Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Phonics and other literary stuff

We home school our 4 children. Actually only 1 right now, with the second starting officially next year, though she is currently starting her ABC's. Even the 3 year old gets involved in this process.
We use the phonics method and use the School of Tomorrow curriculum supported by the Australian Christian Academy.
An article that backs up our choice for this method of learning to read over the whole language approach was printed in The Age 8 November

The article cited a sudy here in Brisbane that returned a result of more than half the teachers and final-year trainee teachers questioned didn't know what a syllable is.

The scary part is this isn't new. "Why Johnny Can't Read" and "Why Johnny Still Can't Read" were published in 1955 and 1983 and explain why the whole language approach doesn't work.
The Reading and Language Arts Centre posts an excellent article about it also.
What does it take for the national education system to be changed? Maybe its when enough parents remove their kids from the badly performing public schools.


Posted by: Jethro | 11:03 AM |