Reading methods in public school Kindergarten?

[KSinNS]

So, my oldest 2 who went to school for a bit were taught reading this way (levelled readers, sight words/work wall, etc minimal to no phonics instruction). S did fine, but he was decoding well before starting school. Tragically, he didn't progress in levels after Grade 1 because he couldn't answer the reading comprehension questions (language issues related to autism, not decoding). I spend lots of time on reading comprehension at home, once he came home in Grade 3. He just needed lots of work around that.  

 

Miss T started K a bit vague on her letters and with no reading skills at all (she was 4). She dutifully memorized levels A, B and C (which is was was expected here) but could not identify a single word out of context. She figured out, for example, that most books started with "Look" or "There" so she would randomly guess which word it was, and then figure out the rest when corrected. Smart kid, but she learned no reading. I expressed some concern mid-year to her teacher, who suggested that I teach her the alphabet (what she was doing for 6+ hours/day in school, I'm not sure.) We worked on it, but she was exhausted after school, so it took months and months (turns out there were reasons for that). Anyway, I ended up keeping her home for Grade 1 on, and she needed very clear phonics instruction to learn to read. She is now, actually, an exceptional reader. Don't even get me started on invented spelling. I'm still cleaning up the mess from that! 

 

What happens here is that a certain percentage of kids are identified for reading remediation in grade 1, and get put in resource programs (these have changed over the years). It's usually 30-35% or so. The problem is, in some schools, most of the class aren't reading in grade 1, so many kids who should get these programs are missed-only the worst 30% or so get picked up. Many parents spend a small fortune on after-school programs for their struggling kids. Those without resources frequently get left behind. It's sad. 

 

I'm not totally anti-whole language. That is essentially how S taught himself to read. And I think for some, even many kids, they really don't need a ton of explicit instruction, and will learn to read quite well and pleasantly. The problem comes that many kids also can't read without someone to break the code for them, and that means phonics in some form. I needed to be taught, and most of my kids need to be taught. It's just sad that kids are left to struggle when sometimes it really is as simple as teaching them, endlessly, a says "a" or "a, ay, ah" depending on your persuasion. 

[Hunter]

Or, you teach them to identify those words by sight and worry about the phonics rules behind them when they are old enough and advanced enough in their reading to understand. Then, you don't have to explain it 652 times. Teaching them to read is still like being nibbled to death by ducks, but...not quite as bad.

 

Mine learned why there is an e in have in level 3 (?) of AAS. By then, they were reading above grade level, fluently and had been for a couple of years. They didn't need to learn the phonetic reasoning behind have or any of the other common "sight" words in order to learn how to read. More...they learned it as slightly older students in order to assist their spelling.

 

Sorry folks but...there is no need to complicate learning how to read for a Ker. They don't need to memorize a huge list of Dolch sight words...but learning the common sight words they WILL encounter in their early reading attempts is, imo, necessary.

:iagree: Applying rules is a logic stage, not grammar stage, skill.

[HomeAgain]

:iagree: Applying rules is a logic stage, not grammar stage, skill.

 

Not true, Hunter.  Applying rules is logical, but not a logic age skill.  Being able to break down the word by rule and origin/meaning is a logic age skill.  A grammar student should be able to understand, apply, and memorize most phonics rules: c before i,e,y/a,o,u, 'when two vowels go a'walkin', 'e at the end..'

[FO4UR]

BUT it appears often long before kids are taught /th/ so it is almost always taught as a very early, if not the first, sight word.

 

 

Not in my world.   :coolgleamA:

 

It takes 30 seconds to explain that when we put t and h together to make a phonogram, it says /th/ or /TH/.  In this word, "the," it says /TH/.  

 

Then they learn the word 'the' by heart, with understanding of the phonics. And, when they come again to a word with 'th' they will remember, it is like the word 'the.'  We remind ourselves again that 'th' can say /th/ or /TH/.  And soon the 'th' phonogram is well known. 

 

 

 

I have to disagree with this idea that English is phonetic.  At least...perfectly phonetic.  

 

 

 

Instead, what we are doing is making up rules to explain the myriad of phonetic intricacies within the English language!  Its working backwards to explain what really doesn't "fit" within our phonics rules!    

 

  

 

No one claims that English is perfectly phonetic.  It is very messy, but largely phonetic.  I start young to teach that rule-breakers are often not really English words but words we've adopted (ski, broccoli, and so on).  Young children can and do understand exceptions to the rules, especially if we can give a brief explanation why.

 

We aren't making up the rules to teach phonics.  We are explaining the rules.  That is an important distinction.  If Latin is like a game of checkers, English is like a game of chess.  The rules and play are quite complex.

 

It's vital that we NOT teach a myriad of rules and expect them to suddenly read and spell.  That is a mistake that too many make, but that is not proof that we should throw the baby our with the bathwater.

 

 

:iagree: Applying rules is a logic stage, not grammar stage, skill.

 

 

I completely agree.

 

Programs like WRTR and LOE are best suited for 5th-8th graders.

 

 

Charlotte Mason does an excellent mix of phonics and visual memory to *set the stage* for analytical thinking.  1st-4th grade is spent synthesizing it all first.  We have to own a thing before we can analyze it.

 

I'm a believer in teaching words that are REAL to the child via phonics and using them immediately in a story that is also REAL.  REAL is in caps...as in the Velveteen Rabbit REAL.  

[Butter]

Not in my world.   :coolgleamA:

 

It takes 30 seconds to explain that when we put t and h together to make a phonogram, it says /th/ or /TH/.  In this word, "the," it says /TH/.  

 

Then they learn the word 'the' by heart, with understanding of the phonics. And, when they come again to a word with 'th' they will remember, it is like the word 'the.'  We remind ourselves again that 'th' can say /th/ or /TH/.  And soon the 'th' phonogram is well known. 

