MortFurd
5th July 2007, 02:36 AM
The thread title is a literal translation of the name of a teaching method being used in some German schools. "Lesen durch schreiben" is a method of teaching little kids to read by first teaching them to write.
The basic method involves a chart with approximately forty little pictures, each of which has a corresponding letter or letter combination associated with it. The word of the picture starts with the same sound that the letter(s) make. For example, a picture of a goat associated with the letter G.
Children are given a picture and asked to write down words describing it, or to write a story based on the picture. The children are never explicitly taught to read. They write by transcribing the sounds they make when speaking. Pronounce the word, match to the letters using the chart, write the word.
Supposedly, this encourages creativity and the kids will learn to read on their own.
Have any of you ever heard of an equivalant method in American schools?
I am asking because my children both attend German schools. My daughter has been "learning" by this method for the last three years. Her spelling and grammar are atrocious, as is the case for most of her classmates. I was pretty sure where this was going when the method was annouced when she started first grade. I protested then. My protests fell on deaf ears - "the teachers know what they're doing, let them do it" was pretty much the reaction at the time.
The end of fourth grade is the determining point for how a child's education will proceed. At that point, there is a decision made to set the children on tracks that lead to various careers. One track leads towards university and a career, one towards a trade (skilled worker - plumbers, carpenters, etc.) and the third towards unskilled labor (hamburger flipper at McWorms, shelf stockers, etc.)
My daughter will begin fourth grade this school year. I'm not fussy about whether she goes to college or learns a trade. Physicists still have to have plumbers fix their pipes, after all. A good trade is as valuable as a degree.
My concern is that by the end of the fourth grade, she (and her classmates) will all be incorrectly tracked based on their (lack of) achievement in the last years. Kids who would otherwise have the abilities to earn a degree may have been robbed of the opportunity by this crappy teaching method. Kids who could have learned a trade may be tracked as unskilled laborers, just because they can't read well enough to learn the fine points of a technical trade.
My wife and I are going to get copies of the more standard reading materials used in other schools, and try to get our daughter up to speed. Having learned (the hard way) how crappy the system is, we will also be teaching our son reading (with the more traditional materials) in parallel so that he won't end up behind the curve.
I've been doing some reading on the "reading by writing" crap here in Germany, and I find a lot of studies that call the method "mostly as good as" the traditional methods. Then I find a LOT of parents and parent organizations who cite practical experience with the new method, and they universally call it crap.
So, I'm looking for someone who may know about similar methods in the US, and how well those methods worked.
The basic method involves a chart with approximately forty little pictures, each of which has a corresponding letter or letter combination associated with it. The word of the picture starts with the same sound that the letter(s) make. For example, a picture of a goat associated with the letter G.
Children are given a picture and asked to write down words describing it, or to write a story based on the picture. The children are never explicitly taught to read. They write by transcribing the sounds they make when speaking. Pronounce the word, match to the letters using the chart, write the word.
Supposedly, this encourages creativity and the kids will learn to read on their own.
Have any of you ever heard of an equivalant method in American schools?
I am asking because my children both attend German schools. My daughter has been "learning" by this method for the last three years. Her spelling and grammar are atrocious, as is the case for most of her classmates. I was pretty sure where this was going when the method was annouced when she started first grade. I protested then. My protests fell on deaf ears - "the teachers know what they're doing, let them do it" was pretty much the reaction at the time.
The end of fourth grade is the determining point for how a child's education will proceed. At that point, there is a decision made to set the children on tracks that lead to various careers. One track leads towards university and a career, one towards a trade (skilled worker - plumbers, carpenters, etc.) and the third towards unskilled labor (hamburger flipper at McWorms, shelf stockers, etc.)
My daughter will begin fourth grade this school year. I'm not fussy about whether she goes to college or learns a trade. Physicists still have to have plumbers fix their pipes, after all. A good trade is as valuable as a degree.
My concern is that by the end of the fourth grade, she (and her classmates) will all be incorrectly tracked based on their (lack of) achievement in the last years. Kids who would otherwise have the abilities to earn a degree may have been robbed of the opportunity by this crappy teaching method. Kids who could have learned a trade may be tracked as unskilled laborers, just because they can't read well enough to learn the fine points of a technical trade.
My wife and I are going to get copies of the more standard reading materials used in other schools, and try to get our daughter up to speed. Having learned (the hard way) how crappy the system is, we will also be teaching our son reading (with the more traditional materials) in parallel so that he won't end up behind the curve.
I've been doing some reading on the "reading by writing" crap here in Germany, and I find a lot of studies that call the method "mostly as good as" the traditional methods. Then I find a LOT of parents and parent organizations who cite practical experience with the new method, and they universally call it crap.
So, I'm looking for someone who may know about similar methods in the US, and how well those methods worked.