Cheryl Floyd 20 Posted January 30 https://www.npr.org/2019/01/02/677722959/why-millions-of-kids-cant-read-and-what-better-teaching-can-do-about-it The discovery is that nothing is new! We have taken so long away from phonics that we now how teachers that are shocked it would and does work. I will say, in my measly twenty years of teaching only my own seven children, there is a bit of a combination that is necessary. If there is a rule for explaining "do" and "so" and "shoe" and "does" and "friend" then I haven't known it. I have taught a small set of sight words but with the primary focus being on phonics. Our language is a phonetic language. It seems to be when one of the interviewed teachers is shocked and never thought to explain language to her students, that this is evidence of a falling away from the knowledge that students are human beings with the faculties of intellect and reason. Now they are underdeveloped, but still present. They will perceive patterns and use inductive and deductive reasoning to intuit how to begin to pronounce and comprehend words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. I loved listening to my children figure out prepositions and adverbs before we named and studied them: "Zip up it." Technically that's correct! When up is used an a preposition, it must have an object. "Zip it up" is not incorrect or just a way we say it, it's that "up" is an adverb in this case. If you have taught your children to read what strategies did you use and what struggles did you encounter? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites