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My mom is a first grade public school teacher. She's taught elementary school over 40 years, the last 26 years she's taught 1st grade. For the most part we don't discuss homeschooling because she is so opposed to it. I had noticed some readers in a recent Scholastic flyer that were leveled A, B, C, etc. that I'd not heard of before. Even the level A looked like it had a lot of sight words. I asked her if she knew what the levels meant. She says it is the new way to teach reading and I really need to teach it to the twins so they won't be behind when they go to school. (I have no intention of putting them in before high school if ever but in her mind they should be doing exactly what PS kids are doing)

 

She was so concerned that she is mailing me a list of 125 sight words that the twins need to memorize immediately. :glare: She really thinks I should aim for them knowing all 220 dolche words as soon as possible. She says that the kids can read more fluently at a younger age if they have all these words memorized. She is totally convinced it is better. They have been using this method at her school for a few years and I know when they first introduced it she was so opposed to it because she said phonics was the best way. Apparently she now has bought into the whole Balanced Literacy approach now. :glare: This is someone that has probably taught thousands of kids to read. I know she has no say in the curriculum used in her class but I'm kind of surprised she has totally jumped on the sight word is better bandwagon. It sounds like the kids spend a lot of time using the pictures in a story to figure out the words when they read. This method seems like the polar opposite of PR which I just started with the twins.

 

Her school uses Everyday Math and has for probably 8 years. When my oldest was in 1st grade she sent me the complete 1st grade EM because she wanted dd to learn math the new way. It was 2 books and we made it through half of the first one and I kept waiting for the real math to show up. She's totally bought into new math as well even though she taught the old way for many years.

 

I have never had a child learn to read at school but we are considering PS for our youngest child. He is delayed and gets a lot of services through the PS. I have found out from other parents that they use Balance Literacy at the school ds goes to and the more I hear about it the more I don't like it. I think it makes the kids appear like they are reading great by the end of K but it seems like so much of it is due to sight words. I had no so much emphasis was on sight word methods. My 6 yo ds attends cub scouts with boys that are in 1st grade and I know my dh has been impressed by some of the words the boys knew.

 

I'll be interested to see the list of sight words when it comes. Several of them ones she mentioned were totally phonetic and the twins already know but they do sound them out. They are getting more fluent in sounding out CVC words I can't see any advantage of them memorizing them. My dh and oldest dd have dyslexia so I've really tried to avoid sight words with the younger kids.

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way back when, when i was in elementary school, that is how they taught us to read. but my dear mom, a special education elementary teacher, taught us phonics at home. the combination of methods was dynamite, and we all soared. when i taught dds at home, i started with phonics and then added in sight words, because it worked so well for me. it worked well for all of our dds, too.

 

fwiw,

ann

 

ie. for me, its a false dichotomy. who says that there is not a middle way?

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I too taught 1st grade and have my MSed in reading. I agree with your mom. I think there is some confusion as to the "whole word sight method" and teaching high frequency sight words. They are 2 different things. If you memorize these most common 100words then you already can read 25% of everything in print!! There is less to have to sound out. Good teachers teach phonics too. Why not give your early reader the key when it is not that hard to do?

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By all means teach phonics. Your children will need to learn the sight words, but that happens easily for most kids. The whole push for sight words is that they typically don't follow phonics rules and therefore are taught to be memorized. However some reading philosophies have gotten tangled up in "there is only one way to teach reading" until the next one comes along. I remember when Whole Language was the THING. I have taken some of the key components from that (mostly reading a lot) and combined it with sight words and old fashioned phonics to teach my dk to read (and several others). You will quickly find out which method best works for your kids.

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I too taught 1st grade and have my MSed in reading. I agree with your mom. I think there is some confusion as to the "whole word sight method" and teaching high frequency sight words. They are 2 different things. If you memorize these most common 100words then you already can read 25% of everything in print!! There is less to have to sound out. Good teachers teach phonics too. Why not give your early reader the key when it is not that hard to do?

 

I agree. I don't think there is anything wrong with memorizing sight words, particularly the very frequent ones. Phonics is only one piece of the reading puzzle, especially in English, which has so many irregularly spelled words. The problem only lies when students are not taught other ways to decode words, and think that they have to memorize every single word separately. But a balanced sight word/phonics approach can be very useful and help kids read more quickly, improving fluency and thus comprehension, which is the whole point.

