Rod Everson

My posts address phonics, reading instruction and skills needed to read. Our website has resources, many free, and essays on various reading instruction topics.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

Exciting news! The OnTrack Reading Phonics Program has been updated inside and out for a smoother teaching experience, with the same proven curriculum at its core.

And due to popular request, we've also added a licensed digital PDF. Lots more to come!

https://t.co/SkbNGb3LJf

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@C_Hendrick Montessori emphasizes developmental processes.

I suspect that's the difference. Time spent teaching early reading skills might be better spent working on development of gross- and fine-motor skills and visual perception skills first.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@kevinbparry A dictionary giving in to persistent errors, rather than setting a standard.

What's the definition in a 1950's dictionary? My guess is every two weeks, but I could be wrong.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

A huge part of the problem is that the teachers who get the best results are not the ones guiding curriculum. If a math teacher (any grade) says that the new math curriculum being considered is crap, and that teacher has been turning out better-prepared students than his peers year after year, well, then the new math curriculum being considered is probably crap.

And if that teacher is turning out better results that his peers while not following the current math curriculum, then the current curriculum is probably crap. And the teacher should be asked how he's doing it, and be safe in saying that he's using his own curriculum. He should then have input on changing the current curriculum.

Unfortunately, I doubt that most school administrations go about it that way, although I could be wrong.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

In a perfect world, parents would have thoroughly learned English phonics when they were taught to read, and would then easily be able to pass that information on to their kids while reading at home with them.

In the imperfect world we live in, schools test letter-name knowledge of 4 and 5 year olds to assess a child's preparedness, so naturally parents think letter names are the way to go.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

Letter names are just one more thing to learn, and they're really irrelevant to learning to read. Our curricula avoid their use, both the curriculum for remediation and the beginning reading curriculum (which is currently being field-tested and is not yet available on our website.)

In our beginner's curriculum, we gradually introduce letter names well after the sounds of the letters have been introduced. After vowel digraphs are introduced, it's handy to be able to refer to them by letter names. But before that, they're really not needed at all.

The sounds, however, are essential from the very start.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@NTFabiano Absolutely true, but only one commenter even hinted at the actual reason. The only natural way to get sufficient vitamin D3 into your body is to expose your skin to direct sunlight. And people who are low on D3 are unhealthy, depressed, and shortening their lifespans.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

I think your goal is admirable. Mine is the same. But in reaching that goal, there will be some inevitable choices that need to be made.

The two that I think you should reconsider for sure are the /ng/ sound and distinguishing between the /oo/ sound in fool and the /ue/ sound in fuel.

With /ng/ it will be very difficult to convince a child to blend /n/ and /g/ because that isn't a normal English blend. With /ng/, the tip of the tongue doesn't go to the roof of the mouth like it does with the /n/ sound. And sing definitely doesn't end with a hard /g/ sound. In fact, the /ng/ sound can be dragged out. Say "sing" and hold the /ng/ sound as an example.

And fool and fuel are clearly pronounced differently, requiring both an /oo/ sound and a /ue/ sound (long-u) in the list of sounds.

The /zh/ and "r" differences I raised are lesser matters. As for J sounding like soft g, yes, they're the same. I was using "beige" as and example of the /zh/ sound.

We aren't that far apart and have the same objective.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

The reasons to homeschool keep piling up. Public schools need a reset, and soon. Administrators just find it too difficult to resist trends and stay with what works. Usually, all that would take is some common sense.

[Hannah Ward 👩🏻‍🏫 Mom (x3) | Learning Designer @HannahWardEdu]

🫩Teacher Training: We're not wasting time on cursive anymore. Don't teach it. The only thing that matters now is 21st century skills.
🤨Me: *ignores that nonsense and makes what I know is actually good for kids*
If schools won't do it, parents can. 💚
https://t.co/n7AG5qDLCi

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

Phonics courses tend to teach 42-45 phonemes. Linguists correctly argue that: 1) there are a lot more English phonemes and, 2) some phonics phonemes are blends of more than one linguistic phonemes.

We could clarify the issue with a better name for phonics phonemes, something like "Our curricular phonemes are..."

