1st grade phonics/reading- what does your day look like?

[lotsofpumpkins]

We currently use Rod & Staff for Phonics and Reading in 1st grade. My oldest went through it last year (and now she's finishing up R&S 2nd grade Phonics), and my ds will be finishing up R&S 1st grade Phonics/Reading in May. I do like how thorough R&S is, but it takes a LOT of time each day. Phonics/Reading hasn't come super easy to ds, plus all that writing in the workbooks was overwhelming to him at times. That being said, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and he has done fine. I'm just wondering if I should go in a different direction with my 3rd child. He is starting K and is using Explode the Code for phonics (one page from Book 1 each day). Once in a while he reads a Bob Book. We are right at the beginning stages of learning to sound out words. With my oldest two, ETC was just something to use in K before switching to R&S in 1st. But I'm considering doing something different with my 3rd child, because with every passing year our school days get busier and busier. I know that my time is required for learning to read, BUT, I feel like the time required by R&S may be a bit excessive.

 

Here is a typical day for ds (just for phonics/reading, not counting penmanship, math, or content subjects). He is 6.5.

Phonics- Read a list of nearly 30 words to me (from the previous lesson). This sometimes takes up to 15 minutes because he is a very wiggly distractable boy! Then we turn to that day's lesson and I quickly give him instructions and he gets to work. I can't really leave him alone to work on it. He needs reminders to stay on task plus he often needs help. (When my oldest was in 1st grade, she was able to do a lot of this more independently than ds can, BUT, she was older for her grade (late birthday), plus phonics just came easily to her). Anyway, the 2 workbook pages usually take him at least 30 minutes. Then there's the list of words for that lesson, which he reads to me. That can take up to 15 minutes. Then we flip back to the previous lesson for a 30-second speed drill to see how many he can read. So, phonics takes up to an hour. On really good days he might only need 30 minutes, but days like that are extremely rare.

Reading- Look at the new words for the lesson. Ds reads the story aloud to me. This takes up to 15 minutes or so. Then he does the 2 workbook pages, which also require quite a bit of my attention to keep him on task and answer his questions. The workbook usually takes about 30 minutes. So, reading takes about 45 minutes.

 

So, on most days I am spending 1 hour and 45 minutes with my ds on his phonics and reading. I am able to do other things briefly here and there while he is working on the workbooks, but I do need to be close by. He also has his math and penmanship, plus content subjects. When my 3rd child gets to 1st grade, I will also have 3rd and 4th graders, plus PreK, a 2-year-old, and a baby. Right now the 3R's are priority and we let history and science slide quite a bit. But I'm wondering if there's a "better way" for 1st grade phonics/reading so I can switch things for my 3rd child.

 

Sorry this got so long. Can you all share what you do for these subjects? I'm especially interested in hearing from any of you who use ETC exclusively for phonics and how that goes (how many pages/how much time each day?). Is the formal reading program necessary in 1st grade, or should we just stick with Bob Books and move on to other books as he is ready? We do have HOD's Emerging Reader's Set which we use for 2nd grade right now; obviously I can let my 3rd child start reading them sooner if we opt not to use R&S Reading for 1st grade.

 

Thanks!

[KrissiK]

We use A Beka's program. Generally, the phonics lesson takes about 10 minutes. We'll go over the "special sound of the day" or talk about prefixes and suffixes or a phonics rule. The lesson is scripted out, so I just do it. Then we read through their readers for a while - 15 minutes or so and that's that. My boys clicked with reading about mid-way through the year, so now it's just working on fluency.

[newlifemom]

I used in the past a combo of Phonics Museum and either 100EZ lessons or OPGTR.

 

For Dd (4) I am skipping Phonics Museum and only plan on doing OPGTR. I don't know when I will formally start it though. Each lesson takes between 10-20 minutes. After she is half-way through, at least I plan to start AAS and call it a day.

