For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.
So I’ll preface this by saying I’m a late 20s Canadian who attended elementary school from 2001-2009, but we weren’t taught phonics (the actual system), we were taught about word sounds.
A lot of my classmates were on their own if they didn’t immediately “get it.” Also, it was encouraged to skip words if you didn’t know them and then try to guess what they were based on the context of the sentence. Lots of wrong guesses happened and those kids got laughed at.
I found it incredibly concerning as a kid because there were a ton of weaker readers who could barely get through a single sentence. This is still happening, even if it’s not in your child’s school, and that should concern you. These kids will grow up thinking they’re stupid when they just needed different tools like your son has.
I think also one thing to remember is that phonics and word sounds are not reading either due to the fact that English is a Frankenstein language where any letter or combination of letters often has a myriad of ways of being pronounced. You cannot learn to read without a healthy dose of memorization and contextual cluing. Letters are, at best, just another clue as to what the word could be.
So I’ll preface this by saying I’m a late 20s Canadian who attended elementary school from 2001-2009, but we weren’t taught phonics (the actual system), we were taught about word sounds.
A lot of my classmates were on their own if they didn’t immediately “get it.” Also, it was encouraged to skip words if you didn’t know them and then try to guess what they were based on the context of the sentence. Lots of wrong guesses happened and those kids got laughed at.
I found it incredibly concerning as a kid because there were a ton of weaker readers who could barely get through a single sentence. This is still happening, even if it’s not in your child’s school, and that should concern you. These kids will grow up thinking they’re stupid when they just needed different tools like your son has.
I think also one thing to remember is that phonics and word sounds are not reading either due to the fact that English is a Frankenstein language where any letter or combination of letters often has a myriad of ways of being pronounced. You cannot learn to read without a healthy dose of memorization and contextual cluing. Letters are, at best, just another clue as to what the word could be.