Re: Words again (was: Heidi's dunkers)

[Guest guest]

Could we please put Homeschool in the subject line for all of these? My

kids are grown (working on PhDs now) and, while it is a trip down memory

lane, this is a chatty group and I need to read these later.

Thanks,

Connie Hampton

One of the founders of the Northern CA Homeschoolers Association, now HSC

_____

From: Lillig [mailto:jturtlesmom@...]

Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 12:22 PM

Subject: Re: Words again (was: Heidi's dunkers)

Hear! Hear! (Do you think typing tutor and Zaboomafoo are poison? -being

sarcastic...)

L.

>

>Well, we use quite a bit of electronic media here, but I'm selective about

>our poisons.

>

>--s

>

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[Guest guest]

Sorry, I deleted the post this is in response to and therefore can't quote

any of it. But maybe that's a good thing. ; )

There has been a lot of research into how the brain learns. Some has been

done by an organization that started out with it's goal being to help people

who have had head injuries and needed to relearn things that had been

learned when they were children. Not only have they helped those people

(and helped them to learn it faster the second time than they did the

first), but they've found their methods work really well with NON-injured

children and adults.

And...

Just because you don't know, or remember, HOW you aquired something, doesn't

mean your brain didn't go about it in a systematic way. Just because you

intuited what certain letter combinations represented, doesn't mean that

being introduced to such knowledge is a waste for others.

(I can already hear you asking for the research organization. Sorry, don't

have the info on hand and have already used up my free time this morning.

But if you are truly interested and open minded, I'm sure you can find such

information yourself through the web.)

Rhea

[Guest guest]

I mean he is only 21 months old, and he knows his colors, numbers

through 10, learning letter names, and phonetic sounds, and he can

recognize his name (because it starts with 'A' he says) and his

brother's name (by the first letter. -

-----------------

,

It's a good thing you'll be teaching him. I think he'd be bored stiff

in school, sitting through years of learning that which HE already knows.

Deanna

[Guest guest]

That is quite true, as long as you can seperate the sounds so as to put them

together in a different pattern, or be able to sound out a word at a

different point in life.

L.

>It seems to me that making sound-text

>associations within the context of sensible sentences would quite obviously

>be vastly

>superior to dissociated syllables that have no context to be associated

>with

>whatsoever.

>

>Chris

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[Guest guest]

>>Common and easy words like " and " and " it, " etc, she

would ask me in the middle of reading, and when I would get them right

consistently she'd ask me other words. It seems to me that making sound-text

associations within the context of sensible sentences would quite obviously be

vastly

superior to dissociated syllables that have no context to be associated with

whatsoever.

