HN Books @HNBooksMonth

My understanding is that Dr. Seuss & P.D. Eastman books (among others) were primarily intended to be read by kids learning to read, not to be read aloud by parents.

But I have personally found these books with extreme limited vocabulary to be much better read-aloud books for 2-year-olds than books for independent reading by 4–5 year-olds. More generally, many other graded readers are excellent read-aloud books. At age 2–3, my kids particularly enjoyed the Henry and Mudge books https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534427139, and everything by Arnold Lobel.

If you are trying to teach kids to read, let me highly recommend Bloomfield’s workbook Let’s Read from the early 60s, which I heard about from a 2012 comment here on HN by Tokenadult. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814311156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466

Bloomfield was one of the leading linguists of his era, and his book is very carefully structured to introduce only one new spelling–sound association per lesson, with the first half consisting of only regularly spelled words, so there is no possible confusion, with the full mishmash of irregular words only introduced after the reader is already fluent with regular spellings.

My son & I started working through it together for about 10–15 minutes per day when he was 3.5 years old, and it took about 8 months to get to the end, after which he could fluently read pretty much any material he could comprehend. As a not-quite-5 year-old he now happily independently reads books intended for 3rd–4th graders. (I’m not trying to suggest every kid should start on such a project at that age; every kid is different, and interests and attention span vary.)

⬐ mncharity

Jim Keller (cpu designer): "I joke, like, I read books. And people think, 'Oh, you read books'. Well, no, I've read a couple of books a week, for [50] years."[1] Thought you might like.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=5044s

⬐ croutonwagon

That’s interesting. I had some credits on Amazon so I got the book. I’ll check it out and see about working with my 5yo this summer.

And that’s pretty amazing for your kid. That’s waaaaay above normal. We read every night to the kids, but we aren’t a huge reading family (if that makes sense)

⬐ progers7

Thanks for the recommendation. If this comment piqued anyone else's interest, as it did mine, there is an updated version of Bloomfield's Let’s Read: https://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-Linguistic-Clarence-Barnhar...

There is some discussion of the differences in the two editions in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4665466 as well as the reviews on Amazon. I am going to give the updated version a try.

I know counterexamples. My second son read Oliver Twist at no more than sixth-grade age (as I just verified by asking him what Dickens he remembers reading). We homeschool all our children, and we make sure that they learn to read thoroughly.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

Then they are at liberty to read whatever they want, whenever they want. Fitting today's generation of readers, they all read a lot of "high fantasy" (Tolkein, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, etc.) and plenty of nonfiction on favorite subjects (e.g., mathematics, biology, history) but they are also well able and willing to read classic novels. I do get the impression, from observing what children in our community check out when they visit the local library, and from observing how infrequently some of them visit the local library, that Dickens is considered challenging reading in today's world. See also

http://www.pacinfo.com/~handley/orsig/highschool.html

for the suggestion that Oliver Twist is a senior-high-level book, which would be surprising to any of my four children.

To add to the great comment above, especially for the parents here considering instructing their children on the formalities of reading, make sure your children learn the sound-symbol correspondences of English (or whatever language's) writing system and skills for pronouncing unfamiliar words first seen in print. All four of my children, now avid readers, got a lot of help from the book Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach by Leonard Bloomfield and Clarence Barnhart.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

I like the stories in that book, too, especially the very last story.

A good book for developing reading skill and getting kids hooked on reading (it has worked for all four of my children) is Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

Press release on the same study:

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/pressreleases/proct02/dyslexics.html

(I looked this up to get a better idea which countries were considered, and which were not.)

Excerpt from a good book on dyslexia by some of the leading researchers in the field:

http://books.google.com/books?id=OTMYM5ijMtMC&pg=PA383&#...

Here's another good link on dyslexia:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l15r432m85775666/

Here's a link to a forthcoming book with practical advice to parents about dyslexia:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047042981...

My overall comments on the submitted article and the claim in its title are:

a) Yes, the English penchant for preserving etymological spellings from multiple languages (especially Norman French) makes learning reading of English more daunting than learning to read a language with a reformed, consistent spelling such as Spanish. But linguists have applied thoughtful effort to improving reading instruction in English, and it is possible with the best materials, for example Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach by Leonard Bloomfield and Clarence Barnhart,

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

to make great progress in reading English independently in less than one year of instruction. (It's regrettable that more schools don't use superior books like Let's Read for initial reading instruction.) Part of the difficulty that pupils have in school in English-speaking countries comes from suboptimal reading instruction rather than from inherent features of the current English writing system.

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Reading-Instruction-Science-Brad...

b) The study didn't test "European languages" exhaustively. It may be that there are some languages in Europe that present similar difficulties. Certainly there are languages in other regions of the world (including languages in the Indo-European language family) that present tougher challenges to primary-age learners learning to read, although those learners often overcome those challenges.

c) For overall adult performance in reading, exposure matters, and for second-language learners of English, the network effects of having huge numbers of users of English (both first-language users and second-language users) all over the world ensures that most second-language learners still reach quite an adequate level of reading proficiency in English, which indeed in many cases exploits the similarity of English spelling to spellings from foreign languages. English gains its position as the world interlanguage honestly and will not be challenged as the world interlanguage by any other language in the lifetime of anyone reading this message.

I think it would be enlightening if you could provide the textbooks you buy.

Interpreting that as a request to name the textbooks I find useful, I'll do that here.

