Why are US schools so bad at facts?

[agamemnus]

But that's just it. In the United States today homosexuals are still treated like second class citizens, on the basis of their sexual orientation. The ability to do so is even codified. Maybe you don't consider it to be a big deal, but you aren't likely to be denied parental rights because the other parent is the same sex as you, either. In the 1960s a white person wouldn't have thought twice about the discrimination a black person felt on a daily basis.

OK, but the issue doesn't deserve the liberulz outcry that it's getting, not a book, or a grade school course.

Phonics helps people learn to read. I can't figure out what your issue is with elementary school children being taught to read.

Nope; phonics confused the hell out of me. I basically just monkeyed what everyone else was saying in class because it didn't make sense to me at all.

I ignored your "connection" between lead poisoning and phonics because it was nonsensical at best.

...
So let me try again, dear! These both highlight failures of the school system. It's clear that phonics teaching, even more so based on using a separate phonics "language", is not effective. Yet it's taught. Schoolbooks are filled with bad facts that aren't checked; yet they are sold to schools and used. That's the connection.



http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/de...age/index.html

Note that the phonics link above was found simply by typing "phonics efficacy" and going to the first link that discusses studies of the general population. (number 2; the first one talks about phonics for deaf people or something...) Now, here are two quotes!

To support such a claim, one would have to show that there are substantial numbers of children who have learned to read without extensive phonics training (this is easy to find), and also substantial numbers of children who cannot "learn to read by reading," who require extensive phonics instruction. The existence of this second group has never been demonstrated...

A consensus of experienced practitioners will tell us if it is worthwhile to tell children that the a-e combination is pronounced with the long vowel and the final e silent (except when the final syllable is unaccented - then the vowel is pronounced with a short-i sound, as in "palace," or the combination is "are," with words such as "have" and "dance" as exceptions). How many of us who easily and fluently read words with the a-e combination were ever aware of this rule?

And let me ask you this: just how are we doing with phonics anyway? Almost every kid nowadays cannot or will not acknowledge the difference between "no" and "know", or "their", "there", and "they're"... this never was the case before. Of course, there are other factors, but this points to the failure of teaching phonics as a policy.

[Loki]

Those are pretty absurd requirements. The same can be said about every other method seeking to teach kids to read...Are there a substantial number of kids who learned to read without using "whole language"? Yes. Is there a substantial group of people who wouldn't be able to learn to read without extensive "whole language" instruction? No. I'm not saying one method is better than the other, but it's dishonest to require that level of proof.

[agamemnus]

I edited my post above, as I am wont to do.

Those are pretty absurd requirements. The same can be said about every other method seeking to teach kids to read... ... No. I'm not saying one method is better than the other, but it's dishonest to require that level of proof.

WOW... One method is always better than another, by definition. And that method is to do away with phonics teaching hand waving... "i before e except after c" might be an appropriate song to teach, though.

Edit (again): the whole point is not to argue for or against anything per se, but that the people who make these sorts of decisions of what to teach children are quite possibly not even having a discussion; if they do, it is politicized and dishonest.

[littlelolligagged]

OK, but the issue doesn't deserve the liberulz outcry that it's getting, not a book, or a grade school course.

You're right. It deserves much more attention than what it is getting/

Nope; phonics confused the hell out of me. I basically just monkeyed what everyone else was saying in class because it didn't make sense to me at all.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is with phonics.

So let me try again, dear! These both highlight failures of the school system. It's clear that phonics teaching, even more so based on using a separate phonics "language", is not effective. Yet it's taught. Schoolbooks are filled with bad facts that aren't checked; yet they are sold to schools and used. That's the connection.

But you haven't given any sort of evidence that the lead poisoning thing was ever taught in schools. All we have is your anecdote to explain your lack of knowledge. You blame teachers and textbooks rather than blaming yourself.

And let me ask you this: just how are we doing with phonics anyway? Almost every kid nowadays cannot or will not acknowledge the difference between "no" and "know", or "their", "there", and "they're"... this never was the case before. Of course, there are other factors, but this points to the failure of teaching phonics as a policy.

I'd like to see your source for kids today not being able to recognize homonyms, and your source for it never previously being a problem.

