An Apple a Day - How to teach children to think

Do you know how to enhance your child's mind? Give your child a mental apple a day? (Some of this info is found in Vol. 6 of my It's Not Rocket Surgery!)

Read on to learn more about:

• The best practice for learning is adult-led, direct instruction with an inquiry-based approach. 
• Parents should start their children’s learning at home, long before school age. 
• For their child’s continued development, they need to advocate for these best practices, especially for math and reading, at public, private, or home school. 
• I’d also like to add that if they use a preschool, parents should choose one that believes in adult-led education, not self-discovery. 
• The less time in preschool, and the more time with mom or dad, the better – for learning, for development, for bonding, for emotional and mental health.

To maximize your child’s window of learning, she or he needs adult-led direct instruction. Unfortunately, as is commonly the case, teachers (and parents) leave good students to fend for themselves on the mistaken assumption that they don’t need help. Mom and Dad can and should do things at home to enhance their child’s learning and intelligence. Start with early reading the right way.

What is the difference between student-led and adult-led education? In its truest form, student-led learning is where students only learn what they want to learn, wherever their curiosity takes them, if anywhere. Groups of students theoretically lead each other into the discovery of all knowledge at their own pace. Teacher-led learning is where the teacher uses a structured lesson plan to present knowledge in a specific sequence. You, as parents, are your child’s first teacher and best advocate.

There are problems with both sides, but clearly the unguided student-led learning leads to failure. Whole Language learning is a prime example of this. (Student-led math instruction is also a fiasco. Such faulty ideas are rampant in Common Core philosophy.)

One teacher, Pavel Ryzlovsky, of Canada, wrote to me: “With the whole population's silent participation, we have already accumulated several obstacles to good-quality language teaching. The other one that needs to be tackled is our adherence to student-oriented learning.

“I remember reading of a study, unprecedented in its scope, which was conveyed to determine what sort of language-teaching system has been the most effective one. It found that teacher-oriented education has been consistently bringing the best results, in few aspects several times better than the student-oriented type.

“The outcome of the study was disseminated among the teaching districts throughout USA; however, only one tenth of their total number embraced the teacher-oriented system; in other districts both parents and teachers refused it as "too demanding" (for children and teachers).

“The sooner we recognize what's wrong at the roots of our approaches the better. We have a long way to go to get out of the trouble we put ourselves into.” ~ Pavel Ryzlovsky, Canada

It is true that when we ask questions we remember better than when we are just spoon fed facts. But waiting for children to be curious about every aspect of knowledge is not enough in the classroom. Children were not born knowing everything. They don’t know what they don’t know. If one wanted to learn to be a doctor, wouldn’t she want to go to the experts? Having to re-invent the wheel, or self-discover all medical knowledge, is not the best way to learn.

Leaving a child to his own discovery will not bring progress quickly. If children were able to learn all knowledge by self-discovery, there would be no reason to have colleges or degree programs. Someone has to cache all the centuries of learned knowledge for others to use, which falls to our universities, libraries and schools. If teacher-oriented learning wasn’t necessary, all the farmers in the last century would have become geniuses just by thinking while on their tractors or in their fields.

“To promote scientific literacy, one focus of science education is scientific discovery learning. However, its effectiveness is dubious, because students face some difficulties in dealing with the discovery processes, especially coordinating hypotheses with evidence. Students do not attempt to associate their hypotheses with the evidence. And even if they do, they are so strongly biased that they retain their current hypotheses and ignore or distort the evidence.” (Hiroko Kobayashi, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. The effects of "collaborative discovery learning with an association scheme" on the acquisition of scientific literacy.)

The above statement shows one reason why teacher-oriented learning is best – the immaturity of students. But teachers have to make learning interesting. As one social studies teacher put it:

“The content has to be first. So in a sense it has to be very teacher oriented, teacher centered. I am giving them information and I am expecting [them] to process it and do something with it. I give homework assignments.”

The best teacher-oriented education uses an inquiry-based approach, much like Socrates used. In this way, the questions are guided by an adult but help the children think and learn. Often, a question is answered with another question. This opens a child’s curiosity and leads the student to the knowledge. This may require longer class discussions, but is worth it. Cultures that use this kind of guided-question, teacher-oriented discovery produce more Nobel Prize nominees and winners than those that don’t.