 

Your kids must be amazingly brilliant or something because Telling them the sound /th/ makes in the most definitely didn't get mine to extrapolate that sound to other /th/ words.  And, yet, my kids learned how to read.  Amazing!

[Hunter]

Not true, Hunter. Applying rules is logical, but not a logic age skill. Being able to break down the word by rule and origin/meaning is a logic age skill. A grammar student should be able to understand, apply, and memorize most phonics rules: c before i,e,y/a,o,u, 'when two vowels go a'walkin', 'e at the end..'

Some "rules" can be taught to some students with memorization of syllables and words in tables. That is not the same as teaching a rule and expecting students to apply it to any word.

 

I have used tables of "c" syllables and words with students that are firmly in the grammar stage and showing very little evidence of logic stage thinking.

 

I'm not talking grammar vs logic with the belief that the transition happens suddenly and all at once to students who are 10 years old. But, I have found it amazingly helpful to predict the efficiency of curricula, by whether or not they are expecting higher level thinking skills from beginners.

 

Phonics is MY hobby. I am careful to only inflict the developmentally appropriate parts on students. A lot of early readers are not ready for spelling rules.

[HomeAgain]

Children WRITING the words correctly is different than children READING the words correctly.  I'm not talking about spelling rules, Hunter, but learning how to apply the rules when they read.  I have a 5yo who can read nearly anything because he has mastered most of the rules with regards to reading.  As he learns to write, he'll be given lessons in the origins of the words, and use that to eventually apply to how he writes the word.

 

How reading is taught in America is totally backward.  It really is.  We went against the grain and started reading lessons with logic.  Looking at things and taking them apart.  Putting things together to match pictures.  Games of sequencing.  When it finally came time to introduce letters, we did it by sound. D'nealian writing, because the letters all have different strokes so there's no mixing up the order/placement of the stick and the ball.  My son learned to read in 3 months flat, from the time sounds were introduced until he was reading chapter books.  He's not a genius.  He's a kid who didn't have to contend with the alphabet song, the uppercase letters, the Zaner-Bloser nonsense.  He'd read, be told a rule, learn it, and move on.  That is not a logic age skill.  That is a skill of someone who doesn't have to deal with American methods.  Every child should be treated the same way - building their simple logic skills, teaching them without making them do party tricks, streamlining the process to just what is needed.

[Butter]

My daughter went from knowing three letters (the ones in her first name) at 4 1/2 years old to reading chapter books in 3 months as well.  And I used a sensible mix of phonics and sight words.  Prior to teaching her to read I was *exactly* like you insisting on pure phonics.  Turns out, pure phonics is not the best option for every kid.  Just the way it is.  Helping me change my opinion was good preparation for my youngest.  He has *refused* from the start to sound anything out.  He wants to be able to just look at the word and read it.  He knows the phonics rules and memorized them super fast.  But he wanted *immediate* fluency.  It's just wrong to insist all kids would learn to read best via x method.

[nature girl]

For us, learning basic sight words at the same time as phonics allowed my DD to read books with understanding much sooner than we would've seen if she'd had to think of how rules apply and sound out every.single.word. It just made reading so much more pleasant for her, which was self-motivating.

 

Now I think many of the words ps considers sight words ARE purely phonetic, but IMO there's no real harm in sight-learning the words they're most likely to come across, at the same time they're learning how to decode the phonemes quickly and fluently. This isn't how we did it, but if DD hadn't been a natural reader maybe I would have considered it just to foster fluency sooner. I don't think it hinders phonics learning--You're teaching a child how to fish, but at the same time giving him some prepared meals to sustain him while he's learning.

[MerryAtHope]

 I don't think it hinders phonics learning--You're teaching a child how to fish, but at the same time giving him some prepared meals to sustain him while he's learning.

 

It definitely can in some cases. A lot of kids get confused by the two methods and just start guessing at words based on shape or first or last letter etc...  and it can be a real mess to undo that--that's what happened with my oldest. 

[FO4UR]

Your kids must be amazingly brilliant or something because Telling them the sound /th/ makes in the most definitely didn't get mine to extrapolate that sound to other /th/ words.  And, yet, my kids learned how to read.  Amazing!

 

No, that it is not the case and not what I've done.

 

I teach and re-teach a phonogram with every word we meet with that particular phonogram until it is learned to the point that they remember without being taught again.

 

My children are a wide range of dyslexic gaining fluency at age 9 and gifted reading at age 3.  

[Butter]

I teach and re-teach a phonogram with every word we meet with that particular phonogram until it is learned to the point that they remember without being taught again.

 

Maybe I'm lazy, then, but it seems *awful* to me as the teacher to teach and re-teach a phonogram with every word it appears in.  My kids learned with a nice blend of phonics and sight words and it wasn't difficult for me or them.  They learned to read very quickly with the exception of the dyslexic one and there was no teaching and re-teaching involved.

[abcmommy]

Title one schools are required to use evidence based reading programs- evidence based reading programs generally employ a blending of teaching explicit phonics and using word wall/sight words.

 

There is a lot of infighting about phonics on this thread- explicit phonics programs like OG based AAS for instance- are necessary for some kids.  My dyslexic certainly benefitted from this approach.

 

My early self taught readers were sight word readers- they had easily memorized a solid handful of words by 3 and read by 4-5 fluently because their capacity for memorizing and their interest in reading was high.  

[Hunter]

Every child should be treated the same way -

Ouch! I can't agree with that!

[AimeeM]

Children WRITING the words correctly is different than children READING the words correctly.  I'm not talking about spelling rules, Hunter, but learning how to apply the rules when they read.  I have a 5yo who can read nearly anything because he has mastered most of the rules with regards to reading.  As he learns to write, he'll be given lessons in the origins of the words, and use that to eventually apply to how he writes the word.

