I don't really remember learning to read. My mom says she went through some book with me before I went to school, but she doesn't remember any details about it. I guess our school didn't use phonics because she wound up buying "Hooked on Phonics" to help my younger brother when he was having trouble reading in 2nd or 3rd grade. I went through Phonics Pathways with my own kids. It was useful, but it didn't go far enough. @ElizabethB has lessons about dividing words into syllables that helped with longer words, and my younger son also needed the extra help of Rewards Intermediate. So why am I bumbling along with making this YouTube channel you ask? It's because the state of reading in this country is so terrible, yet I know most parents won't ever even think of looking for phonics programs to go through with their kids. I'm hoping the videos inspire regular parents to work with their kids - parents who wouldn't come across this information in print. (This is aside from the surprisingly high percent of viewers from other countries where English isn't the native language.) Will I ever have everything in the best, most perfect order? Who knows. Can I help make a difference anyway? I hope so.

I've added quite a few more videos since my last post, including videos on teaching sight words phonetically. Now I have a few more questions as I design my next program. It seems like many reading programs start with short vowel sounds and wait a while to introduce long vowel sounds. It seems like this results in having to teach many common words, such as "I," "a," and "the" as sight words. Is there some benefit to waiting to introduce long vowel sounds that I'm not aware of? Do you think new and remedial readers would feel successful faster if the program introduced a few sounds at a time and then had them reading words and sentences with just those sounds rather than learning all the basic sounds for all the letters before learning to read any words? For example, I was thinking of working with just 5-6 consonants and 1 vowel to start. I made a spreadsheet of all the phonograms and their frequency so way I can teach them the most common sounds first, keeping in mind that some consonants are easier to learn first.

Can you share more about this? We all got Covid last December, and ever since then, we've been getting sick about every 4-5 weeks, even my son and husband who previous rarely got sick. I think the longest any of us have gone without a cold or worse this year has been two months.

When did AP courses start to have so much work? In high school I usually had about two hours of homework per weeknight, even the year I took AP calc, US History, and Chemistry. For chemistry we only had six tests for the entire year, but they were each two hours long and made up entirely of old AP questions. When I read about students taking AP classes today, it sounds like they have so much busy work!

Do you have any suggestions for where parents can find books for reluctant readers? I never had to deal with this myself.

Now I wonder if I should have a video about helping kids find books they like to read. What would be some for reluctant late-elementary or middle school readers? I didn't have reluctant readers, but I know that Diary of a Wimpy Kid was a big hit here.

Do you think parents want an ordered path, as in watch the videos in this order? Or would some sort of placement test to help find specific videos be more useful?

Good ideas! I have some videos that include some of this, but I should probably make some separate videos.

I wonder how many of these parents hate reading because they were poorly taught or have dyslexia? Maybe they think it's that difficult for everyone and don't realize that it isn't.

I have a few suffixes videos, but now I think I should have a root, suffix, and prefix bootcamp. Thanks, Ausmumof3!

I can definitely see how this would be a problem. When there are multiple valid ways to decode a word, you may not be able to figure out which one is right if your vocabulary doesn't include that word.

I've started a YouTube channel aimed at helping parents help their kids with phonics and spelling. Besides regular phonics videos, I have a Syllable Division Bootcamp, and I'm working on a Spelling Bootcamp. Does anyone have ideas for what would be useful for non-homeschooling parents? I did the Syllable Division Bootcamp because it seems like many kids stall out at about the 3rd-4th grade reading level.

While doing a full course interests me, we can't fit it in, so I'm making it a unit in their English class. (I may also expand it to have a unit in their government class.) I found some logical fallacy bingo cards, so we're going to use them while watching political debates.

Does anyone have any books, documentaries, etc. they recommend for teaching about propaganda? We're currently going through this article about spotting 16 types of media bias, as well as reading The Fallacy Detective. I'm especially interested in the use of political cartoons or other forms of visual persuasion.

The idiocy around reading is why I started a YouTube channel aimed at teaching regular parents the phonics and syllable division rules they should know to help their kids with reading. I figured most public-school parents aren't going to buy homeschooling curriculum, so I thought a series of videos would help. (It seems like many of the phonics videos on YouTube are cutsey and aimed at kids.) I only started my channel in the spring, but what has surprised me most is the percent of my viewers who are in other countries, such as India and Vietnam.

I don't think these people understand order of operations. Asking a kid who can't read to write something is like asking someone who can't add to do calculus.

Article about the important of this.

Clark Howard talks about people who died without naming beneficiaries on their insurance, bank, and brokerage accounts. Sometimes people get divorced and don't remove their ex-spouse as the beneficiary, which means that if they die, the ex will get the money, no matter what the will says. My challenge to all of you for November: update your main and contingent beneficiaries. I thought mine were mostly taken care of, but I discovered today that I had accounts at a bank where I hadn't done it.

I'm the captain of three adult rec sports teams. In the past I have only not invited people back for future seasons if they were total jerks to other players. I now have some players I don't want to invite back for the spring. Some missed 3/4 of the games (without telling me before registering), and one no-showed three times. Those will be easier to kick off the teams. Another player is a ball hog. There are a few that I don't really want to invite back because their skill level is so much lower than the rest of us. Lest I sound like a jerk, I have really given many people a chance without seeing them play, and it has reached the point that I am on three teams that lose almost every single game. (Plus I'm on another team, where I'm not captain, that can even lose 15-0!) How do I words things if these players ask to come back in the spring? I don't have to win every game, but it's disheartening to lose 4-5 days per week for months at a time. ETA: Some of the players with the skills gaps haven't played since they were kids, one didn't start until his 50s, one is in his 60s in an over-30 league, and the goalie has bad knees and leg problems that prevent him from doing his job well most games.

What is the secret to finding a hotel with fast, reliable internet? You'd think that with so many business travelers that this information would be easier to find. I'm specifically interested in finding foreign hotels with internet that's fast enough for Microsoft Teams meetings.

Let me add that far too many of the top results for any search related to writing papers are from paper mills trying to sell papers!

DS17 is working on a history paper. I'm trying to get through to him that using only one source for a whole page isn't a good idea. (There's no good reason to only use one source on that page.) He doesn't want to believe me. He wants some sort of official proclamation about using multiple sources per page. My attempts to find something like this haven't worked so far. The Purdue OWL website has information about using sources, but I didn't see anything about using multiple sources per page to make sure you don't just summarize one person's work as the bulk of a paper. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I post stuff on Craigslist in the free section. I put it out at the curb, and the post has my address, photos, and a description that says I won't respond to emails. I don't want to deal with flaky people, so whoever gets here first gets the item. The one time I broke my rule and actually responded to someone who emailed anyway was for a piece of furniture that was going to require someone bring a truck or a trailer. This person acknowledged that my post said not to email, but they were coming from about an hour away and didn't want to waste their time. I said it was still here as of that moment. They came and got it and then emailed me to thank me.

Sure, that makes sense. I think the difference is that your grandma had good social skills. My mom doesn't.

Nobody ever talked about feelings when I was a kid. When I was 17, I was devestated by a breakup. My mom didn't seem to notice. My dad's (probable ADHD) attempt to cheer me up was to offer me the free sample of conditioner that some company mailed to us. (That's assuming he even noticed. He may have just given it to me because it came in the mail.) The lack of any discussion about feelings held me back in my social life. I had friends, but I had zero idea how to tell them I was mad at them about something or work through relationship problems because I didn't see it modeled at all. What's helped me a lot as an adult has been extensive listening to podcasts (Jordan Harbinger especially) and seeing people here post scripts for wording about dealing with various issues.