| Author | Message | ||
     nan Citizen Username: Nan Post Number: 1193 Registered: 2-2001 |
John, I had tons of phonics as kid but we never broke words down into individual phonemes (the smallest unit of sound in English). Intensive blending is characteristic of synthetic phonics, the type found in all the ACE recommended programs. There are several well know types of phonics, and as I have informed you many times, none were found, in the NRP report, to be superior to another. So if you want to say that it is critical that our schools institute synthetic phonics, I'd like to know why. BTW, the extensive reading you credit me with includes a wide range of viewpoints, including people you seem to admire. You, on the other hand, seem to get most of your information from a few narrow sources. I know you don't believe me, but there are worlds out there beyond Louisa Moats, the NIH and the Fordham Foundation. By the way, Ms Moats wrote her famous piece, "Whole Language Lives, but Must Die" (not the actual title, but actually the actual title) piece for the Fordaham Foundation--a group headed by voucher supporter and private Ed company advocate, Chester Finn. Don't think the connection is not related. | ||
| nan Citizen Username: Nan Post Number: 1194 Registered: 2-2001 |
Jennifer, Well, that's the pot calling the kettle black if I've every heard it. You use idiotic terms like "Whole Language soldier", and THEN you show us a letter from PATRICK GROFF!!!!! HAHAHAHA. on the nutcase NATIONAL RIGHT TO READ FOUNDATION website. You got me rolling with that one. Patrick Groff is the most famous phonics fanatic ever. He's an embarrassment to his own kind. I was on a listserv once with Philip Gough, the father of the skills model, and someone mistakenly accused him of writing something written by Patrick Groff. Gough was horrified and called Groff a "phonicator" That was the first time I'd heard someone use that term. Now when I read your posts I think of it often. And so what if you like your kid's reading program. According to YOUR group ACE that program (Houghton Mifflin) is not rich enough in phonics drills for k-1 so we would have to pick another program anyway. I hope you spend as much time rallying the parents at Salomon Schecter as you do here on MOL. After all they are paying the big bucks for a program that you consider insufficient to teach their children to read in k-1. Also, the successful Abbington school you visited in Newark DID NOT use one of those scripted ACE recommend programs. They used a variety of methods including a computer phonics program, and from the sounds of it, lots of holistic, language based activities. It's a lot closer to our program than the ones you like. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1337 Registered: 6-2001 |
Is Johnny Carson dead? I must be reading the wrong newspapers. But at least you get that I don't take your posts too seriously. | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 972 Registered: 3-2003 |
"Is Johnny Carson dead?" More or less. "But at least you get that I don't take your posts too seriously." Nor I your pretensions to erudition. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1339 Registered: 6-2001 |
OK, JC, I'll put you out of your misery. I was thinking of things I had read by Roy Harris or Florian Coulmas some time ago and don't even know if I could find them online. Since John Davenport said he was joking, and this thread is supposed to be about BOE candidates, I didn't seem worth anybody's time to get into some abstruse discussion about an unproveable proposition: whether Aristotle would have supported phonics instruction in Maplewood. So you're right! | ||
| John Davenport Citizen Username: Jjd Post Number: 162 Registered: 2-2003 |
Harpo, I don't have enough time to reply properly (as usual these days). But certainly personal experience only takes one so far. I do realize that there is a lot of social scientific literature on this subject and that different reading styles have been identified. If we follow Montagard's sounds advice and look for a single curriculum that everyone involved in the learning process can understand, then its delivery can still be tailored to individual children with different learning styles by a competent, trained teacher. Of course that makes sense. One flexible, tailor-able, curriculum makes a lot more sense than no curriculum, which is what our current program approaches. And of course 100% of teachers will not favor one approach over another. But the wideranging anger throughout our district about the administration's imposition of our homemade language arts program should indicate where the majority of elementary teachers probably stand, I think. | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1346 Registered: 6-2001 |
John Davenport, You seem open to a curriculum teachers can tailor, I'm not sure how that sits with some of the most vocal people in this debate. But just speaking for yourself, have you got a particular curriculum in mind? | ||
| just me fromsouthorange Citizen Username: Jmfromsorange Post Number: 171 Registered: 7-2003 |
i thought this thread was supposed to be about who's running for boe? | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1354 Registered: 6-2001 |