 

How reading is taught in America is totally backward.  It really is.  We went against the grain and started reading lessons with logic.  Looking at things and taking them apart.  Putting things together to match pictures.  Games of sequencing.  When it finally came time to introduce letters, we did it by sound. D'nealian writing, because the letters all have different strokes so there's no mixing up the order/placement of the stick and the ball.  My son learned to read in 3 months flat, from the time sounds were introduced until he was reading chapter books.  He's not a genius.  He's a kid who didn't have to contend with the alphabet song, the uppercase letters, the Zaner-Bloser nonsense.  He'd read, be told a rule, learn it, and move on.  That is not a logic age skill.  That is a skill of someone who doesn't have to deal with American methods.  Every child should be treated the same way - building their simple logic skills, teaching them without making them do party tricks, streamlining the process to just what is needed.

We (as in, me and mine) homeschool because we do not believe all children should be treated the same way. 

My children did not, could not, learn to read simply by being told a rule and moving on. 

 

 

[HomeAgain]

I don't know if there is a deliberate misreading or miscommunication going on, but here is the full statement and what "treated the same way" means.

Every child should be treated the same way - building their simple logic skills, teaching them without making them do party tricks, streamlining the process to just what is needed.


Not that every child should read by being told a rule and moving on, but giving them the opportunity to build skill without the trappings involved.  I never imagined someone could take offense to that.  My bad.
 

[sweetpea3829]

Not in my world. :coolgleamA:

 

It takes 30 seconds to explain that when we put t and h together to make a phonogram, it says /th/ or /TH/. In this word, "the," it says /TH/.

 

Then they learn the word 'the' by heart, with understanding of the phonics. And, when they come again to a word with 'th' they will remember, it is like the word 'the.' We remind ourselves again that 'th' can say /th/ or /TH/. And soon the 'th' phonogram is well known.

 

 

 

But it isn't the phonogram th that makes 'the' irregular. That phonogram is typically the first two letter phonogram that our kids encounter and they typically pick of up quite readily.

 

It's the e. So we typically teach them that e says a long and short sound. But the very first high frequency word they encounter is a rule breaker.

 

I just don't think it's necessary to complicate reading at this point for them.

[kagmypts]

oul=oo=u, ÊŠ

 

a=e=u, schwa or /É™/

 

ai=e, /e/

 

It's just that there's not a 1:1 correspondence between sounds and letters. But it's phonetic.

 

​The words do follow the rules. The rules are just more complicated than explained at first.

 

The interesting thing is that "oul" is not a recognized phonogram to my knowledge.  If it is, I would love to see the source of that information.  Neither LOE or AAS/AAR recognize "oul" as a phonogram.  As a poster above pointed out, "l" says /l/ except for when it doesn't.  The word "could" doesn't seem phoentic to me at all.  For clarification, phonetic to me means following commonly accepted rules and/or phonograms.

 

The same could be said about ai. The phonogram ai is pronounced long a.  Once again, I don't see any phonics program where short e is a sound made my ai.  It seems to me that these words are actually "rule breakers" and not phonetic at all.

 

In all honesty if a child can look at the word said and immediately know (without any previous exposure) that ai says short e, that's amazing! It certainly did not happen with my kids.  Is there really a difference between teaching a child that said=said or said is /sed/?  In each case, the child has to remember that ai does not equal long a.  Perhaps, it is just semantics, but I don't consider a word phonetic when it includes phonograms that don't make one of it's accepted sounds.

 

ETA - I have always taught my kids that said is a sight word because ai doesn't say short e.  It's an exception so we just need to remember that this is a sight word - said.  It's a sight word simply because ai says /e/.

[Matryoshka]

ETA - I have always taught my kids that said is a sight word because ai doesn't say short e.  It's an exception so we just need to remember that this is a sight word - said.  It's a sight word simply because ai says /e/.

 

That's what most phonics programs get backwards.  Letters don't 'say' anything.  People make sounds, not letters.  We use letters, and combinations of letters to represent what we say.  The reading program we used did mention 'oul' as one way we can represent the oo (like book) sound in English.  This way enables you to easily teach pretty much 100% phonetically without teaching any rules or worry about 'rule-breakers'.

 

I didn't sit down and worry about teaching that, I would just say "in this word, 'oul' represents 'oo'".  We never had a formal lesson on it (though I did point out could/would/should all being examples of it).

 

This also made it pretty much zero work to teach my kids to read in two foreign languages simultaneously; I'd just say, in Spanish (or German) this letter/letter combination is used to represent this sound.  They could read phonetically in all three languages by six years old (in the two foreign languages, with proper accents, even when they didn't know what the words meant - definitely no sight words).

[kagmypts]

That's what most phonics programs get backwards.  Letters don't 'say' anything.  People make sounds, not letters.  We use letters, and combinations of letters to represent what we say.  The reading program we used did mention 'oul' as one way we can represent the oo (like book) sound in English.  This way enables you to easily teach pretty much 100% phonetically without teaching any rules or worry about 'rule-breakers'.

 

However, the letters/phonograms that represent what we say do have have sounds associated with them.  In that way, letters do make/say sounds.  Perhaps, that may not be the most precise way to word it, but letters and phonograms absolutely have sounds associated with them.  Reading is the act of decoding letters into recognizable words, and in order to decode those letters, we correlate sounds with the each phonogram.  By definition, that is phonics.

 

Perhaps, I have misunderstood your point, but I am not sure how any phonics program starts with the spoken word.  When a child is learning to read, which is the topic of this thread, the written word is the starting point.  As such, phonics programs teach the sounds associated with each phonogram.  While the letter doesn't actually speak, it has a corresponding sound.  That corresponding sound maybe referred as the "speech" or what the phonogram "says."  I apologize if I have completely misunderstood your point, but the "get backwards" part of your post is throwing me for a loop.

[Tanaqui]

I have definitely seen oul listed as a phonogram. However, it's not a very common one - would, could, should about sums it up, doesn't it? And their contractions, I suppose. It may be easier for many people to consider that oul is such an unusual way of writing that sound that it makes more sense not to even get into it.

