3 ms·

"Sold a Story" paints a very compelling case for what went wrong with reading. I wouldn't be shocked to see some bleed in of that across to math, as well. In

by taeric 3y ago

"Sold a Story" paints a very compelling case for what went wrong with reading. I wouldn't be shocked to see some bleed in of that across to math, as well. In particular, decoding a word phonetically is a very "interact with the characters of the word" activity that many students weren't taught for many years. Literally teaching you to look around the word for context as a starting point for how to interact with a word. The same approach in math would reach similarly bad results, I'd wager. Edit: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/, in case you don't know what I'm referring to.

AlanYx 3y ago
There was a fantastic Hacker News discussion about Sold a Story a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 Apparently the same sort of analysis with math isn't quite as straightforward. There is some evidence that pure constructivism is not successful with struggling math students. But unlike reading instruction where skilled readers never use the strategies taught in things like three-cueing (for "decoding", anyway), skilled mathematicians do approach novel problems in an exploratory manner.
- taeric 3y ago
  Oddly, I'd expect skilled readers do use cueing. But, I'd expect that understanding and interpreting the different cues around requires experience. I also expect that it is never done "blind" on the word. For example, if you see the word "sake", cues let you know if it is one or two syllables. But the cues alone are almost certainly not usable for determining what word would appear somewhere. (edit: LLMs and an interpretation of them being only the connection of cues not withstanding.)
scythe 3y ago
It's a nice argument. But it probably isn't a great way to explain a decline in performance that was larger in math than in reading!
- taeric 3y ago
  I'm not pushing it as a total answer. My assertion, though, is that reading is a fundamental part of math. We talk about them as if they are separate topics, but learning to "read" a math statement is a big part of learning how to use a math statement. In very "phonetic" style. You aren't necessarily looking for the phonemes, of course, but you are looking for what the constituent parts mean. For example, if you see "Sigma x", you almost certainly pronounce that as "sum". And you don't necessarily do that from "cues" around the symbol/letter sigma, but by learning how to decode it at a symbolic level. Same would go for "F = ma", you learn to read that as a relation of the three symbols. And you can play with it, "if that is F, what is m?" You can go further in the exploration and start learning units attached to the symbols, such that you can put it together.
  - isk517 3y ago
    I had a friend who needed to upgrade his math in order to qualify for a particular college program and asked me to tutor him. Ultimately didn't take very long because he showed me a sheet of problems he was working on and I noticed right away that he was writing our all of his equations horizontally (ex. 1 + x = y = x = y - 1) like one would write a sentence. All I had to do to significantly increase his grade was show him how to work through equations vertically. When I asked why none of his teachers berated him for this he said he just did it like he was taught. Afterwards I phoned my mother and told her she was definitely correct in her assessment that the Catholic school I was sent to provided a much higher quality education than the public schools in the area.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
morkalork 3y ago
>You shall know a word by the company it keeps.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
As we went over in the last discussion, "Sold a Story" can be a grueling podcast because of the ratio of information to cliff hangers. The short version, and maybe the entirety of the information in the 15+ hours of podcast is: Phonics works. While some kids can learn to read English without phonics, many kids can't, and there are periodic trends to teach reading without phonics, which causes a lot of problems when a school district follows one of those trends.
no_wizard 3y ago
Wait, so the idea that I've used for years, which is deriving meaning of a word based on context clues around how its used in a sentence, is a sham? I have been doing this my whole life nearly, at this point. This hits me hard for some reason. And I tested in the top percentiles for reading too! (in 1997, 2004, and 2008) EDIT: I may be completely misunderstanding this here. Are you saying using context for word pronunciation or for trying to derive meaning?
- AlanYx 3y ago
  Not exactly. Most models of reading involve at least two steps: (i) decoding and (ii) assigning meaning. Decoding is translating written letters into blended sounds, then meaning is assigned. There is very strong evidence that skilled, fast readers rarely rely on context for decoding, and conversely, that students who are only taught context-based strategies for decoding rather than phonics tend to struggle with reading, find it a chore, and have trouble reading quickly. But for the next step, assigning meaning, context is valuable. Skilled readers do use a variety of context clues, including images, to infer meaning of words they have not encountered before or whose meaning is potentially ambiguous.
  - no_wizard 3y ago
    okay gotcha. I'm definitely talking about the second example here (assigning meaning). I learned Phonics as a kid (Hooked On Phonics and all that), guess I never thought about it much as an adult. Though I'm not the fastest reader, my retention is typically higher than average, even as I age, and I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
    - taeric 3y ago
      Yeah, the story is about how phonics was basically abandoned. And how disastrous that has been for reading education.
- gizmo686 3y ago
  What is being discussed is using context clues to determine what a word is, in the sense of mapping the sequence of symbols on paper to a word. When you teach children to read, you want to use words that they already know. Once you have the word, infering the meaning of it is a seperate skill.

