At 07:30 PM 09/29/2002 -0700, Charles wrote: >I would bet you used phonics methods in beginning >reading within a much larger approach to reading, >which usually is, in a nutshell, to learn to read >by reading so as to have lifelong reading to >learn. That might include sight vocabulary/whole >word methods, too. My little nephew, he's not >even two, very verbal, and recognizes some >written language that is highly contextualized. >So he clearly is already a whole language reader.
Yeah, of course, I used everything: phonics where it made sense, and for the one and two syllable words that don't follow the rules, I used a whole-word recognition bingo game. And then of course we sat and read books together for many, many years. And of course I started with letter recognition games etc. when everyone was around two. Of all the languages I have learned (about five), English is by far the hardest to learn to read and write; obviously, you need a bag full of tricks. It's unfortunate that good pedagogy (which comes from training in a lot of different methods and experience with children) has to give way to ideology and the market. Joanna
