The Special Reading Group & Phonics Cards for Christmas?

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

In 1955 Rudolf Flesch published his book, “Why Johnny Can’t Read”. He blamed the reading programs of the day. He explained that English is an alphabetic language, and that in order to learn to read efficiently students must learn to “sound out” words rather than merely recognize them at sight. His book included a note to mothers – encouraging them to teach their children to read – and word lists in the back of the book, which they could use to do so.

The book sparked a rebirth of what is known as the reading wars. Educational Journals fought back with many articles in defense of the new methods and harsh criticisms of phonics.

Anna Gillingham, a reading teacher/psychologist of the day, who worked side-by-side with the reading scientist Samuel T. Orton, responded to the journal debates with a letter to the editor in the 1958 edition of Elementary Education. Here is an excerpt from that letter. It describes an unexpected response from general education students when they saw how the at-risk students were being taught to read.

To the Editor — 

“… Twenty years ago as a pioneer, I was experimenting with the selection of kindergarten children who would probably have trouble with reading, unless taught by the technique already found successful with older remedial pupils. I shared the anxiety of many teachers and parents, that being set apart in a special group would cast a stigma upon its members. However, by the time the experiment had been tried for two or three years, we found our fears groundless.”

General Educations Students Asked to Join Remedial Group

“Instead of resenting the placing of their children in a separate group, mothers came and asked for the privilege of having their children taught as a cousin or neighbor had been taught last year, “because he learned so much better.”

“Instead of looking with scorn or ridicule upon their classmates sent out for this special kind of reading, the class manifested envy as of a privileged group. Children asked, “Miss Blank, am I going on this same way with you next year? It’s a lot nicer than what the other children are having.” By the time the project was in its third year, the rest of the class began to recognize the advantage the special group was experiencing. A third grade boy said, ‘kids learn a great deal that we don’t know. We know a lot of words, but when we don’t know a word we have to ask, but they can work it out for themselves.'”

“Another third grade boy who had always read fluently in the Sight­Word reading group, asked his teacher wistfully, ‘If I read this very well, may I go with Miss Blank’s class? Those children in that special group know so much more.'”

“Children asked their mothers, and mothers asked us, what could be done so that all might receive the privileges of the Special Group.

A fifth grade girl, who was an excellent speller, was excused from the class with two other children to work on a delightful art project. Meanwhile, her entire class was having spelling by the Gillingham Technique. After a few days she went to the teacher with the request, “I can do this painting at home.”

“‘Mayn’t I please be in the class for spelling? It is so much fun to learn the rules and the history of words and all the rest that we have been doing. It is so much nicer to know the reason than just to remember the spelling of words and not be sure that we are remembering them correctly or why they are that way.’”

Wanting to Practice Drills

“Numerous similar expressions could be quoted from all the schools in which the experiment has been tried. Pity was felt by some teachers for the children of the Special Group who must go over and over the dull [phonics] Drill Cards.”

from “Teaching Johnny to Read” (Rudolf Flesch, lesson 1)

“To the astonishment of these critics, however, there were protests by the children if, for any reason, the Cards were omitted on a particular day. To the genuine surprise of the teachers, parents not infrequently asked to buy the Cards because the child wished them for Christmas or birthday, or, ‘so that I can teach my cousin, because in his school they don’t have them. He doesn’t know the sounds!’

“Those teachers learned a lesson greatly needed in many other fields, namely, that it is the teacher and not the pupil who is bored by drill and repetition. The child feels delight in definite progress in which he can see tangible evidence of success. ‘See me gain, see me gain!’ exulted one child.

“Recently I had the privilege of observing a second grade selected group being taught by the Alphabet Approach. They had been clamoring for a new diphthong Card for which the teacher had declared them not yet ready. On this day she announced that they might have it. ‘And it is a tough one!’ she warned. Hands were noiselessly clapped and several youngsters joggled up and down in their seats. ‘May I try it, may I try it?'”

[Yes, you read that correctly. Anna Gillingham’s “special group” of readers became the preferred group. The students themselves saw the benefits of being in the remedial group. One of the boys discovered that when he wanted to know a word, he needed to ask. When the others wanted to know a word, they were able to figure it out themselves. This is because they had learned how to read by the alphabetic method, as Anna Gillingham called it. In her editorial she goes on to explain what she means by phonics and she tells how the meaning of the word phonics, within the process of teaching with the whole word method, had changed.]

Misusing the Word Phonics

“Another point which should be made clear in the mind of any teacher attempting to use my technique is the distinction between this approach and what is usually accepted as ‘phonics.’

“Teachers not infrequently tell me that they are using my method, that they “always did believe in phonics.” They usually mean “analytical” or “functional” phonics. By this method several words are taught from one of the delightful primers that have been carefully constructed to introduce the same word in a good many situations [whole-word primers]. After a considerable number of words (perhaps one hundred) are recognized on sight, they are gradually broken down into their phonetic units. In the hands of a skilled teacher this, the current method, attains apparently satisfactory results with many pupils. Others fail because they cannot learn the preparatory group of sight words. Whether or not this method is desirable is a matter of opinion. The positive statement to be made here is that this method of teaching phonics is not to be confused with the Gillingham Technique [Alphabetic Approach].”

The Sight-Word Method vs the Alphabetic Approach

“The Sight-Word Method and the Alphabetic Approach are based upon two distinct and mutually exclusive concepts. When men first began to attempt to communicate with each other at a distance by written messages, they drew pictures. Their communications were, in fact, pictorial narratives. Gradually these pictures became conventionalized into characters bearing less and less resemblance to objects. Thus we find Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphics, each standing for a word or even for a phrase or short sentence. There are many words in any language and a scholar who had many ideas to communicate had to learn many thousands of ideograms – a laborious task.”

Using Letters to Represent Sounds

“About three thousand years ago it dawned upon some genius or group of geniuses in the Eastern Mediterranean region that it would be easier to have a character (letter) stand for a speech­sound. Then these letters, few in number (English has 26), could be combined and recombined thousands of times to form words. As long as a language developed by itself, it was perfectly phonetic. It was only when two languages mixed through conquest or migration that there came to be silent letters or more than one sound for a letter, or more than one letter for a sound. This general approach to written language prevailed in Europe and in America until something less than one hundred years ago. It is upon this concept of combining letters to form words that the Gillingham Technique is based.”

———————————————–

Samuel Blumenfeld
author of “Is Public Education Necessary”
“N.E.A. Trojan Horse of American Education”
“Alpha-Phonics”

“Flesch explained that in the early 1930s, the professors of education changed the
way reading was taught in American schools. They threw out the alphabetic phonics
method, which is the proper way to teach anyone to read an alphabetic writing system,
and they put in a new whole-word, look-say, or sight method that taught children to
read English as if it were Chinese, an ideographic writing system. Flesch explained
that when you impose an ideographic teaching method on an alphabetic writing
system, you get reading disability.” (Samuel Blumenfeld: The Whole-Language Fraud)

———————————————–

Gillingham Editorial (continued):

Returning to Ideographs

“Late in the 19th Century there came a return to the ancient ideogrammatic concept. A word was to be learned in its totality as an ideogram, disregarding the letters of which it was composed. In the extreme form of this method the letters are not learned at all. This Sight-Word Approach swept over America and has worked havoc: with reading and spelling. Several of my older Remedial Reading pupils have told me gravely that until they had learned my Drill Cards, they had no idea that the letters in a word had anything to do with its pronunciation! Here we have a clear demonstration of the mutual exclusiveness of the two concepts.

“A pupil who is trying to remember a certain word as an ideogram cannot at the same time be sounding the letters in series to work out the pronunciation of the word. He may remember the wrong word, just as I may confuse the names of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith met at a tea. Such a pupil may say garden for basket (both words having been previously encountered in the same story), or bird for robin (words seen as labels to pictures).

“The value of introducing phonics while the child is being exhorted to remember words as sight units is controversial, but such an introduction of the sounds of the letters as an aid to learning words as ideograms must not be confused with the Alphabetic Approach.

“And now we come to my last point. It seems to me important that teachers interested in my technique should be made familiar with trends in the widening application of the Alphabetic Approach.”

Why not just teach words as ideograms?

“At least a dozen years ago teachers began to inquire, ‘Since this Alphabetic Approach is the means of saving from failure those who would otherwise have failed, or is the best Remedial Technique for those who have already experienced the frustration of failure, why would it not be the best way to teach all children?’ For some time my voice gravely joined the chorus of conventional answers. ‘If a child can learn to recognize ideograms (Sight-Word Method), he should have the privilege of learning this way. The Alphabetic Approach would slow down his potential speed.'”

“But as the years went by I wondered more and more. This was not a flippant question. It was asked by some of our best and most experienced teachers. For example, Mary Davidson, former head of the Primary Department of the Fieldston Lower School in New York, asked it with purposeful interest, and is now using the Alphabetic Approach with whole classes in the Oakwood School in North Hollywood, California.