 

She can learn words in conjunction with AAS and Penmanship and Copywork/Dictation should be good enough.

 

I am truly moving towards a less is more approach.

[ElizabethB]

If you skip the reading, the phonics goes faster. I dropped reading with my daughter and spent 10 minutes a day on just phonics with my daughter using Webster's Speller, and she was reading 3+ syllable words and able to read out of the KJV at the end of the year. We also spelled about 1 word for every 10 she read. She wrote fine, but children who are not writing well can spell orally or with magnetic letters.

 

Webster's Speller is very efficient!

 

I also used my game for review and she occasionally did some Read, Write, Type on her own for fun.

 

I dropped the reading stories with my daughter after learning to do the same with my older remedial students, I noticed that they learned a lot faster and stopped guessing as much if we just worked on the skills until they were able to read and sound out everything. My daughter never guessed crazily like my remedial students do, but I did notice that she did start guessing a bit from reading stories and that it also slowed down how fast she was learning the basics.

Edited March 25, 2010 by ElizabethB

[....]

My 1st grader does CLE Reading and works through one of the Sonlight 2 Readers independently. I think we spend maybe 30 minutes on reading...? A lot of our phonics showed up in our CLE LA - and they finished that already, but it would take 15 minutes for him to get thru a lesson. We also use BJU Spelling and that's another 15 minutes.

 

OK, I guess we do spend more time than I thought... We also do WWE1.

 

Reading + LA + Spelling = 1 hr :)

[JudoMom]

Phonics Pathways: 10 minutes

Sonlight Readers: 10 minutes

Plaid Phonics: 10 minutes (independent, with reminders to work)

ETC: 10 minutes (independent, with reminders to work)

 

We might not do every item every day, depending on how the day is going. If we get Phonics Pathways in, I'm happy.

[lotsofpumpkins]

Wow, we are really spending a LOT of time on this compared to others. Have I been torturing my sweet boy this entire school year?

 

As one of you suggested, I have considered just dropping the R&S Reading for my next child and just do the phonics portion. That's still up to an hour a day though, depending on how quickly he does it. He's still too young for me to really predict that. He does seem like he picks up on phonics concepts fairly quickly, but he's still young enough that he whines about having too much work. Right now the rule is one page of ETC, and sometimes he tries to act like that's too much! It only takes him 5-10 minutes.

[johnandtinagilbert]

Sure. Here is a typical day in our 1st/2nd grade language arts. Reading is also expanded throughout the day when they read aloud for science and/or history. To be fair, more time is focused in 1st grade on phonics, with less grammar, but you'll get the gist from the blog post.

[lotsofpumpkins]

Sure. Here is a typical day in our 1st/2nd grade language arts. Reading is also expanded throughout the day when they read aloud for science and/or history. To be fair, more time is focused in 1st grade on phonics, with less grammar, but you'll get the gist from the blog post.

 

Thank you for sharing! Sounds like fun!

[lotsofpumpkins]

If you skip the reading, the phonics goes faster. I dropped reading with my daughter and spent 10 minutes a day on just phonics with my daughter using Webster's Speller, and she was reading 3+ syllable words and able to read out of the KJV at the end of the year. We also spelled about 1 word for every 10 she read. She wrote fine, but children who are not writing well can spell orally or with magnetic letters.

 

Webster's Speller is very efficient!

 

I also used my game for review and she occasionally did some Read, Write, Type on her own for fun.

 

I dropped the reading stories with my daughter after learning to do the same with my older remedial students, I noticed that they learned a lot faster and stopped guessing as much if we just worked on the skills until they were able to read and sound out everything. My daughter never guessed crazily like my remedial students do, but I did notice that she did start guessing a bit from reading stories and that it also slowed down how fast she was learning the basics.

 

I've read many of your posts the last couple of years, and have always been kind of tempted to try the Speller. I'm always hesitant because of the learning curve, I guess! One thing that I did like about teaching Reading to my ds this year in addition to Phonics was that it got him reading much faster. I know you don't like sight words, and he does try to guess at them sometimes, but he has learned enough phonics that if I remind him to sound the word out, he can. So, I don't really have any regrets regarding how I've taught my oldest two. But I will spend some time looking into your methods before I make a decision about teaching my 3rd child! Thanks for your input!

[Sue in WI]

I am using OPGTR with my ds7 and ds5. I spend about 10-15 minutes with each one, while ds9 reads to the other. I used it with my oldest, and it is working well with the other two.

[2_girls_mommy]

I am doing R&S 1st grade too. It does take a lot of time, but I am seeing the benefits of it. I do trim down the time. I do not make my dd read the lists of 30 words. We practice the sounds and then we read them together, meaning I am mostly reading today's list to her. When we do the timed drill, she still only gets 3-5 words in the 30 seconds (you can see how new this is to her) so trying to get her to read 30 words before that would be murder. I trim down the spelling words too. I stop before she gets burned out on them. It is just too much to do it all w/her. I try to remember it was written for a classroom, where there has to be enough for lots of kids. She is a wiggly willy too, much more so than my 1st was.

 

I do remember that first grade just seemed to take a long time when I did it before. Now that my older is in 2nd and we have dropped the reading program and the work is more independent, things are going much more quickly for her. Now I just have to get through one more year of 1st grade w/my youngest.

 

I don't have the youngers coming up like you. I might consider a change from R&S 1st in that case too. Although I don't know. I just really like it.

[Homeschooling6]

It takes about 30 minutes. I just started my 1st grader using SWR. Once I can order PR we'll switch;) but that won't be until August.

 

When I was using R&S Phonics with my two middle boys, I would do some work orally. I also cut the reading down to half pace.

[Dinsfamily]

We use SWR and will be starting 1st grade officially next month, but it won't change much from what we've been doing at the end of K.

 

SWR: 5 days/weeks for up to 30 mins...usually this is just Mondays when I introduce new words and Wednesdays when we do dictation. Other days run 15-20 mins. We are covering 20 words per weeks now. During the week, we practice writing our words each day in some fashion, do dictation, and practice our spelling rules/phonograms.

 

Reading: We're about to start Sonlight readers 2. He reads for 5-20 mins per day. Sometime he'll read several days reading at a time, it just depends on what he wants to do. He also reads his own books at night in bed.

 

We're planning on adding FLL and WWE, but they won't add much if any time to our schedule as they'll just focus what I'm already doing in SWR.

[Embassy]

Sorry this got so long. Can you all share what you do for these subjects? I'm especially interested in hearing from any of you who use ETC exclusively for phonics and how that goes (how many pages/how much time each day?). Is the formal reading program necessary in 1st grade, or should we just stick with Bob Books and move on to other books as he is ready? We do have HOD's Emerging Reader's Set which we use for 2nd grade right now; obviously I can let my 3rd child start reading them sooner if we opt not to use R&S Reading for 1st grade.

 

Thanks!

 

For my 6 year old he reads to me for about 15 minutes. I use Sonlight readers. I used to use Explode the Code and he typically did 3-4 pages per day which would usually take 20-30 minutes. I recently started using All About Spelling with him for phonics and that takes about 20 minutes.

[daybreaking]

I just responded to another of your posts and here I am on this one! :)

We're using R&S and we actually take longer than you, if that makes you feel better! Our total time for the Bible and Nurture series is about 2 1/2 hours. The reading lesson and activities take about 1/2 hour, the reading workbook takes DS about 1/2 hour, the phonics lesson and activities, speed drill and spelling practice take about 1/2 hour, the phonics workbook takes DS about 1/2 hour and then the worksheets take about 1/2 hour. Now that we are all done with the worksheets and reading workbooks and a few lessons short of being done with the phonics workbooks, I look back and am immensely pleased with all my son learned this year. There were days when I questioned the amount of time we were spending, but DH encouraged me to continue, as he could see the progress and he felt the emphasis in first grade should be learning to read. I'm so glad he did!

