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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3122 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 24, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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As someone who has a fake going on the computer job and a degree, I've gotten roped in to tutoring/babysitting a psuedo family members kids. They go to one of those classical academy style charter schools everybody is excited about and got dANG: These 3rd - 5th graders don't know how to fucking read.

They are learning through something like systematic phonics (probably), where you learn letter and syllable sounds first; resulting in two kids who REALLY slowly scan through a sentence like human recursive descent parsers and one brighter middle schooler who totally ignored the teachers and taught himself how to read on his own by simply picking up a book and plowing through it.

Interestingly, one of the two kids in elementary is doing pretty good in math, so I gotta assume that the IQ is there. Little dude might be a little dyslexic, who knows?

Apropos: Anybody have any experience getting kids who can read but aren't very good at it interested enough in a book that they are willing to learn on their own? What are the kids reading these days? I'm gonna see if I can't find them a bigass children's science encyclopedia, that was my jam as a little babu but I welcome any suggestions from ya'll.

I'd like to second this from @roystgnr :

Comic strip collections ... let young readers who aren't 100% solid manage to grasp more context from the drawings.

I got started with reading on "Calvin & Hobbs," one of the all time greats. I'm not sure if Spaceman Spiff is still relevant, but I know the stuff about ethical philosophy and girls being gross is timeless.

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