Every summer our local PBS station has a fair with booths and giveaways and semi-educational activities for the kids. Olivia is pictured here with one of her faves, Super Why. Why are you expressing surprise that she is in a tiara and lei? This fair generally acts as a reminder to me to set the TiVo for the Fall and start recording her shows again. It is also when I have to start thinking about curriculum planning again, yikes! After conversing with some of the other moms I ran into at fair I was struck at how literacy based all the PBS shows are. I understand that being able to read is extremely important, but at the expense of reasoning skills or developing spatial thinking? Most kids will eventually learn to read, however, I'm still not sure that I understand fractions.
Do you really need to read before you can add? Discuss amongst yourselves.
1 comment:
Reading is the **PRIMARY** tool of learning. Without an ability to read well, nothing else can be learned very well in this "modern" age. Everything else we learn is based on reading and comprehending stuff.
The hard reality is without a concerted effort to help people read well, many will NEVER learn to read to the point of understanding very much and some will never learn to read at all.
For kids to be competitive in this world, they **MUST** be able to read, write and speak English to at least a high school level, if not a college level. Sadly most kids can not even read, write and speak to a grade school level, even after getting a high school diploma.
Most of my partners around the world, who speak English as a second or even a fifth language, read, write and speak English better than most US high school kids.
The emphasis on reading is correct. Of course, critical thinking skills are also critical, but can be learned after reading starts.
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