“More and more emphatically it was forced upon my attention that there is no sharp line between the potential reading failure and the child who learns with a slight degree of success. If the Alphabetic Approach is necessary for Jimmie, why is it not good for Harry whose test results show only a slight difference? With the almost universal uproar about poor spelling, we can afford to give some training in the kinesthetic and auditory aspects of the language pattern at the beginning. Only a few supernormal children never misspell. These are too few in number to have a school policy made for them. Experience proves more and more that the Alphabetic Approach is slower for only the first weeks or very few months. After that, the progress of children thus taught is often more rapid than that of their Sight-Word Method classmates. Since there is no sharp line between the children supposed to need the Alphabetic Approach and those for whom the Sight-Word Method is preferable, it begins to appear that the Alphabetic Approach may eventually come to be regarded as best for all…”

signed — Anna Gillingham 

*****************************************************************************

This editorial was reprinted in Samuel Blumenfeld’s book, The New Illiterates and How to Keep your Child from Becoming One. This book was recently reprinted by Paradigm Books and is available on Amazon, along with Blumenfeld’s primer: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers.

Samuel Blumenfeld uses the alphabetic method as it is described by Anna Gillingham. The Blumenfeld primer provides word lists which introduce the sounds of the letters and combine them systematically into words. The lists replace the drill cards which Anna Gillingham mentions in her editorial.

edited by Meg Rayborn Dawson (homeschooling mom of 9)
author of: Dyslexic No More: Saved by the ABC’s

MS: Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis
MA: psychology (Grand Canyon University)
BA: (Northwest Nazarene University)

 

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (40 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

 

HOW TO ORDER: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

 

 

Posted in education, education reform, homeschooling, Phonics, Reading, Reviews of Alpha-Phonics, schools, teaching, tutoring | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How the Alphabet Began: Part One

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

Why is Phonics called Phonics &
What does this Have to do with Reading Instruction

“The Phoenicians wrote from right to left
as do those who write Hebrew today. But eventually
the Greeks settled on a left-to-right direction.”
Samuel L. Blumenfeld*

It is not difficult to guess that the word phonics is connected to the Phoenicians, but what is the significance of this and how does it apply to reading instruction?

The alphabet, it appears, was invented by the Phoenicians some three thousand years ago. The Phoenicians, who lived in the area we now call Lebanon, spoke a Semitic language and were neighbors of the Greeks with whom they traded. The Phoenicians used their writing system to help record many of their commercial transactions. The Greeks were intrigued by the facility acquired by the use of a sound-symbol system, and they tried to use it for their own language. But Greek was quite different from Phoenician in its sounds, and it took a great deal of experimentation before the Greeks devised a complete set of symbols or letters with which they could represent every sound of their language.

To facilitate the learning of the alphabet, each letter was given a distinct name, borrowed from the Phoenicians in most cases, in which the sound of the letter was given. Thus, we got alpha, beta, gamma, etc. The important point to note here is that the name of the letter was quite distinct from the letter’s sound value, and there was no confusion in the minds of the Greeks about the two.

In those days there was no such thing as a dictionary or spelling guide. This was long before printing. If you knew the alphabet and wished to use it, you simply sounded out each word you wanted to write and then set down the letters representing the sounds in the same sequence as the sounds themselves were uttered. This seems like so obvious a procedure, yet two thousand years later we shall find professors of education doubting its simple validity. At first, you used the alphabet in any direction you wanted. The Phoenicians wrote from right to left as do those who write Hebrew today. But eventually the Greeks settled on a left-to-right direction.

Before the invention of the alphabet, writing was ideographic. Language was represented by picture-symbols which required a great deal of memorization and was never very accurate. It was easy enough to represent commonplace objects and simple actions by picture symbols. But when it came to communicating complex philosophical abstractions or great subtleties, ideographs were inadequate. The alphabet was a tremendous improvement. Once you mastered the sound-symbol system, you could write down any thought in precisely the manner you wanted it to be conveyed. This enabled the Greeks to expand the mind’s capacity to think and work, and it permitted a tremendous advance in man’s intellectual development.

According to Dr. Mitford M. Mathews*:

“Other peoples, such as the Babylonians and the Egyptians, had caught glimpses of the desirability of having signs represent sounds, not things, but they were never able to break with convention to the extent of setting aside picture writing in favor of letter writing. The fundamental defect of picture writing was that it was not based upon sounds at all. Greeks saw this basic weakness and by avoiding it achieved everlasting distinction.”

How were the Greeks able to “break with convention”?

Dr. Mathews continues:

“The secret of their phenomenal advance was in the vividness of their conception of the nature of a word. They reasoned that words were sounds, or combinations of ascertainable sounds, and they held inexorably to the basic proposition that writing, properly executed, was a guide to sound.”

Perhaps this is one reason why the Greeks produced such great dramatists: their infatuation with and love of the spoken word, and their determination to capture it as accurately as possible for themselves and future generations. It is worth noting that much of the ancient Greek literature we enjoy today was written in the form of dialogues.

*Samuel Blumenfeld, author of Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers gives this short but concise account of the history of the alphabet, gleaned from the work of Dr. Mitford M. Mathews, author of A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (1951) and editorial consultant for the Webster’s New World Dictionary from 1957 to 1981:

Coming Next:
How the Alphabet Began Part 2:
How Greek Children Learned to Use the Alphabet

by Meg Rayborn Dawson (homeschooling mom of 9)
author of: Dyslexic No More: Saved by the ABC’s

MS: Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis
MA: psychology (Grand Canyon University)
BA: (Northwest Nazarene University)

 

***********************************************************************************

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

“I used Alpha-phonics to teach all 6 of my daughters to read as well as tutoring other children. Now my oldest daughter wants to use Alphaphonics to teach her own son to read using Alphaphonics!! I would like to purchase a copy and CD for her.”

Marie Gossling, November, 2015

HOW TO ORDER the 2022 Edition of Alpha-Phonics

Posted in Athens school, History of the Alphabet, How the Alphabet Began, Phoenician alphabet, Phonics, Reading, Science of Reading, Sound-it-out | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Savant who Knew his Mother’s Love

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

 

Joe and I are different from other people. We just accept things when God puts them before us. It’s like accepting what you have to do in life. Things come at you, and you don’t say, “Am I going to do it?” You say, “Now, how am I going to do it?” 

May Lemke

Occasionally, we learn of extraordinary teachers. They excel above all others. We can only sit back and marvel at their work. They just seem to know, without any explanation of how or why they know. This is the story of one such teacher, who raised a severely handicapped child. It is told in Shirlee Monty’s book May’s Boy: An Incredible Story of Love. (May shares the copywrite as a joint author.)

Leslie was received into the home of Joe and May Lemke at the age of six months. May was told that he wouldn’t live long. He had been born prematurely and weighed only three pounds at birth. He was palsied, and his limbs were limp. His eyes had been removed due to infection, and his parents were unable to care for him.

When May first looked at the child, she was brought to tears. She was 52 years old and had already raised five children of her own. Yet, she accepted the challenge with an unwavering faith which kept her strong through the next four decades with Leslie.

 

 

“Oh, Joe, he looks terrible! So forlorn, so long and thin and helpless. But God loves all children, even this little creature. We’ll just see what we can do.”

 

Joe Lemke

 

May’s Childhood Education

May was born in the summer of 1900 in an English fishing village. Her father was a shipbuilder who was often deployed by the royal service, and he was absent for much of her childhood. Her mother was a nurse and midwife with a workable knowledge of herbs and home remedies.  She was the mother of ten, yet always generous with her services. She often welcomed beggars and war victims into her home. Her policy was to never turn anyone away because you never know who it’s going to be.

May’s earliest behaviors foreshadowed who she was to become.

May’s prized possession for many years was the rag doll her mother had made for her when she was just two. She carried the doll everywhere, including to meals, where she kept up a constant conversation with her child. “Now, mind your manners. Stay clean and neat whilst you eat!” When one of her brothers accidentally sat on the doll one morning, May spent the rest of the day nursing it back to health.

May wandered throughout their village visiting new and interesting places, often to be brought home by helpful adults who told about the delightful things she had said and done. Her childhood could have easily been the inspiration of the Eleanor Porter book Pollyanna. Like Pollyanna, she showed love and care to everyone with perpetual and contagious joy. She never missed an opportunity to help or encourage another.

At the untimely death of her 11-year-old brother, she was not yet two years old and stayed next to her mother, from when the injured boy came home, until he died shortly after. Following this tragedy she voluntarily adopted the role as a comforter to her bereaved mother who dubbed her a little ray of gold.

It was the custom for the village children to begin their schooling at age 3 and stay in school until they were 12. Boys were introduced to trades and girls were taught basic homemaking skills, like housekeeping, mending, cooking, cleaning, and needlework. The first world war interrupted May’s youth with new tragedies. She lost 4 brothers and her father, as well as most of her uncles, male cousins, and friends. When supply ships were sunk, food became scarce. It was through her mother’s foresight and planning that she was able to eat.

Before England entered the war, Maria Hansen [May’s mother], anticipating the worst, began to put a bit of strawberry jam in a large stone jar every day. She covered and sealed it with rice paper so it wouldn’t spoil. The children always wondered what it was for.

Later… she lined up May and her three younger sisters and said, “You were always wondering why I did this. I knew things were going to be bad. There’s no food for us now, so this teaspoon of jam will be your meal for today. It will get you by.”

