I received my elementary education in this town. Phonics was used to help us sound out and say words we encountered during reading. We were encouraged to look up the meaning and definition of unfamiliar words. Later the new methods of teaching dropped phonics for “sight reading”, which was simply memorizing words…duh phonics was rediscovered and is being used again.
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Here’s the National Reading Panel Report:
Okay, report read. Hands down phonics is the winner of the reading wars. The “fads” and experimental teaching methods did more harm than good.
Reading and reading comprehension is a skill, skills are taught and one must practice to reach the higher levels.
By seventh and eighth grade there was a required class called Language Skills that one learned to breakdown a sentence structure into the subject, predicate, phrases and clauses and identity the words used in the sentence i.e. verbs, nouns, adverbs etc. and show the diagram!
Thank goodness I had old school elementary teachers, principal and Superintendent who didn’t cater to the “new methods” coming out at the time. Phonics and the round robin reading practices (outlawed in the report) were a staple in grade school. True the round robin reading meant lots of down time waiting your turn, but you still practiced by reading along to your self. Those who weren’t such good readers were spotted and stood out, we including the teacher, knew who they were and could be given extra time and help. Peer pressure is quite a motivator to improve your skill.
We were also required to have our own dictionary in our desk and encouraged to look up words we couldn’t spell or define.
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This research complements your experience: fostering dictionary skills supports lifelong English learning.
Yep, I check etymology whenever I look up a word.
When reading, if a word is encountered that either I forget or don’t know the meaning, I can’t go any further with the text until I look up the word.
I still remember sounding out the vowel sounds from grade school. A, e I o u and sometimes y
Long and short sound for both.
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Here’s the paper publisher’s website, umm.
https://resumebuilderpro.com/resume-examples/education-and-training/learningpt
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Various sponsors show up
often; aggregators of research who then tout their wares to professionals, keyed to the latest public funding trends. On my screen, your link featured Common Core connections which are now old news to most professionals, but the dictionary research sticks. Always good to see you.