[agamemnus]

That doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is with phonics.

Read the article..

But you haven't given any sort of evidence that the lead poisoning thing was ever taught in schools. All we have is your anecdote to explain your lack of knowledge. You blame teachers and textbooks rather than blaming yourself.

You'll just have to take my word for it...

I'd like to see your source for kids today not being able to recognize homonyms, and your source for it never previously being a problem.

Myself. When I was the Emperor of a large Age of Empires clan over 10 years ago, I never once saw someone confuse "no" and "know". When I go and play an online game now, I see it almost every single time I play.

You'll just have to trust me on this one.

Edit: Of course, I suppose it's possible that adults are now playing these games more, and they forgot their homonyms...

[littlelolligagged]

Read the article..

I did - and many others from the same google search saying that phonics was most effective at teaching children to read.

Myself. When I was the Emperor of a large Age of Empires clan over 10 years ago, I never once saw someone confuse "no" and "know". When I go and play an online game now, I see it almost every single time I play.

You'll just have to trust me on this one.

Edit: Of course, I suppose it's possible that adults are now playing these games more, and they forgot their homonyms...

That's really not evidence of anything other than video games rotting peoples brains and making them lazy.

After all, there is now an entire generation of people who are prefer to use u2 instead of taking the quarter of a second it takes to type you too.

edit: Also, it's worth mentioning that by 4th grade elementary schools here, at least, are done with teaching phonics. That is to teach the basic fundamentals of recognizing words, nothing more.

[RandBlade]

Agreed. While "learning to learn", learning principles, instilling creativity and such are definitely worthy goals for any school, some aspects involve learning by rote and cannot be circumvented.

Just one (complicated) example: Organic chemistry. You simply cannot function in OC if you do not learn a lot of basic reaction types (e.g. the difference between a Friedels-Craft-Alkylation and a Friedels-Craft-Acylation, how to prepare the educats, what to do with the products. Or the differences between SN1 and SN2) by rote. I mean, part of that is surely deducible, but it's much faster and more reliable if you simply sat down and crammed it into your head.

Exactly. Its the same in any industry.

Law students have to learn so much case-law, that's the number one example of learning by rote I can think of at uni. If they didn't they wouldn't be able to properly work in the field, and if it wasn't done at school they'd struggle to learn how to do it at uni.

Y = C + I + G + (X-M)
The above is a very basic (but important) economic formula. GPD (Y) = Consumption (C) plus Investment (I) plus Government expenditure (G) plus the net difference between Exports (X) and Imports (M). I didn't just figure that out, I know that by heart. By rote.

Rote provides the basic building blocks for whatever field you're eventually going to utilise, you need to be creative etc too but if you have no building blocks to be creative from then there's not much you can do.

[agamemnus]

I did - and many others from the same google search saying that phonics was most effective at teaching children to read.

Post one.

Also, it's worth mentioning that by 4th grade elementary schools here, at least, are done with teaching phonics. That is to teach the basic fundamentals of recognizing words, nothing more.

1) We had "phonics learning" in 2nd grade.
2) Recognizing words is done by reading with a parent or instructor, and then reading by yourself. Anyone who says otherwise is a QUACK.
3) Admit it; have you learned reading with the phonics "system"? What did it teach you?

I know that by heart. By rote.

Bad example.... :P I figured that formula out on my own; I also saw that formula in the form you just showed. By definition, I know the formula, simple because it makes sense, not because I had to memorize it. I did however basically slowly "memorize" what each term meant, because the formula doesn't make sense if you can't define the factors.


Chemistry symbols are a different matter though.. you pretty much have to memorize them. But that's more of a language, really... I guess a ton of physics formulas would need to be either memorized by physicists and structural engineers or at least they'd have to remember enough to google them...

[Ominous Gamer]

1) We had "phonics learning" in 2nd grade.
2) Recognizing words is done by reading with a parent or instructor, and then reading by yourself. Anyone who says otherwise is a QUACK.
3) Admit it; have you learned reading with the phonics "system"? What did it teach you?

