I, male highschooler, was asked to help my little sister with her school work as we had virtual due to weather. She struggles with reading, and my mother thinks she has dyslexia because she often confuses different letters.
I was mainly helping her with her reading work because that’s what she was struggling with. When she was reading, she’d often guess what word was next in the sentence instead of trying to read it properly. I kept telling her to stop guessing, and actually try to read the word. I helped her sound them out and it seemed to work. I taught her to cover up the other parts of the word so she could sound out the part she did know, and that seemed to help her as I saw her doing it and she was able to sound them out without my help.
There was this one word she kept messing up on, "swiftness". She kept guessing at it and saying "swiftly". My mother overheard me telling her not to guess, and she got upset and said that my sister’s teacher encourages her to guess. That’s the part I don’t understand. Why have a child try to guess a world instead of actually reading it? It will only make things harder for her in the future and she’ll struggle to read. She already does. One paragraph she was trying to read by herself, she kept assuming words that were just wrong and it basically lost meaning.
I believe my sister needs more/better help than what she is getting right now, but my mother doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the way she’s taught. I don’t want my little sister to get left behind and eventually struggle in high school because she was just sent through the grades, especially since she has a 504 plan or something that says shes not allowed to be held back because of her grade in English. It feels like they’re setting her up for failure. So, am I the a-hole or is the way she’s being taught actually good for her?
The way she is being taught is not good. It’s a method that’s been popularized for years based on the logic that a good reader can understand a word by looking at the entire word rather than sounding out each letter. The problem is that good readers got that way by understanding phonics, literally learning each letter of the word, and then over time memorizing words they are familiar with, which is why they can read the entire word at once instead of by putting the letters together. The new method, which I think is called three-cueing, basically tries to skip the intermediary stage by teaching children to look at the entire word rather than the individual letters, and guessing from context. It’s based on bad science, and your sister desperately needs a tutor in phonics if her school teacher is using three cueing as a teaching method.
NTA. While this is an approach that has been used in schools, most of the research recently has indicated that a phonics-based approach is more effective. And at any rate, your sister will only benefit from having multiple techniques available to her to figure out words.
Phonic has repeatedly been found to be best. When will educators accept that?
NTA. Teach her in secret. Welcome to the world of Gen X raising Gen Z. The way they teach now, compared to how we learned, can make it really hard to support. Especially when the teachers tell us parents not to do something. In some cases, I have to Google because I can’t even figure out how to help or why they are even teaching certain things. Let alone when I need to reteach him certain things that are blatantly wrong and need to show him research. Or the number of us parents contacting the school because the informatiom is wrong. And I am talking about basic science and math. Sorry for the rant. Your post hit me in the feels.
No, you’re totally fine for ranting. I really feel this, too. Just based off of the *two* days I’ve been helping her with her work, it seems way too fast-paced and too much for someone her age.
I know what it’s like to deal with the burnout of school, and it seems like they’re only making it harder from her. I’m glad this is reaching parents because that’s mostly who I wanted advice from (besides teacher/professionals) because it also has to deal with parenting. I’ll try to teach her when I can, but my own workload sometimes gets to be a lot.
Definitely NTA! Your mom wants the best for you and your sister. Unfortunately like most parents she trusts teachers even when they are wrong. You are a great brother for helping and wanting to continue helping. You should keep it up!!
Ozzie is right. You are absolutely NTA, but rather a hero for helping your sister. When the weather gets good, take your sis out to parks and city streets and shops so she can see language in context. Take her to a museum so she can see exhibits & read the info with you. She will love you forever for teaching in a way that gives her more of the world than her classroom can.
NTA, teaching kids to read phonetically is, as far as I know, a method that’s considered overall successful.
And anyway, the more tools she has to work with to figure words out, the better off she is.
You’re trying to help your sister, NTA
NTA I don’t know what methods are being taught in school these days, so I won’t comment on that.
If you could spare the time you may want to invest some in continuing to help her read.
My kids knew how to read before they started school because I read to them usually while they followed along.
This could become a nice bonding time between the two of you.
NTA. Guessing is no way to figure out a word. You are exactly right in your assessment that reading will only get harder. Why guess when there is a key to the puzzle. Check out this podcast for a better understanding of what is going on with the schools.
As far as the dyslexia she definitely needs to be assessed. I hope you can convince your mom to get that done.
https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
Nta but I’m curious. How old is your sister?
NTA, but to be clear, the asshole here is your sister’s teacher, not your mom. Your sister’s teacher probably *does* encourage her to guess. It’s called the three cueing system, or MSV, and it is **hot fucking garbage**. It actively makes it *harder* for kids to read, it is **bullshit**, and it’s the default teaching model in a bunch of areas because it was, unfortunately, allowed to become the hip new Thing in pedagogical theory for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Basically, a linguist had the idea that kids learn to read the same way they learn to talk and developed a whole curriculum around teaching kids to guess words on the presumption that good readers identify the whole overall visual picture of the word and not the individual component pieces, with the logical conclusion being that kids would be better readers if they were just taught to do that from the get-go. When people pointed out that kids were consistently mixing up semantically-similar words like horse and pony, his answer was that “well, it doesn’t really *matter* if the text says horse or pony; they got the gist.” When people pointed out that kids were consistently mixing up visually similar words like horse and house, his answer was “well they’ll get better at recognizing the whole shape with more practice with the whole shape, and sometimes mixups happen.” He also said that people really shouldn’t differentiate between skilled and unskilled readers.
Your mom has no reason to know any of that. It’s not unreasonable for her to say “well, the teacher, whose job it is to know this stuff, says to do it this other way and that the way you’re doing it is bad.” Unfortunately, this is like listening to an antivaxer pediatrician.
Oh good lord. You are NTA. The guessing method has been debunked. Without phonics, children WILL NOT LEARN HOW TO READ.
But even if the guessing method DID work, what on earth is wrong with helping someone learn to read a different way if the way in school isn’t working?
We, as a society, are cooked.