Mrs. Hansen had another method for warding off hunger. She told her children to pick up a fresh piece of tar in the street and to chew on it. She said it would keep their teeth nice and lessen the pain of hunger. So the children chewed tar, and it helped – some.

May’s Trial by Fire

When May was fourteen, she joined the war effort, working in a munitions building. She assembled bags of TNT and filled shells with explosives. After a year she began transporting sixty-pound shells, pushing a trolley to and from the loading deck where they were then put on trucks.

An atmosphere of melancholy prevailed at the munitions factory, for most of the girls were older than May and had boyfriends or husbands fighting in France. May was always trying to cheer them up by laughing, singing, and dancing. On one of those days when she had everybody laughing and singing, May’s bright little world collapsed.

The girls had finished loading a trolley, and May was starting to push it away. They were singing: “There’s a long, long trail a-winding, into the land of my dreams.” On the word dreams, there was a deafening roar. The trolley blew up, throwing fiery fragment of explosives in every direction.

The joyful encourager was thrown thirty feet, rendered unconscious and badly burned. All of her hair was blown off, and her teeth were gone. Her thyroid was damaged which stopped her growth from this point on, at the grand height of four and a half feet. Her face required several surgeries, but it was still scarred. One foot was burned badly and permanently deformed, requiring her to relearn how to walk.

Lessons from the war included both sorrow and pain, still this little Pollyanna transformed the experiences into a loving compassion and an even greater desire to help others. Before long she resumed her training as a nurse-governess, which had been interrupted by the war. She worked under an experienced Nanny where she learned about childbirth and childcare.

 Shipped Out to America

Skipping ahead to adulthood, May became engaged to a soldier, following the urging of her mother. He was a man that Maria Hansen had helped during the war. By age eighteen May was an American wife.

Her first marriage had wonderful adventures of its own, and it saw five children into the world. But I will fast-forward this part of her life, through the raising of her family and her eventual widowhood, then to a new marriage, and to the day when she received her final charge. When Leslie came into her life.

Leslie

When May first saw her new son, she remembered that her mother had used slippery elm powder for sick babies. So, she mixed this with milk and a little sugar.

“Try a little, love. You’ll like this,” she said softly. Leslie didn’t seem to understand He lay motionless, his tongue pushing out the nipple. “Suck, baby, you must suck it in.” May encouraged. Still, he lay motionless.

May put her mouth against his cheek, making loud sucking sounds. Then she put the bottle in his mouth, hoping he might catch on. She kept up the procedure most of the afternoon, sucking on the baby’s cheek and putting the bottle in his mouth, over and over again. As the warm milk trickled down his throat, he grew bolder. Pretty soon he was sucking with the zest of a normal, healthy infant. May danced with him around the room. “Baby,” she cried out, “you’re going to live!”

Another natural cure employed by May was for his eye sockets. They were still red and were showing new signs of infection. It was a boric acid solution which she used, until the eye sockets were healed, and the lids lay down naturally. The baby rarely cried or whimpered. He hardly moved. His arms and legs were limp, and when she lifted them, they dropped down. She couldn’t tell when he was awake or asleep.

Days, months, and years passed between the smallest indications of any developmental change. After a year she gradually introduced solid food, and eventually moved away from bottles and poured water into his throat, which was the only way to help him drink. Through the years, May refused to listen to suggestions from friends and family. Even her own children encouraged her to put Leslie into an institution. She replied with the same steadfast faith.

“I know God can do things,” May said, “If He can do them for others, then He can do them for me!” But I do think I’ve waited long enough, she thought to herself. She decided to go home and wait a little longer.

May cuddled Leslie in her arms every day, rocking him and singing softly to him. “I want him to know that he’s loved,” she said over and over again to Joe, “to know he has a mother and a father who love him just like other children.”

Despite May’s gentleness, Leslie always tensed, startled, as if he were frightened whenever she picked him up. He never relaxed his body against her like a normal baby. He was more like a plastic baby, rigid, with rarely a cry, never a smile.

But May refused to give up. “Children respond to love, she told Joe. “They can feel it in your body when you hold them close. I know he’ll feel it eventually. It just takes more time with a child like this.”

Until Leslie was seven years old, May always carried him. He was then fifty pounds, and it was evident that she would not be able to continue. She was nearly sixty years old. So, she created an apparatus to strap him to her back and walked with him as he dragged his motionless feet behind. By age nine, when there was not yet a single sign of his attempting to walk, she came up with another idea. Since they lived beside a lake, she encouraged Joe to take him swimming. This became a daily routine. Yet there was still no sign of movement from the child. When Leslie was ten, he took his first step.

A New Prayer

When Leslie was twelve years old, May began to pray a new prayer for her son. She prayed that he might have a gift, something to give his life meaning. Several times a day, she implored, “Dear Lord, the Bible says that you gave each of us a talent. Please help me find the talent in this poor boy who lies there most of the day and does nothing.”

The next major episode in Leslie’s life was the one which led to his worldwide recognition as a pianist. May had noticed him plucking on strings. In May’s eyes, he was making music. This was the talent she had asked for. So she bought him a piano, put it in his room and began playing little songs with him. She helped him listen to records, radio, and television. This became his new routine.

He often sat listening to records or radio for hours, head down, serious, intense, a study in concentration. Sometimes his foot or hand even moved methodically with the beat.

May’s Miracle

Then, in his sixteenth year, something May calls “The Miracle” occurred.

The family had been in bed for hours. About 3:00 a.m. May awoke and thought she heard music. Assuming that Joe had left the television on, she got up to turn it off. But when she walked into the living room, the television was dark and silent. The music was coming from Leslie’s bedroom.

She opened the door and saw her son sitting at the piano, playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. The music was Liberace’s theme song, and he had heard it numerous times on television.

Leslie had never played a note of music in his life, but now he was playing like a professional, racing up and down the keys, never missing a note, as if he’d been practicing for years.

May fell down on her knees and cried. And laughed. And cried again. She ran for Joe. They were both on their knees for most of the night, praising God and thanking Him for giving their boy the gift of music. At last, God had given him a talent. And what a wonderful talent!

Playing the Piano, Singing & Finally Talking

The Lemke’s household was filled with new life. Over the following years Leslie’s skill continued to improve. After a while he added singing, and finally he began to talk. He began performing at his home and at weddings. Their world began to expand around the growing recognition of the nearly lifeless boy who began playing piano like a master. Newspapers, television, and magazines spread the story. This patient and loving woman had been given her miracle, and he never missed an opportunity to tell about it.

What had May known? She knew the power of love, and she believed in the faithfulness of God. What did Joe know? He knew the power of teamwork, and he got behind every whim his wife threw his way. He knew to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

Leslie came to be known as a Savant. This word describes a person who is born with very little ability, who then, for reasons which baffle the greatest of scientists, develop a unique brilliance in some specific area. Roughly interpreted, the word savant means one who knows.

What did Leslie know? He knew his mother’s love.

Turning things Around

As May aged, she began suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. During her final days, Leslie returned that love. He continued playing the piano for her, and something new began to happen. The now emotionless and quiet May began coming alive to the sounds of Leslie’s playing, raising her hands to the heavens, and singing hymns with him, like How Great Thou Art and Our Father. She was now the failing one, and Leslie the caregiver.

Love and the Brain

This story is not about reading instruction. Leslie was blind, and May did not know braille. This is a story about teaching — at the Master level. With the faith and willingness of May Lemke, anyone can see positive results.

May’s desire was to bring hope and purpose into her son’s life. This should become our purpose as we teach our loved ones to read. Most of all, we must never forget May’s secret ingredient. Love.

by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

 

HOW TO ORDER: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

Posted in education, homeschooling, Leslie Lemke, Phonics, savant syndrome, teaching, The Woman who Willed a Miracle | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Teaching a baby to play Pat-a-Cake

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, Bake me a cake, as fast as you can; Pat it, prick it, and mark it with B, Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Here is a great video showing a mom interacting with her baby using the rhyme Pat-a-Cake.

An older child will be able to clap the hands as you hold him. I like doing this with a baby sitting in my lap as I direct his hands through the gestures.

Why play Pat-a-Cake?

— Interact with a child you love

and Develop

— attention,

— listening skills,

— pre-reading skills…

— Communication

— Coordination,

— Relationships,

and on and on…

you name it.   ENJOY!

shared by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

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HOW TO ORDER: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

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2022 Edition of ALPHA-PHONICS — NEW INFO ON DYSLEXIA

Posted on August 20, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

I have been teaching reading for over 40 years, and it is only in my recent history that I have heard about children with dyslexia diagnoses. And I hear of them at an alarming rate!

I responded by taking on the tutoring of more troubled students, using systematic phonics and this became the entry into a realm of study I never imagined I would undertake.

When I began looking into this, I kept digging deeper and deeper until I began making some discoveries.

For one, the high rate of diagnosis can be attributed to very loose standards for diagnosing children this way. Even the definition of dyslexia is inconsistent from source to source.

Here is an interesting quote I found in a college level text: Dyslexia, Reading and the Brain: A sourcebook of Psychological and Biological Research compiled by Alan A. Beaton.

