How mothers and fathers see giftedness differently

Is there a difference between Fathers vs. Mothers when it comes to perceptions of a child's giftedness?

        Expanding on the previous blog article, Linda Kreger Silverman, on http://www.gifteddevelopment.com, writes:

        “What is giftedness all about? It certainly is a term that makes people uncomfortable. I remember going to a back-to-school night in 1976 and offering to find a mentor for any child who wanted to learn something he or she wasn't learning in school. There was no cost for the mentor. All the parents had to do was join the Boulder Association for the Gifted for $5 per year. I had no takers. One father stopped me afterwards and said something to the effect that his daughter was reading several years above grade level, and had a chemistry lab in the basement, etc., but he was “sure” his daughter wasn't gifted!

        “Since those days, I have endeavored to discover what gifted means to different people. Most of my work has been with parents, and I began to notice that mothers usually called the Gifted Development Center to inquire about testing, while fathers often viewed the assessment with skepticism. When I spoke to parent groups, mothers would nod and smile and fathers would sit with crossed arms and question marks on their faces. One father came up to me after a presentation and told me about his son who had won all kinds of awards as a scholar at Stanford University, but he, too, was certain his son wasn't gifted. I asked him, “What would he have to do to be gifted in your eyes?” The father retorted, “Well, he's no Einstein.”†

        “Then I came across a study in which the researcher thought mothers labeled one child in the family as gifted for their own “narcissistic needs.” [Not!]

        An incidental finding of this study was that when the school had labeled the child, gifted, the mothers believed the label and the fathers denied it, which led to marital conflict. That was when the light bulb went on for me. I realized that mothers and fathers were defining giftedness differently. The more I thought about it, the clearer it seemed that the male writers in the field tended to view giftedness very much like the fathers I had run across and most female writers seemed to share the perspective of the mothers.

        “[With men] all the emphasis is placed on products, performance, portfolios—the external trappings. And the child is expected to keep up the hard work throughout life, performing, producing, achieving. So ‘gifted’ has become the label bestowed by schools on “task committed,” hard working students who get good grades. Clearly, these are the students with the greatest potential for achievement in our competitive society. Is that what giftedness is all about? [No.]

        “The achievement view of giftedness has been with us from the very beginning, with Sir Francis Galton’s (1869) study of eminent men. Today, educators are still looking for children who have the potential to be eminent men. The eminent child in school is the winner of the competition for grades and awards.

        “After we tested his son, one Dad said to us, “He's only five. What could he have done in five years to be gifted?” Women, on the other hand, perceive giftedness as developmental advancement. If a Mom sees that her daughter is asking names of objects at 11 months, and memorizing books at 17 months, and asking complex questions before she's two years old, she gets very anxious. “How will she fit in with the other children?” “What will the teacher do with her if she's already reading in Kindergarten?” “Should I hide the books? I don't want them to think I'm another ‘pushy parent’.”

        “Developing faster than other children makes a child vulnerable, and mothers are keenly aware of this vulnerability. When they can ignore it no longer, when the fear of “What will happen to my child?” rises in their throats, they gulp twice and call a specialist for guidance on their child's unique developmental progress (with one part of them screaming in their heads, “Do you realize how foolish you're going to look if you're wrong and this is all in your head?”). Despite the myth that “All parents think their children are gifted,” nine out of ten of the parents who break down and make that phone call are right.”

        Note: actually, many of us moms delight in our child’s giftedness and do everything we can to help our child enhance it. Shame on any mom (or teacher, or magazine, or doctor) who would squelch a child’s intellectual development! Continuing:

        “…So what is giftedness? The Moms are right. It is developmental advancement that can be observed in early childhood. But the child doesn't advance equally in all areas. As she asks, “What happens after you die” and “How do we know we aren't part of someone else's dream?” she still can't tie her shoes! An eleven-year-old highly gifted boy got off the plane with his calculus book in one hand and his well-worn Curious George in the other. The higher the child’s IQ, the more difficulty he or she has finding playmates or conforming to the lock-step school curriculum. The greater the discrepancy between a child's strengths and weaknesses, the harder it is for him or her to fit in anywhere.

        “And Moms, a word about you. I would like a dollar for every mother who has sat in my office and said, “He gets it from his father.” Our society has such an achievement orientation toward giftedness that most women can't relate the concept to themselves at all. “I'm only a mother. I haven't done anything gifted.” Linda’s next book is about unrecognized giftedness in women. It's entitled, I'm Not Gifted, I'm Just Busy!” See gifted teen girls in future blogs.

        So mom, if in your gut you feel your child is gifted, make the call to get him or her tested. There are so many support systems for gifted children now. Quoting Linda Kreger Silverman again:

        “The damage we do to gifted children and adults by ignoring this phenomenon is far greater than the damage we do by labeling it. Without the label for their differences, the gifted come up with their own label: “I must be crazy. No one else is upset by this injustice but me.”

        “It’s time we took giftedness out of the closet and separated it entirely from the concept of achievement. It’s time we recognized it, valued it and nurtured it in our schools and in our families.”

        The male emphasis on achievement is also a bit misleading because, if achievement comes, it may be later in life or in an unexpected area. Some people are “late-bloomers” when it comes to achievement. One of my cousins floundered all through his 20s and 30s, but is now highly successful.

