HOW TO TEACH READING
I’ve been following an interesting discussion at HEM-Networking on how to teach reading. Being home educators, we all have our own ideas about what works. IOW, the only rule is that there are no rules. Well, don’t tell this guy. Dr. Kerry Hempenstall (I always hate it when a Ph.D. or, even worse, an Ed.D puts the honorific before their name) has a really long dense article on what it means to be phonemically aware. It’s way beyond me (and my level of attention early in the morning) so I skimmed it. Perhaps a snippet may suffice:
Of course, a classroom emphasis on phonological processes assumes that teachers already have the necessary deep understanding of phonemic awareness required to teach it effectively. This assumption may not be warranted, as research has indicated that many teachers do not themselves have a solid foundation in their own phonemic awareness, and few have received the level of training that produces the supra-skill level important in awakening children’s fine-grained sensitivity to the sound structure of words (Lindamood, 1994; Mather, Bos, & Babur, 2001; Moats, 1994). For example, in one study (Mather et al.) only 2% of teachers-in-training and 19% of working teachers knew that the word box is constructed from four speech sounds. It is not easy for adults to ignore entrenched spelling patterns when confronted with phonemic tasks (Labov, 2003). Students whose teacher themselves have phonological deficiencies display lower levels of reading skills as a consequence (Lindamood, 1994). In many teacher-training facilities, pre-service instruction in these areas is not among the priorities in developing a teacher education curriculum on literacy. Hence, many teachers are likely to need retraining if the results of phonemic awareness research into beginning reading are to be put into practice successfully.
Any gluttons for punishment willing to read the whole thing to see if there’s any meat there?
5 Responses to “HOW TO TEACH READING”
 Comment by Rikki May 22nd, 2005 at 5:45 am |
I volunteer to heckle and make rude noises instead. |
 Comment by Jill May 22nd, 2005 at 9:03 am |
I vote to throw in my personal experience and blow raspherries. I have had difficulty with phonics my whole life, perhaps due to the fact that I had an eardrum rupture during the same time they were being presented in school and couldn’t ‘hear’ the sounds. Somehow I still became a great reader with excellent comprehension (although my pronounciations have always been weak!) I managed to help my daughter learn to read before she was four years old, and here she is not quite 7 and just finished the entire Anne of Green Gables series and is a beautiful speller. |
 Comment by Cardinal Fang May 23rd, 2005 at 12:27 am |
This is an excellent article that has tons of good material in it for people who are going to be teaching dyslexic kids. The information in it will be irelevant and far too technical for most homeschooling parents. If a child is not dyslexic and the parents expose them to plenty of language (reading to them, talking to them, playing rhyming games and so forth) they’ll pick up phonemic awareness with no trouble. Probably they’ll learn to read easily. However, if a kid is dyslexic and the parents do those things, the kid will still not pick up phonemic awareness, and won’t learn to read easily. At that point, it might behoove a homeschooling parent to start investigating theories of teaching reading. If you are a homeschooler and your child is not dyslexic, congratulations, that’s excellent. Please do not assume that your homeschooling is related to your child’s lack of dyslexia. All the evidence says that dyslexia is innate. Your child was lucky in the gene lottery. |
 Comment by Jeanne May 23rd, 2005 at 8:44 am |
Hhhmm, I take a bit of offense at this: “The information in it will be irelevant and far too technical for most homeschooling parents.” I’ve found homeschooling parents to be quite adept at handling technical material. Just because some folks don’t find that certain educational theory applies to their families doesn’t mean that it was too technical for them nor that they assume it will not be useful to others. Jeanne |
|
Comment by Cardinal Fang May 23rd, 2005 at 12:13 pm |
Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean that homeschooling parents (of whom I’m one) wouldn’t be able to understand the article. I meant that the technical details of teaching reading to kids who have trouble with it wouldn’t be of much interest or importance to most homeschooling parents. |