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for hundreds of years absent "balance literacy". Public education is a recent invention (1880's - I think). The literacy rate in the USA was 82% prior to the advent of public education; it remains the same today.

 

All this just to say, you are fully capable of teaching your kiddos to read whether you use only phonics or balanced literacy. You do not need to be an expert to teach your kiddos. Please don't get caught up in the mind-set that you need to use professional educator's materials or strategies to successfully educate your children. Your mom seems to be pushing this idea and it is absolute poison to the homeschooling parent. And, it's not true.

 

My opinion is that teaching some sight words along with a strong phonics base is beneficial. I've taught two kids to read, one of them dyslexic. If you want to use sight words- go ahead, if not, don't. It's okay either way as long as you keep teaching. Really.

 

Not that you're necessarily looking for a reading program, but here's a link to a program that utilizes both phonics and sight words. http://www.valeriebendt.com/ReadingMadeEasy.aspx

Edited by Stacy in NJ
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I think explicit phonics instruction is very important for most children, though some intuit phonetic rules from the sight words. You need some way of figuring out words you haven't been taught!

 

That said, I think the dolche words can be helpful in increasing motivation for reading by allowing children to read more complex (and enjoyable) text faster. Phonics instruction just drags for some kids (like my DS), and a lot of the most common words aren't addressed until late in a typical phonics progression, or don't follow the rules at all. The phonics curriculums that we've used extensively have both integrated sight words to some extent.

 

I also found that DS didn't get that he was "allowed" to remember words and not sound them out each and every time until we started teaching sight words.

 

So, I do think they're helpful, but not crucial. I think kids taught by a straight phonics method will probably be just as strong readers by 4th or 5th grade. However, if I were planning to put DS in school next year, I do think we'd be drilling the sight words more.

 

I've seen nothing that's convinced me that Everyday Math is superior to more traditional methods of teaching math. Having looked through it, I do feel that at least some of the information against it is not particularly accurate. A friend of mine with public school kids has convinced me that, with a good teacher, it can be implemented in a way that provides an excellent education for at least some kids, but that's a whole lot of qualifiers in there, and neither of us feel that it's set up in such a way that facilitates parental involvement.

Edited by ocelotmom
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If you memorize these most common 100words then you already can read 25% of everything in print!! There is less to have to sound out. Good teachers teach phonics too. Why not give your early reader the key when it is not that hard to do?

 

:iagree: I taught my kids to read. One of them had a developmental delay and it took me 2 years to teach him to read. When he memorized the sight words, it was such a relief to him that he could read many of the words without having to sound them out. This kid was still laboriously sounding out every word when I started this. He was determined to learn to read, and insisted on being taught for at least 2 hours a day.

 

On the last day of second grade, he read at a second grade, first month level, thanks to memorizing the sight words. Reading lessons ceased for the summer. In August, he read the first Harry Potter book to himself, fluently. The second book he read to himself was Lord of the Rings. I was totally amazed by this!

 

If I hadn't finally broken down and had him memorize the sight words, I don't think he would be reading as well as he does now. Since third grade, his reading and comprehension scores are off the charts. He reads very, very fast, too. Reading and writing are his passions in life.

 

I don't think that memorizing the Dolch lists is necessary for every kid, but now I think it doesn't hurt them, and may help them, so I am an enthusiastic supporter of that, in addition to phonics.

 

As far as Everyday Math is concerned, DH and I greatly dislike that program. DD's school used it. That was one of the reasons we took her out of PS. She had no trouble learning math the old-fashioned way.

Edited by RoughCollie
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I don't think that memorizing the Dolch lists is necessary for every kid, but now I think it doesn't hurt them, and may help them, so I am an enthusiastic supporter of that, in addition to phonics.

 

 

Yes. I haven't needed to teach the list to either of my readers, as they learned to read largely on their own because I gave them lots of simple books and time to read. For kids who don't pick up reading quickly, it is a good idea to have them read a high frequency word list to you and work on the ones that they have trouble with.