Elementary mathematics:

Primary Mathematics

http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm

and

Miquon Math

http://www.keypress.com/x6252.xml

Secondary mathematics:

The Gelfand Correspondence Program series

http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773

http://www.amazon.com/Functions-Graphs-Dover-Books-Mathemati...

http://www.amazon.com/Method-Coordinates-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817...

http://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817639144...

http://www.amazon.com/Sequences-Combinations-Limits-Library-...

and

Basic Mathematics by Serge Lang

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge-Lang/dp/038796...

and

The Art of Problem Solving expanded series

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Books/AoPS_B_Texts_FAQ.ph...

When a student has those materials well in hand, it is time to work on AMC and Olympiad style problem solving,

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Books/AoPS_B_CP_AMC.php

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Books/AoPS_B_CP_Olympiad....

and also the best calculus textbooks, such as those by Spivak or Apostol.

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-One-Variable-Introduction...

http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Vol-Multi-Variable-Algebra-Ap...

Elementary reading:

By far the best initial reading text is

Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

but there are many other good reading series, including

Primary Phonics

http://www.epsbooks.com/dynamic/catalog/series.asp?seriesonl...

and

Teach Your Child to Read in Ten Minutes a Day

(I devote more time than that to reading instruction, typically, because I use multiple materials)

http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Minutes/dp/14120...

and quite a few others. There is more junk than good stuff among elementary reading materials, alas.

I'm homeschooling four children, and describe myself as an eclectic homeschooler with strong unschooling tendencies. My youngest is now six years old, and she spends a lot of each day drawing, building Lego constructions, doing kitchen chores with her mom, playing with her brothers, talking walks outdoors (with various members of the family keeping her company), or occasionally watching videos, some educational, and some not. She is close to being an independent reader. I give her a reading lesson each school weekday, and a math lesson. (My favored materials are Bloomfield and Barnhart's Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

and the Miquon Math

http://www.keypress.com/x6252.xml

series.)

So I guide my children's activities, but they have a lot of free time and a lot of control over how they spend their time. I like promoting QUIET activities like drawing and reading, because much of my work is done at home.

⬐ aeroevan

As someone who was homeschooled all the way through high school and am now working on my PhD in aerospace engineering, keep up the good work.

My bit of advice would be to join an active homeschooling group (if you're not part of one already). Not only will your kids have a (relatively) healthy social life, but they'll meet some really interesting people. I had (and still have) friends whose interests ranged from writing operas to fellow hackers. Most of my public school friends seemed boring in comparison.

⬐ eru

Thanks for talking about homeschooling groups.

I am from Germany, where homeschooling is more or less verboten. Homeschooling seems like a good idea. But I always wondered where children would get their social life from, when most of their peers are locked away for at least half of the day.

⬐ bmj

There is an assumption that all home schoolers keep their kids locked up all day away from other kids, or that home schooling requires this. Hardly. Many of the stereotypical home school kids (socially awkward) are that way because their parents purposefully shelter them. For them, home schooling is as much opting out of the culture as it is opting out of the school system. There's also an assumption that typical schooling is, in part, socialization, which seems odd since most of us don't spend our days exclusively around our own peer group.

We've investigated several local home schooling groups, and we're also finding that many unofficial co-ops exists too, once you get plugged into the local learning web.

⬐ tokenadult

There is an assumption that all home schoolers keep their kids locked up all day away from other kids, or that home schooling requires this.

Yes, that is the assumption, but that is not at all the reality. We have a very strong local group here specializing in homeschooling "gifted" children (standard term, not meant to be a brag) that is helpful for all the parents and for most of the children. I'm also part of several national online networks related to various aspects of homeschooling, and have been an officer of statewide homeschooling organizations.

⬐ eru

I would not assume that home schoolers lock their kids up. Rather that the other kids are locked up in school.

So homeschooled kids may have less opportunity to socializing with "school-aged" peers --- unless there are other homeschoolers around.

"Ph.D.s in education have put a great deal of effort into figuring out how to teach that skill to the kids who Just Don't Get It."

Actually, Ph.D.s in education have done a generally appalling job of researching how children learn to read. There are a few happy exceptions, but I would look more to Ph.D.s in linguistics or psychology (harder disciplines, and more evidence-based, than education in general) for advice on how to teach children to read.

Here are some sound resources on reading instruction:

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

http://www.amazon.com/Language-Development-Learning-Read-Sci...

http://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Dyslexia-Complete-Science-B...

So, yes, the problem with introducing programming into the K-12 curriculum is

a) figuring out how to teach it well to learners of that age of varying backgrounds and interest levels, and

b) figuring out what else gets crowded out of the curriculum.

⬐ pm

One of my friends (my major client) is doing his Ph. D. in speech pathology and designed a program to combat children with learning disabilities. We commercialised the program some time ago and it's selling well, as well as becoming a major tool amongst the local and interstate education sectors.

Mind you, reading is totally different from teaching computer science.

⬐ sethg

I don't want to get into a debate here about what the best techniques for teaching reading are (not to mention how to get teachers in the classrom to actually use the techniques); my point is just that everyone in the system agrees that the schools have a duty to teach literacy to every kid who is biologically capable of it.

150 or even 100 years ago, I don't think this was the case; if a child didn't learn to read in primary school then it was considered the child's failure, not the school's, and the kid just dropped out and got some job that didn't require literacy.

⬐ tokenadult

My ancestors 150 years ago and even more recently learned to read before they started school, as is noted in their diaries or recalled by my oldest living relative. And Horace Mann noted BEFORE he started campaigning for compulsory school attendance in Massachusetts that by his estimate most inhabitants of Massachusetts were literate in English. (He wrote articles in the journal he founded, the Common School Journal, which I have looked up, saying that.) The origin of the compulsory-attendance school system as we know it today in the United States was not to ensure literacy but rather to accomplish other social goals promoted by Mann.