Then we could argue amongst ourselves which curricular phonemes should be included in a good phonics curriculum. Who knows? Maybe we'd even come to a basic agreement on the matter someday.

We could then hand every parent a list of curricular phonemes they should know if they're trying to work on reading instruction at home. And it would be the same list as the one that their school handed out last year, before they moved across the country.

Seems like a good first step before trying to tell them the sound(s) each letter or digraph represents.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@karenvaites @mattyglesias Teacher's unions don't want to allow merit pay, but they do want teachers to get pay raises beyond inflation. So they found another way to go about it.

It's not surprising that they way they bargained for is nowhere near as effective as paying more for excellence.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@135dandan @karenvaites That's true, but it's true because so much of it is poorly done or even pointless to have done in the first place.

But some of it is excellent and demonstrates important points.

I think a gold standard study on the impact of no smartphones in school would be very useful.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

Our curriculum adds two consonant sounds, the /ng/ sound in ring and rink, and the /zh/ sound in beige and seizure. But the /zh/ sound occurs in so few easy words that it's not really necessary for a parent to worry about when working with their child.

We also add a vowel sound, the /oo/ sound in soon, flu, and suit. Some curricula don't, but you might have just forgotten to include it.

And almost all easy words like fire and dear can be sounded out as /ie/+/r/ and /ee/+/r/, so we don't teach those sounds as a single unit. We do teach an /err/ sound, however, but only for words like there and very where the /ae/ spelling isn't obvious or where the /ae/ sound is treated as part of a digraph like in parent.

That said, your main point that phonics isn't that hard to explain to a child is valid. And it would be even easier if all parents were taught phonics themselves in school. In time, that might even lead to a standardization of what sounds to teach.

That would prepare them to simply point at the letter "c" and say, "Try the other sound" when a child says "kitty" for "city." They would know which spellings had two or more sounds their child must eventually learn.

And, after they have that down, they should consider teaching their child an effective multisyllable decoding method like ours, free on our website. Link below:
https://t.co/M8PDlRc6gn

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

What battle with the state? That was completely a district administrator's decision. You actually think the parents are going to come in and say , "But the state..."
That administrator wanted to make some number look better, so the kid was passed along. No one benefited from that decision but the administrator, who obviously has higher priorities than how the kids under his charge are doing.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@grizzlybizzly @educator4ever36 That is definitely on the district. Just because there's an out, doesn't mean they should take it.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@educator4ever36 "just because he didn't submit a single assignment for the semester."
Right. Can't penalize a kid for that. Good grief.
And "keep him out of his university of choice"?
Those sorts of decisions tend to drive kids into the institution none would ever choose...prison.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

I wonder what a study of the vitamin D levels of kids who struggle with reading would find? Has that question ever been examined, anywhere, by anyone?
I think the results might be surprising.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

@melbrethour @educationweek Often they're unprepared to decode multisyllable words efficiently and instead rely on a guessing strategy.
Our Middle School Phonics Course was designed to help content-area teachers address that problem in ten short lessons.
https://t.co/tB4El4RhAG

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

About half the customers today would be bewildered if a cashier took a $20 from them for a $13.70 purchase and said 13.75, 14, 15, 20, while handing them a nickel, a quarter, 2 ones, and a five.

They'd want to see what the screen says they have coming. Then they'd count it themselves to be sure. Some would be surprised that it came out the same.

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

Reposting this so more than three people see it. People like this do far more to address reading struggles than most parents and teachers realize.
Too many kids now suffer because educators remain blissfully unaware of vision therapy and the problems it addresses.

[Lumen Vision @lumenvision]

We strive for excellence in everything we do at Lumen, and we’re so glad that came through. Thank you for sharing your feedback, Tara!

[Rod Everson @OnTrackReading]

What you will find, Masha, if you ever win this unwinnable war of yours, is that the kids who struggle to read the current form of English will also struggle with yours.

It's not the language. It's that they don't process visual images and/or sounds efficiently (or just exclusively sounds, if you're an O-G proponent.)

Either way, the same kids will struggle. Granted, they might learn your phonics faster, but that generally isn't the reason they struggle with reading. After all, kids as young as four and five routinely manage to learn to read. And others at six and seven. It's not rocket science we're dealing with here