“The terminology used in referring to reading difficulties is chaotic and confusing. In part, this chaos stems from a vagueness of definitions and a general looseness in the use of words, but to a much greater extent it stems from fundamental disputes about the nature of the reading problems. This dispute is most evident in the continuing controversy about the existence of dyslexia. Conferences on reading are full of heated exchanges about whether the condition does or does not exist. “

Some experts even denounce the use of the term dyslexia.”

Secondly, research ranging from the 18th through the 21st Centuries, indicates that nearly all cases of “dyslexia” can be reversed using explicit, systematic phonics approach such as that used in Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers.

Having learned these facts about reading problems, I decided to write a book based on reading instruction, practices and outcomes based on personal accounts of some of the very best of teachers. (Dyslexic No More: Saved by the ABC’s)

My book is still in progress, but some of the ideas which I introduce in the book have been added to the 2022 edition of Alpha-Phonics.

I believe it’s time to take this problem by the horns and start teaching reading again!

Be a Hero. Teach a child to read.

Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

To order: https://amzn.to/3PdOSgj

 

by Meg Rayborn Dawson (homeschooling mom of 9)

 

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene University)

******************************************************************************

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

HOW TO ORDER the 2022 Edition of Alpha-Phonics

 

For Parents who are concerned about assuring a solid base for their Children’s education. READING is the bedrock.  One good way to assure the best results is to teach your OWN children to read.  And it is much easier than you ever dreamed.  All you need is a good program like ALPHA-PHONICS.  Alpha-Phonics has been  used by tens of thousands of Parents, easily and successfully FOR 38 YEARS.  Most Parents find they only need 15-30 minutes a day and can complete the course in only a few Months.  Parents need NO experience or special training to teach their Children to become excellent readers. This may sound impossible, but, if you read the reviews and testimonials below, you will learn it is true.

 

 

 

 

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Illuminating the Brain and Watching it Read

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

Up to the year 1870 there was no physiology of the [brain] hemispheres. They seemed to be out of reach of the physiologist. In that year the common physiological methods of stimulation and extirpation were first applied to them. Ivan Pavlov: Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex (1927)

(So, what exactly is “stimulation and extirpation”, and how was it used to learn about the physiology of the brain? The concept is basic. When parts of the exposed brain (usually belonging to a dog) were stimulated, then certain groups of muscles would contract. When those same areas of the brain were cut out (extirpated), then the same muscles would no longer function.

Then it was found, by the same method, that some areas of the brain were not linked to muscles. When these areas were cut out, other functions were lost, like with the retina of the eye, or the sensory nerve-endings in the skin.)

Searching investigations have been made, and still are being made, by numerous workers on this question of localization of function in the [brain]. Our knowledge has been increased in precision and filled out in detail, especially as regards the motor area, and has even found useful application in medicine. Ivan Pavlov

The exploration of the brain is quite intriguing, and useful. Thankfully, our techniques have moved beyond stimulation and extirpation. Today, with the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), our knowledge is exploding rapidly. Discoveries about the architecture of the brain and the mapping of circuitry connecting various parts of the brain which work together, are beyond fascinating. A leader in this area of research is the French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. He has studied the brain’s reading circuits, and he explains the process in his book, Reading in the Brain.

The Brain’s Reading Circuit  

For more than twenty years, functional brain imaging techniques have revolutionized the study of the human brain by literally allowing us to ‘read in the brain.’ Their enormous potential lies in their capacity to visualize brain activity directly, at the very moment when a human volunteer performs a mental operation like reading. Stanislas Dehaene: Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention, 2009

Through the use of MRI scanners, Dehaene discovered which areas of the brain are activated as readers and non-readers read. His studies have verified the findings of those early eye surgeons and their study of autopsies. His pioneering advances in the science of how we learn have inspired many other research projects around the world, and it is through this relatively new realm of science that we are finally able to see and understand how our brains read. Scientists are now even able to explain the differences between reading instruction methods, and their competitive advantages from the brain’s point of view. This new knowledge is being used to train reading teachers.

Dehaene describes the brain’s ability to read, something like this: When the alphabet was invented, it became necessary to teach our brains to read. Like any new skill, we had to carve out pathways through related brain areas, apply new information, and practice what we were learning.

In other words, we were given the alphabet, and in order to read, we needed to first learn how this new tool worked. Those who learned how to use the alphabet taught others, like seasoned mechanics teaching how an engine works, from under the hood of the car. This handing down of knowledge has traveled through time to the present day. Finally, the process of learning to read is being seen and studied in technological laboratory settings.

Interestingly, the area of the brain which was found to be lesioned in Hinshelwood’s patients with acquired word-blindness (the left angular gyrus), is now seen as a part of a complex reading network. Dehaene has identified the brain regions which are involved in the reading process and describes how they are interconnected. (I recommend googling his lectures online.) The process of reading travels through the brain as though it were on an assembly line.

In a layman’s rough analysis of this process, there are pathways leading to areas where the brain analyzes pronunciation and articulation, there are roads to brain dictionaries which discern and record meanings, there are routes to storage facilities. As the reader learns, the connections between these designated, specialized, brain areas become stronger. Circuits are formed as the brain connects the paths. When information travels across these circuits, the pathways are strengthened.

The same fMRI technology has also shown that the brain regions which are activated during the reading process, are also activated very early-on when babies listen to spoken words, even before birth. These findings support the encouragement of parents in reading to and talking with their children, the earlier the better.

Reading development is supported by the process of becoming aware of spoken sounds, of hearing and manipulating them in the brain, before letters have been introduced, and even before uttering a word. Early activity in this brain region fosters a faster grasp of the phonics code. The amount of time the child spends listening to spoken language corresponds with the speed of future decoding. For this reason, scientists are recommending the teaching of phonemic awareness as a prerequisite to phonics reading instruction.

Dehaene Explains More about How we Learn

Dehaene has gone further into his understanding of how we learn, and how to create the best environments, attitudes, and behaviors for learning. In his book How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain (2020), he summarizes his findings in a list of recommendations for optimizing the effects of teaching. Hopefully, these ideas along with new knowledge he has presented about how the reading brain works, will begin to make their way into classrooms around the world.

For example, Dr. Dehaene tells us not to underestimate children, and to recognize and exploit the huge learning potential of a newborn brain. He explains the importance of tactics such as a rich learning environment for the child, recommending the use of games, storytelling, and puzzles, answering their questions, and using a rich vocabulary with clear pronunciations when speaking to them. Dehaene also describes attention, which he calls the “gateway to learning”.

Teachers should become masters at capturing their students’ attention and directing it to what matters. This implies carefully getting rid of any source of distraction: overly illustrated textbooks and excessively decorated classrooms only distract children from their primary task and prevent them from concentrating.

Dehaene also highlights the importance of encouraging and challenging learners, as well as setting clear learning objectives. Practice (repetition) is extremely important and, surprisingly, so is sleep.

Sleep is an essential ingredient of our learning algorithm. Our brain benefits each time we sleep, even when we nap. So, let us make sure that our children sleep long and deep. To get the most out of our brain’s unconscious night work, studying a lesson or rereading a problem just before falling asleep can be a nifty trick. And because adolescents’ sleep cycle is shifted, let’s not wake them up too early.

Dehaene also breaks the process of learning into four pillars. These, stated briefly, are:

Attention, which amplifies the information we focus on.

Active Engagement, an algorithm also called “curiosity,” which encourages our brain to ceaselessly test new hypotheses.

Error feedback, which compares our predictions with reality and corrects our models of the world.

Consolidation, which renders what we have learned fully automated and involves sleep as a key component.

Attention, Active Engagement, Error Feedback & Consolidation

Science-informed teaching is only half of the equation. Let’s consider the other side. If laboratory scientists can inform field workers, how about tutor-informed scientific research? Arguments have been waged throughout the last century in a conflict which has been called “The Reading Wars”. These conflicts have been, largely, between field scientists (tutors) and statistical examiners (university research teams). Let me explain.

Field science might be best seen through the experiences and work of individuals such as Jane Goodall. This branch of science is sometimes called naturalistic observation. Goodall spent decades in the field, studying how chimpanzees live (attention). The field became her laboratory and her observations led her to create, test and evaluate ever expanding hypotheses (active engagement). Watching similar behaviors, repeatedly, became her scientific method. Simply stated, she learned by watching and interacting with the animals, testing hypotheses as they struck her, and remembering and recording those observations, to be re-examined in similar field experiences.

Babies become field scientists in their own sort of way, as they begin to explore more and more deeply into their ever growing environments (attention), as they move from rolling to crawling to walking (active engagement). They test their own hypotheses in their own little brains asking questions like, “What happens when I push this button?”, then after pushing that button, they observe the results (error feedback). Babies are forever collecting data and recording it in their memories. And as they sleep, the lessons they learned throughout the day’s explorations are reviewed and organized in their minds as they sleep (consolidation).