There is one place where student-oriented learning does well, and that is when discovery is enhanced with computers. The computer asks the leading questions, so the student isn’t completely on his own, but feels like he is in control. Student discovery by computer works well with some [older] children, but they still need the human touch on occasion. Too much computer time has proven to be detrimental to emotional and social maturity. (McGlinn, M. (2007). Using the "Documenting the American South" Digital Library in the social studies: A case study of the experiences of teachers in the field. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 7(1). http://www.citejournal.org/vol7/iss1/socialstudies/article1.cfm)

There you have it. 
The best practice for learning is adult-led, direct instruction with an inquiry-based approach. 
Parents should start their children’s learning at home, long before school age. 
For their child’s continued development, they need to advocate for these best practices, especially for math and reading, at public, private, or home school. 
I’d also like to add that if they use a preschool, parents should choose one that believes in adult-led education, not self-discovery. 
The less time in preschool, and the more time with mom or dad, the better – for learning, for development, for bonding, for emotional and mental health.

http://thegodfreymethod.com

An Apple a Day - Best practices for the pursuit of excellence in parenting

Best practices for the pursuit of excellence in parenting - tips from a mom of 15

“No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” ~ David O. McKay

               What? Not even rocket science or brain surgery? No, not for the children of the rocket scientist or brain surgeon, and not for any child. From whom do children, especially young children, learn best? Nature has shown us time and again that children usually learn best from their own parents. Many parents of gifted children have intrinsically understood this truth, which may be part of the reason their children advance ahead.

               Glynne Sutcliffe (M.A., Dip. Ed.) says, “Remember Suzuki and his violin lessons! Parents are the natural first teachers of young children. Children learn almost everything of significance by watching and absorbing what their parents (or parent substitutes) do, feel and think… Young children need a lot of one-to-one time with loving adults willing to open up the world to them. If they are in child care, they need that balancing every day one-on-one time with a parent even more.”

               Helping parents become their child’s first teacher is paramount to turning around the fiasco of the public education system and the key to raise thriving children. Glynne’s research can be found at http://www.earlyreadingplayschool.com.au/ 

               Public education’s answer to teaching children has been to remove them from their mothers earlier and earlier in order to give them a ‘head start’ in school. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked well. Of course, there are situations where abusive, neglectful, or ignorant parents are not preparing their child’s mind for learning, but these are the exceptions. Universal preschool for all is not the answer.

               Rather than merely placing children in preschool, parents must be directly involved in their child’s early education, especially for reading and math. And young children have the extra need of bonding and attachment time with parents, which enhances their learning ability further. Even working mothers like me can find time to help their children’s minds.

The art of continuous improvement is the road to excellence, line upon line, precept on precept, here a little, there a little. In fact, manufacturers are constantly looking for the best practices and improvements to their processes. Can the idea of “best practices” work at home? Certainly! However, continuous improvement does not mean throwing out tried-and-true best practices for new theories. Some new, untried ideas sound good on paper, but do not work in practice.

For example, phonics is the best reading method. Alternate methods that seemed brilliant on paper did more damage than good and greatly increased dyslexia. Another example is writing by cursive penmanship. Public schools have mostly done away with cursive, but maybe the newer methods aren’t always better. Maybe the old ways of learning have more value than meets the eye. The website, Mom.Think.org, posted this finding:

“Scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn ‘functional specialization’ that is capacity for optimal efficiency.”

Whatever the factors, it is clear that parents must not let their children be left to themselves in school, whether that be public, private, or home school. Parents can follow the best practices with their children at home to ensure a great foundation for success. Remember the old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Enhancing your children’s minds at home is like giving them a mental apple a day. Let’s discover what some of those best practices are. First, the why, then the what and how. See you next time...

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Sing a Song of Sixpence - why your child needs math

Why your child needs math

With more and more technology jobs, children really need a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education! Abstract thinking, so necessary to progress, comes from science and math education. Will your child be ready for the technology jobs of the future? Early math the right way is so important. It starts at home!

How often have we heard students say something like, “Why do I have to learn math? I’m never going to use it in when I’m grown up!” The answer to that is, “So that you can think well and solve problems better in all areas of your life!”

As I learned in college, psychologist Jean Piaget’s cognitive theory of development shows that a concrete thinker only sees the obvious, but an abstract thinker can see ‘what if?’ The ability to think abstractly is key to having an open mind and seeing many possible ways to solve a problem. For example, the answer given in the cartoon below is the concrete answer.

