All, finally, FINALLY I can come out with my secret identity…I’m Spiderman.
No, I’m Larry Sanger (Google me), but then, anybody who asked for a copy of my essay already knew that. I’m in the central Ohio area and have one 4.5 year old boy and another who is just 2 months! I’m living the dream, sort of, insofar as I am now able to turn, FULL TIME, to developing educational resources for little kids, as well as speaking out publicly for early reading.
At the same URL I’ve also posted a link to a COMPLETE 122 MB (very big) zip file containing all of the Fleschcards.
THANK YOU all so very much for your help the last couple years as I have learned about baby reading. You’ve helped me so much to refine my thinking. (I’ve thanked the commenters individually in the essay itself. You’re there alongside various big names in education research as well as Titzer himself, who had plenty to say about it.)
Please spread that URL (http://www.larrysanger.org/reading.html) around as much as you can. I hope this essay, which I’ve worked so hard on, will help persuade a lot of parents as well as researchers and teachers to take the whole opportunity, of teaching your little ones to read, more seriously.
I haven’t had a chance to read through it all, but it looks very well put together. :yes: Great job!
I sent a link to the administrator for the University Honor’s Program at UAB in the hopes that she will share it with other HP students.
I am thinking of creating some mommy cards (business cards) and providing the links to my favorite resources on the back. I believe that I may add this to the list.
Ahhhhh…just wait, DadDude (are we still allowed to call you that???)…this may be the calm before the storm…use the time to thicken your skin. I’m sure you’ll be raked through the fire in your own time lol But we’ll be behind you ready to hose you down
Much thanks for your work! (And looking forward to the fruits of your future labour!)
Calm before the storm? You know, I don’t think so. I’ve launched enough stuff online to know that one of the best tests of long-term success is the immediate reaction you get – the things that don’t even make the tiniest ripple, which this essay hasn’t, rarely go on to make more ripples.
But I won’t give up on it entirely yet; I’m going to spend a few days getting the word out in other ways.
What I found most interesting and telling was the lack of response even from my family, friends, and acquaintances. Here’s something 100% free, carefully crafted, written by someone they respect (well, at least when it comes to intellectual endeavors), and the best word for the response is “muted.” They aren’t attacking me, of course – nobody has – but even people who “Like” it when I repeat something funny my son said, most of them are just quiet!
Why is this? I think it is because, despite a free “book” and an interesting video
they just can’t take it seriously. It’s not because they positively deny there’s anything to it, it’s because they don’t believe there’s enough to spend the time investigating it in the first place. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
OK, I have the beginnings of a solution; a blog post saying, “Hell yes, you can do this too.”
Great work. I added a post DadDude to the blog, it just looked so empty. I think it is likely because of the holidays that there are less comments.
I belive some people with older children don’t want to take it seriously. At least for me, I would hate to live with the guilt that I missed the window to teach my child early.
I guess you’re probably right re people with older children. There’s such a short window of opportunity between the time you start thinking about how to educate your kids and the time they’re going off to school. If you don’t know that there’s really something to this baby reading stuff before then, you’re not likely to become convinced in that amount of time…
I wouldn’t be surprised if something big turned it all around, though. For example, maybe some Hollywood star will start talking about it, or some highly-placed individual. Or maybe, these studies of baby reading that are coming down the pike will get more researchers onto it.
Not saying that this IS the problem, but it is my belief that all too many people have come to accept the concept that the government is meant to teach children and that they don’t need to worry about what they could do to help.
It’s kinda sad.
To really steer attention towards early education, it would take more than Hollywood stars and research; it would also need government intervention. A little encouragement from religious groups wouldn’t hurt either as there are many devotionally religious families, in the U.S. atleast.
Unfortunately, there are also some parents (like myself) who are not aware of this window until their child’s development stops going according to plan and that’s when they start putting a lot of effort into early intervention to get their child back on track hoping to “rewire” the brain while this window is still open. I sometimes wonder if rather than intervening at a later stage, I had started from birth, would I have prevented some of the problems?
Great piece of work, DadDude! Thank you for putting it all together. This is a great reference for any parent interested in early education.
Wow! I’m excited to read the whole text. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get lots of invitations for speaking engagements. You’re an inspiration and an amazing father. Thank you for sharing this excellent resource. All the best to you!
