Teaching Reading

Worth reading: D-Ed Reckoning’s series on the incompetent teaching going on in Madison, Wisconsin. (See also Language Log’s post.)

The series arises from a NY Times article, which begins like this:

Surrounded by five first graders learning to read at Hawthorne Elementary here, Stacey Hodiewicz listened as one boy struggled over a word.

Skip to next paragraph “Pumpkin,” ventured the boy, Parker Kuehni.

“Look at the word,” the teacher suggested. Using a method known as whole language, she prompted him to consider the word’s size. “Is it long enough to be pumpkin?”

Parker looked again. “Pea,” he said, correctly.

We aren’t told what comes before or after this scene, or whether the teacher at other times does teach the children how to sound out words. But if the teacher makes a habit of getting kids to guess at words just by the length of the words, and nothing else -– well, it’s hard to imagine a more inefficient and cumbersome way of teaching reading (other than outright lying, i.e., telling the kids that “p” makes a “ch” sound). If children aren't trained to sound out unfamiliar words, how are they to have any idea that the three-letter word in question is “pea” rather than “pie” or “pet” or “peg”? Indeed, if they don’t know how to break down words into syllables, letters, sounds, etc., how are they even supposed to distinguish words based on length? The three letters in “pea” might as well sound like “pumpkin,” for all they know. After all, some three-letter words have two syllables ("ova" or "ego," for example).


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