       Some Myths about Gifted Children - http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html

Gifted Kids are like cream that rises to the top in a classroom:
                Not necessarily. Gifted Children can have hidden learning disabilities that go undiscovered because they can easily compensate for them in the early years. As time goes on though, it becomes harder and harder for them to excel, [like my 5th son, as discussed previously], which can lead to behavior problems and depression.

Gifted Kids are so smart they do fine with or without special programs:
                They may appear to do fine on their own. But without proper challenge they can become bored and unruly. As the years go by they may find it harder and harder as work does become more challenging, since they never faced challenge before.

Gifted and Talented means the same thing:
                Again, not necessarily. There is no rule that states that a child who is capable of scoring to the high ninety percentiles on group achievement testing must be considered gifted. We must remember that achievement tests like the Metropolitan Achievement Tests are "Grade Level Testing".  Such a child is most definitely Academically Talented. But further individualized IQ and out of level academic testing must be given before we can define that child as "Gifted".  

                At the same time, there is no rule that states a child identified as gifted should be Achieving to high standards in the classroom. This type of stereotyping can do serious and irreversible damage to both groups. ANY child can benefit from enrichment. Academically Talented Children can benefit from Honors (Grade Level) Classes. Intellectually Gifted children may need a differentiated curriculum and possibly even a different environment.

They need to go through school with their own age mates:
                Where it's true that children need to play and interact socially with other children their age, they do not need to learn with them. Especially in the case of a highly gifted child who may have a chronological age of six and a mental age of 11 who has been reading since two. To put that child in a reading class with other six year olds who are just learning to read is sheer torture for that child.

                My 5th daughter tested as a very gifted child, so she attended the Spectrum Program for gifted children in Davis County, Utah. They have classrooms for gifted children that challenged them in wonderful ways. My daughter was writing college-level papers in 3rd – 6th grades, and had many hands-on experiences from a teacher trained in teaching gifted children. My child had the best of both worlds: kids her own age, who were also gifted from all over the county, in her classroom. Kudos to Davis County!

Giftedness is something to be jealous about:
                This is perhaps the most damaging myth. More often than not gifted children can feel isolated and misunderstood. They have more adult tastes in music, clothing, reading material and food. These differences to other children can cause them to be shunned and even abused verbally or physically by other children. [But this is NOT a reason to hold them back. There are solutions for this.] Experts in the field of gifted education are beginning to address the higher incidences of ADHD and Spelling/Handwriting disabilities in the gifted population verses those in the much larger normal population. 

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBrightHowmothersandfathersdefinegiftednessdifferently

4 characteristics of a gifted child - is your child gifted? Take this easy quiz

Let's celebrate and enhance our children's gifts, whatever they are.

        Perhaps you are wondering if your child is gifted. Several questions arise when parents realize they may have a gifted child. What exactly is a gifted child? Where can you get your child tested and assessed? Can a child be molded into a genius? How does one maintain the balance between encouragement and pressure? Is it possible to raise a gifted child with his happiness still intact? What is the best way to raise gifted children? What if you don’t do anything? (The end of Vol. 7 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! has several useful, hands-on ideas for parents to try.)

        “Every gift contains a danger. Whatever gift we have, we are compelled to express. And if the expression of that gift is blocked, distorted, or merely allowed to languish, then the gift turns against us, and we suffer.” Johnson (1993), as quoted by Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Gifted Development Center, of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development, http://www.gifteddevelopment.com.

        Gifted children usually have an intense need for a creative outlet. When a child is gifted, but his/her own school or family doesn't recognize or appreciate it, those talents are often subdued or snuffed out by that environment. This can cause behavioral problems both at home and at school.

        Rita Dickinson, founder of gifted education in Colorado, realized that at least half of the parents referred to her had no idea their children were gifted. When the parents didn't recognize it, the school didn't either. (In many cases, the mothers may have thought their child was gifted, but the fathers talked them out of it.)

        The gifted children most often overlooked were from low socio-economic backgrounds, ethnically diverse, or both. Dickinson also stated that a large percentage of the gifted children she tested in the Denver Public Schools were first referred for behavior problems.

        Public school programs for gifted children give economically-disadvantaged children the only opportunities they may have to develop their abilities. Those who want to eliminate gifted classes are punishing the gifted poor, because the rich can afford private schooling. Many middle class families choose to home-school their children rather than to subject them, day in and day out, to the constant boredom of what they already know.

        Having been a gifted child myself, and having several gifted children of my own, has given me plenty of insight into the dos and don'ts of parenting intelligent youngsters. Whether some children are gifted- and others are not- can depend upon our definition (more later). What makes some children gifted is the ability to memorize things easily. What makes other children gifted is the ability to see patterns and relationships. Others easily see geometric relationships in three dimensions. Even others have the ability to readily understand language structure. Sometimes we view giftedness as having a strong talent for music or art. Maybe some are savants in a specialized area.

        Too often we think of gifted as doing well in school and getting top grades. But there is also the ability to be intelligent in understanding human relationships, behavior motivators, and body language. Sometimes our definitions are too narrow. Genius children can seem attention-deficit or hyperactive due to boredom and a need for constant data input for their brain. They are misdiagnosed ADHD when all they need is more interesting mental stimulation!