by taeric 3y ago

AlanYx 3y ago

There was a fantastic Hacker News discussion about Sold a Story a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599181 Apparently the same sort of analysis with math isn't quite as straightforward. There is some evidence that pure constructivism is not successful with struggling math students. But unlike reading instruction where skilled readers never use the strategies taught in things like three-cueing (for "decoding", anyway), skilled mathematicians do approach novel problems in an exploratory manner.

taeric 3y ago
Oddly, I'd expect skilled readers do use cueing. But, I'd expect that understanding and interpreting the different cues around requires experience. I also expect that it is never done "blind" on the word. For example, if you see the word "sake", cues let you know if it is one or two syllables. But the cues alone are almost certainly not usable for determining what word would appear somewhere. (edit: LLMs and an interpretation of them being only the connection of cues not withstanding.)

scythe 3y ago

It's a nice argument. But it probably isn't a great way to explain a decline in performance that was larger in math than in reading!

taeric 3y ago
I'm not pushing it as a total answer. My assertion, though, is that reading is a fundamental part of math. We talk about them as if they are separate topics, but learning to "read" a math statement is a big part of learning how to use a math statement. In very "phonetic" style. You aren't necessarily looking for the phonemes, of course, but you are looking for what the constituent parts mean. For example, if you see "Sigma x", you almost certainly pronounce that as "sum". And you don't necessarily do that from "cues" around the symbol/letter sigma, but by learning how to decode it at a symbolic level. Same would go for "F = ma", you learn to read that as a relation of the three symbols. And you can play with it, "if that is F, what is m?" You can go further in the exploration and start learning units attached to the symbols, such that you can put it together.
- isk517 3y ago
  I had a friend who needed to upgrade his math in order to qualify for a particular college program and asked me to tutor him. Ultimately didn't take very long because he showed me a sheet of problems he was working on and I noticed right away that he was writing our all of his equations horizontally (ex. 1 + x = y = x = y - 1) like one would write a sentence. All I had to do to significantly increase his grade was show him how to work through equations vertically. When I asked why none of his teachers berated him for this he said he just did it like he was taught. Afterwards I phoned my mother and told her she was definitely correct in her assessment that the Catholic school I was sent to provided a much higher quality education than the public schools in the area.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

morkalork 3y ago

>You shall know a word by the company it keeps.

droopyEyelids 3y ago

As we went over in the last discussion, "Sold a Story" can be a grueling podcast because of the ratio of information to cliff hangers. The short version, and maybe the entirety of the information in the 15+ hours of podcast is: Phonics works. While some kids can learn to read English without phonics, many kids can't, and there are periodic trends to teach reading without phonics, which causes a lot of problems when a school district follows one of those trends.

no_wizard 3y ago

Wait, so the idea that I've used for years, which is deriving meaning of a word based on context clues around how its used in a sentence, is a sham? I have been doing this my whole life nearly, at this point. This hits me hard for some reason. And I tested in the top percentiles for reading too! (in 1997, 2004, and 2008) EDIT: I may be completely misunderstanding this here. Are you saying using context for word pronunciation or for trying to derive meaning?

AlanYx 3y ago
Not exactly. Most models of reading involve at least two steps: (i) decoding and (ii) assigning meaning. Decoding is translating written letters into blended sounds, then meaning is assigned. There is very strong evidence that skilled, fast readers rarely rely on context for decoding, and conversely, that students who are only taught context-based strategies for decoding rather than phonics tend to struggle with reading, find it a chore, and have trouble reading quickly. But for the next step, assigning meaning, context is valuable. Skilled readers do use a variety of context clues, including images, to infer meaning of words they have not encountered before or whose meaning is potentially ambiguous.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  okay gotcha. I'm definitely talking about the second example here (assigning meaning). I learned Phonics as a kid (Hooked On Phonics and all that), guess I never thought about it much as an adult. Though I'm not the fastest reader, my retention is typically higher than average, even as I age, and I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
  - taeric 3y ago
    Yeah, the story is about how phonics was basically abandoned. And how disastrous that has been for reading education.
gizmo686 3y ago
What is being discussed is using context clues to determine what a word is, in the sense of mapping the sequence of symbols on paper to a word. When you teach children to read, you want to use words that they already know. Once you have the word, infering the meaning of it is a seperate skill.