"Your Baby Can Read" - A VERY BAD WAY TO TEACH READING!!
Mar 10 '00 (Updated Mar 22 '00)
I am talking specifically about a video I purchased called "Your Baby Can Read." Yes your two and four year old will be able to "read" after just watching this video for a week or two, but is it really the way you want them to learn how to read? The true title of the video should be, "Your baby can memorize."
Curiosity got the best of me with this video. I saw a segment about the creator and tape on 20/20. He promises that your child will be able to "read" and read well after viewing the several tapes in the series. They are affordable - maybe $9.99 a piece and for that what parent wouldn't want to give their youngster a head start in life and teach them to read.
I was disappointed in the biased report 20/20 laid out - of course with their soft approach it really didn't surprise me. They touted how wonderful this would be for any child and what a wonderful advantage it would give your child.
They never called a spade a spade and said what this video really teaches - the "whole word" approach to reading. In fact if you want your child to "read" at an early age, you don't even need these videos. Just read the same books and words over to your child again and again, and I promise you your baby can read - my first was reading at 2 1/2!! Why you ask, because she memorized the letter sequence and could pick out certain words in text and ads.
She actually wasn't reading, she was memorizing words like stop, toy, cat, exit - when she saw them in another example her brain would remember the sequence and low and behold she could make you believe she was reading.
I 100% believe that the whole word approach is the worst possible way for a child to learn to read!! To help prove my point up until the start of the school year in 1998 some areas, if not all, in California actually used the whole word method to teach reading. The year my son went to kindergarten they decided that phonics was the better way to teach and got rid of whole word.
Yes children who use whole word may read sooner than kids who learn with phonics, but in the long run they pay a very big price. They do not know how to decode words and spell - they can only half read - easily skimming over words they think they have memorized and never gaining full comprehension of what they are reading. Yes whole word will give your child confidence in reading, but it will be bad confidence and hard to correct later on.
I bought this video just to see what it as like. (Of course as a good mom I had already been doing phonics with my older children and will continue with my younger ones.) It was 100% the whole word approach and within a week or two my 2 and 4 year old were reading the words they memorized on TV in books they had never seen before.
It's a simplistic video - it shows a girl and they say the word - girl over and over, then they put the word under the girl so you memorize and associate the letter sequence with seeing a girl, then they take away the girl and keep the word up and say it a few more times. they do this for every word they "teach" your child.
I thought the video itself was low grade and BORING!! My 2 and 4 year ran to the TV to watch. I'm not sure what attracted them, but it sure held their attention and got them to focus.
This is just a very bad idea and not the way for any baby to learn to read!!
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Member: Nancy
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