        Being gifted is a combination of genetics (nature), environment (nurture), and attitude (the child's own viewpoint and choices). I have one son with a t-shirt that reads, "Genius by birth, slacker by choice," which is so true for him! Attitude - inner motivation - is everything. I have a daughter who gets top grades, but she has to put a lot of work, time, effort, and study into it. She has made herself gifted or talented, in a sense.

        If a child is genetically gifted, her parents can enhance her abilities or destroy her self-esteem by how they handle the situation. Parents can encourage a child's natural abilities or they can ruin them with too much force. Is being academically smart the only area of the child worth developing? What about heart? What about compassion? Social awareness? Gratitude? Humility? A child's love of learning can grow or wither depending on parents' choices.

        Is your child gifted? Take this easy quiz.

• Does your child learn at a much faster pace?
• Does your child process material to a much greater depth?
• Does your child show intensity in energy, imagination, intellectual prowess, sensitivity, and emotion, which are not typical in the general population?
• Does your child create something, somehow, some way, whether academic, scientific, literary, musical, or artistic?

        This info comes from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped and Gifted Children (1985), http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html, cites three types of characteristics of gifted children: general behavioral, learning, and creative characteristics. Parents of gifted children will get a kick reading through the following definitions and recognizing them in their children. (No, they don't have to have all of these to be gifted.)

General Behavioral Characteristics

1. Does/did your child learn to read early, with better comprehension of the nuances of language? As much as half the gifted and talented population has learned to read before entering school.
2. (Did the gift increase the reading, or did the reading increase the gift, or both?)
3. Does your child read widely, quickly, and intensely and have large vocabularies?
4. Does your child commonly learn basic skills better, more quickly, and with less practice? 
5. Is your child better able to construct and handle abstractions?
6. Does your child often pick up and interpret nonverbal cues and can draw inferences that other children need to have spelled out for them?
7. Does your child take less for granted, seeking the "hows" and "whys"? 
8. Does your child work independently at an earlier age and can concentrate for longer periods? 
9. Does your child have interests that are both wildly eclectic and intensely focused?
10. Does your child often have seemingly boundless energy (which sometimes leads to a misdiagnosis of hyperactivity)?
11. Does your child usually respond and relate well to parents, teachers, and other adults? (They may prefer the company of older children and adults to that of their peers.)
12. Does your child like to learn new things, is willing to examine the unusual, and is highly inquisitive?
13. Does your child tackle tasks and problems in a well-organized, goal-directed, and efficient manner?
14. Does your child exhibit an intrinsic motivation to learn, find out, or explore and is often very persistent? ("I'd rather do it myself" is a common attitude.) 

Learning Characteristics 

1. Is your child a natural learner? 
2. Does your child show keen powers of observation and a sense of the significant? (They have an eye for important details.)
3. Does your child read a great deal on his/her own, preferring books and magazines written for children older than s/he is?
4. Does your child often take great pleasure in intellectual activity?
5. Does your child have well-developed powers of abstraction, conceptualization, and synthesis?
6. Does your child readily see cause-effect relationships?
7. Does your child often display a questioning attitude and seek information for its own sake as much as for its usefulness?
8. Is your child often skeptical, critical, and evaluative? (They are quick to spot inconsistencies.)
9. Does your child have a large storehouse of information about a variety of topics, which they can recall quickly?
10. Does your child readily grasp underlying principles and can often make valid generalizations about events, people, or objects?
11. Does your child quickly perceive similarities, differences, and anomalies?
12. Does your child often attack complicated material by separating it into components and analyzing it systematically?

Creative Characteristics 

1. Does your child's creative abilities often set him/her apart from age-mates?
2. Is your child a fluent thinker, able to generate possibilities, consequences, or related ideas?
3. Is your child a flexible thinker, able to use many different alternatives and approaches to problem solving?
4. Is your child an original thinker, seeking new, unusual, or unconventional associations and combinations among items of information?
5. Does your child see relationships among seemingly unrelated objects, ideas, or facts?
6. Is your child an elaborate thinker, producing new steps, ideas, responses, or other embellishments to a basic idea, situation, or problems?
7. Is your child willing to entertain complexity and seem to thrive on problem solving?
8. Is your child a good guesser and can readily construct hypotheses or "what if" questions?
9. Is your child often aware of his/her own impulsiveness and irrationality, and show emotional sensitivity?
10. Is your child extremely curious about objects, ideas, situations, or events?
11. Does your child often display intellectual playfulness and like to fantasize and imagine?
12. Is your child less intellectually inhibited than their peers are in expressing opinions and ideas, and they often disagree spiritedly with others' statements?
13. Does your child sensitive to beauty and are attracted to aesthetic values?
14. Does your child often have a drive to be creative- to create something new all the time?

        In general, a child with an IQ of 100+ is average, of 130+ is gifted, of 150+ is highly-gifted/genius, and of 170+ is profoundly-gifted/genius. The child of 160+ IQ is as different from the child of 130+ IQ as that child is different from the child of average ability. Recent research indicates that there may be many more children in this high range than formerly believed. Due to their unique characteristics, these children are particularly vulnerable to being misunderstood. Highly-gifted children still need specialized advocates because very few appropriate curriculums and non-traditional options have been developed for these children to date. (Common Core should be abolished.)

