Can someone steel man the reason for not teaching phonics? Among the different trends in teaching, de-emphasizing/abandoning phonics is counterintuitive, bordering moronic. But I do not claim to be more than a pea brain myself.
I'm here in Alabama, I'm teaching my kids reading through phonics at home about 2 years ahead of them starting in school. They're learning what they call "sight words" in class. My kids are so far ahead of the others that our specific teacher has now moved to teaching the rest of the class phonics and almost abandoning sight words altogether.
I think the rubber on the road reason for not teaching phonics is that it's _hard_ and requires genuine teaching - personal focus on a little kid's understanding. I can't imagine that scaling in a classroom but I'm no educator.
Good job by you! It’s heartening to see a teacher willing to switch things up too.
I guess I didn’t consider phonics to be hard.. it seems self evident. But yeah, I also read to my kid a ton and have been throwing some phonics practice in there. I don’t know how else to give a toddler footholds to comprehend what’s on the page.
That's weird because 2 years of one-to-one study with their parent should matter more than whatever method, also teachers don't just go and give up their method, even for good reasons. And 2 years of one-to-one study with their parent being effective is not a legit reason to change methods.
This is not really accurate. There was a vary long running debate about phonics which is 1 piece of a larger system (alphabetic coding, phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, and comprehension) vs Whole language which became popular int he UK and US in the 1980s and 1990s. Whole language is junk pedagogy and doesn't work but was the preferred method taught to teachers for nearly 30 years in the US.
The NYT Daily podcast did an ok episode on this[1].
English is not really a phonic language. The is some, but the rules are not clear - why is phone not fone? Many letters can have more than one sound, and it is arbitrary which is chosen. Different English speakers even have different sounds / ways to pronounce a word.
Not that phonics is useless, but it isn't as helpful as it should be. We need spelling reform first - which probably needs to start with a more general spoken language reform, and that doesn't seem like it will get anywhere for political reasons.
For me, phonics was a lifesaver. Sure, you have to learn a corpus of typically common words that don't follow the pattern, but that's ok. I went from functionally illiterate to loving language.
I don’t remember how I learned to read but having a toddler who I’m now teaching to read, phonics have been a nice hook for him to wrap his mind around what’s on the page. I’m sure he’d be cromulent at reading without it, but we read together a ton and I don’t see him reading as accelerated without it.
the_sleaze_|10 days ago
I think the rubber on the road reason for not teaching phonics is that it's _hard_ and requires genuine teaching - personal focus on a little kid's understanding. I can't imagine that scaling in a classroom but I'm no educator.
prodigycorp|10 days ago
I guess I didn’t consider phonics to be hard.. it seems self evident. But yeah, I also read to my kid a ton and have been throwing some phonics practice in there. I don’t know how else to give a toddler footholds to comprehend what’s on the page.
bmacho|10 days ago
justin66|10 days ago
Teachers use phonics all the time. “Teachers don’t use phonics anymore” is just a thing people say. It’s odd.
ch4s3|10 days ago
The NYT Daily podcast did an ok episode on this[1].
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerQQFrBbPQ
bluGill|10 days ago
Not that phonics is useless, but it isn't as helpful as it should be. We need spelling reform first - which probably needs to start with a more general spoken language reform, and that doesn't seem like it will get anywhere for political reasons.
blargthorwars|10 days ago
prodigycorp|10 days ago
CGMthrowaway|10 days ago
prodigycorp|10 days ago