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boy, I must have been a teacher's nightmare. That rule would have never worked for me and illicted a major tantrum. I was WAY above my reading level in Kindergarten and it just got worse. Yes, I was the child who honestly believed for a year that scissors was a synonym for [sizzers] and pronounced [skizers]. So what? It's cute, now, right?
Children's books were too boring as I wanted some plot to go with the words. I would have lost all faith in reading by following that rule and being "hemmed in" by artificial walls with "baby books". My very first book was.... Little House in the Big Woods (when I was "sent to my room" at a tender age for a minor infraction).
If I didn't know the word, I was the child who NEVER looked anything up and learned purely by context. You couldn't get me to use a dictionary (would disrupt the fun); I learned to look things up in dictionaries as a game separate of reading. I had read my way through all the children's books in three libraries by third grade and my poor mom was desperate for some help from teachers to direct my reading. I didn't get any--so I read War and Peace instead, just because I was told I couldn't. I did not understand a third of what I read (ummm advanced English, French, Russian), but I loved reading it for what it was.
Fast forward to teaching fellow students how to use a dictionary to look up words (I am good at it) but not using them myself despite trying (my New Year's resolution every school year--lasted about 1 paragraph and I was too tired to continue looking up every other word so I stopped and just read). I taught myself to read 5 languages without rules and dictionaries (they were on my desk to look intelligent). I was not the fastest learner, but man am I stubborn!
When forced to "learn to read right" (with dictionary in tow) in my masters classes, I lost all love of reading and spent quite a while afterwards not opening a single book. I was just "booked out". I was educated out of loving to read for not "following the rules". Sigh.
Rules were meant to be broken....
(And I am back to loving to read...)
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