[Matryoshka]

Perhaps, I have misunderstood your point, but I am not sure how any phonics program starts with the spoken word.  When a child is learning to read, which is the topic of this thread, the written word is the starting point.  As such, phonics programs teach the sounds associated with each phonogram.  While the letter doesn't actually speak, it has a corresponding sound.  That corresponding sound maybe referred as the "speech" or what the phonogram "says."  I apologize if I have completely misunderstood your point.

 

I started with pre-reading skills, such as being able to identify sounds in spoken words.  My kids from a very young age wanted to 'write' things (before we'd started any reading program).  They'd ask how to spell them.  I'd make them sound out the word, sound by sound, and then tell them what letters to use to represent that sound, and they would 'write' it.  The reading program I used also had this as an activity, but with simpler words than what my kids wanted to write for fun.  In fact, the reading program I used also had a test to see if the kid was ready to learn to read - which included being able to hear and identify the sounds in words - beginning, middle, and end - and also whether the child could blend two or more spoken sounds given to them. If the child could not yet do that, it gave games to help them do it that before starting the program. 

 

Of course, it also had the child look at letters/letter combinations and determine what sound or sounds were associated with them, and then blend them, but identifying spoken sounds in words and blending are important pre-reading skills, so yeah, that is where reading should start.

 

[Btervet]

We loved phonics around here, but I really really don't get the idea that all sight words are evil.

 

I couldn't imagine holding books back from my kid because he hadn't yet learned the rules for high-frequency words (the, of, come, should/would/could, have, etc). Those rules are complicated, but the words are encountered very early and often. Teaching them the sight words just makes the process easier, and later (for us when we started work on spelling) we worked on the more complicated rules.

 

Even OPGTR uses sight words, and I would guess almost everyone would agree that it is a phonics-based program.

 

The one thing I hate most about phonics, especially the phonics only approach, is it isn't helpful when you encounter a word that could follow the rules to say multiple things. Have is pronounced with the short a, and has an e to stop the word from ending with a v. But following the phonics rules, it could ALSO have a long a, and the e could be a silent e to make the vowel long. The only way you know which rule to apply is memorizing the word. Same with spelling, the only way you know when to use see vs. sea is memorizing. Rules only take you so far.

[Matryoshka]

The one thing I hate most about phonics, especially the phonics only approach, is it isn't helpful when you encounter a word that could follow the rules to say multiple things. Have is pronounced with the short a, and has an e to stop the word from ending with a v. But following the phonics rules, it could ALSO have a long a, and the e could be a silent e to make the vowel long. The only way you know which rule to apply is memorizing the word. Same with spelling, the only way you know when to use see vs. sea is memorizing. Rules only take you so far.

 

It is entirely possible to teach reading in English almost 100% phonetically without ever using even one of those 'rules'.  Those are made up and confusing. My dyslexic brother was just confused by traditional phonics 'rules'.  Remembering them all and their exceptions is just overwhelming.  Often there are more exceptions to the 'rule' than words that follow it.  That doesn't mean that one should rely on 'sight-words'.  I think 'one' and 'once' are the only words I can remember where I just told my kids 'these make absolutely no sense so just learn them'.  Pretty much everything else makes some sense phonetically.  But you don't need complicated rules, or 'silent' letters, or any of that to make sense of it.

 

I didn't wait to teach my kids 'would' - I just explained it as we went.

[Btervet]

It is entirely possible to teach reading in English almost 100% phonetically without ever using even one of those 'rules'.  Those are made up and confusing. My dyslexic brother was just confused by traditional phonics 'rules'.  Remembering them all and their exceptions is just overwhelming.  Often there are more exceptions to the 'rule' than words that follow it.  That doesn't mean that one should rely on 'sight-words'.  I think 'one' and 'once' are the only words I can remember where I just told my kids 'these make absolutely no sense so just learn them'.  Pretty much everything else makes some sense phonetically.  But you don't need complicated rules, or 'silent' letters, or any of that to make sense of it.

 

I didn't wait to teach my kids 'would' - I just explained it as we went.

 

I guess I really really don't understand then. Those rules ARE phonics in my mind. What are you talking about when you teach them phonetically if you don't teach the phonics rules?

[Matryoshka]

I guess I really really don't understand then. Those rules ARE phonics in my mind. What are you talking about when you teach them phonetically if you don't teach the phonics rules?

 

http://www.phono-graphix.com/about_the_method.php

http://www.phono-graphix.com/pg_in_theory_and_practice.php

 

Links explain it better than I can. :)  The second link has a nice bit about "phonics rules" and their wrong-headedness. ;)

[Farrar]

It definitely can in some cases. A lot of kids get confused by the two methods and just start guessing at words based on shape or first or last letter etc...  and it can be a real mess to undo that--that's what happened with my oldest. 

 

Kids do that anyway though. I've met kids who only ever got phonics who did that. And unless you stalk them around books, refusing to let them ever see pictures or look at books on their own or something, it's not like you can stop it. It's part of the natural learning process for many kids. While I think phonics is by far the better bet for a basis for teaching (as in, it works nearly all the time, other methods only work part of the time) I refuse to believe that kids exposed to a few sight words or who don't have the crayons snatched from their hands when they naturally try invented spelling are ever harmed. The kids who develop reading problems despite a good phonics base of instruction were always going to develop them. I firmly believe that.

[Farrar]

You know, I think a lot of the thinking in this thread represents the idea that we can control kids' learning to an extent that I simply don't believe we can. Or, at least, that we shouldn't attempt. Kids encounter words from birth and develop a relationship with words and pictures and symbols - their own relationship. Most kids look at books and words and signs and remember stories and things they've seen on videos or movies or heard read aloud. All of that is their own. And they begin to make their own meaning out of it all. We step in as part of that process with this great system - phonics - to help them go farther and make more sense out of it than they can possibly make without it. But, they already have their own ideas about words and books by then. And we encourage kids to guess and think and memorize in every other aspect of life. The idea that we can make them blindly learn to follow and apply these rules for these abstract symbols all the time is such educational hubris. Of course they're guessing and memorizing and creating meaning in their own way.