[FO4UR]

Lesson at the White Board=15min daily. This includes EVERYONE! We have a phonogram for the day and we build words with it. I write the phonogram at the top of the board and we say the sound several times. Then I write, phonogram-by-phonogram, as the kids shout out the sounds and decode the words. Then, we practice writing the phonogram on the board (ds3 typically just wants to write his trusty "7" - he wants a turn and just likes 7, I guess:lol:) dd has pretty much learned to read from just these lessons. ds7 needs the continual review. ds3 is picking up TONS now too...not really reading yet, but he gets how to blend and is storing away those phonograms in his head.

 

We have daily, "you read to me and I read to you time." For the "I read to you" part, I pick AO readings or something equivilent. For the "you read to me" part, I keep a dishpan full of books on their level and let them choose. 30min for that - idk.

 

I've been having ds7 read through SWR words. I set the timer for 5min and see how many we can read. I didn't start this until I was certain he was decoding, not memorizing words.

 

Then, I sit between ds7 and dd5 on the couch and go through the SWR phonograms. Whoever says it first gets the card and they compete to see who gets the most cards. This occasionally results in sibling rivalry...but it works and gets it done in less than 5min.

 

Handwriting/Spelling...sigh! This is where I am ever unhappy! We've been using ETC the last couple months. ds7 likes it, but his handwriting is going down the tubes, and I've noticed that his actual spelling is backsliding too. I don't think it's the books...it's learning style. I'm thinking of going back to SWR style spelling, but using spelling words that coordinate with the phonograms in our white board lessons instead of the SWR lists. 15-20 min

 

Then, we have HP (LOL, I ended up getting it after all...) and we play a game together about 2-3 x per week. I tried to coordinate this with our white board lessons, but we just haven't been that coordinated lately. It would make sense to do that...and use the HP lists for spelling. Doh!:001_huh: Another 30min.

 

So, I've got 1hr 45min for the days we do a HP game. I do a lot of combining though. So, in adding dd5's reading to me and handwriting I only add in 15-30min on top of the total routine. I can't imagine doing THIS MUCH PER CAPITA!!!:svengo:

[In2why]

We use Phonic Pathways and we go over the new rule and page/pages each day for about 20 minutes. 2 or 3 times a week we study sight words using either flashcards or magnetic letter/s. We also use Raz books on computer where he reads guided level books and then takes a comprehension quiz on each book. Every night he reads a few early reader books as he can extend his bed time as long as he is reading. I would say we average about 30 minutes of direct instruction and about 45 minutes of independent reading.

That doesn't include narration where I read Story of the World, or we listen to livingbooks either on MP3 or books on tape while we do other things like ride in the car, work with clay, color, or what not.

[ElizabethB]

I've read many of your posts the last couple of years, and have always been kind of tempted to try the Speller. I'm always hesitant because of the learning curve, I guess!

 

The instructions on my how to tutor page in the Blend Phonics Guide make it easy and idiot proof, they gradually add in syllables to the words in Blend Phonics, here's an example:

 

“Now, we’re going to sound out some syllables. The first few syllables are also words. A syllable has one vowel. I’ll tell you the names of the letters as I write each syllable, then we’ll sound out each letter of each syllable, then say the whole syllable.â€

AT AM AN AX [write on board, then sound out letter by letter than the whole word.] “These next syllables are not words. The are parts of words, however.â€

AB [write on board, sound out, then say syllable.] Then, say, “This is a part of the words ab- stract. Syllables make up words. By learning how to break up words into syllables and learning how to sound out syllables, we’ll learn how to easily sound out some really long words. Now, try the rest of these syllables:â€

AP ACK [write on board, sound out, then say syllable.]