Another example of a field scientist is the reading or math tutor. Imagine these dedicated individuals who show up at homes, in classrooms, or even invite struggling learners to their own homes. As they teach, they observe, experiment, and evaluate outcomes, while collecting their own sort of data. In other words, they observe learners, recognize problems, and try interventions, which they then accept or reject as they receive error feedback. This data is rarely stored in laboratories, to be compared with similar data. There is seldom time to even record it. As soon as one student leaves, another arrives. Yet, information gained during tutoring sessions is consolidated in the brains of tutors, where it is stored away to be used with other students who bring similar problems.

Although the tutor’s ever-increasing knowledge may not be recorded, it is still preserved. Students often become tutors, teaching in ways which they have been successfully taught, and the data banks are passed from brain to brain. Yet, the data rarely arrives on paper or in medical journals.

In an ever demanding scientific world this unpublished data, is rarely considered credible. There is no scientific peer review. That is, unless you observe the delight of previously troubled parents and caregivers, as the anxiously watch and wait for the outcomes of tutoring sessions. And the delight they express when their previously struggling loved ones finally catch on to reading or math, thus proving wrong the warnings of nay-sayers who had little confidence in the ability of those children to learn. Unfortunately, those types of data are usually dismissed as anecdotal, which is not always honored in scientific circles.

Field-Informed Science?

What would happen if neuroscientists were to leave their laboratories and visit the field, where they could observe working tutors as they apply individualized, field tested interventions? Could the interventions be taken from the field into the laboratory, and be tested with fMRI technology?

For example, the stories of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Orton have been preserved in university archives. The previously mentioned 3200 case studies are available for examination. Various reading instruction methodologies have been explored and recorded there. Interventions have been applied, observed, and evaluated in these studies.

Let’s consider the multisensory approaches to teaching which have been put forth through the work of the Ortons. Why and how do they work? What changes can be seen in brain scans when additional senses become involved during reading instruction. It may be difficult to observe the impact of movement within the confines of a sensitive MRI machine. Yet it is not difficult to suppose that creative researchers may ultimately find ways to help the MRI technology to adapt to the performance of a wider range of examinations.

Here’s an example. Suppose that a reading tutor stumbles across some unexpected intervention. Maybe he notices that when classical music is played in the background, while he is teaching reading, it seems to have a positive impact on some students. Or perhaps other students become successful at improving their fluency when they read along with rap music. Can we take these interventions into the lab? Can we look into the brains of these students as they light up in various regions and make connections to other parts of the brain. Will we observe the involvement of additional brain regions? Imagine the possibilities that wait to be discovered, if the discoveries of tutors can be examined by the neuroscientists in their MRI scanners.

The Impact of Emotion & Stress Upon the Brain & Learning

I’d like to send out one more idea before I leave this topic. I previously discussed the conglomeration of emotional disturbances which seem to wrap themselves around reading challenges. I gave examples of students who began with optimism and ended in despair.

I’ve shared discussions about nurture versus nature, asking whether the poor emotional health and lack of attention is a cause or an effect of the experiences of struggling readers. Is it possible that the cause and the effect take turns, creating a vicious circle, and suggesting that the child begins in optimism, discovers his inadequacy, sometimes through bullying-types of experiences during learning, and then begins to question himself? Does he then adjust his behavior, in an effort to self-protect against this hard-to-understand enemy of learning, and fight back? Or develop a silent repertoire of cheating and deception?

I also mentioned comments made by Dr. Samuel Orton and his wife, stating that attention problems are often overcome at the point when the reading ability establishes itself. Are there actually types of reading instruction and specific interventions which teach the student to expand his attention span? What about the importance of practice? What happens in the brain when training is repetitive? Do neuro-networks become stronger? Or what is the value of encouragement? How great of an impact might it have? Are there scientific methods for a deeper view of the brain? Can we see an increase of myelin through repetition?

Can ideas like these be hypothesized and tested by data crunching scientists? Can the impact of stress be seen in the brain? Hinshelwood acknowledged backward progress when a student was sick or tired. Can this be understood through scientific lenses?

In my own optimistic mind, the options are endless, and as we discover these mysterious links between learning and emotion, we will embark on the pronouncement of a new urgency, teaching educators not only what becomes known about the learning brain, but also about the power of positive reinforcement and how to avoid the devastating effects of excessive, punishing behaviors towards our students. Parents, teachers, and caregivers will learn to encourage rather than condemn.

The future holds the possibility of discovering much more knowledge than we can even imagine. The impact of scientific study, as it informs reading, is only the beginning. Imagine the possible expansion of variables waiting to be discovered in the field and then transported to the labs for their examination through this amazing new technology of scanning working brains. We have reached the day where we are now becoming informed by the brain itself. There is so much to look forward to!

 

 

by Meg Rayborn Dawson (homeschooling mom of 9)

 

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene University)

 

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WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

HOW TO ORDER

For Parents who are concerned about assuring a solid base for their Children’s education. READING is the bedrock.  One good way to assure the best results is to teach your OWN children to read.  And it is much easier than you ever dreamed.  All you need is a good program like ALPHA-PHONICS.  Alpha-Phonics has been  used by tens of thousands of Parents, easily and successfully FOR 38 YEARS.  Most Parents find they only need 15-30 minutes a day and can complete the course in only a few Months.  Parents need NO experience or special training to teach their Children to become excellent readers. This may sound impossible, but, if you read the reviews and testimonials below, you will learn it is true.

 

Posted in Brain science and reading, dyslexia, education, fMRI and reading, homeschooling, Ivan Pavlov, Pavlov's Dog, Phonics, Reading, Stanislaus Dehaene, teaching, tutoring | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Bringing up girls: Biology and behavior

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

Gender differences, pt. 2 (girls)

DR MICHAEL NAGEL

 

Whether you have a boy or a girl you may have wondered what science can tell you about the role of the brain in shaping your child’s behaviour. In this two-part series author, speaker and academic Dr Michael Nagel, explores gender differences from a neurological perspective and opens the door to a greater appreciation for how we parent, educate, and support our children.

Generations of parents and teachers have often used expressions like ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘it’s just a girl thing’ to help describe or justify children’s behaviour.

For some people such phrases are overly simplistic, yet there is a vast body of scientific research suggesting that differences in how girls and boys behave and learn, may be part of the reason why.

Given that we know so much more about child development and in particular the development of the human brain it seems timely to look at such differences with the insights provided by science.  The following article focuses on girls and explores some of the research and what this means in terms of raising girls.

The male and female brain

Prior to unpacking the biology of sex differences and how they relate to differences in behaviour and learning, it is important to note that there is a vast and growing body of research suggesting that fundamental differences between girls and boys can be explained through looking at the unique structural and chemical differences found within the brain of each sex.

 

There is mounting evidence suggesting that the physiology of the female brain plays a tremendous role in how girls engage with the world around them, behave and learn.

Since the mid 1990s we have learned a great deal about the human brain and importantly some of the most prominent reasons why girls may act and behave the way they do have been uncovered by neuroscientists.

Indeed, studies looking into the inner workings of the brain suggest that while society and culture play a role in shaping behaviours, there is also much to say about the innate differences that exist between girls and boys.

This is not to say that neuroscience has finally answered all questions related to nature versus nurture, but rather it has recognized important sex differences in the brain which influence how girls behave with the world around them.  This is evident in the very early days of life.

Since the mid 1990s we have learned a great deal about the human brain and importantly some of the most prominent reasons why girls may act and behave the way they do have been uncovered by neuroscientists.

Social skills and oral language

One of the most significant differences between females and males and well documented is that females have superior social skills. Females show greater eye contact than males, demonstrate superior social understanding and sensitivity to emotional expressions and even show better understanding of social themes in stories.

The extent to which such superiority is the result of nature or nurture is not completely clear but there does appear to be a biological origin which is evident in infants.

In a ground-breaking study conducted in the United Kingdom, researchers found differences in how one day old girls and boys engaged with their surroundings.

Quite simply, and prior to any substantive environmental influences, one day old girls were more interested in looking at faces while their male counterparts focused on, and took greater pleasure in, the objects around them.

This difference was evident across many children with various cultural backgrounds and the researchers concluded that given the children were only a day old, such differences could not be explained by experience. In other words, these differences could only have resulted from innate biological differences. Such biological tendencies are supported by other neuro-scientific evidence and the experiences of those adults who are immersed in the day-to-day interactions of children.

Another prominent difference evident in young children is that girls generally develop the capacity to communicate earlier than boys.

On average, girls are about eighteen months ahead of boys in terms of oral language and vocabulary development and boys do not seem to catch up until six or seven years of age.

It is noteworthy that Finland, a country that regularly ranks one of the highest in terms of literacy and numeracy, does not enrol children in school until seven years of age.

There are a number of reasons for this approach but one of those is founded on a concerted effort to ensure that ‘sex’ differences, as they pertain to communication skills, do not disadvantage boys.  Girls will talk more and with greater fluency early in life and such differences are also due to the fact that the rates of maturation of the brain’s hemispheres are different between girls and boys.

Multiple studies have shown that the female brain appears to be coded to grow more quickly across the hemispheres with regions of the left hemisphere developing faster in females than in males. The left hemisphere of the brain will also grow to be slightly larger than the right in females while the right side of the male brain will become larger than the left. The significance of this lies in what neuroscientists refer to as the ‘lateralization’ of brain function or, simply stated, what task each of the hemispheres may be responsible for.

