If you are a parent or caregiver of a young child and if you have been attracted to internet based, or face-to-face learning programmes purporting to offer materials or resources designed to teach your child to read, perhaps you should consider a number of variables before you make any decisions.
Anyone promoting their products can pretty much say what they like on the internet. So how do you know it’s true? How do you know it’s reliable? Can you trace their claims back to the source? Or is it just spin? In the event that the site under your consideration makes attractive claims about what children can or cannot learn in respect to reading and literacy, ask a few questions such as:
To whom can a claim be traced? Or is it just rhetoric with no point of reference? In other words, does the site lack credibility? A site to take notice of will cite its authors and reference its claims; otherwise it lacks credibility.
For example, If you are checking out the I Can Read® System, you will learn how the I Can Read® came into existence. This is verifiable information: you can check it.
The I Can Read® System was developed by two Australian educational psychologists, Tony Earnshaw & Annabel Seargeant between 1997 and 2000. Both Tony Earnshaw and Annabel Seargeant are qualified and registered Australian educational psychologists. Tony has an undergraduate degree in English and a psychology degree from the University of New England in NSW as well as a Masters degree with first class honours in how children learn to read. Annabel has an undergraduate degree in English with a major in English literature, as well as a psychology degree and a post-grad Diploma in Counselling.