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First, I think we have the same mother. :001_smile:

 

Second, I think a combo works best. I agree 100% with you that children rely on memorization and picture prompts to "read" in public Kindy. My oldest is in public K right now and she "reads" me refrigerator stories that she's worked on in class and if I cover up any of the visual cues or single out a word in one of the sentences she cannot read it. So she has memorized what the teacher has said repeatedly and uses the pictures to prompt which sentence she needs to parrot. Like you, I don't think this is reading! We are doing phonics at home and the combo seems to be helping her. I am not using dolch words with her at home because she is getting them repeatedly at school.

 

Also, our school using Terc's Investiagtions and it is a math curriculum that I think is junk. I've read that it is similar to Everyday Math but I've never looked at EM, so I don't have an opinion on EM. My mother and sister also think EM is a great program.

 

I'm in the same boat. Homeschooling has become a topic we all just avoid because family is so unsupportive and I choose to not engage them in any way about it. Hang in there!

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Most sight words are phonetic. Teach them phonetically, even if it's out of the order of your phonics program...if it's important to YOU to get those Dolch words learned quickly.

 

Also, for the sake of your relationship with your mom, be very careful about how much you share with her. Once your kids are reading, you can tell her how you taught them.

 

I do some drilling of words, but only after they spell the word. If they don't remember the word, I cover it with my hand and show one sound at a time...decoding. I highly discourage guessing. There is knowing and decoding - no guessing.

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Guest CarolineUK

What you describe sounds very much like the method used in English schools, ie strong on phonics, but also lots of learning of sight words and also lots of pictures to give visual clues (Jolly Phonics and Oxford Reading Tree). I know this method has been strongly criticised, but it is the way my eldest two learned to read at school and it is the way I am teaching DS6. Both DS11 and DS6 are dyslexic and have both learned to read reasonably painlessly using this method, although it has required many hours of patient practice.

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Balanced literacy is the same garbage as whole language, repackaged for a new generation. It is whole language with a few rudimentary phonics lessons tacked on. I looked at the phonics lessons for the tutoring curriculum taught by volunteers, based on the "balanced literacy" program in the school. Out of a 50 minute lesson, 5 minutes were phonics, and they never even taught what silent e was.

 

I volunteered in my then-first grader's class. They reviewed a strategy of the week of how to deal with an unknown word. That week's strategy? Look at the first letter and guess. I AM NOT KIDDING. If whole language includes word guessing, you can't "balance" that with phonics, any more than you can balance any two other completely contradictory viewpoints.

 

I was lazy with my youngest child, because I was tired from teaching my oldest how to read over years and years, and because my second child picked it up pretty naturally. I hoped my third would too. She didn't, and she picked up a lot of bad habits because I sent her to first grade without her already knowing how to read. Only now after a lot of intensive phonics at home and at her new school is she starting to overcome the bad guessing habit she got into.

 

Of COURSE reading teaching should not be ONLY phonics. Of COURSE you should also include good literature, etc. That's not what "balanced literacy" is.

 

Edited to add: But don't take my word for it. Check out this video.

Edited by Sara R
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I volunteered in my then-first grader's class. They reviewed a strategy of the week of how to deal with an unknown word. That week's strategy? Look at the first letter and guess. I AM NOT KIDDING.

Exactly what I'm trying to break DS of, especially since he comes up with completely crazy guesses! (And no, he's never had Balanced Literacy or exclusive sight word instruction).

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My son was taught to read by a specialized reading tutor because he has dyslexic tendancies. She began with rigerous phonics. After many weeks she did begin introducing the sight words on the Fry List (an updated version of the Dolch list) on a limited basis over many weeks. As a former teacher I am also a believer in phonics.

 

What is wrong with your mom's method, in my very strong opinion about this, is not how they are teaching reading as far as phonics and sight words but rather in the huge amount of words and huge amount of progress that is expected of children at ridiculously young ages. If you read the standards for NAEYC, being required to read hundreds of words at the age of 6 is NOT considered to be developmentally appropriate.

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Exactly what I'm trying to break DS of, especially since he comes up with completely crazy guesses! (And no, he's never had Balanced Literacy or exclusive sight word instruction).

 

I know! Get this: kids figure out "look at the picture clues" and "look at the first letter and guess" WITHOUT being specifically instructed! Heck, those are strategies illiterates use to get by! They certainly don't need direct instruction in it from an authority like the first grade teacher! The philosophy is ridiculous.