        Highly-gifted children tend to reveal disproportionate development, meaning that their mental age increases at a much faster rate than their physical and emotional growth. Because of their high cognitive abilities and high emotional intensities, they experience and relate to the world in unique ways. These children are often found as a result of extremely high scores on individually-scored IQ tests, generally above the 140 IQ range. Others may be prodigies or savants in specific areas such as math, science, language and/or the arts. As noted previously, profoundly-gifted children can score in excess of 170 IQ.

        A bright child who is capable of scoring in the high ninety percentiles on group achievement testing may not be considered gifted. We must recognize that standard achievement tests are "grade level testing".  Such a child is definitely academically-talented, but further individualized IQ and out-of-level academic testing must be given before we can define that child as "gifted". [Much of this comes from Linda Kreger Silverman (ibid).]

        May all parents of gifted and talented children recognize those gifts, help the schools recognize them, and do their utmost to enhance and develop their children’s talents. All parents would be wise to teach their children math and reading early (ages birth to 5), and to teach them in the right way – direct instruction and phonics.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBright4characteristicsofagiftedchildIsyourchildgiftedTakethiseasyquiz

Why moms recognize, support, and celebrate gifted children sooner

                In general, did you know that women usually recognize giftedness in their children long before men do? Women recognize early cognitive development in their children while men are waiting for some kind of outward achievement to prove giftedness.

                Male researchers seem to focus on outward proof too, while female researchers see the giftedness in the precocious developmental stages first. They realize that a person can be gifted in one or more areas without actually producing anything at all. The giftedness is in the way children think, not just what they do. Thank goodness my Dad didn’t make that mistake- and worked with me early.

                Even in our modern world, boys are far more likely to be brought for gifted-testing than girls. At the Denver Gifted Development Center, 60% of the 5,200 children tested to date are male and 40% are female. Boys are more likely than girls to misbehave when they are inadequately challenged (bored) at school. Because of this, they are more likely to get their parents’ attention and involvement.

                 It is crucial for gifted girls to be recognized early, before they go into hiding in the middle school years. (Many women don’t realize they are gifted and think their children get it from their father.) More about gifted teen girls in future blogs.

                When we define giftedness by achievement in school, or with the potential for significant achievement in adulthood, we create an unequal measure for children of diversity, children who are economically underprivileged, and for girls. Throughout history, those who attained distinction have been primarily white, middle or upper class males.

                However, giftedness is blind to color, is dispersed across all socio-economic levels, and is found in equal amounts in males and females. While the percentage of gifted students among the upper classes may be higher (showing that gifted children are not just born, but also made), the great majority of gifted children come from the lower classes. All over the world, there are many more poor gifted-children than rich ones.

                For a lot of gifted children who weren’t born with a silver spoon, education means public school. What can parents do to improve their bright child’s educational experience? One concerned mother wrote to me in 2009:

                “I believe my son is gifted. We live in ____, MO. Needless to say, I am unimpressed with the school’s expectations for students. My son is entering 2nd grade next week. He was so bored in class and I do not look forward to this year, either.

                On the school supply list for his class, they are requesting flash cards for addition and subtraction of numbers 0-10. My son knew how to add and subtract these numbers before he was in kindergarten. I feel his reading skills are above grade level as well.

                Can you please help me with some sort of resource-a glimmer of hope, perhaps that my child will not be bored to tears this year? I really do not know what to do. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.”

                I give several resources through this Vol. 7 of It's Not Rocket Surgery!, as well as in future blogs. Parents should talk to their child’s teacher and see if s/he is willing to allow the child to work ahead when bored. They should also see if the teacher will allow the child to read books when finished with assignments early.

                Too often, bright children are labeled ADHD and medicated for the teacher’s convenience when really they’re just bored. They need healthy alternatives for their active minds, and shouldn’t be held back to the standards of the slower kids in the class.

                Whether school means public, private, or home, the purposeful proactive parents will find ways to optimize their child’s educational experience. They will make the time – a priority – in their busy schedules, because this is the stuff that really counts in life.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBrightrecognizingsupportingandcelebratingthegiftedchild 

3 reasons why sight-words damage a child's reading ability

What about reading fluency? What about "experts" who say that children need sight words as well as phonics to achieve fluency and confidence?  They are mistaken. The only sight words that children should practice with flash cards are the ones that they have already sounded out with phonics. The flash cards would just help them speed up reading time after they already know the WHY of the words. Using sight-words without knowing the why is like using a calculator when you have no idea what adding or subtracting really means. You may get a right answer most of the time at first, but as your learning becomes more complex, you really trip yourself up without knowing the WHY.

        In the article (on www.donpotter.net), Miscue Analysis: Training Normal Children to Read Like Defective Children, Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld observes,

        “Back in the early 1900s, when the professors of education were working overtime to find “scientific” justification for changing reading instruction in American schools from alphabetic phonics to the look-say, sight, or whole-word method, many studies were done to see what kind of effect the new method would have on children’s reading ability.

        “One study done by Myrtle Sholty, published in the February 1912 issue of the Elementary School Teacher, revealed that the two methods of teaching reading produced two different kinds of readers: objective and subjective. The alphabetic-phonics method produced fluent, accurate, objective readers while the sight method produced impaired subjective readers who guessed at words, omitted words, inserted words, substituted words, and mutilated words. The sight readers’ lack of phonetic knowledge put them at a distinct disadvantage. They were unable to accurately decode the words since they looked at them as whole configurations, like Chinese ideographs, with no connections to the sounds of the language.