Congratualations DadDude! I took a look at the HTML Essay and skimmed around it. It is very well put together.
I cant say I’ll read it all later, as I probably wont. I more interested in the most successful “Hows” of early education and less in everything else since I’m already a believer in the “phenomenon” of early education.
I’m on vacation right now and tried to dowload the Fleschcards but I pack up to go home in a short while and the file wont be finished downloading by then but I’ll get it when I get home.
I cant wait until I have kids, I want to teach Math and Reading early, along with lots and lots of bits of intelligence. It will be especially challenging because I plan to raise my kids in my non-native language (Spanish) but I have faith that I can do it. (I hope!) since I have so much time to prepare myself…
I actually found your method of teaching your son to read through childandme. I started using your method for 1.5 months and have seen positive results.
For example, when I sounded out f-a-n. My son would said “fan”.
We goes slowly through exercises from Felsch book. It’s been 1.5 months and we just started exercise 2 today.
Oh well…I just let my son take the lead and only do the exercise whenever he feels like to.
Thanks, Elle and everyone. I love to hear from people who have actually used Fleschcards. I’m not surprised that some kids want to take breaks from using them.
What I really wonder, however, is whether anyone has gone through most or all of the cards, and if (as a result?) their kid can now read phonetically. Of course, if you’re like us, you can’t say which tool did the trick, because you use many tools. I’m also curious whether your child’s enunciation has markedly improved (as mine did) just when using the cards.
Cheap baby reading apps might dramatically increase the number of children who can read fluently prior to school age which will force experts to take these claims seriously.
The IAHP lose credibility when they claim that babies can subitize to 100 and continue to use an outmoded patterning treatment which is not supported by evidence. Their patterning technique has failed when tested under controlled conditions. Research has also shown that babies can only perceive small quantities (1-3) directly by instant recognition.
Makoto Shichida.
Doman and Shichida both claim that babies can perform lightning-fast calculations – again not supported by any credible evidence.
Shichida also claims that he has a scientific theory and evidence for ESP and teaches ESP to babies!
Child development specialists are unlikely to investigate any claims made by the IAHP or Schichida.
I can give you our progress report. We are up to set 12 and my kids are reading CVC words and blends. They just started watching Leapfrog Letter Factory & Talking Words Factory which has added new enthusiasm to their lessons; they hadn’t been interested in the cards since last August. The twins are now 38 months old and we were having difficulties getting them interested in the Fleschcards at the same time; so of course one would distract the other after only a few cards. Now they are asking me to read with them. I am making review books from the Fleschcards, some of the same words and some new words, to make it new for them, and if they get stuck I will sing the Leapfrog phonics song to help them along. Before we start digraphs I’m hoping to find some resources to introduce the sounds.
The IAHP lose credibility when they claim that babies can subitize to 100 and continue to use an outmoded patterning treatment which is not supported by evidence. Their patterning technique has failed when tested under controlled conditions. Research has also shown that babies can only perceive small quantities (1-3) directly by instant recognition.
Makoto Shichida.
Doman and Shichida both claim that babies can perform lightning-fast calculations – again not supported by any credible evidence.
Shichida also claims that he has a scientific theory and evidence for ESP and teaches ESP to babies!
Child development specialists are unlikely to investigate any claims made by the IAHP or Schichida.
This is my last post-thank you, goodbye to all and best wishes.
This is very interesting. Are you quoting from something? “Psychomotor patterning” has nothing to do with Doman’s baby reading method, does it? I didn’t think it did.
As to Shichida teaching ESP–that’s news to me! If so (and it seems to be so), that pretty much does it for me–no need to investigate Shichida. Anybody who pretends to teach ESP is a charlatan, no two ways about it.
That Doman-trained babies either have or haven’t genuinely learned to subitize large numbers, that seems like it could easily be proven under carefully designed conditions. It just requires some properly-designed tests. I still have a lot of doubts, so much so that I’m not really interested in doing Doman math with my second baby, but I’m open to actual evidence.
The Steven Novella blog is not especially persuasive. The response to him further down, by John Rullman, really hit the ball out of the park. Really embarrassed him, as far as I’m concerned. I still have to post a reply to my essay from Steven Novella on my blog; I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Aha, so you are leaving? Well, that’s a shame. So long!
Verrrry interesting!