Has anyone after-schooled with LOE Foundations?

[TKDmom]

I'm just curious if anyone has experience with using Logic of English to supplement learning to read/write at school. My 5yo is in a K at a local school. She will probably stay there for at least this year. I'm not thrilled with all the sight words she brings home to work on, but it's not the end of the world, either. She's pretty bright, she understands how to sound out CVC words, and she memorizes just about every word she reads, anyway. 

 

I'm not sure what I'm asking...just curious to hear anyone else's experience and decide if it's worth the cost, energy, and time to use LoE after school, or if I should wait till I start homeschooling her and use Essentials (which I already own) to teach her proper spelling ad phonics rules.

[Arcadia]

I used Uncovering the Logic of English: A Common-Sense Approach to Reading, Spelling, and Literacy to afterschool my younger boy in spelling in kindergarten. My boys were early readers but my younger was not as strong in spelling as my older. We spent maybe 10-15 mins per weekday on that.

Their PS school taught phonics and the Frys word list concurrently in Kindergarten. 1st grade they use Sitton Spelling.

You can use Essentials to afterschool her now instead of waiting since you own it.

[EmilyGF]

I haven't afterschooled with Logic of English, but I'm using it with my daughter. If your child is sent home with sight words, you might learn the phonograms and then figure out how each work is actually phonetic.

 

Is she in full day K or half day?

 

Personally, I would invest more time in a good math foundation for a kid who is having no problems learning to read!

[TKDmom]

I haven't done this but have considered it too. I bought LOE Foundations and we've been working our way through A and now I'm putting my DD in PK.

 

I'm worried that a little kid might get really confused by the different approaches. For example, in LOE you don't teach the name of the letters and teach the sounds instead. In a standard pre-school and K program, they will teach the letter name and the sound. Also the classes I observed only taught the most common sound associated with the letter while LOE teaches all of the letter's sounds.

 

All my kids have learned the letter names before encountering the sounds. I understand the logic of teaching sounds first, but it was nearly impossible to keep them from learning the letter sounds, long before they were ready to read. I don't stress over confusion too much. When we've done phonics programs like LoE, I usually say something to the effect of, "The letter A makes the sounds /a-A-ah/". The fact that the names and sounds aren't exactly the same, or that they haven't learned all the sounds before doesn't seem to be a problem.

[TKDmom]

I haven't afterschooled with Logic of English, but I'm using it with my daughter. If your child is sent home with sight words, you might learn the phonograms and then figure out how each work is actually phonetic.

 

Is she in full day K or half day?

 

Personally, I would invest more time in a good math foundation for a kid who is having no problems learning to read!

 

She's in full day K. We don't even have the option for half-day any more. I should probably just work through some of the phonics readers I already have with her to get her reading, but LoE is so shiny and new. ;) I haven't taken the time to really research Foundations to see how it differs from Essentials or if it's something I want to invest in. 

[SMRB]

We used AAR for afterschooling. I looked into LOE Foundations and Essentials carefully last year. I agree they are very shiny and beautiful, and I really wanted to try it! I ended up deciding that it would be too much. We may get Essentials a little later and use parts of it during the summers, but I was very concerned about causing confusion with it during the school year, and it looked like a lot of work (for both of us). 

[Jennifer N.]

I have used A and B with my daughter and we are currently working through C at a very slow pace.  She is in 1st grade in public school.  It's been great but it is a money and time investment.  We worked through A starting in late preschool so she had already learned her letter names thoroughly and I just said as someone mentioned above, this is letter a and it has the sounds a, ay, ah.  Sorry can't write the phonetic pronunciation here.  By spring of kindergarten, we had worked through about half of B and her reading skyrocketed.  Literally, in the space of one month she went from a solid understanding of short vowel cvc words to reading early chapter books on about a 2nd grade level.  I have heard that this has happened for other children too at about that place in level B.  She ended up having quite a bit of disparity between her reading level at that point and her spelling level.  I can see why All About Reading and All About Spelling advocates teaching them separately, Marie has a great article on that somewhere on her blog (Marie is the creator of AAS/AAR).  I read it earlier this year.

 

If you are planning to do Essentials with her anyway, I would do Foundations instead and just go at the pace you like.  I have taught Essentials as well (spelling, phonemic awareness and vocab portions only) to my older two sons.  It can get pretty dry.  Fantastic, amazing information but lots of direct teaching.  Foundations is much more active and fun. 

 

I am a reading teacher by profession (at home til my youngest is in K) so I get a professional benefit from using these materials with my children.  It allows me to master the material so much better and this is definitely not the way I was taught to teach reading in graduate school!  Actually, at this point, I think my daughter would do just as well with us just reading together and working on her spelling at some future point (it's already pretty good for a 1st grader) but we are working through level C so I make sure I don't miss anything. 

 

I would like to say one thing Foundations and Essentials have that is absolutely amazing and I don't know if the other Orton-Gillingham based programs have is all the phonemic awareness activities.  Actually physically teaching what is a vowel (a sound you sing) versus a consonant (sound is blocked by a part of the mouth).  That's just one of the PA activities.  Essentials has a lengthy introduction on the importance of phonemic awareness and how to teach it.  That chapter is worth the whole price of the book but maybe that is because I am a teacher and I plan to take this all back to my classroom in some form or another. 

 

If you have any other questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them.  I am not always on the forums but I will try to check back more frequently to see if you have any other questions I can help with.