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

0 (zero) reasons to teach sight-reading

Just say NO to sight-reading. There are 0 (zero) reasons to teach sight-words and sight-reading to hearing children.

                Danielle, a proactive, purposeful parent, told me about teaching her son at home by the accepted, traditional, reading methods – alphabet names, capital letters, sight-reading, etc. Then her child "hit a wall" and she didn’t know how to fix it.

The sight-reading (popular in many preschools) messed up everything she had been trying to teach him. Luckily, she found The Godfrey Method and has been rebuilding his foundation properly for phonics. In her own words:

                "My son, Jaksen, started showing signs of giftedness when he was very young, so my husband and I decided that it was best to nurture this and do what we could to keep him challenged. By the age of 2 he knew all of his letter names, uppercase and lowercase, and his numbers 1-10. He was potty-trained, too.

                “He was doing so well that naturally we thought the next step should be sight-words. Initially it began well, but after about a month or so we noticed that my son was now confusing some of his letters for numbers, such as 9 for P. And he would guess at the words he was seeing and get frustrated very easily. For example, he would see ‘Clairebella’ and say ‘sister’ instead. From this he began to regress. So we stopped doing sight words, but we were unsure where to go next. We hit a wall."

                With The Godfrey Method, Danielle reports that Jaksen now knows all his letter sounds and is reading words already.

                The educational system has been going backwards for several decades, now. Many schools teach sight-reading in kindergarten. Many national-chain preschools teach sight-words. Several commercial, early-reading programs are also based on sight-reading.

As I keep warning, if your baby can read by sight-reading now, he’ll probably struggle with reading as an adult. My co-worker, Dave, was taught to read by the sight-reading method back in the 1940s-50s. He can read functionally but always wrestles with new words. His “Archie Bunker-isms” are hilarious.

                My illustrator, Leah, says, “I have never met a phonics-learner who couldn’t sight-read, but I have met plenty of sight-readers who don’t know how to decode an unfamiliar word. As adults they must often guess and feel embarrassed.” This sad scenario can be prevented by teaching children to read early the right way.

                So when and where do sight-words have a place in learning to read? Sight-reading comes as a natural consequence of sounding-out words. It is never the place to start. When a child has read the word “dog” a few times, s/he will begin to recognize it by sight. But s/he knows what sounds create the word “dog” and understand its left-to-right orientation. Even when sight-reading, children say the sounds in their heads, albeit much faster than before. They will be able to sound-out new or unfamiliar words reasonably well, too.

                I don’t even use the sight-word method with those pesky “platypus” words that don’t seem to follow the rules. Actually, they used to follow the rules, but we changed our pronunciation. Or they follow the rules of a parent-language other than English, and we adopted them. Again, we usually changed the pronunciation to suit us.

                Platypus words will be discussed more at the end of the Appendix of Vol. 3 of my book, It's Not Rocket Surgery!, but suffice it to say that if we pronounce them the way they look, most children will still understand them. We just sound like we’re speaking with a foreign accent. It doesn’t hurt to say, “thē” instead of “thuh.” Nor to say, “sāys” instead of “sez.” Nor “frī-end” instead of “frend.” Saying it the phonetic way before the popular way actually helps children remember the spellings better.

                So when and where does reading by context have a place in learning to read? Never let a child guess at a word by context of the rest of the sentence. Never! The child needs to sound out the word. The only place for using context is with words that have homonyms or alternate spellings, and the reader needs to understand which meaning is used. “The wind was too strong to wind the sail.” For more examples by Sonal Panse, see Spy Code Rule 44 in the Appendix of Vol. 3 of my book, It's Not Rocket Surgery!

 

http://thegodfreymethod.com/blog/open-world-just-say-no-sight-reading

Top Ten Myths of Reading 4

Myth 4. Teach sight-words.

Truth: Instead, teach only by sounding-out words. Phonics structure the brain properly for maximum, efficient reading capability. Phonics heals the dyslexic brain.

My illustrator Leah Shingleton says, “I have never met a phonics-learner who couldn’t sight-read, but I have met plenty of sight-readers who don’t know how to decode an unfamiliar word. As adults they must often guess and feel embarrassed.” This sad scenario can be prevented by teaching children to read early the right way.

