Reading rant: The Sequels

[cahn]

My life for the past couple of weeks has been basically the sequel to my previous reading-rant posts :P So in case you were wondering how those turned out, here is an update!

1) Sequel to my post on Lucy Calkins: Turns out that at Back-to-School Night the 1st grade teacher at the swank gifted school my kids go to revealed that they use Lucy Calkins for a reading curriculum in first grade, thus leading to one of the other parents panicking (she has heard of the evils of this curriculum from her reading specialist friend), a lot of evening texting, a meeting with this parent and her friend the aforementioned reading specialist, and now I'm trying to set up a meeting with this parent and the school curriculum director. It doesn't make a lot of difference to me viscerally speaking, because my kid knows how to read and did before even starting kindergarten, but man am I glad he knew how to read already. (The other parent's child mostly knows how to read, but is not fluent.) I mostly am just trying to make sure they don't use three-cueing because come on, that's completely ridiculous. I tried asking A. about it with very leading questions and he didn't seem to think that the teacher had ever said anything that was similar to three-cueing, so I guess that's a good sign. (Although I asked him about phonics in kindergarten -- which I now know his kindergarten teacher used, because the other kids have learned it -- and he had no idea about that either, so he might just be really poor at answering those kinds of questions. But also since he knew how to read, it's possible she did phonics with other kids but not him.)

(Interestingly, the reading specialist we talked to said that older teachers often do a decent job of teaching kids to read even with an awful curriculum, because they don't feel like they have to slavishly follow the curriculum, they just mix in phonics because they know it actually works. Their Kindergarten teacher is, in fact, on the older side -- not old, but she's definitely taught for a while, and I haven't heard any complaint about parents worrying this teacher didn't teach their kid how to read well (and let's just say I have heard many complaints from other parents about various subjects and teachers, so I kind of feel like I would have heard about it).

2) Sequel to the post where I mentioned my niece's reading: to recap briefly, my niece, my sister's oldest child O., who I think is reasonably bright, had not learned how to read at the end of 2019, the year before she entered kindergarten. Mostly legit, most kids don't know how to read when they enter kindergarten, right? But she'd been exposed to "whole-word" methods with maaaaaybe a small smattering of phonics, and I was a little concerned, not about the not reading yet, but because when I played word games with her that Christmas she was displaying a somewhat worrying tendency to guess the word, and I didn't like that. We all talked about this and my sister elected to wait and see how she did in kindergarten.

Then her kindergarten year, of course, turned out to be severely disrupted by the pandemic, and I'm not sure how much she learned about anything that year. But here's the thing! My sister, and apparently her kindergarten teacher as well, thought she was actually reading.

Now it is the fall of 2021 and O. is entering first grade, and she just turned 7. At this point, my sister has realized O. does not actually know how to read. That by itself I would be okay with (I know it's still pretty common not to know how to read in first grade), but the way in which she doesn't know how to read is still this thing where she goes "I'm going to look at the first two letters and then guess what the word is." And this is good enough that she seems to be fooling her teachers that she is reading. It is not good enough, as you can imagine, that she actually likes reading, and I worry that O. looks like she's doing well enough that the underlying deficits are not going to get addressed.

If I lived near them, I'd probably buy a phonics curriculum (conuly recommended me some on the previous post, and I've forwarded them to my sister) and go over it with O. I don't, and my sister doesn't have the spoons to do something like that (even though she's doing better these days with medication). But fortunately our parents agreed to pay for a tutor, and I spent a decent chunk of time this weekend and this week researching and phone-interviewing reading tutors. (This kind of thing is also very hard for my sister these days, which is definitely autoimmune-related because she was the queen of organization and logistics before she got sick... but also I have the pedagogical interest.)

The two tutors I'd really have liked to retain from their online description weren't able to do it, sadly. (I had a brief email exchange with one of them, and I just reeeeallly liked her and although I guess I can't say for sure because I haven't talked to her at length, my sense is that I would hire her in a hot second if she were available.) The three I've interviewed so far are all retired teachers.

The first seemed very nice and very personable, and I think O. would love her, and she kept bringing up sight words and how phonics were all very well and good but she taught to the whole child, and at one point she asked how O.'s comprehension was. "It's great when someone reads to her," I said. "Oh, okay, so she's an auditory learner!" Nooooo, I mean, maybe she is?? But the proximate reason she can comprehend being read to better than reading herself is because she doesn't know how to read properly!!

