I love the way you all think
Ok so it seems you want two different types of surveys done. I am actually surprised you only want two!
This time around I am not aiming to please any scientists. But just gather information that can be used to determine effective methods of teaching. I am looking to find what reliably works and is repeatable.
Once this information is gathered THEN a proper scientific study can be conducted. Once the successful method is determined it will be alot easier to replicate the results in a well monitored, and carefully selected (to reduce bias) group of children.
At the moment there is SO little information out there that anything I do in quantity ( even with faults) will be reguarded as ground breaking! ( sad, I know!
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I actually prefer to have less animality in this survey as I have a substantial background knowledge on a lot of the forum members and can add that to what you have written to tease out flaws or overlooked methods. However I will happily take anonymous surveys over none and WILL NOT let anyone else know your personal details. The details I publish will be anonymous. I want the details now as I can validate your successful reading claims with them. I have seen many videos over time of your children reading and this valiidty means alot to people. I already have a fair idea of who has had success teaching reading and yes eventually I will target you for a survey
As to reading levels...OK this one is ridiculously hard to determine. How do you determine the reading ability of a sight word reading baby who can read the word elephant but not mit? In truth you can't. That is why I have asked parents to indicate their ability in any way they can at any age. Hey if you have been reading long enough to have a 3/4 year old who can be lexiled then great but I still want to know if you have a 2 year old who recognises 40 words but can't blend yet and hasn't intuited phonics. like I said the more information I can get the better. I can find out all sorts of things by comparing 2000 attempts.
I will hunt for people who tried and failed to teach reading to little kids but I doubt there will be that many of them here...and to be honest they will be the hardest category to track down as it seems almost any consistent effort will result in SOME success. They are a valuable addition to the study all the same. Even if the aim is to find what works, knowing what doesn't is still useful.
Now this survey is about reading. Purely because I decided it is the easiest place to start. I have no intentions of neglecting the other areas of possible early learning success at all. I just needed to focus on one place first and reading is the most commonly asked about skill. If you have had success in another area ( music, math, sports) and can tell me why then please DO drop me an email! I will save your responses for when I get through this mountain of a task