Learning to read, teaching reading, phonics or not...

[ThreeBlessings]

My youngest dd is 3. I'm trying to sort through in my head how, if, etc. I will teach her to read. She is showing a lot of normal interest in letters and sounds. We are currently doing a letter/sound of the week just for fun. It helps me to have set activities, games, and things to do together ready.

 

Background-

 

My oldest dd is 11. She can read very well, but reads slowly to herself when alone and tends to reread passages for comprehension. If she is reading out loud she reads at a normal pace and can answer questions about what she has read correctly. She can read almost any word, I can't think of her ever stumbling over a word. Sometimes she will be unsure of the meaning of a word she doesn't know, but she pronounces correctly from reading. She also spells excellently and rarely misspells.

 

When she was 4 she wanted to learn to read very badly. I taught her letter sounds and how to sound out and write CVC words. In K she was enrolled in a K12 virtual school and started K12 phonics. Her ability to read stopped progressing and she started to dislike learning to read. I decided to not re-enroll her for 1st and we've been homeschooling on our own ever since. I did not do any more phonics with her. We did play games such as word bingo, and for fun made a word family book, she did copywork for school and I continued to read aloud to her often. She didn't want to pick up a book on her own for about 2 years. At that point she was able to read everything very well at the same level she is currently. She began loving chapter books when she was 9 and reads daily.

 

My ds is 10. I never taught him phonics or taught him to read. He played word bingo and helped make the word family book with us. He went through a phase where he constantly asked me what words were and how to spell everything. At 6 the child was reading everything. Words I had never told him what they were, everything. It is a complete mystery to me how he made the leap from not reading at all to reading everything, but he did. Starting at age 7 he did copywork for school. He reads fluently, he reads at a good pace, he comprehends well. He also spells well and rarely misspells words. He also began loving chapter books at 9 and reads daily. Before that he read all of the Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes comics.

 

I know a lot of people, if not all on this forum are very pro phonics. Given my children's backgrounds I hope some will understand why I am not sure what I will be doing with my youngest. I am genuinely unsure how to go about this. Right now it feels right to be playing word games and exploring letter sounds with her, she is enjoying herself and littles love this sort of learning. I'm confused as to whether or not I want to have her do any formal phonics at all. It was not a positive experience with my oldest. I went very gently with it and followed the K12 program, it did nothing but frustrate and bore her. I think she would possibly have been enjoying books on her own sooner if she had never had experience with the formal phonics.

 

Any insights?

[mrs.m]

Well, I don't think you are going to get much encouragement to skip phonics. But I say that you can do whatever you want because you are the mom and you know better than a bunch of people on a forum that don't know your children.

 

But something to consider is that you had a failure with a curriculum and maybe not really with phonics itself. The programs can vary. OPGTR was not so great here, but CLE's Learning to Read turned it all around.

 

But with a 3 yo, I think you might be jumping in too soon and I think you are right on about playing games and keeping it light and fun. :)

[ThreeBlessings]

Well, I don't think you are going to get much encouragement to skip phonics. But I say that you can do whatever you want because you are the mom and you know better than a bunch of people on a forum that don't know your children.

 

But something to consider is that you had a failure with a curriculum and maybe not really with phonics itself. The programs can vary. OPGTR was not so great here, but CLE's Learning to Read turned it all around.

 

But with a 3 yo, I think you might be jumping in too soon and I think you are right on about playing games and keeping it light and fun. :)

 

Thanks. I'm not looking for encouragement to not do phonics, so much as wanting to understand learning/teaching reading. I know people here are very pro phonics. My older children learned to read before I came around to The Well Trained Mind and classical homeschooling so our homeschooling has evolved. How they learned to read is somewhat mysterious to me because they both made giant leaps and bounds on their own. That is why I am trying to think ahead for my youngest. I like to plan and think things through in advance (earlier today I sat down and mapped out a tentative plan for my 6th grader for Math for the rest of her school career). :) My youngest is very, very smart and may be ready to read early. I want to be prepared for what I am going to do when she is ready. I don't want to get in the way of her learning nor cause delay by not doing the right thing.

 

It is a good point about the K12 phonics possibly not being a good fit.

[twoforjoy]

I'm probably not as gung-ho about phonics as most people here. I do think phonics is important, but I don't think it needs to be presented in the same way or at the same level to all kids.

 

I did very little phonics with my DS. He was a natural reader. He also seems to be a natural speller, but I got a little panicky a few months ago that I had messed up by not doing more phonics. He totally balked at doing Phonics Pathways with me as a phonics program, because he knew it all already.

 

However, I'm having success using Phonics Pathways as a spelling program with him (and I've been unhappy with the spelling programs we've tried, so it fills a gap there, to). He enjoys memorizing the rules, and gets them a lot more easily, than I'd expected. So far that's going very well, and this way he'll get his formal phonics but via spelling.

 

With my younger two, I'll probably use OPGTR from early on. I think the conversational style will make it easier than Phonics Pathways, in terms of having it be fun and natural. But, if they're like my first DS and just take off on reading on their own after learning a few CVC words, I'll probably do what I did with him, and back off on phonics for a bit and then return to it as a spelling program when they're a bit older. I know that my DS did not want to do "easy" phonics stuff when he was first reading--he just picked things up so quickly and wanted to jump right in to harder things than Bob books. Rather than forcing him to go through them, I do think that taking a break from phonics for a while worked out well for us, and now we can go back and make sure that he doesn't have any gaps that will make reading or spelling harder for him in the future. If they need more structured support as beginning readers than he did, I'll stick with formal phonics for longer.

Edited October 14, 2011 by twoforjoy

[ThreeBlessings]

twoforjoy- Thanks for sharing. Incorporating phonics into spelling is an interesting idea. I'll file it away in my brain for possible later use. :)