Lolli may have misspoke, or you missunderstood. Phonics is not the same as recognizing entire words. The idea to teach children via memorization has been attempted, and discarded as insufficient. Thanks to the lovely way the English language is constructed its nearly impossible to get a satisfying level of pronunciation and defineablility by teaching elementary children using a visual recognition system.
The proper way is to break down sounds into root parts, using phonics, so childen can blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations and spellings of unknown words.

This comes up in secondary education classes in college, but I was also unlucky enough to end up in the county's read via memorization attempt in 1st through 3rd grade. Granted a single example can't be used to defend or define a study, but those were the only years the county attempted to teach without phonics, and I ended up taking personal phonics courses in late middle school because the memorization attempt had failed me.

You're the last person who should be requesting sources in this thread.
RTS speak is hardly a valid way to view proper use of a language. Considering a lot of serious players can hit 200 APM, using u2 or gg is more than acceptable. Its a different story if you want to get into IMing via something like AOL, but again thats going to give you very little ammunition to use againist language education.

[agamemnus]

Thanks for your input, Ominous Gamer...

The proper way to break down sounds into root parts, using phonics so children can blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.

Well, that is a step removed... learning suffixes and prefixes isn't the same as a phonics learning system.

This comes up in college secondary education classes, but I was also unlucky enough to end up in the county's read via memorization attempt in 1st through 3rd grade.

What do you define as reading via memorization? Sounds ominous...

Granted a single example can't be used to defend or define a study, but those were the only years the county attempted to teach without phonics

I suspect their program was really not the same thing as simply giving children books and reading with them.

I ended up taking personal phonics courses in late middle school because the memorization attempt had failed me.

So what was the actual problem that "hooked on phonics" supposedly solved?

RTS speak is hardly a valid way to view proper use of a language. Considering a lot of serious players can hit 200 APM, using u2 or gg is more than acceptable.

"u2" or "gg" is fine; switching "no and "know" is not. Also, in the latter case my experience actually comes from both MMORPGs and how some real 17 year olds type on IRC..

Studies have demonstrated that the best predictor of early reading ability is a child’s understanding of how words are made up of sounds. Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read provides instruction in sound-symbol correspondence and practice in these associations at the word and sentence level.

]That's from the Hooked on Phonics site, which makes money off of selling the idea of teaching by phonics systems. However, again, "correlation is not causation". Also, I can't even tell from their site exactly what they do, but I suspect it's not exactly the same system employed in my elementary school, where letters were assigned symbols that indicated how they sounded.

[Aimless]

I'm confused. As Lolli pointed out, the evidence right now favours phonics for teaching reading to American kids, at least in early stages:

http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/findings.cfm

Findings and Determinations

The meta-analysis revealed that systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulty learning to read. The ability to read and spell words was enhanced in kindergartners who received systematic beginning phonics instruction. First graders who were taught phonics systematically were better able to decode and spell, and they showed significant improvement in their ability to comprehend text. Older children receiving phonics instruction were better able to decode and spell words and to read text orally, but their comprehension of text was not significantly improved.

Systematic synthetic phonics instruction (see sidebar for definition) had a positive and significant effect on disabled readers’ reading skills. These children improved substantially in their ability to read words and showed significant, albeit small, gains in their ability to process text as a result of systematic synthetic phonics instruction. This type of phonics instruction benefits both students with learning disabilities and low-achieving students who are not disabled. Moreover, systematic synthetic phonics instruction was significantly more effective in improving low socioeconomic status (SES) children’s alphabetic knowledge and word reading skills than instructional approaches that were less focused on these initial reading skills.

Across all grade levels, systematic phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers to spell. The impact was strongest for kindergartners and decreased in later grades. For poor readers, the impact of phonics instruction on spelling was small, perhaps reflecting the consistent finding that disabled readers have trouble learning to spell.

Although conventional wisdom has suggested that kindergarten students might not be ready for phonics instruction, this assumption was not supported by the data. The effects of systematic early phonics instruction were significant and substantial in kindergarten and the 1st grade, indicating that systematic phonics programs should be implemented at those age and grade levels.