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I know! Get this: kids figure out "look at the picture clues" and "look at the first letter and guess" WITHOUT being specifically instructed! Heck, those are strategies illiterates use to get by! They certainly don't need direct instruction in it from an authority like the first grade teacher! The philosophy is ridiculous.

Very true. I taught dd7 with phonics only. She still guesses when she can, and sometimes her guess makes no sense at all.

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I used a phonics program and the results were great. There were a few site word cards included mostly to facilitate reading the phonics readers that came with the program. I still taught how to sound them out.

 

I can't say the sight word method doesn't work because it was how I learned to read. But after some reading on the subject I believe the phonics method is better.

 

I am now working with my second child (student) on learning how to read. The phonics method is proving to be excellent and the results are not slow going (like some people claim).

 

The whole strategy thing for sight words is insane though. I heard another one "guess based on the shape of the word, what word is it shaped like". What?!

 

But the math? I wouldn't touch EM with a ten zillion foot pole. No way, no how. It's garbage.

 

The shape of the word? Okay. "Ward" and "word" have the same shape. How do you know the difference between them? What a silly method.

 

I'm very familiar with Beka phonics and it's a system that I like. It teaches sight words, but not many words qualify for that category with Beka. Sometimes I peruse bookstore shelves and I'm surprised by what qualifies as sight words in some reading systems. While the Beka system can be intimidating at first glance it is workable. Learning list after list of words sounds rather tedious. You can't learn every word in the language by memorizing it, and as for the shape concept, well, words just fail me.

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Balanced literacy is the same garbage as whole language, repackaged for a new generation. It is whole language with a few rudimentary phonics lessons tacked on. I looked at the phonics lessons for the tutoring curriculum taught by volunteers, based on the "balanced literacy" program in the school. Out of a 50 minute lesson, 5 minutes were phonics, and they never even taught what silent e was.

 

I volunteered in my then-first grader's class. They reviewed a strategy of the week of how to deal with an unknown word. That week's strategy? Look at the first letter and guess. I AM NOT KIDDING. If whole language includes word guessing, you can't "balance" that with phonics, any more than you can balance any two other completely contradictory viewpoints.

this video.

 

I have to disagree that balanced literacy is garbage. Many of our most frequently used words are not phonetic. Kids have to remember words like of, was, come, said, you, and have, because sounding them out phonetically does not work. As far as guessing the word by the first letter, I have no problem with this either. I think it teaches kids that you think when you read, and what you read has to make sense. My belief is that phonics is an important part of reading, but there is so much more to reading than phonics.

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As if regular phonics wasn't tedious enough, now we're going to drill kids on lists of sight words? No wonder so many kids can't stand to read. Ugh.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm a hardcore phonics supporter. I just think that learning the "sight" words should be a process where the kid sees a word while they're reading something fun, asks mom what it is, and remembers it after that. That's how I did it, and I was reading at a post-secondary level by first grade. So no, memorizing the most common hundred sight words with no context or enjoyment is not necessary.

 

Sorry if there's typos- my seven week old kitten jumped on the keyboard as I was typing this no less than three times. :tongue_smilie:

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"Balanced literacy' is a term that's been around for about 20 years... What I figured out while going through a teacher credential program years ago was that 'balanced literacy' was the compromise made when educational professionals realized that the 'whole language' movement wasn't really working. So the good bit of the whole language movement (focus on quality literature rather than 'Dick and Jane' type readers) and the very necessary direct instruction in phonics merged together.

 

I think it's pretty unnecessary to name it... but what "balanced literacy" meant is that teachers were basically given the freedom to use any strategy that they could to teach reading skills to their students.

 

I'm still waiting for "balanced math" to come and throw out TERC Investigations and Everyday math and CMP so that teachers can go back to focusing on teaching math and not on teaching "a philosophy of math education."

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"Balanced literacy' is a term that's been around for about 20 years... What I figured out while going through a teacher credential program years ago was that 'balanced literacy' was the compromise made when educational professionals realized that the 'whole language' movement wasn't really working. So the good bit of the whole language movement (focus on quality literature rather than 'Dick and Jane' type readers) and the very necessary direct instruction in phonics merged together.

