NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?

[Bekah]

Fortunately I retired before Common Core was *added* to a bunch of stuff we already had going.  

Bekah

On Apr 7, 2013, at 9:40 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> Most of the time it's wimpy-ass compromise. No field suffers more from committee and group think than education. It claims to put children first, but it always puts its wimpy-ass compromise first. And it can't serve two masters. The common core movement that has taken hold of the curriculum is a good example. It is a wimpy-ass compromise. The big players at the committe table don't represent children or students of any age. It is corporate first. The leader, a former college board classicist who got the nation hooked on Advanced Placement, is pushing an ideology that has, at its core, anti-teacher politics. The Unions have signed on. So have the states. Race to the top. So on. That's what sucks in American Education--the politics and money. How it is wasted on machines and materials, how teachers are attacked by corporate bullies with big bucks, how the Unions sell out the workers...on and on.
> 
> 
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:
> As good a short outline as I've ever seen -- with one caveat. This is the
> early -21st-century U.S.A., so "we spent years and years in debate about
> [X]" is properly followed  by "until we massacred them and sowed their
> fields with salt," not some wimpy-ass compromise.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
> Of Bekah
> Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2013 11:39 AM
> To: Prashant Kumar
> Cc: pynchon -l
> Subject: Re: NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread
> being asked?
> 
> Studies have shown that about 70% of the common English words are
> phonetically regular.  This means that 30% are not.   Phonics is nice for
> "sounding out" new words and for spelling,  but its use is very limited when
> it comes to deriving meaning.  Phonics also falls short of helping with
> those 30% of words -
> (These are words like:  eight,  read (past tense),  could,  said,  climb,
> you, light, tough, school, etc. and homonyms (foul/fowl,  to/too/two,)  more
> and more as you go up the grades.)
> 
> Eventually the real point of both methods is to have thousands of words
> memorized for just plain old sight reading with comprehension.  The problem
> is how to get there.
> 
> What happened was that in the 1970s and '80s researchers found that phonics
> was not enough,  so the swing to whole language was too far (it started at
> the university teacher-training level).  Then more research (done by
> publishing companies mostly) found that  whole language was not enough (and
> older teachers and parents agreed).    The swing back was almost reactionary
> (and political and based on $$ in text book publishing) and imo,  went too
> far.  Taken to their extremes and alone,  neither one is preferable - imo.
> 
> I think phonics is a good start,  but not enough - elements of whole
> language are also needed for getting those 30% of words which are not
> phonetically regular as well as for learning to get meaning from the text.
> (I could also say that whole language is a good start but elements of
> phonics are also needed for those who struggle with "new words"  -
> "unmemorized"  words.)
> 
> Whole language tends to work best for kids who are pretty bright and have a
> good basis in oral language skills.  These kids can figure out quite a lot
> and make sense of decoding skills almost on their own (my son did).    K ids
> with a very good memory can memorize those new words very quickly (and
> that's the end point),   but kids who don't have such a good memory have to
> "sound it out" or (figure the context) over and over.   Kids who aren't
> quite so cognitive have a very hard time figuring out why every time they
> "read" (repeating and following 'memorized' text) the word "rat" it starts
> with an "r."
> 
>  Also,  the kids who don't have a solid basis in oral English have a hard
> time with whole language because they're not so skilled at using context to
> help determine what the unknown word is.   ("Read that again - does that
> make sense?")
> 
> Phonics is an incredible tool, but it doesn't make meaning from the text and
> the early textbook stories can be seriously stupid in terms of
> comprehension.  Otoh,  whole language is an incredible tool but it can be
> overwhelming for a learner without a LOT of reading readiness skills (being
> read to,  memorized texts,  solid language base, etc.)
> 
> A good teacher will use the best of each method and try to use a bit of each
> as appropriate.  This is feasible using small group instruction - direct
> instruction - but new methods want whole group instruction to get more
> teaching time in for all the kids.    The serious whole language people
> liked indirect (environmental) instruction  -  so that's also a problem.
> Whole language done well takes a LOT of time - it's better - imo - overall
> - in the long run - if it has phonics included (why ignore that invaluable
> tool?)   -  but it takes time!
> 
> Hope that helps -  (?)  We spent years and years in debate about it.  The
> best reading programs (imo)  now use both,  but the focus tends to be on
> phonics these days again.
> 
> 
> Bekah
> 
>