Language in the Brain, Mouth and the Hands | Yale Psychology Lecture
Legalzoom.com had a wonderful article on young folks who became entrepreneurs, some very young, before high school graduation and some right out of college. Richard Ludlow put together a website called Academic Earth which has free lectures from such institutions as Yale and Harvard.
I listened to Language in the Brain, Mouth and the Hands by Paul Bloom | Yale Psychology Lecture
A captivating speaker, Paul Bloom is fascinating with his striking storytelling and insightful humor. Daycare providers utilizing what Bloom teaches here, can better assist their daycare kids in learning to read.
Legalzoom.com wrote this about Richard Ludlow:
"Richard Ludlow, a social entrepreneur, founded the Yale Economic Review while he was still in college and then after graduation, deferred admission to Harvard Business School to focus on his next venture, a website called Academic Earth. The mission of Academic Earth is "giving everyone on earth access to a world class education." The website was launched in January 2009, and by May 2009 had built a library of over 1,500 video lectures by professors from prestigious universities like Harvard and Yale. All videos are available free for anyone to watch. Subject matter includes Astronomy, History, Law, Religion, and more."
Why the recommendation to daycare business owners? Educate yourselves and don't wait for the Department of Early Learning to be your leader in making your business successful.
Learning through this modality that gives you free access to such people as Paul Bloom, a Yale professor, provides a stellar education. Keep track of what you read and listen to and create your own training documents crafting what you learn into your business plan.
To the Department of Early Learning; create a process by which day care providers stepping up to the plate in this manner (sitting through this lecture by a Yale professor and making specific application to how they utilized this lecture in their daycare) can receive STARS credit.
And how sweet that a young person (Richard Ludlow) using the technology of the internet created a website that offers free high class education. Daycare provider could incorporate these lectures into their curriculum for school aged children.
Dr. Seuss would approve.
Showing posts with label History of Reading and Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History of Reading and Writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Underground History of American Education and Learning to Read
The Odysseus Group People's Education Debate & Discussion Center
John Taylor Gatto, New York Teacher of the Year, wrote a book called The Underground History of American Education, a book filled with history and ideas you won't find in the public education system voted in by Congress in 1854 or 1857 when a legislative bill created the National Education Association (NEA).
It's been a gradual downhill since. The French philosopher, Alex de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America in 1831 with high praise for the literacy, critical thinking skills, debating skills and articulation skills of the United States of America. He said we were more literate than the French. A Frenchman said that.
Click on John Taylor Gatto's link and enjoy perhaps some ah ha moments, moments we didn't learn in our public schools. This is the book that helped me to help my grandsons to learn not only how to read but to love reading!
John Taylor Gatto, New York Teacher of the Year, wrote a book called The Underground History of American Education, a book filled with history and ideas you won't find in the public education system voted in by Congress in 1854 or 1857 when a legislative bill created the National Education Association (NEA).
It's been a gradual downhill since. The French philosopher, Alex de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America in 1831 with high praise for the literacy, critical thinking skills, debating skills and articulation skills of the United States of America. He said we were more literate than the French. A Frenchman said that.
Click on John Taylor Gatto's link and enjoy perhaps some ah ha moments, moments we didn't learn in our public schools. This is the book that helped me to help my grandsons to learn not only how to read but to love reading!
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Learning to Read is Easy...just ask my Grandsons how They learned to Read at Age Six
We were a nation of literate, extremely well read folks from the 1600s through the 1800s. The big decline started in 1930. So what happened?
Over the last four years in teaching day care staff, home day care business folks and day care center directors, I've done anecdotal research and asked on introductions at the start of class if folks have actual memories of learning how to read.
Few have actual memories of first learning the mechanisms of reading. Most of us somehow just started reading; and a great many of us love to read.
From a National Education Association (NEA) report in 2004: "The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters - impoverishes both cultural and civic life."
The NEA was created through Congressional legislation in 1854 and from my readings of history it is where the decline of literacy started in the USA. The NEA and the hold it's having over our country is the problem.
The evidence from reading John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education and Alex de Tocqueville's Democracy in America published in 1832 about 2 decades before the political creation of the NEA supports the hypothesis that the NEA is the problem.
