Tax Tip of the Day

2006-03-27T00:24:00.000-05:00

Turbo Tax is only as good as the person inputting the numbers.

Yes, I have seen errors on Turbo Tax returns. The problem is, the people who generally buy and use the program would never know, until they get the letter from the IRS.

So, if you want to do your own taxes, take the trouble to *really* educate yourself. Take a couple of classes in individual taxation. Don't just buy a $25 program and expect it to do the job for you.

On the murdered minister and his wife, who did the deed...

2006-03-25T23:02:00.000-05:00

Well, the police have said infidelity was not the motive, then they clammed up when asked if abuse/molestation was the motive.

This is, of course, conjecture on my part...

My suspicion is that he was molesting one, or more, of the daughters.

And I wonder, in that situation, would I have the (pardon the expression) balls to kill the man?

If you are in that situation, and you go to the police and prosecute, then your eight year old daughter, and perhaps the six year old daughter, are going to be put through hell. The minister is going to have a lot of the community and church back him and declare you the evil one. And he may not be convicted. Even if he is convicted, the court may still mandate visitation with the children! If he is not convicted, then you have to deal with the aftermath, and not being able to protect your children, custody issues, the horror of visitations and sending your daughters to him...

Conjecture, of course, but I think she did right. And I wonder why so few women take this ultimate step when their children are harmed in this fashion. Would I? I'm not sure it would even enter my mind. Divorce, prosection... yes...

Presuming my conjecture is accurate... Good for her.

Why I use The Writing Road to Reading

2006-03-13T11:42:00.000-05:00

Many years ago, I purchased a so-called phonics program from a school supply catalogue. It had cute little characters to introduce the letters, along the lines of The Letter People. When I got the materials, I was completely aghast at the way the program introduced the schwa. Basically, there was a little schwa character, who said, "You'll only find me in a dictionary!" and the teacher's guide had some murky guidance along the lines of "some letters sometimes say something else." Horrible stuff.

So I started to research... with the "schwa" as my yardstick for determining whether a particular program made sense and was worthwhile. After all, the schwa is probably the single greatest problem with our language as it is written and spoken today. Most programs I looked at did not do the schwa well at all. Then I found the Riggs version of The Writing Road to Reading by Romona Spalding (there are other programs out there based on WRTR, like Teaching Reading at Home by Sanseri and Reading Works by Patterson). They teach "around the schwa", since children "already know how to pronounce words, they need to know how to spell the words that are in their vocabulary". Sounds convoluted, but it really makes sense given their approach. [I also found out that cute little characters to helpkids remember the letter sounds actually interferes with learning to read and decode.] So that is what started me on Riggs.

I also very much like how the children are given all the tools they need to write and read upfront... phonograms are taught first, with all the sounds of each phonogram (a= /a/ /ay/ /ah/ /aw/). Spelling words start after the first 56 (?) phonograms have been mastered. The student is guided through the spelling words and in the choice of the appropriate phonograms, along with any applicable spelling rules. So the first spelling word is ME. What is the first sound? /m/ Write that phonogram. (easy, since only one phonogram has that sound) What is the next sound?/ee/ What phonograms could be used? (there are ofcourse several choices here) We use the phonogram 'e'. "The vowels a, e, o, and u usually say their name at the end of a syllable." (spelling rule said after every word in which it applies. It does not take long for the kids to know them by heart and use them independently.) So now, Alex might write the word "sell" as "sel" and I just have to say, "We often double..." and he finishes, "... the letters l, s, and f after a singlevowel in a one syllable word."

I find this approach to be incredibly beneficial. It has given Alex the necessary skills to really work through words on his own. Not that he does not make spelling mistakes, lol, he makes many spelling mistakes! But generally his mistakes are with choosing incorrect phonograms, rather than with actual spelling rules per se (although he does make mistakes there, too, at times), so with time, exposure, and more spelling words I think he will end up being avery good speller and reader with this program.

The Riggs program pulls much of their methodology and materials from pre-1920s teaching... before "dumbing down", before look-say, before whole language. Another thing that impressed me about the program is that their 70 or so phonograms and 42 (I think that's the right number) spelling rules provide logic and structure for around 90% of the English language. I'm sure you've heard the complaint about how our language is so comlicated because it doesn't follow any real rules, and there are so many exceptions that the rules are meaningless... that is not true. That is said because, after whole language failed and parents started pushing for phonics instruction, people who had been taught to read by look-say and who had learned in college to teach whole language to students, people who never had any kind of phonics instruction and did not understand phonics, began to develop "companion" phonics programs for use in whole language classrooms. They did not do their research properly, and did not have any real understanding of what they were doing, and they came up with absurdities like "When two vowels go walking, the first on does the talking," which is NOT a phonics rule, it is only true about 16% of the time. WithPROPER phonograms and PROPER spelling rules, over 90% of our language can be properly spelled. The few exceptions tend to be words borrowed from other languages.