The abstract answer is the ability to solve the value of x, if the other sides were the given values. (A concrete thinker might say that side is not really 4-cm long, get the ruler. The abstract thinker can say, “but what if?” and solve the problem.)

The maths and sciences help people develop from concrete thinkers into abstract thinkers as they reach adulthood. The lessons learned while solving math problems make the brain more flexible in solving other problems in general. This gives children more self-confidence to meet challenges. If we want our children to be well-rounded in all areas, they need math and science.

Giving your child a head start in math – the right way – helps him to see patterns and connections in new ways. It helps her to see more possibilities and make wiser decisions as she grows. 

By the way, I use algebra on my grocery shopping list, to keep my costs + tax exactly to the penny, for the amount I want to spend. I love math!

(And stay away from Reform and/or Common Core math.)

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Sing a Song of Sixpence - helps with multiplication math

      Enhance your child's math ability with Cuisenaire rods for fractions, super-ones, and algebra!

Prepare your child early for algebra with fun fractions. Did you know that understanding fractions is a basic foundation to solving algebra problems? One of the best ways to develop your child’s math and fraction-solving abilities is with Cuisenaire® rods. I prefer the set of small, wooden rods. The set comes with 155 rods of different sizes and colors as well as an Activity Guide. This is a great way to make sense of numbers, fractions and spatial relationships for children of all ages.

Cuisenaire® rods give a visual, hands-on understanding of why 2/6 = 1/3, for example. 

The Activity Guide gives parents great ideas on ways to use the rods to show different mathematical realities and turns the abstract into the logical for children.

Cuisenaire® rods are recommended for elementary school ages, but can be used before and after that. Each rod size coordinates to a specific color and number. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing can also be learned with them. They are available at http://catalog.teachingsupplystore.com/connecting_cuisenairereg_rods_small_group_set_wood-p-48101.html.

Parents can and should give their children the jump on understanding algebra with a solid knowledge of how and why fractions work. I like to make sure my children know fractions by third grade, where possible.

I also make sure my children know their times-tables by heart by third grade. This not only helps with multiplication math, but also with fractions, where knowing factors quickly helps making equivalent fractions, a very necessary skill. And it will boost a child’s ability to understand algebra later.

One thing I like to do is make multiplication flash cards with colored numbers. (Colored numbers also help with addition flash cards). I assign a specific color to each number, and it always is shown in its color. It engages both sides of the mind and makes the repetition-memorization easier. It is vitally important for a child to have addition and multiplication facts memorized without a calculator. Calculators are tools to be used long after the child is fluent in math-speak, so to say.

My personal number color code is 0 = hot pink, 1 = dark gray, 2 = light blue, 3 = red, 4 = dark blue, 5 = dark green, 6 = orange, 7 = deep yellow, 8 = purple, and 9 = black. See example below.

Then we printed off some flash cards from CoolMath4Kids at http://www.coolmath4kids.com/times-tables/math-flash-cards-multiplication.html. I like them because the numbers are just outlines that you can color-in. I had my kids help me color each number by our code, which became a fun family learning activity.

We used our flash cards every day until each child knew all the multiplication tables by heart. It was well worth the effort!

What are Super-ones? Super-ones are the idea that any number divided by itself equals one. In fraction form this means that 3/3 = 1; 75/75 = 1;            x/x = 1;                 (i+7y)/(i+7y) = 1;          ф/ф = 1;            √4/√4 = 1; basically anything over itself equals one. 

This is very helpful in converting any fraction into an equivalent fraction. It is the WHY of it. An equivalent fraction is one that is the exact same size of the pie, just cut into smaller pieces.

For example, to convert 2/3 into an equivalent fraction, just multiply it by a super-one. So 2/3 x 2/2 = 4/6. Both fractions, 2/3 and 4/6 are the same size, because we just multiplied by 1 (since 2/2 = 1). Can you see the beauty of this?

We could choose any super-one we need. 2/3 x 3/3 = 6/9, and 2/3 is the same size as 6/9 because we just multiplied by 1 (3/3). How about 2/3 x 4/4 = 8/12? Again, 2/3 is the same size as 8/12 because we multiplied by 1 (4/4). Therefore, 2/3 = 4/6 = 6/9 = 8/12; all these fractions are the same size of the pie.

