Reading in the 1930's or 1940's

[yvette37]

Hello,

Does anybody know how they used to teach reading in the 1930's or 1940's? or earlier for that matter. What did they use instead of the 'Synthetized Phonics'? I am quite curious about this.

Thank you

Yvette

We don't rearrange the sounds to create a new sound that we recognise, we rearrange the letters to create a new word that we recognise.

claig said: "I think it is due to memory, they see how others do it and they internalise the whole words, whole sentences, whole thoughts and whole images portrayed by these words and they can then create new patterns, sentences and thoughts based on what they have seen before. They immerse themselves in words and thoughts until they become second nature, so that their ideas then flow rather than having to be developed brick by brick, sound by sound, from the bottom up."

You are entitled to think it's 'due to memory' claig and to invent a theory as to how reading and writing works if you wish.

What the research shows, however, is that there are different types of memory, based in different locations in the brain. That babies learn language by their brains forming neural pathways in response to specific speech sounds and patterns of sound. That some children figure out for themselves, consciously or sub-consciously, how our alphabetic writing system maps on to the way speech sounds make up words and sentences. And that others don't figure it out for themselves and need specific support.

In a mass education system we have to find a method or methods of teaching reading that work for all children, so it makes a lot of sense to use one that benefits as many children as possible. The evidence suggests that synthetic phonics does just that. If children can't decode they can't see how others do it. That's the problem.

'How can one see a word as a whole without seeing the letters in it?''

The Avenger doesn't understand how we think. We see the letters, and in fact only need to see some of the letters, before we make teh jump, join the dots and guess what the remaining letters must be, we make the leap, see the word in our mind, then recheck teh page to see that it matches the word in our mind. As we become more skilled and understand context better, we can jump from stepping stone to stepping stone even faster, without falling into the water.

We use our mind in exactly the same way as we use it when we see a footballer strike a ball and already predict and see its final path as soon as the ball has been struck, which is why we begin to cheer before the ball has even hit the net.

We can read well because we can see ahead, based on what we already have learnt.

I agree ... whole word rules..with a tiny bit of phonics!

I am a home-ed Mum and have taught 4 DCs to read using a combination of the two! As English is not a phonetic language, teaching it using phonics produces such a huge list of exceptions that it becomes very confusing for children.

I taught single letters phonetically and then built up from there to simple words. Once they were confident with these we moved on at lightning speed - led by the children. I used Rigby Rockets and Oxford Reading Tree initially and thereafter the children chose their own books from the library.

I think the educationalists like Gove and the like have absolutely no idea whatsoever how children truly learn. They are all full of their theories and trying to make their own mark and it is children (and teachers!!) who are suffering as result.

My DH is an author, poet and teacher who runs workshops in schools all over the country. When he goes into schools, he brings home tales of how 8 year olds are being taught about home insulation and writing using metaphors. We didn't do metaphors until O level in the pre-National Curriculum days and children today (RIGHTLY) don't get it (it took me a while back in 1980).

Excuse the rant.... National Curriculum is one of my bugbears!

You need to bear in mind that there's a difference between expert skills and how novices learn those skills. How many parents have had things 'mended' or 'cleaned' by an enthusiastic toddler? What the toddler sees is adults appearing to do certain things that s/he can easily mimic. What the toddler doesn't see is what the adult knows and what outcomes the adult is aiming for. It's exactly the same with reading.

Expert readers' brains already know the phonetic patterns of written English, so they can pick up beginning and end letters, skip chunks of text etc etc. Novice readers' brains don't have that information and until they do, they can't take the short cuts that expert readers use.

Agree with EightPairsOfHands that some of the curriculum is too complex. There are things like simile, personification and metaphor. It's all great stuff, but is it too much too soon? We didn't do this when I was at primary school. Is too much being covered, leaving too little time to consolidate the essentials. The Daily Mail sometimes tells us tha teh curriculum has been dumbed down, but I think it may be teh opposite, that it is too advanced.

Has a bureaucrat created a league table like checklist and ticked nearly everything under the sun, which needs to be covered and tested, and then left the kids to get stuck into that - and stuck some may well become?

Yes and Yes to the last two messages.

hildergardofbingen - When we taught out children to read, we started with purely phonetic words that built up from the sounds in the alphabet (cat, rat, jam, Jim etc). This stage lasted a L-O-N-G time but it built the confidence and ability - the expertise - necessary to progress with gusto.

claig - Agree with you entirely! I think the words "largely inappropriate" express too many aspects of the National Curriculum. There are, however, some inspirational teachers who find a way of ticking the boxes and successfully teaching the important things. These few seem to largely ignore the prescribed way of teaching and formulate their own method which both teaches and enables them to tick the boxes for the outcomes - they also make it FUN. My DH is a children's poet and author who is also an inspirational itinerant teacher. He is the one who reports back to me about The Few....(and The Many ;-) )

I did simile and metaphor at primary school, must have because it was a large proportion of the 11+ content. My son age 6 understands it and will use a simile in language but I don't think he's been formally taught it at school yet he's just picked it up. In fact my 3-year old will say things like "I'm roaring like a lion" I can't see why you would want to leave that until GCSE!! Simile and metaphor will be picked up through speaking and listening, not just reading, well before the DCs are competent readers in a lot of cases.

