How to Implement Alphaphonics?

[rose]

I'm just starting Alphaphonics with my 5yo boy (April b-day). We're on lesson seven. He LOVES school, especially his R&S preschool books. He's got the attention and the desire to read. He knows the letter names and many of the sounds. We're on lesson 7 of Alphaphonics. Sometimes he can blend well enough to read a word here or there. More often he just guesses one of the words that has already been covered that starts with the same letter as the word infront of him. He wants to read though. I'm a little relucant to proceed until things are clicking a little better. At what lesson did sounding out words click for your child?

 

I know that Alphaphonics should go along with a writing curriculum. We don't have one. My boy writes out letters and does copy work on his own initiative everyday. I'd like to move him into currisive writing before I have him do formal copy work with the Alphaphonics words but I'm not sure how to teach that. Any suggestions on this front? Ideally I would want a writing curriculum that was non-consumable because of the others coming after him. Better yet would be advise for teaching cursive without a curriculum at all. Besides copying some of the lesson words how would you suggest reinforcement lessons?

 

By the way, I will say that I know that he is still really young. My older two children didn't read until they were 7 and 8 and I'm fine if he doesn't read until that age either but I just know that being able to read would make him so happy. This child craves knowledge and will devour many books once he can read and he's keen. That why I'm willing to try to help him at this young an age.

Edited June 27, 2016 by Rose M

[Bics]

So I can't hyperlink for some reason, but check this out:

kidzone.ws/cursive

 

I have used these to teach two children cursive first.  I printed each page. Lower-case is first, based on how the letters are formed, not in alphabetical order.  It makes so much sense.  My kindergarteners both would give out about halfway through a page, and I didn't push it.  We would do the first half one day, second half the second day, and then after awhile, the third day I would flip it over to the blank side and write with a highlighter.  Then they could trace with their pencil over my highlighter.  I was just making up words using words consisting of review letters.  It took almost the entire year to get comfortable with lowercase, and then we began on uppercase.  I started with A, O, C because they are nearly the same formation as the lowercase. 

And the customizable tracer pages could be where you reinforce his reading practice.

There are fancier things out there, but I liked cheap and do-able.

[smfmommy]

Teach Your Monster To Read could help reinforce the phonics.  Bob books are very phonics based and would help with the blending practice.

 

You can read How to Tutor for free here:

http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/Tutor.htm

 

It is the book Alpha Phonics was based on and you can read how he teaches cursive which should correspond well with the Alpha Phonics.

[Pistachio mom]

I have used the Alpha Phonics with my three children in combination with a list of sight/memory words, BJ Press Phonics workbook, Star Fall website, and lots of simple library book. Once they are reading, we graduate up to Memoria Press' Storytime Treasures guides that use simple literature to begin teaching grammar/literature concepts.  I did a lot of writing and illustrating stapled construction-paper books about our pets and family members using the phonics we were covering in Alpha Phonics. I also adjusted the order of the vowels: I taught short i sounds and words along with the short a because words with "i" are easy to write for a young child.  As long as you are systematically teaching phonics from a logical plan, the research shows that using real books to teach children to apply those skills is the most beneficial way to teach fluency. Lots of publishers make guides to go with sets of children's literature. Memoria is not the only one. My children did not like the little readers that went along with the BJ Press books because the pictures were way too distracting. So, we just taught sight words,  phonics, and used real books to build fluency. The Ruth Beechick guide A Home Start in Reading was also very helpful for me.

 

https://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/literature-and-poetry/storytime-treasures/

 

In using real books, we did not just read it once. I would pre-read it and make a list of words to learn - usually a combination of their sight words, and challenging words for them to read. They would copy these words as part of handwriting and we would practice reading them in the context of the story. We used the pattern from the Memoria guides to use with any book I wanted. It was so much fun! 

 

Our local library has a delightful Mem Fox audio book about teaching reading to children. I'm sorry that I forget the title, but you may be able to look it up by just her name if you are interested. It was so encouraging and motivating to me!

 

About writing: I do recommend using some kind of program. I like Italic Handwriting series by Getty and Dubay. Any pre-cursive style of lettering will be a help for your son in learning cursive style letterforms, called one stroke. The advantage of one-stroke letters over the "stick and ball" letter styles is students have an easier time with not reversing letters. You know, the b/d, p/q, etc.... I also like D'Nealean font; and the BJ Press pre-cursive handwriting books are also wonderful and very age appropriate. I used the Italic series to start and later just made my own papers for my girls to copy. It might be worth it to check out the Cathy Duffy reviews, or for more old discussion threads here on the forums.

 

Good luck in your research, and your son sounds like he will be a delight to teach!

Edited July 16, 2016 by Pistachio mom

[Pistachio mom]

Hi again, I just re-read your initial post:  In the beginning stages,  I just teach a few letters and sounds formally. Phonics toys are great for the review of letter sounds. Blending individual sounds into words is a maturity skill. I used baby blocks as manipulatives, refrigerator magnets, and felt letters to make games out of this. I had one reading words at 3, the other two were closer to 5.  Reading words in sentences takes a little bit longer - as it is a combination of maturity and practice. Independent reading fluency (in my family) is more of a  2nd grade skill, and continues to grow. By 3rd and 4th my two oldest were reading chapter books.  So, it is fine to work with a smaller set of letters for blending sounds into words practice. You might do separate games for just teaching letter sounds, and later the phonogram patterns.

 

Some activities we did:

*buy blank wooden cubes at a craft store, write letters on with permanent marker, and then roll them like dice to make words.

*I also bought phonics posters to "cut up" into flash cards. Our Michael's had some fun Dr. Seuss posters that had sounds arranged into rhyming word families...

We did lots of hands on things to make reading feel like playing at first. The website All About Learning has some great free resources, and also very nice phonics and spelling curriculum. They have some free apps for reinforcing letter sounds. 

*read nursery rhymes. This is really beneficial and fun.

 

http://www.allaboutlearningpress.com/

Edited July 16, 2016 by Pistachio mom

[ElizabethB]

Use it across instead of down to prevent guessing. Also, you can write the words out on a whiteboard to make it more fun and interactive and reinforce the left to right direction of reading and blending.

 

Here are some blending tips:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4KTyqpg5o

 

Don Potter has some free cursive resources that are good, I will look for them and add the link.

 

Alphaphonics cursive by Don Potter! He has more handwriting things online, too.

 

http://donpotter.net/pdf/af_cursive.pdf

 

Don's handwriting page:

 

http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/11gth.html

Edited July 17, 2016 by ElizabethB

[Pistachio mom]

Elizabeth, I love the Don Potter links!  Part of the fun of Alpha Phonics is the beauty of the letters! His calligraphy style for the books is more of a foundation Roman calligraphy, rather than cursive. I did not know he had a website. This is a wealth of information about lots of things. Thanks for sharing.

Edited July 17, 2016 by Pistachio mom