 

And I say all this as someone who is really pro-phonics. That's what we teach, hopefully in a relatively methodical way. But there's also this personal process of kids romancing the words and learning to love them that is going on at the same time. Sometimes I feel like all of this, stop them from memorizing at all costs, forbid them from ever seeing a sight word talk ignores that they're looking at and learning from books on their own already.

[MerryAtHope]

Kids do that anyway though. I've met kids who only ever got phonics who did that. And unless you stalk them around books, refusing to let them ever see pictures or look at books on their own or something, it's not like you can stop it. It's part of the natural learning process for many kids. While I think phonics is by far the better bet for a basis for teaching (as in, it works nearly all the time, other methods only work part of the time) I refuse to believe that kids exposed to a few sight words or who don't have the crayons snatched from their hands when they naturally try invented spelling are ever harmed. The kids who develop reading problems despite a good phonics base of instruction were always going to develop them. I firmly believe that.

 

Absolutely (and I'm never in favor of snatching crayons out of kids' hands, or trying to be so on top of a child's writing that they're never allowed to misspell words--I'd never be able to work under such circumstances and can't imagine trying to impose that on a child!) The post I quoted didn't seem to be talking about teaching "a few" sight words along the way but seemed to be advocating more of a 50/50 type of approach. Apples to oranges in my mind (necessary sight words plus a few occasional "we'll learn the phonics of this word later" sight words can work--and if that's what she meant, then I misunderstood.)

[Hunter]

I taught myself to read when I was 4. I memorized some words, took them apart, and applied that to new words.

 

To memorize the first words, I had to ask adults who did not want to take the time to answer my questions. I learned that if I only asked one word every 30 minutes, an adult would just answer me, because it was quicker than telling me not to ask, or hitting me.

 

As Farrar said, we are not always in control of what a student learns. No one was in control of what I learned.

 

I use the screen name hunter, because I have always been a hunter, not a sponge.

[nature girl]

Absolutely (and I'm never in favor of snatching crayons out of kids' hands, or trying to be so on top of a child's writing that they're never allowed to misspell words--I'd never be able to work under such circumstances and can't imagine trying to impose that on a child!) The post I quoted didn't seem to be talking about teaching "a few" sight words along the way but seemed to be advocating more of a 50/50 type of approach. Apples to oranges in my mind (necessary sight words plus a few occasional "we'll learn the phonics of this word later" sight words can work--and if that's what she meant, then I misunderstood.)

 

I was the one who made that post, and I didn't mean to imply that at all, although maybe I didn't word it well. This was my post:

 

For us, learning basic sight words at the same time as phonics allowed my DD to read books with understanding much sooner than we would've seen if she'd had to think of how rules apply and sound out every.single.word. It just made reading so much more pleasant for her, which was self-motivating.

 

Now I think many of the words ps considers sight words ARE purely phonetic, but IMO there's no real harm in sight-learning the words they're most likely to come across, at the same time they're learning how to decode the phonemes quickly and fluently. This isn't how we did it, but if DD hadn't been a natural reader maybe I would have considered it just to foster fluency sooner. I don't think it hinders phonics learning--You're teaching a child how to fish, but at the same time giving him some prepared meals to sustain him while he's learning.

 

 

All I meant to say was that I understand why schools are teaching basic sight words soon after they're teaching phonics, to allow kids to read fluently when they're not yet able to understand and apply the complex rules. I taught the words "said" and "is" and "you" as sight words because we were coming across them all the time in basic readers, and it just made reading a lot more rewarding for her. (We actually used Progressive Phonics in the beginning, which does teach limited sight words. After PP she was up and running...) But when we came across more complex phonemes (like "ould" words) I just told her what they were, and she quickly absorbed them as sight words. I didn't see the harm in it as long as she was still sounding most words out.

 

So I think it's the same deal when schools teach very common words that are phonetic (like "and") as sight words, because it just lets kids move past them and focus on sounding out the words they're not familiar with, without losing their train of thought. I don't think MOST schools teach anywhere close to 50/50, although perhaps some do and I agree that would be detrimental. 

[MinivanMom]

I was the one who made that post, and I didn't mean to imply that at all, although maybe I didn't word it well. This was my post:

 

 

 

All I meant to say was that I understand why schools are teaching basic sight words soon after they're teaching phonics, to allow kids to read fluently when they're not yet able to understand and apply the complex rules. I taught the words "said" and "is" and "you" as sight words because we were coming across them all the time in basic readers, and it just made reading a lot more rewarding for her. (We actually used Progressive Phonics in the beginning, which does teach limited sight words. After PP she was up and running...) But when we came across more complex phonemes (like "ould" words) I just told her what they were, and she quickly absorbed them as sight words. I didn't see the harm in it as long as she was still sounding most words out.

 

So I think it's the same deal when schools teach very common words that are phonetic (like "and") as sight words, because it just lets kids move past them and focus on sounding out the words they're not familiar with, without losing their train of thought. I don't think MOST schools teach anywhere close to 50/50, although perhaps some do and I agree that would be detrimental. 

 

What is happening in public schools varies widely depending on your district or state, which can make these conversations very difficult. A parent complains about their district where there is virtually no phonics instruction and long lists of sight words to memorize, and another parent jumps in to defend the fact that they taught just a few sight words to their child early on. I think people often wind up talking past each other.