Chris>>

~~~Believe me, if you'd been raised without benefit of a Mother who was willing

to take the time to teach you, you might just feel quite differently. There are

lots of people, who don't have parents who are willing to devote any time

whatsoever to teaching their children. I didn't learn how to read until first

grade, (and it wasn't due to lack of intelligence or aspiration), believe it or

not, and I learned from a teacher with the methods that some of you seem so

eager to throw out the window!

Carol

____

[Guest guest]

Hmmm--all I remember is Dick and Jane

> >>You people really make me feel old. I can remember back before

> phonetics was the rage!<<

>

> ~~~Unless, you're over 100 years old, I don't think so! (Bet I'm

older than you, if you think that, because you're probably thinking

of the more recent revival of Phonetics with the advertisements on

TV some years ago, for a product that's based on phonetics......now

I can't remember the name of it, but it's still around, I think.)

Phonetics evidently started in 1891 in Finland!

> See below.

> Carol

>

> a.. 1891: Hugo Pipping was appointed Docent of Phonetics.

> a.. 1903: A phonetic laboratory was established. The laboratory

got new equipment, which implies the unofficial establishment of the

Department of Phonetics. The laboratory had early connections with

physiology and language studies, especially with those of Finnish

and Saami.

>

> http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/hyfl/history.html

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Haven't people been teaching kids/adults the alphabet

as long as there's been an alphabet? That would make

" phonics " thousands of years old, and I don' t THINK

anyone on this list is that old!

When people speak of " phonics, " they may mean a lot

of different things - they may be referring to specific methods

of teaching that were used on them.

To me, phonics means teaching kids to figure out words

by showing them the relationships between sounds and

letters.

Aven

> > >>You people really make me feel old. I can remember back before

> > phonetics was the rage!<<

> >

> > ~~~Unless, you're over 100 years old, I don't think so! (Bet I'm

> older than you, if you think that, because you're probably thinking

> of the more recent revival of Phonetics with the advertisements on

> TV some years ago, for a product that's based on phonetics......now

> I can't remember the name of it, but it's still around, I think.)

> Phonetics evidently started in 1891 in Finland!

> > See below.

> > Carol

[Guest guest]

<<My dad has a tizzy every time he speaks to me of the new math, and how

its creator - some guy, I forget- was some idiot all into teaching the

world can be broken into sets, subsets, intersecting sets, unions, blah,

blah, blah, rant, rant, rant. My father taught college level physics

courses, until retirement, btw.>>

Are you saying that they still call it the " new math " ? I'm over 50 and i

still remember the start of 7th grade and out of no where came the " new

math " . Really, where in the heck did this come from? I didn't " get it " at

all and every since then i have had issues <!> with math. Probably would not

ever have been great at math but after the new math came out, well, i just

hate math..

Kathy A.

[Guest guest]

> -----Original Message-----

> From: ChrisMasterjohn@... [mailto:ChrisMasterjohn@...]

>

> ~~~~~> Same here. Of course, I'm biased by my own

> experience-- I started reading when I was 2, and was writing

> around 2 1/2 (pretty sloppily!). My mother didn't really

> " teach " me to read, methodically. She just read to me

> constantly, and would usually read with her finger under the

> text she was reading, so that if I was looking, I was making

> an association with the text I saw and the words she was

> speaking.

I don't really remember learning to read, but I'm told that it went

something like that. The problem with an inductive approach to learning to

read--or to anything, really--is that you need a lot of data points to get

it right. You have to see and hear thousands of words before you can figure

out how things work. Basically you're figuring out for yourself what the

phonetic approach gives you directly: a simple, concise algorithm for

converting written words to spoken words.

> It

> seems to me that making sound-text associations within the

> context of sensible sentences would quite obviously be vastly

> superior to dissociated syllables that have no context to be

> associated with whatsoever.

Agreed there, but that sounds more like a complaint against a specific

textbook. (Now that I think about it, mine was the same way. Did yours have

a plaid cover?) There's no reason you can't teach reading with phonics using

sensible sentences. When I learned Japanese, I started out by trying to

memorize hundreds of characters with flash cards. This worked well for the

first three hundred or so, but I eventually gave up and found that I learned

more quickly and with less pain when I just read text and looked up the

words I didn't know.

[Guest guest]

I didn't " get it " at

> all and every since then i have had issues <!> with math. Probably

would not

> ever have been great at math but after the new math came out, well, i

just

> hate math..

>

>

> Kathy A.

I didn't even have the 'new math', but I still hated math. Words would

have been my love no matter what, I guess.

Carol

[Guest guest]

> > -----Original Message-----

> > From: ChrisMasterjohn@a... [mailto:ChrisMasterjohn@a...]

> >

> > ~~~~~> Same here. Of course, I'm biased by my own

> > experience-- I started reading when I was 2, and was writing

> > around 2 1/2 (pretty sloppily!). My mother didn't really

> > " teach " me to read, methodically. She just read to me

> > constantly, and would usually read with her finger under the

> > text she was reading, so that if I was looking, I was making

> > an association with the text I saw and the words she was

> > speaking.

>

> I don't really remember learning to read, but I'm told that it went

> something like that. The problem with an inductive approach to learning to

> read--or to anything, really--is that you need a lot of data points to get

> it right. You have to see and hear thousands of words before you can figure

> out how things work. Basically you're figuring out for yourself what the

> phonetic approach gives you directly: a simple, concise algorithm for

> converting written words to spoken words.

I started teaching my daughter to read in self-defense! She

doesn't want to be read to constantly - she wants to WRITE -

constantly! And she wants me to understand what she writes!

The problem is that she grasped some very

basic phonics and just ran with it - and she doesn't read

enough to notice that she isn't spelling the way other people

do. I got worried that her " invented " spelling habits would

become so ingrained that she would have trouble changing

them later. Also it's stressful for me to try to figure out her

writing. First I pleaded with her to separate the words - and

put periods at the end of sentences. That helped me a lot!

I'm sure that eventually she would figure this out for herself

because she wants everyone - not just her parents - to

understand her writing. But I think that going through the

phonics book will speed up this process, partly by getting

her to read more and thus see more words.

The great thing about homeschooling is that you can give

children what they really need when they need it, stop

things that aren't working, and try different things. The

horrible experiences of school happen when the

teaching doesn't fit the kid.

Aven

[Guest guest]

Aven,

You make a very good point. I have never liked to be read to either. I hated

the lectures in college. I'd rather read it myself, and could learn much more

rapidly if left alone with it. I'm visually oriented, so being taught orally is

not good for me at all. That's another issue in teaching. We're all different.

My son is just the opposite. He does much better hearing things than reading

them. It was really difficult for me to relate to him, because I learn so

differently. My daughter seems to be a good combination of the two. (Nice for

her.)

Carol

I started teaching my daughter to read in self-defense! She

doesn't want to be read to constantly - she wants to WRITE -

constantly!

Aven

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/9/04 5:58:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, cah@...

writes:

> ~~~Believe me, if you'd been raised without benefit of a Mother who was

> willing to take the time to teach you, you might just feel quite

differently.

> There are lots of people, who don't have parents who are willing to devote

> any time whatsoever to teaching their children. I didn't learn how to read

> until first grade, (and it wasn't due to lack of intelligence or

aspiration),

> believe it or not, and I learned from a teacher with the methods that some

of

> you seem so eager to throw out the window!

______