The NRP analysis indicated that systematic phonics instruction is ready for implementation in the classroom. Findings of the Panel regarding the effectiveness of explicit, systematic phonics instruction were derived from studies conducted in many classrooms with typical classroom teachers and typical American or English-speaking students from a variety of backgrounds and socioeconomic levels. Thus, the results of the analysis are indicative of what can be accomplished when explicit, systematic phonics programs are implemented in today’s classrooms. Systematic phonics instruction has been used widely over a long period of time with positive results, and a variety of systematic phonics programs have proven effective with children of different ages, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

These facts and findings provide converging evidence that explicit, systematic phonics instruction is a valuable and essential part of a successful classroom reading program. However, there is a need to be cautious in giving a blanket endorsement of all kinds of phonics instruction.

The teaching should be tailored to the individual, so that kids who read fairly well don't have to go through tedious exercises that they may not need, but I don't understand this summary dismissal of all phonics teaching systems.

PS. No-one is advocating using phonics exclusively, it's just one aspect of learning to read.

[Ominous Gamer]

Well, that is a step removed... learning suffixes and prefixes isn't the same as a phonics learning system.

ag, you're a moron. Lolli, you're a stronger person than I.

teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.

I suspect their program was really not the same thing as simply giving children books and reading with them.

Reading with children limits the educational input the words to what is immediately on the page. The children aren't absorbing root definitions and rules for how sounds work, they are absorbing how you pronounce and spell a single word.

"u2" or "gg" is fine; switching "no and "know" is not. Also, in the latter case my experience actually comes from both MMORPGs and how some real 17 year olds type on IRC..

Will you make up your mind? Which genre was it? Were you the leader of some slow AoE clan, or a member of some sort of grammar nazi raid?
I'm not defending people who never learned the difference between no and know, than and then. However personal and immediate online discourse is not defending your stance againist any certain teaching method. Hell, it doesn't mean a damn thing past the worldwide concept of lanaguages simplifying themselves.

[littlelolligagged]

I already did post links, both of which show the importance of phonics as the building blocks of reading.

The panel determined that effective reading instruction includes teaching children to break apart and manipulate the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), teaching them that these sounds are represented by letters of the alphabet which can then be blended together to form words (phonics), having them practice what they've learned by reading aloud with guidance and feedback (guided oral reading), and applying reading comprehension strategies to guide and improve reading comprehension.

*gasp* What a concept. Phonics doesn't mean you will spend your entire life breaking words down into their composite bits.

Phonics wasn't being used when I was in elementary school - and I taught myself how to read when I was 3 the same as my son did. So, no, I didn't learn to read through phonics. I have, however, seen how exceptionally well it worked for my daughter. She had a much harder time with the "sight word" lists than she did with the words she could decode through phonics.

[Aimless]

Well, that is a step removed... learning suffixes and prefixes isn't the same as a phonics learning system.

He's talking about learning how written words sound when spoken, not about discerning the approximate meanings of words by breaking them up into roots, suffixes and prefixes.

[agamemnus]

ag, you're a moron.

No, I said phonics learning system, which is different than the definition of just "phonics"...

Reading with children limits the educational input the words to what is immediately on the page. The children aren't absorbing root definitions and rules for how sounds work

Which is obviously how I learned reading and writing by age 6 with phonics instruction (not!). Your blanket statement is false.

Will you make up your mind? Which genre was it? Were you the leader of some slow AoE clan, or a member of some sort of grammar nazi raid?

I said latter case; in the second case it was a grammar nazi raid, and in the first case it was an exceptional AoE clan.

Anyway, I declare this thread to be over by invoking Godwin.


EDIT:
Lolli--

Phonics wasn't being used when I was in elementary school - and I taught myself how to read when I was 3 the same as my son did. So, no, I didn't learn to read through phonics. I have, however, seen how exceptionally well it worked for my daughter. She had a much harder time with the "sight word" lists than she did with the words she could decode through phonics.

But, is it possible that simply reading tons of books is better than both a "sight word list" (what do you mean exactly??) or a phonics system?

[Ominous Gamer]

No, I said phonics learning system, which is different than the definition of just "phonics"...

This is going to be rich, please define the difference between a "phonics learning system" and this:

a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.

Which is obviously how I learned reading and writing by age 6 with phonics instruction (not!). Your blanket statement is false.

