When a child gets stuck on a word, some teachers ask them to look at the picture for clues or think about what would make sense in the sentence instead of taking a conventional approach. In other words, they’re being taught to guess how to read.
A new report from the Aristotle Foundation argues the practice is leaving kids without the reading skills they need. Depending on the province, the report says, between 20 and 56 per cent of students cannot read by Grade 4.
The authors estimate that today’s Grade 10 students are two to three years behind in reading compared with students in the same grade 25 years ago.
They say the decline began well before the pandemic.