"John Adams spent many years in France and often talked about the fact that France had 24 million citizens but only 500,000 who could read, compared to America where nearly everyone read. The state of literacy in America was detailed by French jurist and philosopher Alex de Tocqueville, who toured America in 1831 and wrote in his book, “Democracy in America,” pp. 328-329, “Everything about him (the American Frontiersman) is primitive and wild, but … (h)e wears the dress and speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents for a time to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and some newspapers. It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which thought circulates in the midst of these deserts (wilderness). I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous district of France.”
(DON M. POWERS The Edmond Sun)
This is high praise from the French wouldn't you say? : )
I was extremely blessed for three years to do child care on and off for my to-be grandsons. They were five and three years old when they first came into my life.
One night early into the beginning of first grade for Isaiah, he was in such agony trying to learn to read. I looked at what he had to read. It was those Bob Books. I couldn't believe it. What the heck kind of books were these? "Mag sat on a rag rug." I thought, "Are you kidding me? What drivel."
I was reading John Taylor Gatto's book at the time and from reading his book I finally remembered how I learned to read. So I made Isaiah a "Secret Codebook" of phonemes and we started having fun learning how to read.
One night I was talking to my son about Gatto's book and how I finally realized the mechanics of how I learned to read; and I wished I had remembered them when he was young and struggling with public school and learning how to read. Later, I saw Isaiah thumbing through Gatto's book.
Ah, ha another clue, he's listening to our adult conversation, now he's fascinated by this adult book. I asked him, "Do you want me to read this book to you?" Yes, he did and so did his four year old brother, Cole. Cole, also, wanted a Secret Codebook of his own so I made one up about the alphabet.
Ok! I had bought a share in a CSA farm so the boys could experience being with the land and be little farmers. They loved it. They preferred going there rather than going to see a movie. So with green beans to prepare we all came to the table.
2 hours. Two hours I read to them, not one fidget, not one of them had to go to the bathroom, they were in hog heaven. I read to them about Benjamin Franklin's and Thomas Jefferson's schooling.
I then went to the Humane Society's Paws and Claws Thrift Store in Vancouver, Washington and bought two adult dictionaries and highlighting pens for the boys. Again the boys were in hog heaven. I taught Isaiah how to look up words. He'd highlight the word he looked up. Cole wasn't at the reading stage yet so he'd look up pictures and I would read the word and definition to him; and he'd highlight that.
Isaiah did so well that he got in trouble with his first grade teacher. She sent home a week's worth of homework, some to do each night. Well, it was so easy, he did it all in one night. Public education is about obeying authority more than it is about learning. So she wasn't happy he did a week's worth of homework in one night. He had anxiety from being reprimanded by the teacher.
The boys loved going to the library with me. They didn't want to be in the children's section. They wanted to be in the adult world so they got books without pictures and graphic novel kind of books. Most times in the car they had books to read. They loved it. Cole was so cute, he kept saying, "Can we go to the library and buy more books." I'd explain we weren't buying them, but he kept saying it so I slowed down to understand why he thought that way. The library card looked like a credit card. : )
Cole hated Kindergarten. He's a kinesthetic child, he's got to move! The night before the first day of first grade he didn't want to go and he said he didn't want to learn how to read. I looked at him and thought, "Oh, my and he's has to survive 12 years of public education." I looked at him and I thought what is his motivation then it hit me. "Cole, I said, do you know why you want to learn how to read?" He gave me that look, like, "What's Margo coming up with now." I said, "You want to learn to read, so you can read things adults don't want you to read." That did it! He came home from school each day with new words, he'd say the word, sound it out and without it being part of the homework, use it in a sentence.
The boys kept their adult dictionaries and highlighting pens underneath their beds to grab them quickly when the time came to look up some words.
Isaiah's second grade teacher, he said, told him if he struggled with more than three words the book was too hard for him. So we got an adult book about pirates since the boys loved pirates. It took him about 40 minutes. He patiently and determinedly looked up a number of words in the dictionary. He did it. He read a long page from an adult book. He felt good about his accomplishment.
This long holiday weekend as we remember how this country of ours came to be and the high literacy rate we had; rejoice in that and see what books your kids want to bring along in the car as you travel from point A to point B and back again.