[Aurelia]

We do Dancing Bears for about 15-20 minutes and Ariel reads at bedtime for another 15.

[lotsofpumpkins]

I just responded to another of your posts and here I am on this one! :)

We're using R&S and we actually take longer than you, if that makes you feel better! Our total time for the Bible and Nurture series is about 2 1/2 hours. The reading lesson and activities take about 1/2 hour, the reading workbook takes DS about 1/2 hour, the phonics lesson and activities, speed drill and spelling practice take about 1/2 hour, the phonics workbook takes DS about 1/2 hour and then the worksheets take about 1/2 hour. Now that we are all done with the worksheets and reading workbooks and a few lessons short of being done with the phonics workbooks, I look back and am immensely pleased with all my son learned this year. There were days when I questioned the amount of time we were spending, but DH encouraged me to continue, as he could see the progress and he felt the emphasis in first grade should be learning to read. I'm so glad he did!

 

Ok, that does make me feel a bit better. :) I'm just trying to figure out how to juggle it all, since I have 3 school-age children now (plus I'm doing some preschool stuff with the 3 year old). We do get our 3R's done consistently, but I'm having trouble fitting in all the content subject stuff I want to get done. Maybe I need to get up earlier so we can actually start school before 10 am... :blushing:

 

I too am quite pleased with everything that my son has learned this year. He really has improved by leaps and bounds. It's funny, I'm worried about how I'm going to have enough time to go through all of this again when my 3rd child gets to 1st grade, but I guess I forget that by then my current 1st grader will be able to do quite a bit on his own.

 

Anyway, thanks for the input!!!

 

ETA: My dh also has encouraged me to continue! He realizes that this is a lot of work, but he also sees how much the children have learned. I know there are other ways of learning to read that don't take as much time each day, and I'm still considering another path, but I think I'll be fine with sticking with R&S too. I just needed to start a bunch of threads to discuss everything that I'm debating; it really helps to get opinions!

Edited March 28, 2010 by lotsofpumpkins

[lotsofpumpkins]

Lesson at the White Board=15min daily. This includes EVERYONE! We have a phonogram for the day and we build words with it. I write the phonogram at the top of the board and we say the sound several times. Then I write, phonogram-by-phonogram, as the kids shout out the sounds and decode the words. Then, we practice writing the phonogram on the board (ds3 typically just wants to write his trusty "7" - he wants a turn and just likes 7, I guess:lol:) dd has pretty much learned to read from just these lessons. ds7 needs the continual review. ds3 is picking up TONS now too...not really reading yet, but he gets how to blend and is storing away those phonograms in his head.

 

 

 

Sometimes I wonder if I could have already had ds5 reading if I had insisted that he pay attention to ds6' lessons. Your daily whiteboard lessons sound great. I'm thinking that regardless of what I do with ds5, I should actually insist that ds6 sits in, because he's also the type who will need review. Right now the plan is to use R&S 2nd grade phonics to accomplish that. Though the idea of family phonogram time is really appealing to me at the moment. :)

[daybreaking]

I'm just trying to figure out how to juggle it all, since I have 3 school-age children now (plus I'm doing some preschool stuff with the 3 year old). We do get our 3R's done consistently, but I'm having trouble fitting in all the content subject stuff I want to get done. Maybe I need to get up earlier so we can actually start school before 10 am... :blushing:

 

I know what you mean about the content subjects. I struggled quite a bit with that, as well. What I ended up doing was utilizing a lot of "eating times" and strategically planning read alouds to coincide with breakfast, morning snacktime, lunch and afternoon teatime. I find I am able to cover a lot, with minimal distractions, when the children are busy eating. :001_smile: I use the various times to read history, science and geography books, as well as literature and Bible stories. Since my children are 4 1/2 years apart, they're on quite different levels, but the eating seems to keep my DD3 content while I read DS7's materials and vice versa. For things I need to do 1:1 with DS, such as A Beka's history, I wait until DD naps.