~~~~~> Well, I'm all for " whatever works. " I suspect that exposure to text

in the way I had is much superior for most or all people then phonics teaching,

but it may be the case that for people who have no option but to learn in a

" school " environment phonics is valuable. But there is something seriously

wrong with a system that punishes all the other kids that had parents who taught

them how to read with drudging through what is to them, utterly worthless.

Chris

____

" What can one say of a soul, of a heart, filled with compassion? It is a

heart which burns with love for every creature: for human beings, birds, and

animals, for serpents and for demons. The thought of them and the sight of them

make the tears of the saint flow. And this immense and intense compassion,

which flows from the heart of the saints, makes them unable to bear the sight of

the smallest, most insignificant wound in any creature. Thus they pray

ceaselessly, with tears, even for animals, for enemies of the truth, and for

those

who do them wrong. "

--Saint Isaac the Syrian

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/10/04 1:29:21 AM Eastern Standard Time,

bberg@... writes:

> Agreed there, but that sounds more like a complaint against a specific

> textbook. (Now that I think about it, mine was the same way. Did yours have

> a plaid cover?)

_____

~~~~> It definitely wasn't plaid with traditional plaid colors. I think it

was blue, and might have been checkered in some way, but, well... that was a

long time ago.

_____

There's no reason you can't teach reading with phonics using

> sensible sentences. When I learned Japanese, I started out by trying to

> memorize hundreds of characters with flash cards. This worked well for the

> first three hundred or so, but I eventually gave up and found that I

learned

> more quickly and with less pain when I just read text and looked up the

> words I didn't know.

_____

~~~~~~> When I learned Spanish, we started by learning phrases that you would

use in conversation, and then we used them, and built up our conversational

repertoire, and did a lot of reading in context stuff. I thought it was

effective, especially when they ceased letting us use any English in the course.

Once I had a good base to work on, I found the most effective thing for me was

to read Spanish poetry, and only look at the English if I didn't know words,

and then read them over and over again until the poem made sense without doing

any in-head translation to English.

Chris

____

" What can one say of a soul, of a heart, filled with compassion? It is a

heart which burns with love for every creature: for human beings, birds, and

animals, for serpents and for demons. The thought of them and the sight of them

make the tears of the saint flow. And this immense and intense compassion,

which flows from the heart of the saints, makes them unable to bear the sight of

the smallest, most insignificant wound in any creature. Thus they pray

ceaselessly, with tears, even for animals, for enemies of the truth, and for

those

who do them wrong. "

--Saint Isaac the Syrian

[Guest guest]

Agreed! I think that the enviornment is also an important part of

teaching/learning. Quiet kids can't learn in noisy places. Noisy kids

don't learn in quiet places. Extroverts can't learn by themselves.

Introverts can't learn with others in the same room. (Speaking of the

extreme ends of the scale.) Etc.

L.

> The

> horrible experiences of school happen when the

> teaching doesn't fit the kid.

>

> Aven

>