More about the NEA and 1930 in a later article. Nancy Drew will help with that story.
Over the last four years in teaching day care staff, home day care business folks and day care center directors, I've done anecdotal research and asked on introductions at the start of class if folks have actual memories of learning how to read.
Few have actual memories of first learning the mechanisms of reading. Most of us somehow just started reading; and a great many of us love to read.
From a National Education Association (NEA) report in 2004: "The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters - impoverishes both cultural and civic life."
The NEA was created through Congressional legislation in 1854 and from my readings of history it is where the decline of literacy started in the USA. The NEA and the hold it's having over our country is the problem.
The evidence from reading John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education and Alex de Tocqueville's Democracy in America published in 1832 about 2 decades before the political creation of the NEA supports the hypothesis that the NEA is the problem.
"John Adams spent many years in France and often talked about the fact that France had 24 million citizens but only 500,000 who could read, compared to America where nearly everyone read. The state of literacy in America was detailed by French jurist and philosopher Alex de Tocqueville, who toured America in 1831 and wrote in his book, “Democracy in America,” pp. 328-329, “Everything about him (the American Frontiersman) is primitive and wild, but … (h)e wears the dress and speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents for a time to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and some newspapers. It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which thought circulates in the midst of these deserts (wilderness). I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous district of France.”
(DON M. POWERS The Edmond Sun)
This is high praise from the French wouldn't you say? : )
I was extremely blessed for three years to do child care on and off for my to-be grandsons. They were five and three years old when they first came into my life.
One night early into the beginning of first grade for Isaiah, he was in such agony trying to learn to read. I looked at what he had to read. It was those Bob Books. I couldn't believe it. What the heck kind of books were these? "Mag sat on a rag rug." I thought, "Are you kidding me? What drivel."
I was reading John Taylor Gatto's book at the time and from reading his book I finally remembered how I learned to read. So I made Isaiah a "Secret Codebook" of phonemes and we started having fun learning how to read.
One night I was talking to my son about Gatto's book and how I finally realized the mechanics of how I learned to read; and I wished I had remembered them when he was young and struggling with public school and learning how to read. Later, I saw Isaiah thumbing through Gatto's book.
Ah, ha another clue, he's listening to our adult conversation, now he's fascinated by this adult book. I asked him, "Do you want me to read this book to you?" Yes, he did and so did his four year old brother, Cole. Cole, also, wanted a Secret Codebook of his own so I made one up about the alphabet.
Ok! I had bought a share in a CSA farm so the boys could experience being with the land and be little farmers. They loved it. They preferred going there rather than going to see a movie. So with green beans to prepare we all came to the table.
2 hours. Two hours I read to them, not one fidget, not one of them had to go to the bathroom, they were in hog heaven. I read to them about Benjamin Franklin's and Thomas Jefferson's schooling.
I then went to the Humane Society's Paws and Claws Thrift Store in Vancouver, Washington and bought two adult dictionaries and highlighting pens for the boys. Again the boys were in hog heaven. I taught Isaiah how to look up words. He'd highlight the word he looked up. Cole wasn't at the reading stage yet so he'd look up pictures and I would read the word and definition to him; and he'd highlight that.
Isaiah did so well that he got in trouble with his first grade teacher. She sent home a week's worth of homework, some to do each night. Well, it was so easy, he did it all in one night. Public education is about obeying authority more than it is about learning. So she wasn't happy he did a week's worth of homework in one night. He had anxiety from being reprimanded by the teacher.
The boys loved going to the library with me. They didn't want to be in the children's section. They wanted to be in the adult world so they got books without pictures and graphic novel kind of books. Most times in the car they had books to read. They loved it. Cole was so cute, he kept saying, "Can we go to the library and buy more books." I'd explain we weren't buying them, but he kept saying it so I slowed down to understand why he thought that way. The library card looked like a credit card. : )
Cole hated Kindergarten. He's a kinesthetic child, he's got to move! The night before the first day of first grade he didn't want to go and he said he didn't want to learn how to read. I looked at him and thought, "Oh, my and he's has to survive 12 years of public education." I looked at him and I thought what is his motivation then it hit me. "Cole, I said, do you know why you want to learn how to read?" He gave me that look, like, "What's Margo coming up with now." I said, "You want to learn to read, so you can read things adults don't want you to read." That did it! He came home from school each day with new words, he'd say the word, sound it out and without it being part of the homework, use it in a sentence.