Well, my next question to John Davenport was going to be does he support a particular candidate, but maybe I can broaden the question to ask: Do any of the candidates who support chaanging the LA curriculum support a particular "brand named" curriculum? | ||
| Nohero Citizen Username: Nohero Post Number: 3008 Registered: 10-1999  |
Well, I guess it drifted. But that hardly ever happens here.  Never mind Greek and Latin, kids, how 'bout a little Aramaic? http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1159068,00.html | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 978 Registered: 3-2003 |
"John Davenport, You seem open to a curriculum teachers can tailor, I'm not sure how that sits with some of the most vocal people in this debate." Well, this vocal debater has always advocated for tailoring whatever curriculum is employed, to meet the needs of kids as individually as possible. (I'm tempted to post here my last Point of View piece from the NR.) "Well, my next question to John Davenport was going to be does he support a particular candidate, but maybe I can broaden the question to ask: Do any of the candidates who support chaanging the LA curriculum support a particular "brand named" curriculum? " John Davenport has said here that he supports Bennett, Crawford, and Little. None of these candidates, as far as I am aware, supports one particular published curriculum to the exclusion of all others. They might have their preferences, though, so perhaps you should ask them directly. (Not that this should matter much: the BOE cannot decide that a particular curriculum be used. That's the administration's job.) I'm curious if anyone kows where Mark Miller stands on this or other issues. As for Julia Burch, she has said here previously that 'she pretty much hates curricula', and, as mentioned, she has objected to a trial phonics program. But she hasn't said much here since she decided to run for the Board, so I suppose it's possible she has changed her mind. (Personally, I like what I've seen of a LA curriculum called Read Well, which is on ACE's list and is put out by a company called Sopris West: see http://www.readwell.net/ and http://www.sopriswest.com/ .) | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 979 Registered: 3-2003 |
Nohero, teeheehee! This one's surely worth committing to memory: "Da'ek teleyfoon methta'naanaak, pquud. Guudaapaw! Please turn off your mobile phone. It is blasphemous." | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1355 Registered: 6-2001 |
Nohero, I saw that when it was published and glad you posted it here. It's positively hilarious. Maybe JCrohn and I would see everything eye to eye in Aramaic. JCrohn, Thanks for the added info and, yes, I'm sure I could have phrased what I was trying to say about Greek better, but don't know enough in that area to support it with any certainty. | ||
| jfburch Citizen Username: Jfburch Post Number: 1332 Registered: 6-2001 |
Crohn, I don't have time for this either, but for the record, I have never said that as a point of policy that I object to curricula. I have noted that as a teacher, and given my teaching style, I tend not to like curricula that are given to me. I used the word "hate" once, in a discussion with a fair amount of context--I and several other folks had come at the issue many times in many threads. The full post, with context, is here: /discus/messages/3130/22027.html#POST164641 | ||
| harpo Citizen Username: Harpo Post Number: 1356 Registered: 6-2001 |
Thanks for the whole context. | ||
| jem Citizen Username: Jem Post Number: 922 Registered: 5-2001  |
It should be noted, in all fairness, that Robert Little used to post very frequently on MOL and I can't remember the last time he posted since it was announced that he was planning to run for the BOE. | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 983 Registered: 3-2003 |
Burch: "...for the record, I have never said that as a point of policy that I object to curricula." Okay, but for the record, as a BOE member would you consider examining the school budget from the standpoint of whether a published "science based" curriculum could reduce our dependence on costly Project Ahead in grades 1-3, or would you continue to argue on the basis of your personal experience with older students that it would not likely help? | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 984 Registered: 3-2003 |
"Thanks for the whole context." There's a larger one still in the discussion preceding and following Burch's post. (Also, a number of your questions about phonics have been responded to and counter-responded to in these discussions, ad nauseam, which is why they aren't being addressed at length now. Check out the ed thread archives sometime, you may find them interesting.) | ||
| mem Citizen Username: Mem Post Number: 2850 Registered: 5-2001  |
Question: If a CHS student can run for BOE, than shouldn't a teacher in the school district be able to run? If so, I vote for Suzanne Ryan. | ||
| lumpynose Citizen Username: Lumpyhead Post Number: 798 Registered: 3-2002  |
Suzanne Ryan is backing Rowland Bennett and Lynn Crawford for the BOE. Her endorsement is in the News Record. It's starting to make sense to me now as to why the feral ones wouldn't listen to an experienced and gifted teacher like Suzanne who works in our own district. |