The idea of using super-ones works in reverse, too. Any larger fraction can be reduced down to its lowest form by dividing by a super-one; but the super-one has to be made of factors that fit both the numerator (top) and denominator (bottom).

For example, let’s reduce 15/20 to its lowest form. A factor that goes into both the top and bottom is 5, so divide 15/20 by the super-one: 5/5. See that 15/20 divided by 5/5 = 3/4. Both 15/20 and 3/4 are the same size, because we just divided by 1 (5/5).

Such an understanding of super-ones makes solving fractions and later algebra problems so much easier! It is the WHY behind the methods taught. Cuisenaire rods also help children visualize that 2/3 = 6/9, or that 3/4 = 15/20, but the super-one is the reason that equivalent fractions really are the same size.

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Sing a Song of Sixpence - Enhance your child's math skills with finger-math

Patterning and finger-math can enhance your child's math skills!

Enhance your child's math skills with the ancient finger-math method. Did you know that the abacus developed from the practice of ancient finger-math? Usually teachers discourage students from counting on their fingers, but this is very different. Like an abacus, the right hand represents the ones place and the left hand represents the tens place.

There is a wonderful book, The Complete Book of Fingermath by Edwin M. Lieberthal (1983), that shows parents and children how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide very quickly with their fingers.

Finger-math works for any age group, from preschool to high school and is very effective. Patterns, spatial relationships and time are the foundations of understanding math. Fingermath helps to build such numerical patterns and relationships in the mind, so that what’s on paper makes more sense, quicker. http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Fingermath-Simple-Accurate-Scientific/dp/0070376808/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249156659&sr=8-1.

Any child can become more gifted in math by learning the finger-math method. Purposeful parents would do well to give it a try as early as possible. They should also use every opportunity possible to help their children make patterns and sort things.

Counting money supports number patterning, too. A website with free printable math worksheets is www.edhelper.com.

Once a child has a good grasp of number values, addition, and subtraction, it’s not too early to introduce the idea of a number line that goes from negative numbers to positive numbers.

Children can understand the idea of digging holes (negative numbers versus building mounds (positive numbers) with a number line. Or use the idea of being in debt versus having money. I like to use a number line to show what happens if we have 4 but subtract (take away) 6. Our 4 mounds turn into 2 holes! Or 4 - 6 = -2. Or we have 4 dollars but we owe someone 6 dollars, so we still owe him 2 dollars. We have negative money.

Early math the right way, just like early reading the right way - The Godfrey Method!

http://thegodfreymethod.com

Home Early Learning Play School (HELPS) now available

Hey Moms! All the activities from the series, It's Not Rocket Surgery! for early reading the right way, are now published together in one place! Home Early Learning Play School (HELPS) is here: http://www.amazon.com/Home-Early-Learning-Play-School/dp/150789404X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423921195&sr=1-1&keywords=Shannah+B+Godfrey

So, you've used A Funny Boy Was Prince River with your child, who now knows all the beginning phonics sounds, but you wonder what to do next? All of the Home Early Learning Play School (HELPS) activities, each previously found at the end of each volume of It's Not Rocket Surgery! by Shannah B Godfrey, are now together in one book.

This amazing book has each of the spelling rules presented in fun activities that help your child understand phonics, how to decode words, and become an excellent, confident reader!

You'll also find the answers to all of The Godfrey Method mottos:

Early reading the right way.

Keep It Simple for Success (KISS your child) with The Godfrey Method.

Learn how to overcome the Top Ten Myths of reading.

Dress your child's mind for success.

Reading is hearing with your eyes - phonics, phonics, phonics!

The two most crucial things kids need, quality parent-time and excellent reading skills, together.

Nurture your child's nature and notions.

Dyslexia is induced - it's the disease you get from sight-reading.

"No Child Left Behind" has become All Children Left Behind.

Just say NO to Common Core!

How to put your children on the launch pad of life and watch them soar!

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/HomeEarlyLearningPlaySchoolHELPSarenowallinoneplace 

10 ways to nurture your young child's gifts

Every child is a unique. What are the best ways for you to nurture your young child's gifts?

         First and foremost, NEVER teach your baby to read by sight-words. This will only hinder his/her capabilities later in life. Use true phonics by direct instruction, starting with The Godfrey Method books like A Funny Boy Was Prince River.