        And so it was well known by the top psychologists involved in creating the new look-say or sight reading programs that these whole-word instruction methods produced inaccurate subjective readers. Despite this, the professors proceeded to devise and publish the textbooks based on this very defective methodology.”

        In the November 1914 issue of Elementary School Teacher, Clara Schmitt observed,

        “The child who learns words in this way [sight] only is always dependent upon his teacher since he can acquire for himself no new or unfamiliar word from the printed page… [The errors made] were calculated to fill in the context. The defective child reads, for instance that the fox saw a vine with berries (instead of grapes) on it.

        “The normal child progresses in his knowledge of phonetic values to such an extent that he becomes independent of the teacher in so far as the illogical complexities of our English spelling permit. At the fourth grade the normal child is able to work out new and unfamiliar words with approximate phonetic correctness.”

        In other words, it was easier for the defective [non-phonetic, sight-reader] child to substitute a word which fitted the context than to decode the word accurately. And that is the way many children are being taught to read today, in the 21st century!

        Whole-language guru, Frank Smith, mistakenly wrote in Reading Without Nonsense [what an ironic title],

        “Children do not need a mastery of phonics in order to identify words that they have not met in print before.... Once a child discovers what a word is in a meaningful context, learning to recognize it on another occasion is as simple as learning to recognize a face on a second occasion, and does not need phonics. Discovering what a word is in the first place is usually most efficiently accomplished by asking someone, listening to someone else read the word, or using context to provide a substantial clue.”

        The difference between Clara Schmitt and Frank Smith is that Schmitt came to her conclusions after observing real children in a real classroom, whereas Smith writes from theory alone. All that glitters is not golden. What is clear is that the two teaching methods – phonics and whole word – turn out two different kinds of readers. Phonics methodology produces accurate, objective readers. The whole-word approach produces error-filled, subjective readers.

        Why is the U.S. educational system continuing to decline, regardless of how much money we funnel into it?

        In summary, the repercussions of over four decades of the whole-language fiasco, et al, are still being felt in our public schools. The school system won’t turn around until the universities change what they teach the teachers to teach. We experimented with 22 teaching models on U.S. children from 1967 to 1995. Only one of those worked. The other 21 models were abject failures, such as whole-language, yet proponents were able to get them legislated into most state curricula. Many are still being used today.

        This is why it is up to parents to give their children a sure foundation of reading at home before they start kindergarten. Only parents can turn the downward educational trend for their children. Waiting for schools and legislators to change will only waste your child’s quickly-passing window of opportunity to succeed.

A couple of FAQ:

        What are the author’s credentials? (education, research, and experience)

        Shannah B Godfrey was a gifted child herself because her dad took the time to teach her to read by phonics when she was only 3 years old. Her successful school career led her to a successful college career and then to a successful aerospace career. She is also the parent of many children – adopted, step, and natural (14, not counting the foster children) – and understands how to prepare, nourish, and stimulate young minds, to open up the world of possibilities to them.

        Was Shannah B Godfrey really a rocket scientist? (most-searched Google question about TGM)

        Yes. She worked as a Research & Development (R&D) Chemist on Solid Rocket Motors (SRM) for almost ten years at Alliant Techsystems (formerly Thiokol Corp). She co-developed several cutting-edge technologies that were presented to the Joint Army Navy NASA Air Force (JANNAF) Conference in 2007.

The Author, Shannah B Godfrey, with her aerospace science and engineering group (expecting her 14th child)

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwl3reasonswhysightwordsdamageachildsreadingability

5 reasons why a good vocabulary needs phonics

Did you know that phonics help a child to increase and understand more vocabulary?

        Learning to read by phonics and the phonics spelling rules gives a child such a rich vocabulary and understanding of words, root words, usage, comprehension of words and sentences, better pronunciation, and best of all - confidence. No other reading method is this robust. In fact, sight-reading causes problems, dyslexia, and embarrassment.

        Learning a word by sight does not help a child recognize it when its usage and prefix or suffix changes. The child must memorize a whole new word (word-shape) for each alternative. This is cumbersome and ridiculous. Adults who sight-read say a lot of Archie-Bunkerisms; hilarious but embarrassing.

        And for words that don't follow the rules, first learning a "platypus" word phonetically helps a child remember it much easier than sight-reading because she has made common associations in her mind that are much more useful than guessing from the first letter of the word, its length and/or context (so cumbersome and confusing).

        As mentioned in previous volumes of It's Not Rocket Surgery!, a sight-reader needs to memorize about 4,000 word-shapes to have a basic reading vocabulary; it’s easy to mix up similar words. Whereas a phonetic-reader only needs to memorize about 47 sounds to read, and easily increases his/her vocabulary regularly.

        Mistakes are going to be made by early readers. But there is a big difference between a phonics mistake that is easily correctable and a lifetime of basic illiteracy beyond the limited sight-word vocabulary. As shown in VAS in previous chapters, we have seen otherwise intelligent college students that couldn’t write down a simple phone message properly- thanks to Whole Language.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwl5reasonswhyagoodvocabularyneedsphonics

3 ways phonics helps children with platypus words and spelling

Did you know that with phonics the spelling rules and platypus words make sense to a child?