For example, it is now widely recognized that the left hemisphere is the primary region for comprehending and processing language, and in early infancy girls show left hemisphere dominance for speech perception. Moreover, as they mature, girls begin to use both hemispheres for most language activities. Early dominance in this area means that girls generally speak sooner and with greater proficiency than boys.

Aside from how language appears to be lateralised between the hemispheres there are also some structural differences that impact on the processing of language as well as other important functions.

One of these structures is a band of tissue that connects the right and left hemispheres and is known as the corpus callosum.  The corpus callosum acts as a bridge between the thinking areas of each hemisphere and allows for the flow of information from one hemisphere to the other. Numerous studies have identified that the corpus callosum of females maintains greater neural density and is thicker and more bulbous than its male counterpart.  In simple terms this means that females have a greater number of connections between the hemispheres and consequently greater efficiency and cross talk between each hemisphere.

The importance of relative size and neural density in the corpus callosum as it relates to particular behaviours and attributes generally depends on particular cognitive functions.  In terms of fluency and articulateness in language, the degree of connectivity in relation to the number of neural connections between the hemispheres has been shown to be of great significance.

Moreover, studies beyond those focusing on the brain tell us that females, as compared to males, typically have higher verbal IQs, greater proficiency in a range of language related tasks and abilities as well as superior verbal fluency.  In practical terms what all of this means is that girls talk more and with greater fluency than boys and this capacity is intimately linked to a girl’s emotional skill set.

Emotional awareness and the ‘intimacy imperative’

A further early sex difference is related to emotional awareness, and can be found in a young girl’s sensitivity to facial expressions. This sensitivity has been linked by a number of neuroscientists to lower levels of testosterone in females.

Neuroscientists believe that because the female brain is not immersed in high levels of testosterone in the womb a girl arrives in the world better at reading faces, hearing human vocal tones and empathising with others.

Moreover, studies have found that infants and toddlers with lower foetal testosterone demonstrate higher levels of eye contact, better communication skills and larger vocabularies.  And while some boys do arrive with those types of skills, it is generally girls who are born with the innate abilities for immediately connecting with the people around them.

A girl’s need for connecting with others could be described as an ‘intimacy imperative’.  Indeed, the evidence suggests that connecting with others is perhaps one of the most important aspects of a girl’s emotional well-being. Girls appear programmed to engage in social harmony and intuitively know how to use this in both positive and negative ways; generally speaking, this is true of females of all ages.

For example, there is an abundance of research demonstrating that female aggression is most often seen through damaging relationships.  For females, social exclusion, reputation damage and ignoring individuals replaces physical violence and can be more damaging long term.  In other words, when girls want to hurt someone they do so by disrupting any measure of social harmony or engaging in what some researchers have coined as ‘relational aggression’.  It is worth noting that relational aggression has been observed in over one hundred different societies, suggesting something more than culture may be at work in terms of this type of behaviour.

The importance of relationships for girls cannot be understated.  Arguably relationships are important in the lives of all children, however it should come as no surprise that during the early days of toddlerhood and childhood, boys and girls seek out, and engage in relationships very differently.

Anyone who has ever raised, lived or worked with small children has witnessed examples of such differences.  From even the earliest days boys are more likely to be aggressive, competitive, boisterous and prefer toys that make noise and can be manipulated (a diplomatic way of saying pulled apart or destroyed).  Girls on the other hand are much more sociable, passive, talkative and show greater capacities for listening, concentrating and paying attention.

What does this mean for raising girls?

So, what does this mean for parents of daughters, caregivers and teachers of young girls?  First, it means that we should accept that boys and girls will engage with the world differently and have different priorities in terms of play, learning and relationships. Second, while relationships are important and both boys and girls require social interaction for all aspects of development, positive relationships are that much more important for a girl’s overall sense of self and well-being.

It is, therefore, imperative that the innate needs of girls are nurtured by adults through fostering positive relationships and monitoring when relationships go wrong between girls, their friends, siblings and/or any significant adults.

And finally, girls are good at, and love to communicate which means that adults need to be empathetic and enthusiastic listeners. As a father of a daughter, and in spite of the work I do, I learned the hard way that sometimes all that my daughter wanted was a sympathetic ear to hear her thoughts and a shoulder to comfort her when needed.

In the end, girls and boys will behave and engage with the world differently and as such it is important to recognise that much of this is innate and as such should be nurtured in a way that meets the needs of the young girls in our lives.

Fortunately, there are a few simple things that can be done to help meet these needs and they include:

  • Being an active listener whenever there is any emotional upheaval. You need not try to solve all problems and in many instances only need to listen intently and acknowledge the feelings being displayed.
  • Watch for changes in behaviour. Girls will often act inwards when upset so it is important to keep an eye out for any signs of distress which can include becoming unusually quiet, introverted and ‘distant’.  Self-exclusion from people and activities is a sign of something gone awry.
  • Helping to mend relationships… when girls are in a state of emotional upheaval with siblings or friends they may need help to ‘patch’ things up. Fractured relationships are a gateway to a range of anxiety related issues.
  • Providing opportunities to engage in stereotypical boy activities but ensure there is much conversation occurring during these times. Girls will often avoid some activities that boys gravitate to but this is not necessarily due to a lack of interest so encourage participation in a range of activities… the key is to encourage not force and when you can join her in any and all activities.
  • Continually letting girls know they are safe, secure and loved.

shared by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

 

HOW TO ORDER: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

Posted in education, father daughter relationships, homeschooling, Phonics, raising girls, Reading, teaching, teaching girls, tutoring | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why boys wrestle, play fight and fidget

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

Gender differences, pt. 1 (boys)

DR MICHAEL NAGEL

Whether you have a boy or a girl you may have wondered what science can tell you about the role of the brain in shaping your child’s behaviour. In this two-part series author, speaker and academic Dr Michael Nagel, explores gender differences from a neurological perspective and opens the door to a greater appreciation for how we parent, educate, and support our children.

“Stop fidgeting!”, “Sit still!”.  How many times have you heard someone say either of these things to a young boy? And how many times have you seen boys unable to follow such requests?

Science tells us that because of their biological makeup, sitting still is just not an easy proposition for boys.

Most boys regularly appear to be in a state of perpetual motion and some much more so than others. Even when they are looking at books or reading you can see boys tapping their feet or fidgeting in some fashion.

Importantly, this is not necessarily some type of behavioral problem but is actually a biological imperative given some of the chemicals swirling around in the bodies and brains of boys.

In fact, research into the development of the male and female brain suggests that brain development during pregnancy goes a long way towards shaping these types of behaviours.

From the beginning it is important to consider that all children start off anatomically identical and this includes the brain of every child.

It is the introduction of additional male hormones triggered by a boy’s Y chromosome during first trimester that is not only responsible for the development of the sexual organs and other physical differences but also for creating a ‘male’ brain.

These changes suggest that the reason why boys generally act differently to girls is at least partially due to the brain’s biological makeup.

Parents and educators alike witness some of these differences every day.

A shorter attention span and being more adept at learning spatially, along with needing more rest and being in a seemingly constant state of motion are just some of the ways adults can see how boys differ from girls.

There are multiple factors that contribute to these differences and to the endless energy and movement of a boy that are beyond the scope of this article. However, there are two important chemicals that help us to understand why movement is not only more pronounced in boys than in girls, but is also so very important for their overall development. These two biological elixirs include testosterone and serotonin.

Prior to looking at how testosterone and serotonin impact on the behaviour of boys it is noteworthy that movement and physical activity are, in themselves, incredibly important to both boys and girls.

Given how technology has become so pervasive in our lives, the important links between movement, physical activity and healthy development cannot be stressed enough. All children need to move, and movement is integral to all aspects of development, and this is especially true when testosterone is meandering through the minds and bodies of boys.

Playful aggression is hardwired into males and not just in our species but in most primates. Moreover, testosterone also appears to be a major contributor to the constant movement and energy levels of boys and as such is not something that can easily be switched off simply by command. This is also exacerbated by another chemical called serotonin.

 

The role of testosterone

Most people are aware that testosterone is the primary male sex hormone and is associated with a range of behaviours including mating and aggression.

Some studies have even linked testosterone with various levels of anti-social behaviour, criminality, and gambling.

In terms of boyhood, it is important to note that there have been many studies linking testosterone to inattentiveness, impulsivity, physicality and movement.

Testosterone not only fosters male physical characteristics but also aggressive and competitive behaviours, territoriality, and later in life, sex drive.

Testosterone is the reason why boys find things more interesting than people and why they engage in exploratory and rough and tumble play.

As boys grow into men, high levels of testosterone tend to make males more aggressive and/or ambitious, have larger muscles, and be more dominating. And while it is true that females do have testosterone, it is not the prominent sex hormone in girls.

For females, progesterone and estrogen are the dominant hormones which in turn foster female physical growth and promote bonding and attachment behaviours and incline girls towards cooperation over competition.

Testosterone can also act much more differently in boys than in girls. For example, there is a substantive body of research telling us that testosterone and a boy’s amygdala operates somewhat differently than that of a girl.