The second potential tutor sounds older and not nearly as much fun. She did also bring up sight words a time or two, but at least after I described O.'s problems she agreed that she thought a systematic phonics program would work well for her, and she at least threw around names that are consistent with an analytic phonics program.

The third runs one of those learning centers (Sylvan) which seems to have a reasonable phonics program, but she brought up sight words too. IDK I know I am working from one data point and a fairly bright data point at that, but I never did a single sight word with A. (of course we talked about words that don't quite follow the phonetic pattern as he was sounding out words) and he learned to read fine :P

I have recommended #2 to my sister and we'll see how it goes.

It's killing me, though, that there's a good chance O. will learn to read only because she's got an aunt who is interested in pedagogy and grandparents who are well-to-do enough to pay for tutoring. I think about all those other kids out there who don't have that and it makes me really sad. UGH.

Comments

[conuly]

The first seemed very nice and very personable, and I think O. would love her, and she kept bringing up sight words and how phonics were all very well and good but she taught to the whole child, and at one point she asked how O.'s comprehension was. "It's great when someone reads to her," I said. "Oh, okay, so she's an auditory learner!" Nooooo, I mean, maybe she is?? But the proximate reason she can comprehend being read to better than reading herself is because she doesn't know how to read properly!!

You can't seem to convince teachers of this, but there is NO SUCH THING as "learning styles". She is not an "auditory learner" because that is not a thing that people are.

I honestly do not know what the hell is going on in ed schools, but they're teaching their graduates a whole bunch of garbage.

[crystalpyramid]

Can you expand more on this? If I ask my students how they learn best, some kids say they learn best by doing things or writing things down or seeing pictures or watching videos etc. I know that I personally really struggle to get information from videos if I don't take notes on them, but I think this is sort of the opposite of most people. And there are definitely people who just find images confusing.

Are you saying this doesn't exist? Is there research that backs this up?

Applogies for the derail. Obviously a child who can't absorb information by reading because she can't read isn't just "an auditory learner." But I'm guessing she might be better at auditory processing than I am, because I'm way better at getting information by reading than hearing it.

[conuly]

There is, I'm sorry to say, quite a lot of research backing up that learning styles don't exist. (Note: With the obvious caveat that of course, say, a dyslexic or somebody who is functionally illiterate for other reasons will find reading hard, or that somebody with hearing or auditory processing issues might have trouble with lectures.)


https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myth-is-still-prevalent-among-educators-and-it-shows-no-sign-of-going-away/

(This is mostly on studies about belief in learning styles, but it helpfully includes some links on studies showing that they're a myth)

https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/

(No links here, but as it's a professional organization it may be more convincing?)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-learning-styles/

(And they summarize basically what the first two links said)

I know that I personally really struggle to get information from videos if I don't take notes on them, but I think this is sort of the opposite of most people.

I think it's more likely that many people really overestimate how much they really do comprehend and will retain from videos if they don't take notes or otherwise do some sort of review and practice of what they're trying to learn.

[seekingferret]

I didn't really learn how to read until mid-first grade and then I instantly became a compulsive reader and never stopped so I'm not sure how much a thing this is to worry about.

[ambyr]

This is also my trajectory, and was so normal at the time--I don't think my kindergarten tried to teach reading in any way, it was understood to be something you didn't start to learn until you became a "big kid" in first grade--that I wonder when the shift in timeline happened.

[cahn]

Yeah, I know a bunch of people who didn't learn to read until first grade, and I remember as well that kindergarten didn't teach reading. But like I told seekingferret, it's less that she doesn't know how to read and more the particular way in which she doesn't know how to read that bothers me, especially that she seems to have conned her teachers into thinking that she can read. (And also that the literacy rate in my own school district is horrible, which possibly I shouldn't take out on her, but I just really worry about them pushing whole-word on her.)

I do think everything is being pushed earlier and earlier (math is like this too; I remember doing simple addition and subtraction in second grade but they're working on it in first and sometimes even in K), which is good for some kids (I'd have loved to do it earlier!) but not great for others.

