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

I agree with you niminy. When I read Maupassant in French for A level, I had to guess a lot of the meaning. There are English words that I use now that I couldn't define, but I know what they mean from the context in which they are used. I do think that that is how we learn and absorb information. That is the progressive constructivist approach which constructs knowledge based on our existing knowledge. It allows us to make the leap to the next level without following didactic instructions which we may not have to hand.

I'm not stupid enough to pay someone to write speeches for me, learnandsay.

No one is suggesting that phonics teaching alone teaches comprehension, niminypiminy. And are you really suggesting that whole word teaching does?

I imagine if you pay someone else to write your maiden speech you will also take the time for them to teach you how to pronounce unfamiliar words and rehearse it to the nth degree

In order for people not to laugh at us, we make sure not to commiit any faux pas. How would you pronounce faux pas without being told and memorising it?

Lookandsay was being taught In the 1960s. Dh was born 1961 and was disasterously taught look and say to read.
He didn't learn to read until he was 10, when he was finally sent for remedial phonics. He spent the whole of secondary in the bottom classes because of his literacy problems, even though he is very intelligent and now a professional engineer.

As faux pas is French I would wink at the nearest handsome Frenchman claig

What about the children whose acquisition of reading skills and self-esteem are damaged by your liberal approach of mixing methods? And you won't know which ones they will be - until it's too late and the damage is done. You don't need whole word teaching to teach comprehension.

Well, aren't key words and the so-called 'tricky' words taught as whole words?

In any case, you could just as well say that you won't know those children who will be put off reading and think it's boring because of doing endless phonics - until it is too late.

It's true that you don't need to use whole word teaching to teach comprehension. But it is also true that phonics systems are particularly poor at teaching comprehension.

But faux pas is English, because English is French and German and Latin and Greek, and without memorisation we would all be up s*'s creek.

Well, aren't key words and the so-called 'tricky' words taught as whole words?
only by people who don't know what they are doing and can't read the instruction book (aka Letters & Sounds)

If the Macbeth quote is too tricky you can always go for the other one: 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'

Pretty much decodable.

but winking at handsome French men is much more fun than memorisation ... and no it isn't English it is a French phase commonly used by English speakers

How did the people who wrote Letters & Sounds learn to read, before Letters & Sounds was created?

mrz, you are right

you obviously know some pretty poor phonics teachers niminypiminy if they are teaching words by sight and not teaching comprehension.

They used Jolly Phonics claig much better programme

Well, aren't key words and the so-called 'tricky' words taught as whole words?

Nooo!!!!! They are taught as decodable with a tricky 'bit' - the bit being an alternative grapheme they haven't yet been taught, not as utterly undecipherable.

But it is also true that phonics systems are particularly poor at teaching comprehension.
Of course it's poor at teaching comprehension - that's because it doesn't even purport to. At all. Decoding is one strand of reading - there are many others.

In any case, you could just as well say that you won't know those children who will be put off reading and think it's boring because of doing endless phonics - until it is too late.

Endless phonics? 20 minutes a day of games, songs, actions - really? And just how, exactly, is actual damage to reading skills by mixed methods even slightly the same as that statement?

'They used Jolly Phonics claig much better programme'

Claig's example of reading a book in a foreign language is an instructive one. You know how to decode all the words, because you have been taught the rules for that language. But unless you memorise a lot of whole words, decoding won't help you. And unless you can infer from the context, and from your knowledge of other words in that and other languages, what an unknown word is likely to mean, being able to decode the sound will not help at all.

So what I am saying is that to become fluent, higher-level readers, we need to be able to decode words, for sure. But we need other skills skills that the emphasis of phonics on decoding is poor at equipping us with. Because even once children have become 'free readers' they still need to learn to read. You can free read all you like, but unless you have a lot of other reading skills you won't be able to read Charles Dickens and make any sense out of it.

Exactly right, niminy.
Which is why I didn't understand why the Head of Ofsted seemed to think that teaching young children phonics would solve the problem of this country's decline in literacy standards compared to other countries on the P??? test or whatever it is called. I mean what does he mean by literacy? Is it decoding or higher level skills? What does that P* test actually test for and for what age group? How is teaching phonics to KS1 etc going to increase our literacy standards vis-a-vis other countries?

Endless phonics? 20 minutes a day of games, songs, actions - really? In my children's school they do loads more than that. My 5 yr old son can tell me what a split diagraph is and give me lots of examples. But he thinks reading is boring and refuses to do it at home. Although we have taught him to love stories and books since he was born.

*If the Macbeth quote is too tricky you can always go for the other one: 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'

Pretty much decodable.*

It's not whether you can decode it. It's whether you can understand it. There is a difference, you know.

and no one is disagreeing that decoding is just one skill needed to be a good reader ... but your belief that good phonics instruction excludes teaching vocabulary and comprehension is not based in reality.

When do children become free readers? and what is a free reader?

My Y2s studied Macbeth and The Tempest and enjoyed both

'My Y2s studied Macbeth and The Tempest and enjoyed both'

Blimey, without the York Notes, I would struggle with Shakespeare, and there are no notes available that can make sense of Gordon Brown's speeches, or so I find.

I don't believe that good teaching excludes vocabulary and comprehension. I just don't think that phonics, which does relentlessly focus on decoding, whatever else good teachers may do, is the be-all and end-all.