 

Our district has kids memorizing the full Dolch lists. They also teach the sound of each letter at the beginning of kindergarten; if you're really lucky you'll get a teacher who teaches both the short and long sounds for vowels, but there is no phonics instruction beyond that. The kids just have to memorize those Dolch lists. I regularly see parents by the side of the ball field or soccer field drilling their K or 1st grade kids with flashcards. It is nowhere near 50/50 here, and we are one of the biggest, most affluent districts in the country. Savvy parents work around the system by teaching their kids to read with phonics prior to starting school.

 

I think parents dealing with a system like mine have a very genuine complaint, and I'm not sure it's helpful when other parents chime in with a chorus of, "I taught my kid sight words and he's fine! A few sight words never hurt anyone!" A few sight words aren't going to hurt all kids, but it will hurt a portion of the kids, especially when it's more than just a few sight words. That cheerful, pro-sight words chorus just isn't helpful to the parent whose child guesses blindly and has no skills to sound out unknown words.

[Kylie]

That is the way I learned to read. It wasn't until I was an adult, researching how I was going to teach my son, that I discovered phonics and retaught myself. I'm SO glad I found phonics. I hate the whole language method. I thought I was dyslexic before I learned phonics.

[Sahamamama]

My first grader knew last year why "have" uses a silent e. My 4yo this year also does. To read at grade level, a child doesn't need to know advanced phonics. Memorizing rules a Ker needs to read at grade level (which is ridiculous anyway) would serve a student much better than memorizing the 50 dolch sight words by sight. Teaching the rules is akin to teaching a man to fish.

 

"Because English words do not end in i, j, u, or v." ;)

Yup, we learn that here with All About Spelling, and it does serve us better than Dolch word lists! :iagree:

 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

You know, I think a lot of the thinking in this thread represents the idea that we can control kids' learning to an extent that I simply don't believe we can. Or, at least, that we shouldn't attempt. Kids encounter words from birth and develop a relationship with words and pictures and symbols - their own relationship. Most kids look at books and words and signs and remember stories and things they've seen on videos or movies or heard read aloud. All of that is their own. And they begin to make their own meaning out of it all. We step in as part of that process with this great system - phonics - to help them go farther and make more sense out of it than they can possibly make without it. But, they already have their own ideas about words and books by then. And we encourage kids to guess and think and memorize in every other aspect of life. The idea that we can make them blindly learn to follow and apply these rules for these abstract symbols all the time is such educational hubris. Of course they're guessing and memorizing and creating meaning in their own way.

 

And I say all this as someone who is really pro-phonics. That's what we teach, hopefully in a relatively methodical way. But there's also this personal process of kids romancing the words and learning to love them that is going on at the same time. Sometimes I feel like all of this, stop them from memorizing at all costs, forbid them from ever seeing a sight word talk ignores that they're looking at and learning from books on their own already.

 

 

I'm so glad you said these things. This thread has been freaking me out.

[Sahamamama]

You know, I think a lot of the thinking in this thread represents the idea that we can control kids' learning to an extent that I simply don't believe we can. Or, at least, that we shouldn't attempt. Kids encounter words from birth and develop a relationship with words and pictures and symbols - their own relationship. Most kids look at books and words and signs and remember stories and things they've seen on videos or movies or heard read aloud. All of that is their own. And they begin to make their own meaning out of it all. We step in as part of that process with this great system - phonics - to help them go farther and make more sense out of it than they can possibly make without it. But, they already have their own ideas about words and books by then. And we encourage kids to guess and think and memorize in every other aspect of life. The idea that we can make them blindly learn to follow and apply these rules for these abstract symbols all the time is such educational hubris. Of course they're guessing and memorizing and creating meaning in their own way.

 

And I say all this as someone who is really pro-phonics. That's what we teach, hopefully in a relatively methodical way. But there's also this personal process of kids romancing the words and learning to love them that is going on at the same time. Sometimes I feel like all of this, stop them from memorizing at all costs, forbid them from ever seeing a sight word talk ignores that they're looking at and learning from books on their own already.

 

I agree, in a way, and it is true that many children, especially these days, encounter print from a very early age. Of course, not all children do encounter much print at all until they arrive at school. In my social worker days, I was in many homes that had not one book, believe me. Parents are not taking these children to libraries. There are no books for birthdays or holidays. Or perhaps there are books, but it doesn't therefore follow that every child encountering these books will form a positive relationship with them.

 

And while it may be true that some children romance the words and learn to love them, I think it can also be said that there are plenty of children who have so thoroughly been taught to guess and guess and guess, but they learn to hate the words -- because every time they guess, they are wrong. Imagine that! Every time the spotlight is on you, you fail, because you are not good at guessing or memorizing or whatever it is they want you to do with that list of words.

 

For these kids, reading really is a struggle and a dread. It really isn't a romance for some children.

[Farrar]

I agree, in a way, and it is true that many children, especially these days, encounter print from a very early age. Of course, not all children do encounter much print at all until they arrive at school. In my social worker days, I was in many homes that had not one book, believe me. Parents are not taking these children to libraries. There are no books for birthdays or holidays. Or perhaps there are books, but it doesn't therefore follow that every child encountering these books will form a positive relationship with them.

 

And while it may be true that some children romance the words and learn to love them, I think it can also be said that there are plenty of children who have so thoroughly been taught to guess and guess and guess, but they learn to hate the words -- because every time they guess, they are wrong. Imagine that! Every time the spotlight is on you, you fail, because you are not good at guessing or memorizing or whatever it is they want you to do with that list of words.

 

For these kids, reading really is a struggle and a dread. It really isn't a romance for some children.

 

I totally agree and get that... but I think those kids are still developing a relationship. And, it makes it all the more crucial that teachers include clear instruction in phonics because no one will advocate for those kids if they have any sort of reading problems. But it also makes it all the more crucial that schools include some of that romance by bringing in stories and songs and poems and signs and all kinds of stuff that reflect those kids' worlds. And that's the goal of whole language - not memorizing sight words, but helping kids find that spark with reading. Sometimes there will be challenges that are too big to surmount... but I think we still have to try. Because otherwise, what's the point of reading?