 

The education establishment wants you to believe that "balanced literacy" incorporates phonics. But that is a lie, told assuage nosy parents. There is a teeny tiny bit of very rudimentary phonics tacked onto whole language, and the bad anti-phonics part of whole language (look at the first letter and guess, look at the word shape, look at the picture) are still there. How do you balance "sound it out" and "guess"? Answer: you can't.

 

Dick and Jane were NOT phonics readers. They were look-say readers, the sight word teaching method popular before so-called "balanced literacy" and whole language.

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When I started tutoring, I used to think that the Dolch sight words were fine, although I never taught them myself since I thought it was more efficient just to teach them phonetically.

 

Then, I started giving out reading grade level tests. I've been giving them out for at least 16 years now and tutoring for 17 years. I noticed that schools that taught 100% whole language had about a 60 to 70% failure rate and schools that taught balanced literacy had a 30 to 40% failure rate.

 

I've given out hundreds of tests and have not yet had a failure from a school that taught with a good phonics program without the Dolch sight words. Once, I thought I found a failure from these schools, but I later found out when I started tutoring the child that they had moved later than I thought and the child had learned with sight words and had just transferred into this school.

 

While the people I meet and their children are not a random sample, statistics from hundreds of studies bear out these percentages.

 

For example, here is a quote from Sally Shaywitz's "Overcoming Dyslexia, A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level" p. 261:

 

In one Tallahassee, Florida, elementary school where such a program [explicit phonics] was implemented, the percentage of struggling readers dropped eightfold--from 31.8 percent to 3.7 percent.

 

The problems start to show up in 3rd or 4th grade, up until then, the books the schools use have a high enough percentage of sight words in them that many children appear to be reading fine, but they have difficulty sounding out words that they do not know, and will often guess at unfamiliar words rather than slow down and sound them out. Also, many if these students can sound out most of these words if they slow down, but they don't because they have highly ingrained guessing habits from the way they have been taught to read. Most of my tutoring work is actually spent working on changing habits, not teaching new skills, although my students generally do need to be taught a few sounds and a few rules.

Edited by ElizabethB
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The shape of the word? Okay. "Ward" and "word" have the same shape. How do you know the difference between them? What a silly method.

 

 

:iagree:

 

And, on my sight word page, there is a link to an article by Raymond Laurita Called "Basic Sight Vocabulary--A Help of a Hinderance?" that compares similar sight words that cause problems, for example:

 

come-came-can,

full-fall-fell,

 

or, words almost all my remedial students get confused and have the most lingering problems with:

 

he-her-here-where-were

 

I'm sure I've read on ElizabethB's posts that there are only two sight words that can't be taught phonetically.

 

Rosie

 

:) You've been studying up!

 

But, I will give the sight word people 5. I personally only teach 2, but there are 3 more that are pretty wacky and I would let people slide by teaching them as wholes by sight.

 

Since I have so many remedial students who have suffered so much, and it is so hard to retrain them, I don't take chances and work really hard to teach those 3 phonetically.

 

(I teach the words "one" and "once" as sight words, but I teach them in a paired group. The 3 that I would give grace on are: two, buy, and laugh. They are spelled a bit crazy but are semi-phonetic if you work really hard to explain them.)

 

Of the other 215 Dolch words, 150 are completely phonetic without teaching any special rules or patterns.

 

The rest can be simply taught with the addition of a few simple rules and patterns that are all listed on my sight word page.

Edited by ElizabethB
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As if regular phonics wasn't tedious enough, now we're going to drill kids on lists of sight words? No wonder so many kids can't stand to read. Ugh.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm a hardcore phonics supporter. I just think that learning the "sight" words should be a process where the kid sees a word while they're reading something fun, asks mom what it is, and remembers it after that.

 

:iagree:

 

That's how I learned a lot of words and how I deal with my son too. We do Starfall, fridge phonics, Letter Factory, and plan to do OPGTR when he has more interest but he also knows a ton of sight words just from asking. Words like go, stop, police, fire, Toby, exit, space, etc. just from signs out in the world or from words on his toys or clothes or from wanting me to label drawings he makes. He can 'read' these in any context so he's not just using clues.

 

This seems a very natural way to introduce new words in an age appropriate, interest led manner. This + phonics + great literature would seem to me to be true Balanced Literacy. I can't imagine sitting down to flash card a bunch of Dolch words is really the most effective way to teach reading.