        But there are questions, you say. What about the fact that not all words can be read using the phonics rules? Actually, about 80% of English words are phonetic, if you know the rules. Proper phonics instruction would be the key, here. Also, when words are sounded out phonetically, they are close to the right word, but just sound like someone speaking with an accent. It is really easy for a child to hear herself say it the wrong way and quickly know the right way. Children’s minds make these wonderful leaps that aren’t possible with guessing at sight-words.

        What about the fact that the English language is neither intuitive, natural, nor phonetic in spelling? Not true. Those that don’t think the English language is mostly phonetic must have been taught with a lot of sight-reading or the inability to see root words and languages. It is really easy to see that ‘said’ was originally the past-tense of ‘say’, therefore written and spoken as ‘sayed.’ It’s easy to see that ‘sayed’ could have slipped into ‘said’ when spelled phonetically. Then over the years, we grew lazy and pronounced it ‘sed.’ American English has changed the pronunciation of British English with such relaxations in many words. See Platypus Words in Vol. 4 & 5 of It's Not Rocket Surgery!

        Continuing with the knowledge that almost any child can become much more intelligent with the proper phonics method early in life, let’s discuss irregular spellings.

        Sounding-out words phonetically helps children remember how to spell them. When I was learning to spell, I would say a word the way it looked first, then I could remember how to spell it. For instance, the word ‘bicycle’ is really two (bi) wheels (things that rotate in a cycle). Even though we pronounce the word as ‘bi-sickle,’ saying it out loud as ‘bi-cycle’ helps one remember how to spell it and WHY. If a child heard you say ‘bi-cycle,’ she would immediately know it was a ‘bi-sickle.’

        As for my youngest son, he has an individual temperament of perfectionism (OCD) that many children may not have. However, most children have their self-esteem deeply shaken by the constant guessing game in whole-language sight-reading. Despite his OCD, if my son sounded-out ‘great’ as ‘greet’, or ‘beard’ as ‘bird’ (rhymes with "heard" right?), he wouldn’t fall to pieces nor lose his confidence. Proper phonics instruction has taught him the rules of ‘ea’ combinations having three possible sounds.

        Once the WHY is known, it is much easier to remember which words use which sounds for the spelling. It is also easier to learn to spell which homonym has ‘ea’, and which has ‘ee’ by saying them strictly phonetically on purpose. Looking for "context and meaning" should only be done after the letter sounds (and later- diphthongs & blends) are understood first.

        What about the fact that, at some point, we have to confront irregular spellings and words that are so common in our language? The other thing proper phonics instruction does is to help a child look for the root words within the prefixes and suffixes. I show my children how strange spellings have a root from another language. Then it is easy to learn which of our words have a German, French, Spanish, or another origin. It becomes a game and a fun puzzle to see common German spellings or French spellings, or whichever. For example, once a child knows that ‘eau’ is usually a French spelling for the long ‘o’ sound, it makes sense (beau, bureau). Or that the German sound for ‘ei’ is the long ‘i’ sound (stein), not the long ‘a’ sound (weigh) we commonly use.

        Children also understand the idea of platypus words, or those that “don’t follow the rules.” The platypus animal does not follow the rules of taxonomy (is it a bird or a mammal?). But pronouncing a word phonetically still makes it easier to spell and remember. The connection between the sounds of the letters and the accepted pronunciation make a sensible link in the child’s mind that sight-reading does not.

        For example, why do we say ‘was’ like ‘wuz’? I would tell my child to say ‘wass’ first, then explain we’ve become lazy and say ‘wuz’ now. I would also have my child look for other words where the letter ‘a’ sounds like the short ‘u’ (above, around, among, etc.) and for words where the letter ‘s’ sounds like a ‘z’ (surprise, uses, busy, etc.). Phonics rules allow for alternate sounds, teach those sounds, and help a child recognize their use.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwl3waysphonicshelpschildrenwithplatypuswordsandspelling 

How to prevent dyslexia

You may ask, "What about those phonics-only readers who struggle as much as sight-word readers?"

       I have never met any. They are rare, the exception – not the rule. Obviously if thy exist, they have not been given complete synthetic phonics, the right tools to understand the English language. Actually, true phonics readers don’t develop dyslexia.

        I had a co-worker who claimed she was dyslexic even though her elementary school used Hooked On Phonics® as its teaching method. She said she mixed up numbers and such, yet she was now successfully working on Amended 1040X tax returns as an IRS seasonal worker (yes, I have done that job, too). But what she didn’t seem to realize was that, the phonics had cured her. She read well and fluently, and was an intelligent woman.

        Being a tax examiner for amended returns is one of the hardest positions at the IRS, and she could read and understand the complex instructions in the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM). She was definitely not a sight-reader nor had reading problems. One thing I have  noticed is that young phonics readers do not mix up numbers with letters, but many young sight-readers do. Interesting phenomenon. And sight-reading can cause dyslexia in many children.

         If my coworker still had a problem with numbers, which I doubt, it may have been because of the math-teaching method her school used. The reform math uses methods similar to whole language. (And Common Core makes all this much worse.)

