Helen Lowe articles on phonics and phonics tools

My grandmother made a career of teaching students who were victims of the word recognition/ whole word method of teaching reading, to read. My grandmother was a determined and very well educated woman from Massachusetts, who had done social and missionary work in Boston, New York, and Appalachia between 1915 and 1920. She found that our schools' methods of teaching reading leave many normally intelligent students unable to read - and that kids who can't read become juvenile delinquents. She was successful, and highly regarded, by all but the officials of the Glens Falls school system who she often tangled with over their decisions to channel various children out of an education. She left a legacy of children and grandchildren who have often continued her efforts by teaching basic literacy to adults.

My grandmother published several articles on her work and on the issue of how to teach reading. Don Potter obtained most of them in pdf format and put them on his web site, as below. (Of course, all of my grandmother's descendants have hard copies of the articles.)

How They Read by Helen R. Lowe. On Don Potter's web site, with his comments, and more links on this topic.

The Whole-Word and Word-Guessing Fallacy by Helen R. Lowe, published in "Tomorrow's Illiterates", Charles Walcutt, 1961. On Don Potter's web site.

Solomon or Salami by Helen R. Lowe, Atlantic Monthly, November 1959. On Don Potter's web site, and he also cites another web site where he found it. This is an analytical study by my grandmother, based on her work, demonstrating the poor reading skills of children taught to read by teh reading recogniton/ whole word method.

Don Potter's web site on education is a valuable resource on the subject of reading and phonetics. Should his site ever not still be there, I saved copies of all her articles.

Why don't they teach my child to read? by Howard Whitman, Colliers, 11/26/54. Mentions my grandmother's work.

How should reading be taught? Keith Raynontal et al, Scientific American, March 2002, 286(3), p 84+. An excellent article on the phonetics vs word recognition controversy. The authors point out that in every other country that uses the Roman alphabet, reading is taught phonetically, and that in China, whose language is written in actual hieroglyphics, students are first taught to read phonetically using an English transliteration of the Chinese language!

My improved on version of the transcribed contents of my grandmother's Wordcaster books of phonetic exercises, based on word parts and rhyming words.

Email me at tiggernut24@yahoo.com

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