WellTrainedMind Forum takes on early reading

[DadDude]

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=352375

You might see a few familiar names. Interesting, but also frustrating.

[waterdreamer]

*Sigh* Since this is a classical education board, that encourages teaching children to learn how to learn properly you'd think they'd be all over this.
*Sigh* I find EL is like religion, you can't convert people who are set in their beliefs.

[cokers4life]

  That is a funny way to put it Waterdreamer.

[arvi]

My son 23 months old can blend words phonetically for the past 2 or so months. He can blend /l/, /ea/, /f/ for leaf and /p/, /ai/, /l/ for pail and so on. He was exposed to blending since the beginning in the same way as Tanikit had suggested in that forum. But his blending skills skyrocketed after constant use of readingeggs, readingbear, starfall and more importantly preschool prep phonics DVDs.

If I have to buy into what the majority has claimed in that forum, I should have started blending only after my son had turned 3 or 4 years old.

On the other day, we bought a pack of grapes and on that there was the word 'cape'. I asked my son to read it and he first said 'cap' and then immediately he said /c/, /a/, /pe/ cape.

[Tanikit]

What bothered me most about those posts is that blending is often taught purely as testing - and you cannot test small babies and children - it just doesn't work. I have heard a lot about a blending problem with small children and am interested in it - it will be lovely to see what happens on brillkids with people who are trying to teach it - how many are successful and how many are not and what methods do people use. I still do believe that if you blend for the child and get them used to hearing how it works that most children should be able to blend at a very young age. My DD (1 year old) is already hearing blending though I have yet to start reading bear with her purely because my eldest does a lot of it and it has become habit to say the sounds for the younger one.

Having two is quite fun - my youngest is now getting word cards in the bath same as the elder one did at her age, except that with them both in the bath I am now teaching my elder one what a noun and verb is - same materials totally different things being taught. I just wonder if the younger one will be an expert at grammar later on because of it.

While I do believe in early education and do it with my own children I can no longer recommend it to people who are not interested - I know what has worked for my own children and can suggest they try it, but if they want to wait then its their own choice. That post did make me wonder about what was really important - many people would say it is that children enjoy learning and are happy, but no one ALWAYS enjoys learning and no one is ALWAYS happy. I think life and early learning are just choices people make and we all need to make the choice we feel is best - the question is is there a "right" or "better" way of doing things here or is it all just our opinion? I like my opinion though on early learning and I like doing early learning with my children, but I respect someone else who might think it is a bad idea or even that it is impossible - its their opinion and they are entitled to it.

[sonya_post]

I am a Classical Homeschooler and belong to a local group of folks who are on the Well Trained Mind Forum. What I am doing has not been received well, so I just don't bring it up. As classical homeschoolers, they firmly believe that children should learn to read by the phonics route. So this whole teaching whole language is well, bunk.

BTW- I have a 19 month old who can blend sounds perfectly well and rather enjoys showing off while doing so. I don't make much of this stuff. I just see is as an opportunity for the EL community to get excited about educating the rest of the public. If people buy into or not is not our problem. You just keep doing what you can where you are.

   

[Maquenzie]

Thanks for sharing.

I wish the women you were debating with answered your question that posed why it mattered where the motivation came from.  I am also curious to hear the answer.

That's a question I struggled with, especially at first, when becoming a "convert"  of early learning.  It's an argument I hear over and over, but it's always as an understood premise--the child wanted to, so it was acceptable.  I would agree that painful drill isn't good for a small (or big) child, but is a joyful learning experience initiated by someone other than the child harmful; if so, why?

This assumption isn't usually held in other areas of a child's life.  We as parents (well, most of us) initiate all types of activities for our children from mealtimes, self-care, nap and bedtimes, games we choose, books we choose, etc.  In my opinion the question shouldn't be "who initiated it", but rather, "is the child a willing participant"?  My hypothesis is that those that hold fast to the belief that the child must initiate certain types of learning at certain ages automatically equate the parent-initiated activity to one a child is not a willing participant of.

From what I've read of that thread, I think that's the crux of the issue.  I would really love to understand more from all sides of this argument.

[PokerDad]

I was reading through that thread last night and, to use a poker term, went on tilt from what I had to read.

For some reason, people, the educated seemingly the worst among them, cannot figure out that readiness is as much of a function of what precedes as genetics (if not nearly 100% so). For example, the brightest of the bright sitting in a barren room for their first 5 years will not be ready for much. I think Doman talks about this at length in his books. It's not just Doman though. There's plenty of empirical observation and even research that can demonstrate readiness as a function of prior experience.

[Tanikit]

I am still not sure that there is such a thing as reading readiness - this is often applied to things where testing will be involved - if you just present the information to the child and expect nothing back then you can teach a tremendous amount and usually the children do remember it and learn from it. Babies learn so easily that you could probably teach phonics to a baby/toddler WITHOUT teaching the letter sounds first - basically just by sounding out words to them and they would probably learn the letter sounds and all the digraphs/vowel blends etc without you ever teaching them outside of words. I have not done an experiment on this and it seems unlikely that anyone would do it, but if it is possible then it would prove that there is no such thing as reading readiness. A child does not need to know that print is read left to right (mine learnt that nearly a year after she started learning to read), they do not need to know their letter sounds, they do not need even to know that the printed word is what tells the story and not the pictures - that can be part of the teaching and is usually implied. Heck they dio not even have to understand the words they are learning to read - that can ALSO be part of the teaching. A child is ready to learn to read from the time they are born and you can start with whatever step seems most logical at the time.

[Mae_Jakob_Ka]

I just can't stop grinning when I read what waterdreamer wrote. 

Well, I started teaching my son to blend since he was 21 months old. I followed DadDude's suggestions and had used the exercises from Why Johny  Can't Read. Like Tinikit, I sounded out the words for him son when we first started. After a few months, he started to understand how to blend.

He is 3.3 years old now and can blend anything I sound out for him..and of course he can blend one and two syllable words on his own.

It's possible. My son did it and so do many other kids on Brillkids forum.

[Mandabplus3]

Well wasn't that an entertaining read?   
Pokerdad i agree, I am a big believer in prior experience determines readiness. I have just seen too much proof to say it's otherwise. Have any of these people ever been to a low sociology economic school?  Genetics seem to play such a minor part when it comes to building on previous knowledge which less face most of education's just that. A gradual increase in depth of knowledge...sounding out is usually a building of knowledge from letter sounds (yes tanikit interesting thoughts...)
I think the problem is that basically the people saying it's developmental age based are "testing" Testing is left brained and thus developmental. If parents are just informing and encouraging sounding out then how is that developmentally determined? They will respond when they are ready to, that doesnt mean we can't teach it. Or that we shouldn't teach it or more accurately "expose" our children to it.
Sigh, I do congratulate you keeping your temper when replying. I thought it safer I keep my mouth shut

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