        There are incorrect ways to teach phonics, which is why I stress to not only teach it early, but to also teach it correctly. Early reading the right way, The Godfrey Method. When my youngest daughter came to a big word and paused, I reminded her to break it up into 3 or 4 pieces (syllables) and to read each piece. Once that was done, she easily put it together. She felt happy that she did it herself and gets more confident with each new word. She also saw the common sound patterns of the word and made connections to other words. She could not do that with the whole language reading method.

        There are several charts of monosyllable words for beginners in Vol. 2 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! for parents to use with their young children.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwlHowtopreventdyslexia

7 questions parents need to know about reading

These 7 questions answer why phonics first for your child:

        1. How does early reading by phonics increase my child’s IQ?

        Several studies show that a person’s intelligence quotient (IQ) is only about 50% genetic. The other 50% that affects IQ is environment. Any child’s IQ can be raised by what mom and dad do at home. And the more they learn at younger ages, the more they are able to learn for the rest of their lives. Of course, part of the nature-nurture mix is the child's own inner motivation. Give your child the chance to be his or her best self. My dad taught me to read when I was only 3 years old.

        How to be an exceptional parent without spending a lot of money = early reading the right way. Intelligence is not completely genetic. Almost any child can become much more intelligent with the proper phonics method early in life. The sooner we recognize what's wrong at the roots of our reading-instruction approaches the better.

        2. Why is phonics reading better than sight reading?

        Scientific research shows that phonics wires a child’s brain properly for efficient, excellent reading. Learning sight-words first wires a child’s brain in the wrong place for reading. Dyslexic children read with a different part of the brain than do normal readers. Reading is hearing with your eyes. The Godfrey Method wires the child’s brain properly for a sure foundation. It makes a mental connection between letters and sounds like no other. Prevention is much better than remediation. If a child learns sight-reading first, he may have trouble reading later as an adult.

         3. How will learning to read early affect my child’s school years?

         Children who start kindergarten ahead of the class usually stay there for the rest of their school careers. They have more confidence and self-esteem, too. They get to skip the embarrassment of going to remedial resource classes, too.

        4. What about children needing to be taught using the most efficient method according to their personal learning style?

        What may be efficient or seem easier in the early years, such as sight-word flash cards, will often bring trouble later in life, when there are no more flash words, no more teacher to tell you when your guess is right, and no way to decode a new word. Teens and adults aren’t prone to ask for help with reading when they are stuck on a word. It is embarrassing.

        Personal learning styles - whether visual (seeing), audio (hearing), kinesthetic (body movement), and/or musical - that actually involve phonics-instruction work best for a child. Sight-reading should NOT be considered a child's learning style. If your baby can read by sight-words, s/he may struggle with reading later. Always put phonics first.

        5. How is the Godfrey Method different from other reading methods?

        It uses an innovative picture-letter phonics system that even young children can grasp, woven into an enchanting stories, A Funny Boy Was Prince River, for one. The Godfrey Method is able to start children younger, which increases your child’s capacity to learn for life. It is affordable, time-saving, prevents dyslexia, provides quality parent-child time, helps children learn faster and easier than other phonics methods, improves speech, and helps boys catch up to girls in school sooner.

        The Godfrey Method is simple yet effective, and the child never forgets. Our motto is, Keep it Simple for Success (KISS). All children do not learn the same. The Godfrey Method involves several senses and learning styles.

        6. Why doesn’t the Godfrey Method use a lot of electronic devices?

        Studies show that too much TV, radio, video games, and computer time may trigger autism or dyslexia in young children. The Godfrey Method focuses on books for 2 reasons, to keep flashing lights and noises away from young, developing minds, and to provide nurturing interaction between parent and child. Holding your child on your lap or next to you, reading A Pretty Girl Was Alpha Bette and doing the phonics cards, is much more beneficial than plopping a child in front of the TV with a DVD and walking away. What may be more convenient for the parents may be devastating to the child’s mind. Why take the chance?

        7. Did you know that sight-reading can cause reading problems? Proponents of this method try to solve the problem (that they created) with some strange remedial methods.

        Which brings me to miscue analysis. Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld said it best, so I will quote parts of his article, Miscue Analysis (ibid.), here:

        Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman knowingly mislead the public. “Frank Smith explains the concept of the miscue in Understanding Reading (p. 151): The prior use of meaning ensures that when individual words must be identified, for example, in order to read aloud, a minimum of visual information need be used. And as a consequence, mistakes will often occur. If a reader already has a good idea of what a word might be, there is not much point in delaying to make extra certain what the word actually is. As a result it is not unusual for even highly experienced readers to make misreadings that are radically different visually — like reading “said” when the word is actually announced or reported but which make no significant difference to the meaning. Beginning readers often show exactly the same tendency... The mistakes that are made are sometimes called miscues rather than errors to avoid the connotation that they are something bad (Goodman, 1969). Such misreadings show that these beginning readers are attempting to read in the way fluent readers do, with sense taking priority over individual word identification.

        “One could write a book about the utterly perverse reasoning in that paragraph. In the first place only a sight reader could make the kinds of errors Smith illustrates. A phonetic reader will make entirely different kinds of errors, perhaps something on the order of scanning hastily and reading deported for departed, but then correcting himself because the sentence doesn’t make sense. On the other hand substituting “said” for “announced” is the kind of error that Schmitt found that defective children made even though they had been taught to read by a phonetic method.