        Some children learn more quickly than others due to genetic and/or environmental factors, mixed with personal motivation. Whether a child is noticeably gifted or not, his parents can still enhance learning and give him an advantage in school.

        Parents can put too much pressure on children to perform, and they can put too little pressure on them. The best way for a parent to enhance a child's learning is to provide a stimulating learning environment without forcing a young child to learn. One of the most important steps is to use flash cards (and other teaching methods) only while the child is interested. When the child is ready to stop, you stop. Never try to force the child to finish the whole alphabet in one sitting. Later, you can pick up where you left off.

        Learning should be adult-guided wherever possible. Children learn best by answering (and asking) questions, and adults do best by guiding those leads along with the lesson plan. (Home learning is important, even in conjunction with other school attendance.) Yes, it's important to regularly introduce the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, music, and art, by direct instruction, but if the child is interested in tigers, then study books about tigers to introduce language arts. Go to the zoo together.

        Children's brains need some rest time. They need a break between school and homework. They need a break between school and tutoring. The goal is to have a child who loves learning and knowledge of all kinds. Too much pressure can backfire, causing a child to hate reading, math, or other areas. Do you want a child who can get good grades but can't actually think or analyze for himself?

        To maintain a balance between encouragement and pressure, keep your motivators positive. Give rewards for achievements, not punishments for failures. If a child is not achieving to his ability, look for the root cause. Is there quiet time provided at home for homework? Do the parents read a lot, themselves? Be a good example. Turn off the TV and the games and have quiet time (we do this at 7:00 p.m. each evening). 

        Understand that different children learn differently (see Vol. 8 of my book, It's Not Rocket Surgery!). Try new approaches. Whatever the goal, we parents have to remain calm and not get into a power struggle with the child. This is extremely important. Don't make learning a chore that kills the love of learning. The goal is true knowledge, not just the ability to ace a test. Maintaining a balance between encouragement and pressure requires consistency and variety, simultaneously. No easy feat!

        Regularly work on the basics and occasionally introduce a little variety for fun. Do family field trips. Point out science and art in nature around you. Teach fractions and chemistry with cooking projects. Use Cuisenaire rods (way cool) for hands-on fractions and math. But never, never call a child lazy nor link his core character to grades and homework. Trying to motivate children to excel without putting too much pressure on them can be a balancing act. But so worth it!

        Sometimes success comes from practice, practice, practice, which children can hate. The old saying, ‘Practice makes perfect,’ is true in anything - math, music, art, sports, reading, etc. Some children are self-motivated to practice, especially the things they love, and some aren't. Find positive ways to motivate your child.

        When your child doesn't want to practice the piano or do homework, set the kitchen timer for 15 - 30 minutes and have a race to see how much s/he can get done. Offer a reward for focusing on the task until the timer dings. Achieving little bits here and there add up and make a good compromise.

        Another idea is to allow the child to do a pleasing activity after doing an unpleasant one. Something we have done is to have "TV bucks." We printed fake TV dollars and laminated them. For every hour that my child reads, I give her one TV buck. Then when she wants to watch TV or play a video game, she has to pay me a TV buck for each hour's worth. This keeps the reading time up and the TV/game time down, and links them together as a reward for good effort. (Or you can keep track of reading time vs. TV time in a notebook.)

        And finally, when your child fails at something, put your arm around him or her and say only positive encouragement. True self-esteem comes from accomplishment, but "you don't have to win every battle to win the war". Being gifted comes from internal motivation, so watch and see what excites your child and develop those areas, without excessive force. There are many hands-on ideas to try in Vol. 1 of It's Not Rocket Surgery! for young children, so I won’t repeat them here.

        Remember, being gifted is a combination of your child’s genetics, environment, and attitude. As the Serenity prayer says, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference!"

        Yes, it is possible to raise bright, gifted, and genius children in a happy environment.

        I must thank one of my readers, Mr. Pavel Ryzlovsky, for helping my research on Project Follow Through and the Whole Language mess (see Vol. 4, 5, & 6). In response to my articles on www.examiner.com he commented:

“Dear Ms. Godfrey,

        “I must say that, over years, I have been reading all those prizes for the "Whole Language method of reading" in disbelief, and I patiently waited for the moment someone would start debunking the myth it was constructed upon.

