Why Should Parents Get
Free Funnix Beginning Reading and
Free Funnix Beginning Math?
by Siegfried Engelmann
This is a strange article because its purpose is to talk parents of young children into taking advantage of a free offer. The products given away are Funnix Beginning Reading and Funnix Beginning Math. Both are very successful. Over the last two years, Funnix.com has given away more than 60 thousand beginning reading and math programs. We’re doing it again in December, 2013. (Go to funnix.com for more information).
One would think that a free giveaway should be attractive enough and wouldn’t need a “hard sell” to lure parents to use it. Why am I presenting a hard sell?
Because many parents don’t understand how terrible the beginning instruction is in most school districts. They don’t understand how devastated children are if they don’t learn to read and fail to learn math operations in the beginning grades. Reality checks predict reading and math failure at a rate far greater than parents have in teaching their children Funnix reading or math.
Here are three facts to consider before you trust the schools to be successful with your children.
- 3 out of every 4 school districts have a very poor record in teaching kids beginning reading or math. True, some kids learn with programs that are inadequate for most kids. In the same group of kids, however, are those that don’t learn from any but the most pristine and carefully sequenced activities. These kids will fail to learn beginning reading and foundation math operations.
Some districts do a good job, but they are in a frightening minority. At the end of the first grade in the average school, children are far behind where they would be if they had gone through effective programs.
In other words, the chances are relatively high that your children will receive instruction that induces a high rate of failure. - Typical schools do not have provisions for timely responses to children who fall behind in beginning reading and math. Many schools don’t provide corrective instruction when it is first apparent that some children are not performing well. Schools usually wait until the following school year to provide any remedies. And the “corrective practices” they use are poorly designed. In most schools, students who fail the first level of a reading program do not start over in a more carefully designed program. Rather they continue in the next level of the failed program and during each day, they have a second reading period that has a completely different reading program. Are these two programs compatible? No. Is this scheme successful? No. Are the schools concerned that the plan subjects students to instruction that is very inconsistent and spotty? No. The schools just pile on more instruction, and it’s up to the children to somehow wade through it. Unfortunately, more is not better.
- The learning curves of students’ achievement clearly show that most of those who don’t learn from the initial instruction never catch up. They fall farther and farther behind. In reading, they continue to be word guessers who never quite figure out exactly how to read properly. So they apply various strategies in the hopes that one will work. They hate reading, and they hate the fact that they are failures at what many other students are able to do.
The area of “higher math” is strictly off limits for students who don’t learn well in the early grades. Typically, students fail early because they don’t learn basic math operations. In Funnix Beginning Math they learn how to solve two-digit addition and subtraction problems like: 34 + 18 and 47 – 31.
As kindergarteners or preschoolers, they also learn to solve two-digit problems that have the middle number missing (the algebra variations): 56+ ____ =73 and 36-___= 22.
If it strikes you as being unlikely that children could learn much math as preschoolers, check out the video of kindergarteners on zigsite showing off their math skills. Most of the children in this group had older siblings in classes for failed students.
Understand that math is perfectly teachable to children of either sex. Ironically, however, girls who have high language scores and love reading often perform far below grade level in math. The reason is simply that the programs used are ineffective. Many high schools that serve at-risk populations graduate students who have taken college-prep options, have passed math every year, but perform no higher than the 4th grade level math.
Obviously Funnix Beginning Reading and Funnix Beginning Math cannot buttress against 13 years of terrible instruction, but they can provide a solid foundation that won’t erode, which means that it is much easier for these children to build on the solid knowledge they have.
Conclusion
This is the long way of saying that we don’t want your children to stand a chance of failing to learn beginning reading and math. They will learn these skills if you teach them with the Funnix programs. You can successfully present lessons from these programs. When your children go to school, they will have solid beginning reading and math skills that serve as armor plate and water proofing against poor instructional programs. In fact, the school programs will be much easier for your children because they will have the foundation needed to understand often-vague instruction that schools present.
Do it. Yes, it requires a significant commitment on your part, but the process is rewarding, and it can be fun. It provides you with a clear view of what your children know and can do. These factors bode very well for your children’s future.
Remember, the give away starts on December 1, 2012.
Featured Video
Kindergarteners Showing Off Their Math Skills 1966 Uncut demonstration of at-risk children who were taught math by Zig Engelmann as four year olds and five year olds. The session was filmed in front of a class of college students in August with no rehearsal. Children work addition, subtraction, multiplication, division problems, basic algebra problems, fraction problems, area problems, factoring, and simple simultaneous equations.
Watercolors by Zig
Picture of the Month
February
Deer in the Oregon Cascades
(Broken Top)
Featured Video
Kindergarteners Showing Off Their Math Skills 1966 Uncut demonstration of at-risk children who were taught math by Zig Engelmann as four year olds and five year olds. The session was filmed in front of a class of college students in August with no rehearsal. Children work addition, subtraction, multiplication, division problems, basic algebra problems, fraction problems, area problems, factoring, and simple simultaneous equations.