        “I can confirm this tendency on the part of retarded individuals to read as Schmitt observed from my own experience as a tutor. For ten years I tutored a retarded young man and taught him to read by intensive phonics. Yet, he often made the kinds of errors Schmitt observed. Whenever he came to a word he could not read, he substituted a word which made no sense phonetically. In other words, sounding out the word was not his first means of word attack, even though the word might have been one he had previously read correctly. Whenever he did this, I had him spell out the word, and suddenly his phonetic knowledge came to the fore, and he read the word correctly.

        “When Frank Smith tells us that normal beginning readers make the same kinds of mistakes that defective children make, what he should tell us is that normal beginning readers taught to read by the whole-word method make the same kinds of errors that adult sight readers make! It is one of the dishonest tricks that whole-language advocates play, by not telling the reader when speaking of miscues what kind of beginning reading instruction was used with the individuals being examined. The very fact that the word “miscue” is used instead of “error” is a good indication of the intellectual dishonesty at work, the fancy sleight of hand being used to confuse the public.

        “Apparently, the idea of “miscue analysis” was dreamed up by Prof. Kenneth Goodman and his wife, Yetta, two of the leading founders of the whole-language movement. In my opinion, miscue analysis is probably the worst form of educational malpractice ever invented. What they do is take a poor sight reader — a victim of the whole-word method — and try to improve his guessing “strategies.” After all, it was Ken Goodman who defined reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” In other words, no attempt is made to train the poor sight reader to become an accurate phonetic reader. As long as the sight reader's word insertions, omissions and substitutions relate more closely to the meaning of the text, they are acceptable.

        “In short, the purpose of miscue analysis is to make sure that the pupil remains permanently crippled as a sight reader and never becomes an accurate phonetic reader. Ken Goodman writes in The Whole Language Catalog (p. 100): “Miscue analysis helps people to realize that many of the miscues kids are making are sensible, even remarkable sometimes, in what they reveal about the language processes that the reader would have to go through to have produced them.”

        Yetta Goodman writes in the same article:

        “Insertions and omissions can give you tremendous insight into whether a reader is proficient or not. Proficient readers tend to make insertions more than less proficient readers; certain kinds of omissions tend to be things that are acceptable to the syntax and semantic structure of the text, and good readers make them all the time. Other kinds of omissions indicate kids who want to leave out words that they are afraid to try and identify.”

        “Can you believe it? A reader is more proficient if he or she reads something that isn’t there — that is, inserts a word in the text — than a reader who doesn’t! Of course, the Goodmans have no intention of teaching these sight readers to become phonetic readers.”

        Ken Goodman writes:

        “The concept I put in the place of ‘remedial’ is ‘revaluing’; that is where the intent of the teacher is to help the child to revalue himself or herself as a reader and to revalue the process; to help the child move away from the process of sounding out and attacking words, and toward making sense out of print and legitimizing the kinds of productive strategies that the kids have been using and had thought were cheating. These kids are often their own worst enemies in that their beliefs about themselves and their ability to learn get in their way constantly; they're very easily discouraged. So a lot of patient time taken to help them revalue themselves is the most essential thing.”

        “In other words, the main therapeutic purpose of miscue analysis to convince the defective reader that it’s okay to be a defective reader, as long as the miscues make sense. But, of course, in the workplace such nonsense does not hold water. An error is an error no matter what else you may call it, and to try to convince a child that an error is not an error will not serve him well when he is an adult confronting the demands of a technologically advanced economy that requires accuracy and precision in thinking and performing and reading.”

        “The quest for truth requires a respect and appreciation for accuracy and precision of thought. If, to begin with, you denigrate accuracy in reading, you denigrate the pursuit of truth… Miscue analysis is the crudest hoax ever perpetrated on unsuspecting children. To convince a normal child that it is perfectly all right to read as if he had a defective brain is so heinous a form of miseducation as to be nothing short of a crime.” This article was taken from The Blumenfeld Education Letter, Vol. 7, No.12 (Letter 76), December 1992. Editor: Samuel L. Blumenfeld, reprinted on www.donpotter.net

        The newsletter masthead reads: “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge.” [Hosea 4:6] The purpose of this newsletter is to provide knowledge for parents and educators who want to save the children of America from the destructive forces that endanger them.

        “Our children in the public schools are at grave risk in 4 ways: academically, spiritually, morally, and physically – and only a well-informed public will be able to reduce these risks. “Without vision, the people perish” [Proverbs 29:18]. Notes by Donald L. Potter, May 20, 2005, Odessa, TX.

        Yes, we CAN make reading easier by pulling the process apart and teaching phonics reading skills. To a phonetic reader, reading is NOT a “psycholinguistic guessing game.” It is accurate and precise. No wonder the U.S. is falling behind as the technological giant. Many of our young adults now were taught by these faulty teaching models.

        By the way, remedial classes mushroomed since Project Follow Through because the methods were, and still are, creating more learning disabilities than ever before. Private (commercial) tutoring has mushroomed too, because parents are desperate to fix what the schools have done. But many parents cannot afford to pay for good (not the school’s) remediation. TGM is something anyone can afford to do at home, the earlier the better.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/BeingaWiseOwl7questionsparentsneedtoknowaboutreading