** Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // July 2015 **
If your child is not a good reader, chances are he is not stupid or afflicted with some brain disability. It’s much more likely that your child was never properly taught how to read. The failure to teach schoolchildren how to read in the first grade means that they fall farther behind with each passing year and soon become bored and resentful of school. By the time they get to the fourth grade, American students are scoring below children of many other nations.
Phonics is the tried and true method of sounding out syllables so students can read big words. Unfortunately, the new system called Common Core does not teach children to read by phonics. Common Core instead uses what is called the “sight” or “whole-word” method. That means students are taught to memorize a few dozen frequently used words, mostly one-syllable words, guess at other words, and predict the content of the article from pictures on the page. If children do not catch on to this system, parents are falsely told that their children were born with a disability called dyslexia. Students who become disorderly are given drugs to curb the problem.
The best way parents can deal with this is to teach your child how to read before you put him in school, as I did for my six children and grandchildren. You can teach your child to read at home with a good phonics book such as my First Reader. I suggest three 20-minute sessions every day for six months. You will be amazed at the result. Washington bureaucrats need to stop trying to mess with a system that works and should allow educators to reuse the successful phonics method. The only thing worse than using a bad method in a school is making a bad method mandatory for all schools across the country. That is exactly what Common Core does and why parents are against it.
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For young learners, get First Reader. Complete phonics teaching system, including teaching instructions!
First Reader Workbook is the activity and workbook to accompany the First Reader.
Get TurboReader for older children and adults, whether they’ve learned to read and want to improve, or first time readers. It also is a complete system, including teaching instructions.
Both First Reader and TurboReader will take a student from learning the sounds to reading the books they love!
