Evening star., 1955-06-01

with Phonics' by Julie Hay anc
Charles e. Wingo. I learned thai
one Of the authors Of that book
the late Miss Hay. had been 9
teacher in the public schools Of
the Argo-Summit- Bedford Park
school district near Chicago; the
other author. Mr.. Wingo, was
and is superintendent of schools
In that district. All the schools
in that district teach reading
with phonics.
I also learned that the phonetic
method delevoped by the late
Prof. Leonard Bloomfield was
and is used experimentally in
some Roman Catholic parochial
schools in Chicago.
I spent Thursday, March 25,
1854, visiting the schools in the
Argo-Summit- Bedford Park dis
trict.
I first went into q first-grade
classroom in the w. w. Walker
School in Bedford Park. There
were % children in that class.
The teachers name was Miss
Mary Hletko.
Pupils Read the Paper
Miss Hletko, for my benefit,
picked up a copy Of that morn
ing's Chicago Tribune and let
the children read sentences from
the paper. However, I wanted
to make 100 per cent sure Of my
facts. With her permission I
took the newspaper myself and
began to call children at ram
dom. Here are some of the para
graphs they read to me:
Police Commissioner O'Con-
nor said yesterday that police
men will begin house to house
canvass tomorrow to assure that
Chicago dog owners comply with
the rabies quarantine imposed
last December"
1.-THE weatherman is going to
get up earlier than the farmer
this summer to give the farmer
an up-to-the-minute report on
the days weather outlook with
his breakfast"
1.-THE first Midwest postage
stamp show, sponsored by the
Chicago chapter of the Amer
ican Stamp Dealers Association.
will be held tomorrow through
Sunday in he La Sale Hotel.
More than 10000 are expected
to attend. A part of the stamp
collection of ex-King Farouk of
Egypt will be exhibited"
Some Difficulty Met
OF course these first-graders
didn't read the newspaper items
In the way an adult would. They
had a good deal of difficulty.
Miss Hletko had to tell them
what the symbol 10000 stood
for. She had to help them over
some of the harder words. and
in one instance - Egypt - the
child was unable to work out
the right pronunciation.
But the fact is. and I testify
to it, that those children read
what was in the paper. They
were perfectly able to pronounce
words they had never seen be-
fore, according to reasonable
phonetic principles.
The children in the best group
started to read. I picked up the
book and asked them to read a
story way back which they had
never seen before. They started
to read.
What happened then i'm
pressed me even more. These
children did not go through the
ritual that I had seen performed
dozens of times in another
school. They did not chant the
words. one by one, laboriouSly
and insecurely. in monotonous.
one-word-after-another sing
song. Instead, they did some
thing that I had seen done in
no other classroom. They read
the story! They went through
the pages, at a pretty fast clip,
with completely natural intona-
ton, laughing spontaneously at
one place. expressing surprise at
another, following the thread
of the story with animated sus-
pense.
Visits Sixth Grade
I then spent some time in the
sixth grade.
The sixth-graders. were the
products of a school system that
starts with first-graders like
those in Miss Hletko's class.
Their teacher showed me a chart
with the results Of a recent
achievement test in all subjects.
There was quite spread Of
the grade levels attained by the
81 students in the class. In the
right -hand lower corner of the
chart, however. was a single fig
ure, showing the average grade
level achievement of the whole
class in all subjects. That figure
was rs. These sixth-graders, by
March. had reached the stand
ard that seventh-graders in 9TH
er schools reach about January
or February.
Then. to finish the demonstra-
ton, they read-fluently- from
junior high school textbooks in
science and social studies.
Later that afternoon Mr.. VIM
60 told me that his primer was
used in all four elementary
schools in the district. The re-
suits were always the same:
general student achievement
about one grade level above the
national norm in all subjects: no
"nonreaders" except for chill
dren that were clearly feeble
minded.
Other School Uses Drill
Next morning, with Father