What a prime example you give! And the real sadness, is that if a kid is pretending to read, it tells you how badly that kid really wants to have mastery of the ability.
There is another great piece, which is an interview of Emily Solari by Emily Oster. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/learning-to-read-why-some-schools . I like this quote: "One common rebuttal to the implementation of explicit and systematic early phonics instruction is that it does not foster a joy for reading. I would like to flip this and ask people to consider: It’s very hard to develop joy for reading if you can’t read. A child who is not taught how to read is a child who is more likely to become disengaged in school; they become frustrated and this impacts all academic content areas."
I think it is important to amplify the core issue, which is that educational pedagogy is failing many children on the basics of reading and math. It is hard to see at first glance, because certain demographic groups can compensate for this failure. So, it is easy for the current zeitgeist to misperceive the issue as one of inequity.
Another area that is completely understudied is visual tracking. Whole-word reading approaches might really mess with the early eye muscle development and eye/brain coordination crucial to reading-based focusing, movement, and visual grouping. Age 7-11 is just such a crucial developmental window for brain circuitry. By the time a kid is in middle school, a lot of that ship has already sailed.
What a prime example you give! And the real sadness, is that if a kid is pretending to read, it tells you how badly that kid really wants to have mastery of the ability.
There is another great piece, which is an interview of Emily Solari by Emily Oster. https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/learning-to-read-why-some-schools . I like this quote: "One common rebuttal to the implementation of explicit and systematic early phonics instruction is that it does not foster a joy for reading. I would like to flip this and ask people to consider: It’s very hard to develop joy for reading if you can’t read. A child who is not taught how to read is a child who is more likely to become disengaged in school; they become frustrated and this impacts all academic content areas."
I think it is important to amplify the core issue, which is that educational pedagogy is failing many children on the basics of reading and math. It is hard to see at first glance, because certain demographic groups can compensate for this failure. So, it is easy for the current zeitgeist to misperceive the issue as one of inequity.
Another area that is completely understudied is visual tracking. Whole-word reading approaches might really mess with the early eye muscle development and eye/brain coordination crucial to reading-based focusing, movement, and visual grouping. Age 7-11 is just such a crucial developmental window for brain circuitry. By the time a kid is in middle school, a lot of that ship has already sailed.