My co-worker Dave was taught to read by the sight-reading method back in the 1940s-50s by the old ‘Look Dick, See Jane’ method. He can read functionally but always wrestles with new words.

Learning to read by memorizing the shapes of words is confusing, like trying to memorize thousands of hieroglyphics. NEVER do this:

Teaching children to guess based on context is one of the worst practices in schools and lowers self-esteem. Later, sight-reading will naturally follow sounding-out the words, but should NEVER be first.

The educational system has been going backwards for several decades, now. Many schools teach sight-reading in kindergarten. Several commercial early-reading programs are also based on sight-reading. If your baby can read by sight-reading now, he probably will struggle with reading as an adult.

Sight-reading has many names, like Whole Language. Don't be fooled. It can trigger dyslexia, too.
If you want your children to be their best, keep them away from the Whole Language method of reading. I focus on phonics often in my columns, and there is a very important reason for this. Successful children know how to read well- it is the foundation of everything else- and that is impossible with the Whole Language method. Why, you ask?

The Whole Language dogma is a pernicious propaganda that has nearly destroyed reading ability in all the English speaking countries; not just the in United States, but it also invaded the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and possibly New Zealand. What surprises me is that the governments, universities, and public school administrators turned a deaf ear to those proclaiming that this emperor has no clothes.

(Of course, the children of the government elite attend private schools where proper phonics is taught.)

The Whole Language fiasco* convinced leaders and teachers that phonics was low-level sub-skills. It indoctrinated them to think that explicit, systematic phonics was lower-order thinking. This is completely the opposite of the truth, but several nations swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Is there a purposeful, dumbing-down of future voters, here?

What the Whole Language doctrine put in place of intelligent phonics was a system of ‘natural’ learning (we know that even though language is natural to humans, but reading is not. It must be taught). Whole Language taught a ‘cueing system’ where looking at the context of the sentence helped the child guess at the unknown word. Yes, it said guess. What a slow, frustrating, error-filled process.

There is no more damaging method that guessing. My son is a perfectionist. If he guessed wrongly, he would be distraught, give up, and his self-esteem would suffer deeply. Luckily, his mother taught him phonics early and right.

Then Whole Language goes on to say that children can get others to help them guess, called cooperative learning. They ask the question, ‘What would make sense, here?’ They see what letter the word started with and how long it was, and guess at possibilities from the limited words that they learned by sight-reading. How horrible! And it doesn’t help them with isolated words, such as signs, where there are no pictures, clues, contexts or cooperative partners. The children are confounded and confused. Basically, a Whole Language reader is still illiterate.

True comprehension and 'meaning-making' come from decoding a word properly by phonics, getting it right in a short amount of time, knowing what it is, and knowing the rest of the sentence words with confidence. Not from guessing.

Take a look at spelling bees. Most winners of spelling bees spell by phonics. They are able to hear the sounds in the words and take them apart. They can build words from root words, adding prefixes and suffixes, so they can also deconstruct them for spelling. Phonics makes it easier to remember which spelling goes with which homonym, too. These children don’t have to memorize thousands of sight words.

They have been able to make sense of words on a foundation of phonics rules, and can decode new words, with only about 42 sounds. That is just sheer genius. It is higher-order thinking. It even makes it easier to remember irregular spellings.

Have you or your children ever taken piano lessons? Students are taught each note’s name, sound, place on the piano and in the musical staff, individually before putting them together into chords, measures, and complete songs. Once those are mastered, they can move on to more complex pieces and learn to add nuances to the music with soft and loud, slow and fast, slurring or staccato, etc.
Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to learn piano the Whole Language way? The piano student would have to learn whole songs by sight, guess through context, cooperation, comprehension, and meaning-making. How many whole songs can a child memorize by sight? Not many. But any student who has a foundation of individual notes can build up to any and every tune out there. It is the same with phonics and reading.

*Whole Language at the Fork in the Road, Cathy Froggatt, Former NRRF North Carolina Director, Right to Read Report, February 1998

http://www.thegodfreymethod.com/blog/top-ten-myths-reading-myth-4