Yes - children understand how to SAY "roaring like a lion" or "as tall as a giant" through everyday communication with you and through reading with them but when you tell them to make sure they use a "SIMILE" in their story at school many of them are lost (muses: phonetics of "simile" are interesting)

Metaphor is a whole different kettle of fish :o

The most important things a parent can do is to talk to their child, to read to and with them right up until they are 11 even. Some children go to school with such poor language skills that they can barely talk. I know this may not be the case in more middle-class areas where the parents interact naturally with their DCs, but believe me, in some of the failing schools my DH is called in to help, the ones who can communicate in Reception/Y1 are in the minority! I was not aware of this huge gulf until he described some of the instances. It would shock you.

Still... as we sail upon the sea of life through fair weather and storm...

Which is why it is important for teachers to use such language when talking and reading to children from primary age. Then even the DCs that don't get exposed to it at home will at school. If you and your DH have your way some DCs wouldn't be exposed to such things until secondary level which I think is a huge waste!

I'm sure my DCs yr2 class would be quite happy with the concept of simile and possibly metaphor too.

I am not saying they shouldn't be exposed to simile but it should be encountered not as a tool to score points and tick boxes but as a natural part of their own creative skills, and presented to them in child-friendly language. I think too many are scared by the mere word SIMILE. The teaching staff are obliged to use these technical words...

I'm sorry that I may have come across too strongly as anti - I am in favour of developing children's creativity - I want more of them to feel confident about enriching their language at whatever age they are. I am more pro-imaginative development and expression than you could possibly believe (this is actually DH's specialism in schools). I just think it should be done in more child-friendly ways.

But if you can't read in the first place you can't develop creativity. Whole word.methods left large numbers of children unable to read or functionally illiterate,as they don't have the building blocks to access new words

May be it's just that no "system" is perfect.

I developed my method using initial building blocks of phonic sounds that made sense then moved on from there once those blocks were in place.

I was just typing out a reply almost exactly the same as Bruffin's.

You can be as creative as you like but the foundations need to be instilled. Your DCs were fine with your method, my DS can read well in spite of phonics being very patchy at his school. I found it hard to see how phonics would work when I first heard about it on MN but now I can see how it's the best thing to teach a large group of children.

Yep - my system was fine as I was one-to-one. Not everyone has that luxury, I agree.

Oops meant large group as in numbers but also mixed abilites, backgrounds etc.

Have been following this with interest as am just embarking on some intensive phonics lessons with my year 1 ds who is struggling. We have been doing 10 minutes every evening and its making a difference already. I couldnt agree more that the national curriculum seems to have too much content. Its great to learn science history and alike but whats the point if you cannot read write and add up. Personally, I would prefer KS1 to concentrate on the basics of reading writing and numeracy and let the children play more. As it is I am having to do extra at home because there seems to be little time to consolidate learning before moving onto something else. A good example of this is that my ds was struggling with the concept of money before xmas and the teacher asked if I could do some extra work at home. I did this of course yet they didnt look at money again until this week. If i had not have done the extra at home it is likely he would have forgotton what he had learnt the first time round and be effectively starting all over again. So easy to see how children can fall further and further behind if they do not have the support at home.

I agree, cassgate. The two outstanding oversubscribed primaries in my district advertise the fact that they believe in reading, writing and arithmetic above all.

claig you seem to have a whole different agenda

www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/

EightPairsOfHands of course English is a phonetic language the difficulty is there isn't a direct one letter to one sound match so to learn to read and write we need a combination of letters to represent a single sound and because of our long history the roots of words determine how they are written.

Why do firm foundations exclude creativity surely they are two sides of the same coin.

cassgate, you are definitely doing the right thing with 10mins a day phonics - little and often - you should really see some progress!

Yes Mrz, a good teacher/school will do both teaching the skills of reading and writing using phonics plus semantics and syntactics / grammar and punctuation, etc alongside giving lots of opportunities for creative and meaningful writing and reading. The two are definitely not mutually exclusive.

and don't forget there was once I T A Initial Teaching Alphabet, which even changed shape of some letters - probably didn't last long, but children's books were published in it, including some Beatrix Potters.

Interesting article on ITA

Educashunal lunacie or wizdom