There is no blanket statement. I just admitted I was able to learn how to read without phonics, however the 2nd most popular method, memorization (that you appear to be supporting with your reading example), does not carry a child all the way. Its possible to learn to read at an elementary level without phonics, you could very well be a prime example of that.

[littlelolligagged]

EDIT:
Lolli--


But, is it possible that simply reading tons of books is better than both a "sight word list" (what do you mean exactly??) or a phonics system?

Phonics is used in conjunction with reading tons of books. The "sight word lists" are words that either occur with great frequency in writing or words that cannot be easily decoded through phonics and are therefore learned through rote memorization.

The teaching should be tailored to the individual, so that kids who read fairly well don't have to go through tedious exercises that they may not need, but I don't understand this summary dismissal of all phonics teaching systems.

In some other education thread I seem to remember your objecting to breaking kids up by ability and generally infuriating me in the process. Was I misinterpreting you then, or are you changing your stance?


I'll be the first to admit that I found it frustrating that my son had to learn phonics in school - he was horribly bored with it - but there are far more children who need to be taught to read than there are children like him. He did not, however, learn phonics last year. The slower reading groups still were, but his was only learning how to pick out salient details and working on comprehension activities.

[Aimless]

In some other education thread I seem to remember your objecting to breaking kids up by ability and generally infuriating me in the process. Was I misinterpreting you then, or are you changing your stance?

I'm a flexible person I don't remember the last discussion, but I think I was mostly objecting to the practice of tracking kids from an early age according to teachers' assessments of their "ability", in part because I don't think those assessments are reliable enough as predictors to outweigh the risks of setting up some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, and in part because of the risk of underdeveloping those kids that aren't geniuses like Aga to the point where they can't really catch up. Phonics doesn't strike me as something that's intended to be used for idiots, it seems like a group of methods designed to help the majority of normal American kids learn to read, so I think it may avoid some of those risks.

Tracking is just one way to individualise teaching, although I'll grant you it may be the simplest way.

[Aimless]

PS. letting kids read lots of books is a good way to thoroughly practice the skills and knowledge introduced through phonics

[littlelolligagged]

I'm a flexible person I don't remember the last discussion, but I think I was mostly objecting to the practice of tracking kids from an early age according to teachers' assessments of their "ability", in part because I don't think those assessments are reliable enough as predictors to outweigh the risks of setting up some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, and in part because of the risk of underdeveloping those kids that aren't geniuses like Aga to the point where they can't really catch up. Phonics doesn't strike me as something that's intended to be used for idiots, it seems like a group of methods designed to help the majority of normal American kids learn to read, so I think it may avoid some of those risks.

Tracking is just one way to individualise teaching, although I'll grant you it may be the simplest way.

My problem is that by not tracking kids the ones who are more capable are held back. Yes, they can learn on their own, but why do they deserve any less from their school experience than the slowest kid in the class? If no sort of tracking is used, all classes are taught for the least able - leading to very bored children who hate school.

I don't think phonics is something that is intended for idiots at all. It works - and is something intended for the majority.

The really cool thing is that phonics can be adapted to fit a variety of different situations.

PS. letting kids read lots of books is a good way to thoroughly practice the skills and knowledge introduced through phonics

Next thing we know you'll be telling me that letting kids cook is a good way to help them understand the lessons they learned at school about weights and measures.

[agamemnus]

This is going to be rich, please define the difference between a "phonics learning system" and this:

"phonics" is just a general term describing word-sound relationships despite what Wackypedia says at the moment. The phonics system, which I refer to, and that was attempted to be shoved down my brain, was some sort of weird system with tons of symbols above (or below?) the letters, indicating their pronunciations. It didn't make any sense.

Learning suffixes and prefixes, however, does make sense, because it goes towards understanding new words formed from combinations of simpler words or word pieces.

There is no blanket statement.

You said:

The children aren't absorbing root definitions and rules for how sounds work, they are absorbing how you pronounce and spell a single word.

memorization (that you appear to be supporting with your reading example), does not carry a child all the way.