 

This is a real shift in our greater culture in terms of early reading, I think. It's the death of the Reading Rainbow approach - telling kids why they should read - and the focus on the Super Why approach - telling kids how to read. Both are good... and phonics is really crucial. But so is wanting to learn to read, wanting to know stories, wanting that relationship.

[Tanaqui]

"Because English words do not end in i, j, u, or v." ;)

 

For a very strange and limited set of English words that imagines a good number of common words just don't count. Sushi, broccoli, spaghetti, ski, alibi, bi, taxi... well, the list goes on. If it's listed in most English language dictionaries, and it's not commonly italicized, then it's sophistry to claim it's somehow "not an English word" just because you've got this rule you don't want to mess with.

 

A great number of English words are abbreviations or borrowings, after all.

[mom2scouts]

Yes, our public schools teach sight words and guessing and then throw in a tiny bit of phonics. They allow the children to only read books that use the sight words they've learned. When my kids were in PS, I taught them all to read with phonics instruction before they went to K.

[DesertBlossom]

My kids were at a "back to basics" school that teaches Spalding. They spend all of K learning the phonograms and towards the end of the year start sending home easy readers. My kids took off reading and I became a believer.

 

I have no idea what the neighborhood school does. When my mother taught at a nearby school she was converted to Spalding and used it in her own 2nd grade class, but it wasn't schoolwide. That was decades ago though.

[FO4UR]

Maybe I'm lazy, then, but it seems *awful* to me as the teacher to teach and re-teach a phonogram with every word it appears in.  My kids learned with a nice blend of phonics and sight words and it wasn't difficult for me or them.  They learned to read very quickly with the exception of the dyslexic one and there was no teaching and re-teaching involved.

 

Others call it "spiral review in context of real words."

 

meh...this is just a very strange post, and I'm not sure what to think of it, really.

 

 

 

 

 

But it isn't the phonogram th that makes 'the' irregular. That phonogram is typically the first two letter phonogram that our kids encounter and they typically pick of up quite readily.

 

It's the e. So we typically teach them that e says a long and short sound. But the very first high frequency word they encounter is a rule breaker.

 

I just don't think it's necessary to complicate reading at this point for them.

 

 

The 'e' is not irregular.  Vowels say their names at the end of an open syllable.

 

We say "thee" when 'the' comes before a vowel: the earth, the umbrella, the elephant, etc...

 

I briefly explain that we pronounce it differently sometimes.  My children have understood this easily, maybe b/c they have moved around to regions with very different accents and pronunciations (from The South to Snowbelt OH to middle of MO).  It's not a big deal.  Children understand.

 

It doesn't complicate things to tell them how a word is made.  It complicates things to NOT tell them and expect them to simply memorize thousands of words.  It complicates things to give a list of 101 phonograms and rules and expect them to apply these to all new words independently.

 

It makes sense to start with words that the child will be using today, tomorrow, this week, and explain how those words are made, brainstorm for other words that share construction, synthesizing the word (in all of it's forms - letters/sounds/meaning) with everything in the child's world. When the child knows a word, really knows it, the learning takes off exponentially - even for dyslexic students.

 

 

Don't word build for nothing.  Word build to read real stories. It's not an either/or, it's a both/and.

 

Lots of babies being thrown out with the bath water 'round here...poor things!

 

 

 

You know, I think a lot of the thinking in this thread represents the idea that we can control kids' learning to an extent that I simply don't believe we can. Or, at least, that we shouldn't attempt. Kids encounter words from birth and develop a relationship with words and pictures and symbols - their own relationship. Most kids look at books and words and signs and remember stories and things they've seen on videos or movies or heard read aloud. All of that is their own. And they begin to make their own meaning out of it all. We step in as part of that process with this great system - phonics - to help them go farther and make more sense out of it than they can possibly make without it. But, they already have their own ideas about words and books by then. And we encourage kids to guess and think and memorize in every other aspect of life. The idea that we can make them blindly learn to follow and apply these rules for these abstract symbols all the time is such educational hubris. Of course they're guessing and memorizing and creating meaning in their own way.

 

And I say all this as someone who is really pro-phonics. That's what we teach, hopefully in a relatively methodical way. But there's also this personal process of kids romancing the words and learning to love them that is going on at the same time. Sometimes I feel like all of this, stop them from memorizing at all costs, forbid them from ever seeing a sight word talk ignores that they're looking at and learning from books on their own already.

 

 

Great post!

 

The methodology must be consistent, developmentally sound, and it must provide for that personal process.  

 

If I could go back and change one thing in my homeschool, I would start each child with a Charlotte Mason 'Book of Words' at ages 3-5, whenever they had letters well known and were ready to begin blending.

[OneStepAtATime]

Children WRITING the words correctly is different than children READING the words correctly.  I'm not talking about spelling rules, Hunter, but learning how to apply the rules when they read.  I have a 5yo who can read nearly anything because he has mastered most of the rules with regards to reading.  As he learns to write, he'll be given lessons in the origins of the words, and use that to eventually apply to how he writes the word.

 

How reading is taught in America is totally backward.  It really is.  We went against the grain and started reading lessons with logic.  Looking at things and taking them apart.  Putting things together to match pictures.  Games of sequencing.  When it finally came time to introduce letters, we did it by sound. D'nealian writing, because the letters all have different strokes so there's no mixing up the order/placement of the stick and the ball.  My son learned to read in 3 months flat, from the time sounds were introduced until he was reading chapter books.  He's not a genius.  He's a kid who didn't have to contend with the alphabet song, the uppercase letters, the Zaner-Bloser nonsense.  He'd read, be told a rule, learn it, and move on.  That is not a logic age skill.  That is a skill of someone who doesn't have to deal with American methods.  Every child should be treated the same way - building their simple logic skills, teaching them without making them do party tricks, streamlining the process to just what is needed.