The boys kept their adult dictionaries and highlighting pens underneath their beds to grab them quickly when the time came to look up some words.
Isaiah's second grade teacher, he said, told him if he struggled with more than three words the book was too hard for him. So we got an adult book about pirates since the boys loved pirates. It took him about 40 minutes. He patiently and determinedly looked up a number of words in the dictionary. He did it. He read a long page from an adult book. He felt good about his accomplishment.
This long holiday weekend as we remember how this country of ours came to be and the high literacy rate we had; rejoice in that and see what books your kids want to bring along in the car as you travel from point A to point B and back again.
More about the NEA and 1930 in a later article. Nancy Drew will help with that story.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
How Children Learn to Read, a Lesson from the 17th Century
Thomas Tryon advises how to teach children to read and write in England in the late 17th Century:
"At a year and a half, or two years old show them their letters, not troubling them in the vulgar way, with asking them what is this letter, or that word, but instead thereof, make frequent repetitions in their hearing, putting the letters in their sight. And thus in a little time, they will easily and familiarly learn to distinguish the twenty-four letters, all as they learn the utensils, goods, and furniture of the house, by hearing the family name them. At the same time, teach your children to hold the pen, and guide theirs hand; and by this method, your children, unaccountably to themselves, will attain to read and write at three, four and five years old....."
In America
1790 literacy rate was 90% (women's was 45%)
1840 rate - between 93 -100%
1940 rate - 96% for Whites - 80% for Blacks
1951 rate - 81%
1973 rate - 73%
I am having trouble finding the most recent literacy rates. I'll post when I find.
"At a year and a half, or two years old show them their letters, not troubling them in the vulgar way, with asking them what is this letter, or that word, but instead thereof, make frequent repetitions in their hearing, putting the letters in their sight. And thus in a little time, they will easily and familiarly learn to distinguish the twenty-four letters, all as they learn the utensils, goods, and furniture of the house, by hearing the family name them. At the same time, teach your children to hold the pen, and guide theirs hand; and by this method, your children, unaccountably to themselves, will attain to read and write at three, four and five years old....."
In America
1790 literacy rate was 90% (women's was 45%)
1840 rate - between 93 -100%
1940 rate - 96% for Whites - 80% for Blacks
1951 rate - 81%
1973 rate - 73%
I am having trouble finding the most recent literacy rates. I'll post when I find.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Remembering How You Learned to Read
Folks in my classes continue to report not remembering how they learned to read. A couple here and there do, but most do not.
One woman who learned to read before she went to school, again, like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" got in trouble when she read along with the teacher.
I haven't spent a lot of time this spring reading with the seven year old in my life. I got an adult book out of the library on pirates. The pleasure and pride came to his face when he once again could tackle an adult book. I helped him when he stumbled with the decoding.
He stopped at one point and said, "My teacher says that if I come across five words that are hard to pronounce it means the book is too hard for me." "No way", I shouted gleefully! His look of relief warmed my heart.
He read the first page of the introduction. Took him 23 minutes of concentration and effort. I gave definition to the words he didn't know.
Kids want to be in the real world with adults. They really like to hang out with adults who treat them with respect who have an interest in the world.
One woman who learned to read before she went to school, again, like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird" got in trouble when she read along with the teacher.
I haven't spent a lot of time this spring reading with the seven year old in my life. I got an adult book out of the library on pirates. The pleasure and pride came to his face when he once again could tackle an adult book. I helped him when he stumbled with the decoding.
He stopped at one point and said, "My teacher says that if I come across five words that are hard to pronounce it means the book is too hard for me." "No way", I shouted gleefully! His look of relief warmed my heart.
He read the first page of the introduction. Took him 23 minutes of concentration and effort. I gave definition to the words he didn't know.
Kids want to be in the real world with adults. They really like to hang out with adults who treat them with respect who have an interest in the world.
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