The amygdala is a structure deep in the emotional part of the brain that helps to weigh up danger and elicit a fear response along with numerous other behaviours.

In males the amygdala is not only larger than in females but is also rich in testosterone. In simpler terms this means that the interplay of increased levels of testosterone in a larger amygdala is one of the reasons why young boys are far more inclined to engage in playfully aggressive, or rough and tumble, behaviours.

Playful aggression is hardwired into males and not just in our species but in most primates. Moreover, testosterone also appears to be a major contributor to the constant movement and energy levels of boys and as such is not something that can easily be switched off simply by command. This is also exacerbated by another chemical called serotonin.

How serotonin impacts behaviour

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter. Neurotransmitters are chemicals secreted at the synapses of a neuron that allow neurons to ‘talk’ to one another. The communication which results from an electro-chemical impulse between neurons and neurotransmitters influences all aspects of our behaviour. Serotonin is one such type of neurotransmitter and is linked primarily with processing emotions and acting as a calming mechanism.

Serotonin also plays a role in the control of eating, sleep and arousal, as well as the regulation of pain and various moods. Researchers associate high levels of serotonin with high self-esteem and social status while low levels of serotonin have even been linked to depression, impulsivity, risky behaviour, aggression, anger, and hostility.

When serotonin levels are normal or elevated we feel good, when they are low we feel awful. People suffering from chronically low levels of serotonin are often clinically depressed and given medication to enhance the uptake of this feel good chemical in the brain. Significantly, and not unlike so many other chemicals in the brain, serotonin operates and fluctuates differently in males and females.

For those who raise and work with children, it is important to remember that both boys and girls have serotonin, however, for boys their level of this important chemical is often impacted by testosterone and other chemicals.

Serotonin is also not processed as well in the brains of boys. In practical terms this often results in boys having lower levels of serotonin from time to time resulting in a greater predisposition to fidget and act impulsively. Therefore, asking a fidgeting boy to stop squirming or to sit still might be as successful as asking that same boy to hiccup on demand; when the uptake of serotonin in the brain is low, then fidgeting is often a common occurrence.

As parents or educators, it might be sensible for us to adjust our expectations rather than trying to force boys to do something that is physiologically difficult for them. One way of doing this is to allow boys opportunities to move around and engage in physical activity when they appear restless or ‘fidgety’.

That’s the paradox… promoting physical activity, especially high to low intensity activity, helps to calm the restless boy by altering their biochemistry. This isn’t about tiring a boy out, but rather about providing opportunities for him to balance out the chemical milieu of his mind. Moreover, taking a restless boy and putting him in a situation where he is expected to sit still for long periods of time or play quietly on demand is not always going to end well for anyone.

Top tips for parents

So, let’s wrap things up! You do not have to be an expert in neuroscience to know that boys tend to be in perpetual motion. Given the chance, they run, chase, dig, climb, build and destroy.

It is rare to find young boys sitting quietly and listening and they seem naturally wired for movement.

Testosterone and serotonin play a significant part in this behaviour and physical activity and play help mediate the impact of these chemicals.

It is also noteworthy to emphasise that sedentary behaviour is not part of any child’s natural makeup.

Professor Japp Panksepp1, one of the world’s leading authorities on human and animal behaviour, believes that all children learn to control themselves and regulate their emotions better through play.

Therefore, in order to promote healthy social and emotional development it seems self-evident that rather than simply trying to curtail or stop a boy’s need to move, an alternative would be to provide him with plenty of opportunities to counteract the effects of testosterone and serotonin by allowing for plenty of activities where he can use up some of the seemingly boundless source of energy.

In other words, appreciate that boys are built for activity. If he can’t sit still then give him opportunities to move in a way that harnesses and utilizes that seemingly restless energy!

And finally, it is significant to note that boys bond by doing things with other boys and with the adults around them as well, so foster opportunities to do so through playful activities.

Boys, by their nature, are designed to be active, to throw things, to compete, to learn by doing and to explore the world around them even when the world, or at least the adults in it, would like them to slow down. And most importantly, if he can’t sit still, why try to make him? Instead, and rather than trying to correct a boy’s innate desire to move, accept his high activity levels and provide him with safe and developmentally appropriate opportunities to engage with the world in a physical manner whenever possible.

shared by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

 

HOW TO ORDER: Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers

Posted in activities for boys, boys are fidgety, boys are made differently from girls, child development boys vs girls, education, fathers and sons, homeschooling, How boys learn, Let boys be boys, male differences, male's amygdala larger than female's, Phonics, playful aggression, Reading, rough and tumble, schools, teaching, teaching boys vs girls, testosterone in boys development, the male brain, tutoring | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Book Review: How to Tutor Reading, Writing & Arithmetic

Posted on July 15, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

“It is not necessary to have had formal teaching experience to become a tutor. If you have enjoyed reading to children and answering their questions, then you should enjoy tutoring. With the proper instructional materials, anyone who enjoys children can become a good tutor.” Samuel Blumenfeld (How to Tutor, 1973)

Today’s need for private tutors, and even volunteer helpers, is beyond imagination. Now, nearly half a century from the time that Sam Blumenfeld wrote his book about tutoring, many parents stand, mouths agape, wondering how the schools have arrived in their current state.

Dyslexia is rampant, children are questioning their genders, and frustration and discouragement press young people to behave in ways that previous generations could not possibly have anticipated.

It seems to me that when the public schools took over the educating of our children, so many of us just stepped aside and gave up the territory. We decided to leave it to the professionals. Many were convinced of their personal inadequacies. Those grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even siblings, who were predisposed to the love of teaching, were asked to move aside.

If Sam’s book was necessary in the 70’s, it is even more necessary now.

How to Tutor begins by describing the art of tutoring, and it describes the traits which a parent may look for when choosing a tutor. It also encourages parents to consider their part in the education of their children.

This is not just a text book, even though it serves well as one. It focuses on reading, writing and arithmetic, and it offers useful drills in these areas. Yet, it is above and beyond other resources for tutors. It gives the history and development of the reading and arithmetic. It describes why phonics is foundational to reading. It tells how letters and numbers came about. It provides drills and helpful suggestions. It even offers help in teaching children to write using the cursive alphabet.

If you are looking for educational alternatives for your children, this is a good place to start. It will either convince you that homeschooling is the best way to go, or it may help you understand how to successfully augment the education your children are getting in the schools. If you decide to hire private tutors, it explains how to choose them.

I believe everyone should have some part in the education of our children, and we should all start by educating ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

HOW TO ORDER How to Tutor

 

 

 

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Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

HOW TO ORDER Alpha-Phonics

 

Posted in education, homeschooling, Phonics, Reading, teaching, tutoring | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Phonics Saves a Struggling Reader — She’s now a Global Change Agent

Posted on July 13, 2022 by Meg Rayborn Dawson

“Unfortunately, I not only know about the reading problem in our schools, but I am well aware of how it feels to be labeled a reading failure. Feeling is a lot more acute than just knowing.”

Mary didn’t start out as a reading failure. She attended kindergarten at a time and place where, “Reading was not allowed.” Undaunted, she joined the childhood social milieu and anxiously awaited first grade, imagining the great fun that lay ahead. Why? Because she would finally learn to read of course!

Sadly, first grade was quite different than she had anticipated.

“All too soon the reality was that reading was nothing more than a guessing game. The teacher would show me a picture of a dog and then the word dog. The next day when the teacher asked me to read, I would read dog for the word did.”

Her teacher would stop her, in the audience of her peers, and tell her that she had missed a word. Similar forms of humiliation continued throughout her first-grade year. Still, she had a great desire to learn to read. When she got home from school, she would try to read her own books, but her enthusiasm was dashed by inability.

Her grandmother would tell her to, “just sound out the words,” but she couldn’t comprehend what she was being told to do. She was clueless. All she had been taught was to look at a picture and try to remember which word matched it. She would try to use her memory to identify the word, which was just a group of nonsensical letters in a block unit. She had not been taught that the letters represented sounds. If she had been, her grandmother’s advice might have been helpful.

Children like Mary are not only hurt by the embarrassment of illiteracy, but they are quite aware of their disappointment to loved ones. There is no doubt that Mary greatly desired to please her grandmother, but she had never been given the means to do so, and this story, unfortunately, is repeated endlessly, throughout many American schools, throughout decades. How many intelligent and enthusiastic people have been destroyed by such unnecessary nonsense? The numbers can’t even be fathomed.

This horrendous wave of intimidation and disappointment could have been prevented so easily, so many times. And it would have been quite simple if only these children had been taught, from the beginning, about the ABC’s and how they worked. Letters stand for sounds. Blending sounds makes words. Words make sentences. Sentences make paragraphs. Paragraphs make books. Children who know how to sound out words are soon reading books. Problem solved.

But without phonics instruction letters have no meaning. Students become confused and anxious. Some escape humiliation by using disruptive behaviors in the classroom. Some become sullen and lose all interest in school. Some learn to “fake it”, with clever ruses. Many of these accounts are beyond shocking. Some compensate by becoming sports heroes, others class clowns. Some drop out of school and pursue lives of crime. Many end up in prison. Fortunately for Mary, her grandmother finally recognized the problem and came to her rescue.