I agree, writing is different than reading.  Learning to read is definitely NOT the same as learning to spell or to write, even though they are all related.  (And I must admit I am an excellent reader and do well with spelling but Zaner-Bloser actually mucked me up when my kids were using those texts at school).

 

I did want to say that this last part I really must respectfully disagree with but I do see what you are saying.  I just think the statement comes off as oversimplified.  Different children have different needs, different strengths, different weaknesses.  My children needed a very different process to learn to read than I did.  Treating them the same way as the other kids in their class caused them to fall further and further behind.  They weren't meant to learn to read that way.  Other kids did fine.  Mine needed a different approach (very explicitly, systematically taught phonics based instruction that included a very, very short list of site words introduces slowly over time).  The whole word, limited phonics and long site word list based instruction at school was less than useless for both kids.  For me, however, I was reading long before I hit school.  I just picked it up from being read to.  No real instruction involved.  Still others do well with whole language instruction.  It just seems that approaching reading instruction with the belief that all children should be treated the same way fails to recognize that each child is a bit different than the child next to them, KWIM?

[Butter]

We say "thee" when 'the' comes before a vowel: the earth, the umbrella, the elephant, etc...

 

I've always wondered about people saying that because I *don't* and I don't know anyone who does.  Didn't in Maryland or Virginia and don't in Texas.  The gets pronounced /thuh/ whether it is before earth or cat.

[ktgrok]

I've always wondered about people saying that because I *don't* and I don't know anyone who does.  Didn't in Maryland or Virginia and don't in Texas.  The gets pronounced /thuh/ whether it is before earth or cat.

 

What about "The End"? I've always heard that with "thee" not thuh. 

[FO4UR]

I've always wondered about people saying that because I *don't* and I don't know anyone who does.  Didn't in Maryland or Virginia and don't in Texas.  The gets pronounced /thuh/ whether it is before earth or cat.

 

 

"Thee" before a word beginning with a vowel has been common pronunciation everywhere I've lived.  IL, MO, OH, NC  

 

It's also proper diction when studying things like vocal music and public speaking. 

 

 

Regardless, a very short explanation and children can then begin to synthesize it all, even the idea that English has a bunch of complex rules that are routinely broken.  If we approach things from either the standpoint that children cannot understand complexity or that children can leap via intuition through complexities, we make a grave mistake. Children can understand a great deal more than we give them credit for if only we allow them to relate the new things to their old familiars.

 

(CM Science of Relations)

[Minerva]

I've always wondered about people saying that because I *don't* and I don't know anyone who does.  Didn't in Maryland or Virginia and don't in Texas.  The gets pronounced /thuh/ whether it is before earth or cat.

 

In my house we all say "the" with a long e sound. It's always a little confusing for my kids when we teach the schwa sound at the end of "the" for this reason. We are from the West Coast if that makes any difference. 

[Butter]

What about "The End"? I've always heard that with "thee" not thuh. 

 

If I want to emphasize it, I do say thee on that one, but usually I say thuh.

[umsami]

I've had two kids do public school kindy.  They all learned phonics, but even with phonics there were sight word lists.  The goal is to have them reading CVC words by Christmas I believe.  

 

The school my son attended in upstate NY also used the "D" level as an indicator as ready for first grade.  They were happy that every student reached that level.

 

My Aunt taught kindy and first grade in DoD schools for years.  I remember when whole language was in vogue (or whatever they called it), she realized quite soon that it didn't work and taught phonics anyway. :)

 

With DS1, I used Click-n-Read phonics.  With DS3, we've been using 100EZ lessons, but will switch to AAR.  100EZ lessons has worked well, but to me some of their weird alphabet versions of the words just don't work and don't make sense.  Plus, I want to use AAS for him.

[MinivanMom]

I totally agree and get that... but I think those kids are still developing a relationship. And, it makes it all the more crucial that teachers include clear instruction in phonics because no one will advocate for those kids if they have any sort of reading problems. But it also makes it all the more crucial that schools include some of that romance by bringing in stories and songs and poems and signs and all kinds of stuff that reflect those kids' worlds. And that's the goal of whole language - not memorizing sight words, but helping kids find that spark with reading. Sometimes there will be challenges that are too big to surmount... but I think we still have to try. Because otherwise, what's the point of reading?

 

This is a real shift in our greater culture in terms of early reading, I think. It's the death of the Reading Rainbow approach - telling kids why they should read - and the focus on the Super Why approach - telling kids how to read. Both are good... and phonics is really crucial. But so is wanting to learn to read, wanting to know stories, wanting that relationship.

 

It's a lovely thought that this should be the goal of "whole language", but I have never seen whole language taught or implemented that way. I was taught whole language in college back in the mid-90's, and we were most definitely taught that there should be no systematic phonics instruction. It was okay to point out a sound "in context" if a child was stuck, but that was the limit. Kids don't need to know the sounds that letters represent. You just need to surround kids with words and good feelings about words, and they will magically learn to read, because they want to read.

 

I later went into a strongly pro-phonics school district in another state, which was a bit of a shock. They taught systematic phonics and drilled the kids with lists of nonsense words, but they also provided a language-rich environment filled with books. Kids definitely found that spark with reading and developed a positive relationship with books and with the written word. I think it's a false dichotomy when we assume that we have to choose between phonics versus a language-rich environment.

 

I also think some here are using "whole language" as a synonym for "language-rich environment", but they aren't synonyms. "Whole language" was a very particular approach to teaching guessing within a language-rich environment with minimal phonics (only in context because kids will figure it out on their own). It had a very strong culture of "literacy centers", "word walls", "shared reading", etc. I think "language-rich environment" is a better phrase to use than "whole language" when talking about the development of a positive culture around reading and books. "Whole language" just has a lot of icky baggage for those who encountered it as a very particular educational approach.