        “I can tell you that the method* you justifiably exposed has also been called to assist promotion of the same sort as reading in instrumental music teaching, and so it's been doing considerable damage there, too.

        “Thank you, and I sincerely hope that your article makes the whole mountain of wrong teaching and poor reading shake. All the best to you.”

        So I sent him Cathy Froggatt’s wonderful article, Whole Language at the Fork in the Road,  http://www.nrrf.org/satire_WL_at_Fork.html. His second reply was:

“ Dear Ms. Godfrey,

        “Thank you kindly for sharing this story with me, it's a really good satire. I would like to add that, with the whole population's silent participation, we have already accumulated several obstacles to good-quality language teaching. The other one I see that will need to be tackled is our adherence to student-oriented learning.

        “I remember reading of a study which was conveyed to determine what sort of language-teaching system has been the most effective one. This study was unprecedented in its scope (and was done at an unprecedented cost of some $10mln) [even more]. It found that teacher-oriented education has been consistently bringing the best results, in every aspect several times better than the student-oriented type.

        “The outcome of the study was disseminated among the teaching districts throughout USA; however, only one tenth of their total number embraced the teacher-oriented system; in other districts both parents and teachers refused it as "too demanding" (for children and teachers).

        “The sooner we recognize what's wrong at the roots of our approaches the better. We have a long way to go to get out of the trouble we put ourselves into. Regards, Pavel.”

        I researched and found the study to be PFT. Later, Pavel sent me the link to Don Potter’s website, http://www.donpotter.net/ed.htm, full of the wonderful writings of Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld and others. Thank you, Mr. Ryzlovsky. There are many of us crying that the emperor (whole language and sight-reading) has no clothes!

        *And, thanks to Glynne Sutcliffe for leading me to Laurie Rogers’ website, http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com, which shows how the same faulty method has been used in “reform” math, causing even more damage. Also see her http://www.saferchild.org.

        There is a marvelous resource called, “Are You Willing to Try Something at Home?” from Davis County, Utah, Spectrum Gifted Program. It gives parents ideas of things to do with their children that are fun learning activities. It is broken up into sections that help a child’s mind learn to solve problems:

Divergent thinking (all the possibilities)
Convergent thinking (selecting choices)
Planning
Evaluation
Decision making
Creativity
Forecasting
Communication

        The materials in this workbook give parents ways to help their children develop these skills to become good problem-solvers in life. I noticed that they’ve changed the name to Davis Enhanced Education Programs (DEEP, formerly Gifted and Talented Programs). http://www.davis.k12.ut.us/213810114132536240/site/default.asp. Contact them for a copy of “Are You Willing to Try Something at Home?” at 801-402-5140 (FAX 801-402-5333), or Sheri Sauvé, Supervisor, and Jayne Barkdull, Administrative Assistant, atjbarkdull@dsdmail.net

The district website offers two documents: Depth, Complexity, and Higher-Order Thinking and Strategies for Advanced Learners. Take a look!

        One day the realization hit me that being gifted is just that – a gift. I didn’t personally do anything to get a great memory and logic, it was given to me by God and nature. It may have been genetically passed on to me from my parents, which is still a gift. I had nothing to be arrogant about because my giftedness wasn’t a personal accomplishment, just a gift.

        What if my mother had taken antihistamines at the wrong time in pregnancy? What if oxygen had been deprived during my delivery? What if I had been dropped on my head as an infant? Then I wouldn’t be gifted, I would be handicapped.

        What if my father hadn’t taught me to read by phonics at age three? Hadn’t nurtured my gift? So I learned gratitude for my gift, plus a realization that others had different types of gifts to be appreciated. I think it is important to help our children be humble about their giftedness, not arrogant. It is called a gift for a reason. Use it for good things in this world. One of the best ways to help children learn to use their gifts unselfishly is by serving their fellow man, helping make the world a better place in their corner.

        As discussed in a previous blog article, being gifted is a combination of genetics (nature), environment (nurture), and attitude (the child's own viewpoint and choices). It’s not all genetic. I like to say, “Intelligence is one-part nature, one-part nurture, and one-part inner motivation.” There are many different kinds of gifts and talents, and each should be encouraged and celebrated. Not all are academic.

http://thegodfreymethod.com/content/StarLightStarBrightHowtonurtureyourchildsgift

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