[melannen]

Yeah, I absolutely did the "memorize books/guess words" thing the whole time I was on picture books. It was a combination of being smart enough to get away with it, and also wanting to keep the experience of "being read to" as long as possible.

Mid-first grade I suddenly saw the point of being able to read independently and skipped right to stealing all my older sister's chapter books.

[cahn]

This makes me feel a little better -- because I absolutely think that part of what's happening is that she's smart enough to get away with it. But did your school actually think you were reading? Because that's a large part of what worries me.

But wait, why would memorizing/guessing words keep the experience of being read to as long as possible? I think O. gets read to less now because she's now expected to be able to read books herself (which of course she hates doing, since she's really just guessing at words).

(I had the opposite experience, lol; I wanted to keep reading books to my kids but as soon as they learned how to read, they didn't want me to read to them any more, except that A. will sometimes ask me to read a book silently that he's also reading, and he will let me read him Shel Silverstein poems :) )

[cahn]

So, like I said in the post, if it was just that she didn't know how to read I wouldn't worry nearly as much! It's the combo of that and the fact that she has somehow convinced her teachers that she does know how to read so (I think -- I'm obviously not there in the classroom) they don't seem to be actually actively trying to teach her fundamentals any more, and also that I'm primed to worry about this because there is actually an epidemic in our school district of kids who get to third and fourth grade and don't know how to read because they're using this awful whole-words curriculum. (O. is in a completely different school district, so I may be jumping the gun here, but as far as I can tell whole-word in general and three-cueing in particular is pretty widespread. I've also asked my sister to try to find out what curriculum her school system uses, though I think this is probably not going to happen.)

And on the other hand, melannen's post below does make me feel a little better...

[crystalpyramid]

Yeah, I have a friend who was homeschooled as a kid and didn't learn to read until she was at least 7. It really troubled my mom (who stressed out toddler-me a ton by trying endlessly to teach me to read with flashcards). Said friend is now a playwright who also writes articles that sometimes go viral, so seems to be doing fine reading-wise.

I think they've tried to push the ages in different grades a bit later, now, too -- I know the state I live in has changed the cutoff for kindergarten admission.

[conuly]

Yeah, I have a friend who was homeschooled as a kid and didn't learn to read until she was at least 7. It really troubled my mom (who stressed out toddler-me a ton by trying endlessly to teach me to read with flashcards).

Interesting fact that your mother would never believe: If you compare students who started learning to read at the age of 7 with those who started learning at the age of 5, by 9 they're reading on about the same level - especially if you spend age 5 and 6 doing things like intensive hands-on instruction in science and art and nature study and drama and field trips to various places.

Even more interesting fact: Every time I've pointed this out to people (even back when I had the URLs to various studies on hand, which I no longer do), somebody would say that you can't wait until 7 to start teaching reading because then they'd be behind and not able to switch to "reading to learn". Those people who started reading before their peers also say that they were "bored" for several years while their peers caught up and they can't imagine how much worse it would have been if they'd had to wait until 7 for their peers to be taught to read.

Which just goes to show that even if you can read, that doesn't mean that your comprehension doesn't still absolutely suck.

[conuly]

For whatever reason, schools seem to insist on teaching it earlier now. I hope the pendulum swings back sooner rather than later....

[crystalpyramid]

The cynic in me says the fact that you can't make kids do standardized tests until they can read has got to be part of it.

[thistleingrey]

But still, glad O. has the support she does!

If O. is on the brink of switching over and has been enjoying having people read to her, great, short stint with tutor, no big deal. If she isn't, then 7 seems a good age to break things down into phonics.

I read independently at 3.5 and had a year of phonics in school after it (that year was at a private school; from fourth grade on, public schools). It helped me speak more clearly; it's not as though phonics training is a loss even for kids who read fluidly above age-level expectation, any decade. As long as the tutor can keep a light touch, tutoring sounds potentially really helpful to me. And I read that early not because my L2 mother pushed it but because she kept up with me.

[cahn]

Yes! I do see what everyone's saying about how this is a natural time to learn to read and yes, it's possible I'm over-worried and that she'd learn how to read fine without any extra help. But I really like what you say, it's not as though phonics training is a loss even for kids who read fluidly above age-level expectation. Like you, I could read independently by the time school started, but I'm still glad for the phonics training I had after that because it helped formalize patterns in my brain that I had but that I wouldn't have been able to articulate.

