Because at that point, you have learned the skill.
In mathematics, once you have learned the basics of calculus....you have learned the basics of calculus.
Exactly. Mastery is mastery.
I disagree.
Mastering the basics of calculus (whatever that means, TBH) doesn't mean you can do differential equations, and you won't get there if your professor tells you that you're too young for it and that you have to keep practicing the chain rule and the substitution method for another couple years.
This is precisely the situation that gifted kids are in at school, and precisely the situation that this so-called reading specialist is using and advocating: you can't read book x because I decided it's too hard for kids your age. And BTW, your test scores prove it: you're not getting better.
Never mind that you had hit the test ceiling last time. So here's a basic reader for you.
I'm kind of surprised to see this reaction from two people here?
Mastery of a skill implies you have knowledge that allows you to access more difficult material. There are only so many phonetic combinations that a child has to learn before virtually any word can be understood (possibly with a dictionary), so mastery occurs earlier in reading than other subjects.
I understood Jon to be contrasting reading with calculus. Once you understand the basics of reading, you can apply them to infinitely more difficult contexts. With calculus, mastery of the basics doesn't necessarily imply you have the potential to immediately access more difficult material without more instruction. (Obviously, for some autodidacts, this will be untrue.)
Yes.
This mindset (that the same proximal zone exists for a group of children of the same age, or worse, that one exists for a similar group of children) is downright toxic for kids who mastery literacy very rapidly-- and many of us here are parents to children like this.
I can't even wrap my head around the idea of FORCING my child to read material that she found too difficult. Honestly, all I've done since she mastered decoding is
steer her away from material that I thought was inappropriate in other ways...
"No, dear,
Silence of the Lambs is probably not a good book to read for a 6th grade book report, honey..."
Like UM, I said little when my then-7yo opted to pick up Bleak House and Great Expectations. She didn't finish either one until she was more like 12yo.
On the other hand, what does this Reading Specialist's view of the world say about
forcing barely-literate high school students through Othello and The Scarlet Letter, anyway??