When I learned to read I didn't do it by (forced?) "rote memorization" as lolli says. That's ridiculous. I just remembered the words by reading, not being given a list and told to study it. We did, however, through even the 9th or 10th grade, had some form of spelling and word list sessions where we would practice the words in context and (from 2nd (3rd?) through 8th grade) we did have spelling tests. I don't believe in spelling tests, though. I never did well on them... spelling, just like reading, economic formulas, math, programming etcetcetc is best learned through practice, not memorization or some sort of crazy hand waving system...

My position is that sound-letter connections are not per se important for reading, but that they are naturally learned by the brain through reading.

I just admitted I was able to learn how to read without phonics

??? Then what do you mean when you said:

Granted a single example can't be used to defend or define a study, but those were the only years the county attempted to teach without phonics, and I ended up taking personal phonics courses in late middle school because the memorization attempt had failed me.

Anyway, if your latest statement is true, this means that we have so far not seen one single person here who has personally benefited from phonics system (as I defined in the beginning of my post) based reading/writing learning.

[Aimless]

My position is that sound-letter connections are not per se important for reading, but that they are naturally learned by the brain through reading.

Is it harmful to take a systematic active approach to that "natural learning"?

[agamemnus]

Double post!

The really cool thing is that phonics can be adapted to fit a variety of different situations.

I do concede that it is theoretically possible that a small amount of children will not automatically pick up word-sound combinations when reading with parents/teachers/classmates/by themselves. However, I speculate it is in the minority, in disagreement with Aimless. I believe that nowadays a lot of children are not being allowed to reach their full potential: In my high school, 10 years ago, there was special ed. (dunno exactly what it was called), CP2, CP1, Honors, and (for 11th and 12th grade, sometimes) AP. Honors courses took up maybe 10% of the student body, and that is sad because I did not consider most Honors courses to be particularly rigorous; we didn't really have a huge number of what I would consider "smart" people in Honors courses either.

I will paraphrase some author or another and say "the human brain is a terrible thing to waste"... there is an incredible amount of learning that 99% of all people can do, simply if you don't restrict them.

I suppose that not all phonics learning is bad, as I have later clarified, but I still believe it is being taught in excess and without any sort of planning or research in the school system.

[Ominous Gamer]

"phonics" is just a general term describing word-sound relationships despite what Wackypedia says at the moment.

You heard it here first folks, agamemnus > wikipedia

The phonics system, which I refer to, and that was attempted to be shoved down my brain, was some sort of weird system with tons of symbols above (or below?) the letters, indicating their pronunciations. It didn't make any sense.

This is what you consider phonics? Wait...this also means you don't know how to read a dictionary definition. You're telling me you're able to pronounce all those words from memorization and sight?

Learning suffixes and prefixes, however, does make sense, because it goes towards understanding new words formed from combinations of simpler words or word pieces.

still on this, and it still has nothing to do with the coversation

I don't believe in spelling tests, though. I never did well on them... spelling, just like reading, economic formulas, math, programming etcetcetc is best learned through practice, not memorization or some sort of crazy hand waving system...

Someone who doesn't understand phonics, complaining about not doing good on spelling tests. Awesome.

Then what do you mean when you said

Without phonics I was still able to gain a rudimentary understanding of language, easy enough to pass as an elementary student (since I was one).
Without phonics the other reading and pronunciation methods fall flat in higher learning. Especially when other languages come into play. Who wants to take a guess at a few, lets say African, country names that could get a student without an understanding of phonics in some serious trouble?

[agamemnus]

Is it harmful to take a systematic active approach to that "natural learning"?

You killed my double post.

I believe it is harmful, because it confuses the natural learning process. These gimmick based systems that eschew a child's natural learning abilities are everywhere in the US school system. Thankfully, I forgot both their details and their overall names and mechanisms. Unfortunately, it isn't so great for the purposes of this discussion... let me try to remember...


Ok, one example is in mathematics. In elementary school, I used to try to remember carries in my head. Everyone has the ability to do this, but it comes with a lot of practice. When I made a mistake, the teacher scolded me and said I should write the carries to make myself more accurate. I also remember some sort of elaborate system of writing that stuff out that made it even more easier.. and then I remember seeing my classmates count with their hands while I was counting in my head.

I still can't count as well as I'd like to in my head because my teachers developmentally disabled me. I should sue! I keep trying to multiply powers of two but I keep messing up in the 100,000s.