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Guest CarolineUK
I just think that learning the "sight" words should be a process where the kid sees a word while they're reading something fun, asks mom what it is, and remembers it after that. That's how I did it, and I was reading at a post-secondary level by first grade.

 

Sounds idyllic, sadly for many children it's not that easy. I was also a child who read 'naturally' and could read fluently by age 5. Two of my sons, however, like their father, are dyslexic, and even simple phonics sounds have to be repeated ad nauseum for months before they 'stick'. DS6 still reads 'ou' as 'on' sometimes, and completely forgets other sounds, even after reading for between twenty minutes and half an hour twice a day, every day for eighteen months. He does, however, read reasonably well now, if painfully slowly. We haven't sat and learned bland lists of words, but the readers we have chosen purposefully repeat certain words at particular times to ensure that there is plenty of exposure. When he struggles a lot with a word I then go through a book afterwards both picking the word out, asking him what it says, and also asking him to look for it, which he finds quite good fun. So there are ways of learning sight words which are not unbearably boring for a 6 year old. Without this method both DS6 and DS11 would have found the experience of learning to read horribly frustrating, and I'm sure would have been put off reading for life.

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Having a child with a development delay has made me see the value of sight word programs. I agree that for a typical child pushing phonics strongly with some instruction for "true" sight words is the way to go. I didn't even teach oldest to read at all, but when I realized he was reading (just after his 4th birthday) he was clearly using phonics to continue reading more and more difficult books. My very mildly dyslexic dd learned to read well with phonics at age 6.

 

My youngest takes a lot longer to retain anything and just has not mastered the blending needed for phonics (he's 9.5 and had all the letter sounds at 4). At this point, he simply needs to read, it is a survival skill. If that means a whole word approach that is fine. I still sound things out for him and he still does phonics based activities, but the bulk of our efforts are going to the approach that is working for him.

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Having a child with a development delay has made me see the value of sight word programs. I agree that for a typical child pushing phonics strongly with some instruction for "true" sight words is the way to go. I didn't even teach oldest to read at all, but when I realized he was reading (just after his 4th birthday) he was clearly using phonics to continue reading more and more difficult books. My very mildly dyslexic dd learned to read well with phonics at age 6.

 

My youngest takes a lot longer to retain anything and just has not mastered the blending needed for phonics (he's 9.5 and had all the letter sounds at 4). At this point, he simply needs to read, it is a survival skill. If that means a whole word approach that is fine. I still sound things out for him and he still does phonics based activities, but the bulk of our efforts are going to the approach that is working for him.

 

:iagree: My almost 10yo was the same way - he had the letter sounds at 4 (and lost and relearned them repeatedly.) I kept trying phonics, phonics, phonics and he did finally get to where he could read CVC words fairly consistently (after a SLP helped him learn to blend.) In school, they have used mostly sight words to get him reading and it has worked. He still doesn't read anywhere near grade-level, but being able to read at that 1st grade level (Dr. Suess type books) has made him so happy!

 

I will *still* keep working with O-G programs with him to further his reading level, but sight words have helped him. BTW, he isn't a guesser - his perfectionist tendencies mean he won't *ever* guess at a word he can't sound out.;) Oh, one other thing - until he medicated for his ADHD, he couldn't even learn sight words! We've come a long way in the past 6 months.

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The education establishment wants you to believe that "balanced literacy" incorporates phonics. But that is a lie, told assuage nosy parents. There is a teeny tiny bit of very rudimentary phonics tacked onto whole language, and the bad anti-phonics part of whole language (look at the first letter and guess, look at the word shape, look at the picture) are still there. How do you balance "sound it out" and "guess"? Answer: you can't.

 

Dick and Jane were NOT phonics readers. They were look-say readers, the sight word teaching method popular before so-called "balanced literacy" and whole language.

 

That isn't how my dc's school teaches neurotypical Kers and 1st graders. They do use sight words, but they also teach phonics. My 6yo has had no problems with reading after adjusting when she went to school, but she is one who can generalize. My 8yo (also 1st grade) is different - he can't learn sight words *or* phonics (much like his brother was, except he can't even learn the letter sounds), so he doesn't read at all.

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