Another case in point... silent e. Most programs teach that silent e makes the preceeding vowel say itsname. Of course, there are so many exceptions to this it is ridiculous. The language is not at fault; the RULE is WRONG. Riggs teaches that there are 5 "jobs" for a silent e: (1) makes the vowel say its name, (2) lets C and G say their second, soft sounds (chance,change), (3) In English, every written syllable must have a vowel (little), (4) English words cannot end in I, U, or V (movie, venue, have), (5) "no job e", a miscellaneous category that I have a problem with, since every "no job e" I've found has the e to prevent plural confusion (if HOUSE were HOUS you would think it was more than one HOU; likewise horse, coarse, parse, nurse, etc. I intend on calling the RiggsInstitute to ask about this... I teach Alex the 'avoid plural confusion' and will continue until I find a silent e that doesn't fit at all!).

Many so-called phonics programs really, in my mind, are not PHONICS at all, but teach reading through pattern recognition. 100 Easy Lessons is like this. It's ok for very early readers... but then words like "have" must be taught as exceptions, since they don't fit the pattern. I used 100 EZ Lessons w/ alex,taking a break from Riggs due to his moter issues, but I stopped halfway through... at that point, I felt, the pattern recognition approach began to hinder rather than help. [re-reading this now and a thought struck me... is pattern recognition really any different than whole language instruction? Isn't the crux of whole language that the child will somehow absorb and internalize the patterns in our language? I must think more on this.]

More on schwa... I said above that Riggs taught "around the schwa," but I didn't expand on that. What Riggs does, to address not only schwa but also regional variations (such as "warsh" for "wash" or "cah" for "car") and dialects (spelling in all English speaking countries is remarkably consistent), is to use a "think to spell" approach. Let's take the word "the". Many (most?) phonics programs teach this as a sight word that does not make any sense... but the word is supposed to be pronounced "THEE". Our pronunciations have become very lazy over the last 50years. [Rent an old Hepburn or Cary Grant movie and pay close attention to their pronunciations; especially words like "baby" and the schwa words.] You teach the child that, although in casual conversation we say "thuh", we need to think "thee" to spell it. Likewise words like above, around... we think /AY/bove and /AY/round when we spell. I also make a point when I'm talking to the kids and especially when reading to them to pronounce words properly. If they hear the words properly fairly often, it will make it easier for them to "think" the proper spelling.

I also found it interesting that theprogram treats as schwas (ie, with a little "thinking cap" mark over the letter, as a memory aid) words Iwouldn't have expected (beneath? enough?), so I guess my speech is more proper than I thought! Or perhaps our region of the country has stayed closer to the proper pronunciations than other areas.

So... my personal opinion is that the WRTR programs are the optimal way to teach the English language, as well as the optimal way to teach reading. I make a distinction here... reading and spelling are different skills, and of the two, reading is the far easierskill. I guess my thinking is, at this stage, if the two skills are taught separately (which almost all programs do), reading may come easily (sometimes not,depending on the child), but spelling often doesn't (depending on the skills of the individual child). If reading is taught THROUGH SPELLING, with a solid spelling program such as this, the spelling will be there, and the reading will be effortless. I like the way the spelling rules are simply presented with the spelling words, repeatedly, until they become internalized.

I also like their method of keeping rules and information on wall charts (or notebooks,but I find wall charts easier to use); when our charts are up, Alex refers to them during other writing workto check how he's spelling words. I think spelling rules are best presented early and often, so they become internalized and not simply something to memorize for the two weeks that rule is being studied, KWIM? Also, proper spelling rules and proper spelling helps the child to not practice (and internalize) incorrect spellings (so I don't like programs that teach reading via pattern recognition first and wait until 2nd or 3rd grade for formal spelling lessons).

I could write more, but I'll keep this brief (lol). These are my reasons for buying this program, and for sticking with it, despite the fact that it is tremendously difficult (for me more than Alex at this point). Also, I am in no way trying to "sell" this program... it is not easy to use [although Reading Works and Teaching Reading at Home are supposed to be much more user-friendly; I bought the least teacher-friendly version. But, my understanding is Riggs has the best and most rigorous grammar and composition, so it is probably what I would have chosen even if I had known about the others before.]. Anyway, I am completely sold on the early and frequent teaching of spelling rules.

Now, this approach does have critics; I have seen people say that pushing spelling rules interferes with reading (in much the same way that little characters as a memory aid for the sounds interferes). This may have merit... but I think that those critics are really misunderstanding the intent of the program. The intent is to teach spelling; the reading is secondary, and the spelling rules are internalized to a large degree by the time the reading begins to take off. I doubt these critics would be able to argue with the research behind this method, either... it is often used remedially because the results can be so dramatic.

Tax Tip of the Day

2006-03-13T09:58:00.000-05:00

In many states, the annual license or registration fees for your car are deductible as personal property taxes. The determining factor is whether the fees are based on the value of the car (in which case they are considered a personal property tax and are therefore deductible), or if the state charges a flat fee (not a property tax but a non-deductible fee).

At Midnight Faeries Dance

Tax Tip of the Day

On the murdered minister and his wife, who did the deed...

Why I use The Writing Road to Reading

Tax Tip of the Day