[thistleingrey]

Fingers crossed for good tutor compatibility with O. :)

[melannen]

Phonics and grammar are both really helpful for things *other* than just learning to read, and I wish curricula would realize that!

[ashkitty]

My sister read like that for a while - the 'guess the word based on the first couple of letters' method. Our whole family are huge readers so it didn't take that long to remedy itself, despite the school's crap non-phonics curriculum.

(I vaguely remember doing phonics, but I could read super early. My sister was born when I was 3, and so my parents no longer had time to constantly read to me, and learning to do it myself was clearly the only solution. It was discouraged at the time for kids to be able to read before kindergarten - maybe in the 80s they didn't trust parents to do it themselves? but either way, both of us have advanced degrees in literature stuff now so it seems to have turned out okay.)

[cahn]

Ah, this does make me feel better -- although I also worry about the family-reading component. My sister used to be a huge reader (and this was one of our thoughts at the time, that O. would get some osmosis from her mom) but reading was one of the things that took a hit when her autoimmune problems kicked in, which she's really not happy about.

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I absolutely did not know this "whole words" thing was still around. What I always heard about it is exactly what you're describing--- kids don't get the phonological mapping expertise they need, and rely instead on guessing and memory, only to have issues of one kind or another when they have to read words or texts they don't know in advance. I always assumed we had nuked it from orbit ages ago! Sorry to hear we haven't. I did know that "learning styles" have continued to lurk around like some hard-to-exorcise pop-psych demon, even among people who should have learned some real evidence-based psych. I've seen it myself!

I agree with Ashkitty (is that Ashura? s'mae!) that having parents who are readers is important. Something I have learned from my brief brushes with pedagogy is that motivation is super important, way more so than actual instruction for some subjects. Once you get the idea that something is frustrating and stupid and you'll look bad for not knowing it already, it's way harder to learn anything about it than if you get the idea that it's the key to Exciting Adult Stuff. My partner's kid learned arithmetic because there were always game-playing adults around, and it was always "we can't deal you in until you can add the numbers on the cards", and then the kid could do math and then about two years later the kid was winning.

[conuly]

I absolutely did not know this "whole words" thing was still around.

I think they're calling it "balanced literacy" now. The "balance" is supposed to be that they do some phonics... but it's a bad approach to mix phonics in with non-phonics, because in the early stages it IS easier to memorize whole words based on shape and guess based on pictures. But it's a bad habit that proves very hard to break once the words get harder and the pictures go away.

[ashkitty]

S'mae! It is me. :)

That's all such a good point - that when it's a key to something kids want to do, they have the motivation to learn it. (My best friends' kid wants to play D&D with us desperately, so he's learning all the math on the dice and everything; it's great.)

[cahn]

RIGHT?? I absolutely did not know it was around either until I started looking into things for my kids and my niece. And honestly not so much from my kids' end, because they both learned how to read in preschool, where there was a learning specialist at their school but that person did solely phonics. But both the local school districts have this awful whole words, sorry, balanced literacy thing, and the local reading specialist I talked to last week was super discouraged because she gets them when they're 3rd and 4th grade, and can't read, and at that point it's much harder for her to help them because they're stuck in these terrible habits that she can't undo in one hour a week or whatever she gets.

Once you get the idea that something is frustrating and stupid and you'll look bad for not knowing it already, it's way harder to learn anything about it than if you get the idea that it's the key to Exciting Adult Stuff.

Yes! My younger kid clearly had the latter vibe (I never pushed it, but there was a lot of "oh, when you can make change you can play Monopoly," and I didn't say so explicitly but he could see there was a lot of text around that if he could only read...)

But I worry because I get the impression that something is frustrating and stupid and you'll look bad for not knowing it already is exactly the situation my niece is in :(

[luzula]

I didn't read all the comments here, but...
1) I have NO memory of how I myself learned to read.
2) When my small niece and I were playing around with letters and words, I always helped her along by asking her to sound out the individual letters and ask her to put them together and help her along until she realized what word it was. Doing it in any other way never struck me. Memorizing the shape of words??? How weird.

[cahn]

YES IT IS SO WEIRD. And this is how I played with my children too! And in fact my niece has lots of words memorized! But as soon as it's not a word she's memorized, it doesn't seem to go well.