One Physics example. I'm not exactly sure but I think it was a system of multiplying measures... IE: multiply disparate measures (both system type and powers (m, mm, cm, km) of speed by force, and then break it up into the metric system in meters and seconds and such. What we did was to put it into this huge box-type format and constantly repeat it. This was actually hard for me to remember for some reason. :\

Bad example (IIRC):

Divide 5.0km*1.0m by 12s*1.0minutes*2.0m.

Normally I would do:
5km*m / (12s*minutes*2m)
5000m*m / (12s*60s*2m)
5000/(24*60) m / s^2
5000/(24*60) m / s^2
3.5 m / s^2


The "system":

5.0 km | 1.0 m
--------------
12 s | 1.0 minutes | 2.0 m

5.0 | km | m
--------------
24 | s | minutes | m

5000 | m | m
--------------
24 | s | 60 s | m

5000 | m | m
--------------
1440 | s | s | m


5000 | m |
-----------
1440 | s^2 |

3.5 m/s^2

[agamemnus]

Someone who doesn't understand phonics, complaining about not doing good on spelling tests. Awesome.

By the 6th grade, I had won my class's spelling bee but I lost in the school-wide because I forgot a double "r" (or added?), I believe. In high school (9th grade), I barely made any spelling mistakes; I had begun to write quite a lot from 4th grade onwards (the phonics program started and stopped in 3rd grade) and after 8th grade I virtually stopped taking spelling tests (high school spelling tests were sparse).

Without phonics I was still able to gain a rudimentary understanding of language, easy enough to pass as an elementary student (since I was one), but without phonics the other reading and pronunciation methods fall flat in higher learning. Especially when other languages come into play. Who wants to take a guess at a few, lets say African, country names that could get a student without an understanding of phonics in some serious trouble?

OK... yet, you still do not define how exactly you were taught, and what things were actually missing. Were you taught lists of words, or were you forced to make up sentences that use the words? That's a big difference. Were you simply unable to pronounce words "correctly", but could actually read and write normally?

Methinks you shouldn't generalize from your personal experience so much (we might be both guilty of this), since, as you may have known, I could already read and write in two languages by 7.

[Ominous Gamer]

Methinks you shouldn't generalize from your personal experience so much

Methinks you don't quite understand this concept. The only reason I dropped a personal anecdote was to show that school systems have tried other forms of teaching in this field. Everything else stands on its own and is disconnected from what I experienced.

I was really hoping for an answer to the dictionary question

[LittleFuzzy]

Is it harmful to take a systematic active approach to that "natural learning"?

It is for those whose natural learning doesn't fit the active systemic approach taken. The phonics system makes the assumption that the first association in all reading is that of symbols with spoken sounds. That's not actually true. There are readers out there for whom the first association is a visual construction of what's happening, for instance. And it's not like reading is limited to systems which link symbols with phonemes.

Personally, I'm not fond of phonics, because too many of the people I've spent time with worked, at some point or other, with remedial readers who'd never been able to get beyond phonics and into higher level reading, but I realize there's lots of room to disagree, and it makes perfect sense to try phonics for students who are having trouble anyway.

[GGT]

Wait, so is this thread about phonics, or learning systems, or text books?

Aggie, I have no idea what your concept of phonics is, but it seems bassackward. It's useful for teaching certain groups, at certain times, with other visual methods (Like Chinese who learned to read characters, figuring that our S has a ssssound, like a ssssnake that hissssessss, sssee the ssssnake in the shape of an Esss.....).

I can't really remember how I learned to read, but some phonics was in there. And reading aloud. As a little kid pre-K I could stumble on a new word and "sound it out" myself most times.

[agamemnus]

I was really hoping for an answer to the dictionary question

Watch this... The internet is always right:

http://www.answers.com/topic/phonics: "2. Phonetics."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetics

Phonetics (from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, "sound, voice", pronounced /fəˈnetɪks/) is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech.[1] It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of sounds.

So what I am saying is that I am not against the idea of a very loose phonics instruction, but I am against the idea of taking a sentence and then having the class try to add silly symbols to it and then try to sound out the sentence like a bunch of pantardcakes.