'm concerned.  (my mother has given me more stories from her days as a univeristy administrator that just get me angrier)

So it came down to keeping him local, and with a public college.  As it is, he did get a decent education at the University of Houston.  From what I can tell, they are selective, but in a different way.  At UH, they will admit people that may not be the top students, but they did not give them a pass.  In his engineering and math courses, during the early years, it was not uncommon for 80% of the students in a class to drop out prior to the end of the semester (they started with huge classes, but they were down to reasonable size for the second half of the semester).  They were that tough.  They gave you a shot, but it was up to you to take advantage of it.  I see a lot of merit in that.  His friends that graduated there all got engineering jobs in the oil industry, except one that joined him in grad school.  The ones that took the jobs, I suspect started about $80,000, the one that went to grad school with him got an offer for just over $100,000 (he's about to finish).  And once you start working at a large company where you went to school becomes a minor issue - so it's difficult to see much benefit, at least from a money standpoint, in the Ivy League.

As far as getting a better, more thorough, education, sorry, but he's not into answering all those deep questions that have sent philosophers banging their heads against the walls and screaming from the mountain tops, for millennium.  Just not into that stuff.  For him school is simply a path to a job, and UH does just fine providing that path, at least for engineering students.