“Several years later (even though my family was afraid to help me) my grandmother decided that enough guessing and stumbling over words was enough.”

Evenings after school were spent in more lessons. The difference? These lessons were fruitful. Her grandmother simply taught her the sounds which corresponded to those previously random, letters without purpose. She was amazed!

“I will never forget how she could sound out a word she had never seen before. Once she pronounced it, she would say, “Oh, I have heard of that word,” and then tell me what it meant.

“The nightmare was over. I understood the mystery of words, and reading was easy.”

With the help of a loving grandmother, Mary had conquered illiteracy in her own life. And when she graduated from high school, her eyes were on a single goal. She wanted to rescue other children in the way her grandmother had rescued her. She wanted to teach, with the confidence that every child would learn easily and quickly.

Rudolf & the Rochester Reading Rescuer

“Why should children receive one reading program in the classroom, and then have to go out of the classroom to receive remedial instruction in phonics? Why not teach reading so that children learn successfully the first time they are taught?” Mary L. Burkhardt

Mary’s story is found in the foreword of the book, “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read: A new look at the scandal of our schools (Rudolf Flesch, 1981)”.

This was the second time that Flesch had addressed the same issue in a book.  The first time was in 1955 (Why Johnny Can’t Read: and what you can do about it). His message hadn’t changed. Johnny was still illiterate. The notorious they still weren’t listening. Johnny couldn’t read because he hadn’t been taught phonics. He didn’t know how the alphabet works. Mary L. Burkhardt continues in the foreword to this book, to tell how she worked in her own little corner of the world to teach in a way that she believed all children should be taught.

She wound up in Rochester, New York, working for the city school district. This previously timid, struggling child, who had overcome her own trial with illiteracy, came into the teaching field with a vengeance. She came with a battery of well-founded opinions. She believed things like:

“Whether children are ‘advantaged” or “disadvantaged’ black or white, rich, or poor, doesn’t have anything to do with how successfully children learn to read. Such [suggestions] are only excuses for not teaching children to read.”

And:

“Reading is not a mysterious act. When taught logically and systematically, reading becomes a natural accomplishment for the child.”

And:

“If we could only recognize and appreciate the very logical auditory and visual process the child goes through when learning to read, we could save ourselves from all the reading ‘fads,’ ‘bandwagons,’ and ‘shortcuts’ that add to the great confusion about how children learn to read.”

And especially:

“When children are taught to read in a structured, teacher-directed instructional program, they read. When this is not done, many children experience difficulty, and they are then mislabeled as dyslexic, an excuse.”

After nearly a decade of teaching throughout the Rochester Schools, observing reading instruction and results, and guiding other educators, she was honored with the position of Director of Reading. With the help of the Rochester Board of Education and a committee of 40 members, including parents, community group representatives, teachers, and administrators, she was ready to conquer that fearful phenomenon of illiteracy. She organized her resources and guided the selection of curriculum. It was not long before the results came in.

Before the Board of Education Stepped Up

“First, I would like to share with you a few personal experiences and the hope that your children never have to suffer as I did in school.”

This action of the Board of Education didn’t come until Mary had already spent several years assessing the problem. During those years she observed and remembered what she had seen. Her autobiographical account describes a growing concern for the livelihood of her students.

Mrs. Burkhardt’s first year teaching: High School — “Many of my students had previously been told that maybe reading just wasn’t their thing, that they should just keep working and try not to worry about their reading problems.”

Mrs. Burkhardt tested students to determine their weaknesses. She learned that most of them had a decoding problem (couldn’t sound out words).

“They were expending a great deal of time and energy guessing at words rather than being able to sound them out.”

This was the same problem she had described from her own childhood. She had discovered early that “reading was little more than a guessing game.” This problem continues to hound today’s illiterate students. Its source has often been traced to a methodology called look-say, whole word or whole language. Students trained in these programs, or eclectic programs centered around them, are often taught to guess. Much of the curriculum encourages this guesswork, with the use of pictures.

For example, in the story about a circus there may be a large and colorful, drawing of a clown. Within the text is the word clown. The child sees that the word begins with “c”. His eyes roam to the clown, and he tries the word. Since clown starts with the “/c/ as in candy” sound, he guesses, “clown”. He is instantly rewarded. Applause! Take a bow! But he has not read the word.

Some students are better guessers than others. Some students are confused by a process which doesn’t feel like reading — and it doesn’t work for them when they are alone.

Guessing (rather than reading) steals precious time. Clocks tick away, and hour hands travel around their faces, while children play on. These once ambitious students begin to wonder if they are just stupid. Some accept the label. They stress over the disappointment of loved ones, and teachers. Some don’t survive. Others develop compensation skills. They make up for failure with cleverness. They develop tricks, they become sleight of hand artists.

Many adult dyslexics describe their antics. They tell about privately avoiding reading, so no one will know that they can’t. They choose jobs that won’t uncover their illiteracy. They become great speakers, crowd pleasers, and charismatics. These students in Mrs. Burkhardt’s first year of teaching were no different than many struggling students of today. Presumptions about their (non-existent) inability are now couched in terms like, learning disorder and dyslexia.

Mrs. Burkhardt the Elementary School Teacher — After teaching highschoolers for a couple years, Mrs. Burkhardt moved to the elementary school to try and remediate students who were falling behind in the reading race. She complains that even sixth graders were still guessing words.

“My students were alert and anxious to learn, and the teaching staff was extremely dedicated and worked long, hard hours. At that time, only look-say and eclectic programs were used in the school… In spite of the teachers’ hard work and the children’ readiness and willingness to learn, children were having trouble learning to read. In fact, remedial readers were being generated in my school faster than I could remediate them.”

Mrs. Burkhardt tells of a student she has never forgotten, an eager and always smiling, remedial fifth grader. He and his classmates still struggled with decoding, so she spent part of each class working on just that – sounding out words. As they were reading, one of the classmates decoded, astronaut. This happy boy shouted out with joy, “So that’s what the word astronaut looks like!”

Mrs. Burkhardt suggests that astronaut had probably been in this boy’s listening and speaking vocabulary for a long time, maybe even before he started school. This was the key to an encouraging realization.

“As soon as they are able to sound out words, they can enter them into their reading and spelling vocabulary. Once they can decode a word, they then may automatically know the meaning. If the word read is totally new to the child, he can then immediately be taught its meaning.”

Mrs. Burkhardt – Supervisor — From there Mrs. Burkhardt climbed to a position as the Supervisor for Elementary and Secondary Reading Programs.

“[We] worked to remediate students as rapidly and successfully as possible… Students daily received an extra “shot” of reading instruction. The reading teachers worked to teach them the phonics and comprehension skills they needed. Each student was tested throughout the entire school year. The teacher was teaching-testing: teaching-testing: and individualizing instruction to meet each student’s reading needs. After three years, the proof was again evident. Students who were thought of as having limited reading capabilities made significant progress every year.”

This supervisory experience, encouragement from her success in that position, a compassionate empathy for struggling readers, and a continually growing, zealous flame, made Mary Burkhardt the perfect candidate for her appointment as Director of Reading. When she embarked on this next adventure, the average first graders in her district were already three months below grade level at the end of their school year, and the average sixth graders were two years behind. She soon demonstrated that this need not be the case.

Five Years Later — By implementing phonics-first programs, Mary Burkhardt proved what she had insisted all along. Once students could successfully sound out words, they were safely on the road to reading. Many new first graders were decoding words in text within 3 to 4 months (because they had learned how the alphabet works). They returned from Christmas break ready to read real books!

One school librarian reported to her that second graders were coming into the library and asking for chapter books, and that they were reading “like the fifth graders used to read”. Average first graders were now above grade level at the end of their first year, and second through sixth graders finished out their schoolyears at grade level.

“Today students automatically decode [sound out words] logically, systematically, and successfully. This enables them to use their energy to read for meaning and understanding, which of course is the ultimate purpose and joy of reading.”

Mary Burkhardt went on to become a leader in organizational management for companies around the world. Her linked-in profile describes her as an “experienced global change agent” who has overseen thousands of employees. Plus, she is the CEO of her own company. Obviously, as the Reading Director for the Rochester Schools, she was already a global change agent. What an amazing accomplishment — to change the lives of young people, over, and over again, through her gift. She taught them to read for real!

by Meg Rayborn Dawson

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene Univ.)

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Be a HERO:  Teach a Child to READ

Did you know every year many 1,000’s of parents teach their own children to READ? Many of them have used  Alpha-Phonics because they have found it can easily be used to teach their children to read. Your Kids can make a lot of headway in only a couple of weeks with this proven program.  Alpha-Phonics is easy to teach, is always effective and requires no special training for the Parent.   It works !  And it is  very inexpensive.  You CAN DO it !!  Follow the links below to know all about the time-tested (38 + years) Alpha-Phonics program:

WEBSITE     TESTIMONIALS    

CATHY DUFFY REVIEW

OTHER REVIEWS     AWARDS     

HOW TO ORDER

 

Posted in Dyslexic No More, education, homeschooling, Intensive Phonics, Jane & Sally, Mary Burkhardt, Phonics, Reading, teaching, teaching phonics, tutoring | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment