Teaching reading at home, different method @ school?

[provenance61]

(please excuse cross-post, I also posted to curriculum board but haven't gotten any replies yet...)

 

Our daughter is currently in an inclusion preschool 1/2 day, and we are considering whether to continue next year for KG or homeschool. (Well actually I'd like to homeschool either way, but we're deciding whether to also do KG. She has a vision impairment, and we would not get any assistance from her vision teacher if she were not enrolled. Of course, we're not getting a lot now, but that's another story...)

 

I'm a big fan of phonics -- her older brother (now 10) taught himself at home with just a little phonics. Our daughter now is in last year of preschool but also has loved Leapfrog and is starting to put letter sounds together and spell words. This is coming from home, they are not doing at school.

 

My question is, would it be confusing if we take a phonics approach (with reading lots of books of course, and probably doing FIAR) and she does KG which is more whole language based?

 

I just asked her school what approach they take to reading in KG and this is what I got:

 

"Basically, it's a combination of whole language and phonics through the framework of guided reading . We determine where each child's reading level is (though a running record) and place them in flexible groups at their instructional level. Skills are taught using texts at their individual instructional levels. Groups are made with anywhere from 2-6 children per small group. There is also a lot of opportunities for inventive spelling, which also supports print awareness."

 

To be honest, I'm not sure I understand. But it sounds like a mixture and I'm really not at all happy about the inventive spelling. I remember her brother was spelling in KG and no one seemed to appreciate it, there was a lot of emphasis on inventive spelling. I just don't understand (myself) how encouraging invented spelling and getting used to that is going to help down the road when they have to start spelling words. Am I missing something? In her preschool class now they are doing "Tools of the Mind" curriculum which is very structured, they need to make play plans (draw picture and pretend "write" before they start to play (even if it is just scribbling on a line.)

 

Just not sure where the school approach is leading, and what would happen if we also schooled at home. Would we have a collision of minds or would she implode?

 

Any thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated. :)

 

Amy

[SuperDad]

"Basically, it's a combination of whole language and phonics through the framework of guided reading . We determine where each child's reading level is (though a running record) and place them in flexible groups at their instructional level. Skills are taught using texts at their individual instructional levels. Groups are made with anywhere from 2-6 children per small group. There is also a lot of opportunities for inventive spelling, which also supports print awareness."

 

Honestly, based solely on the info in your post, I am not getting a great first impression from this school. The whole idea of "play planning" - in PreK! - makes my Charlotte Mason soul rather nauseous. Additionally, the paragraph quoted sounds like a lot of educational jargon being used to cover up a substandard curriculum. Based on that paragraph, it sounds to me like it's very whole-language, especially since they say they base it all on "guided reading". Of course, though, I'm drawing these conclusions from limited info, so take it with a mountain of salt. Fwiw, I, too, am not a fan of invented spelling. I'm don't avoid it like the Plague, but I don't expect or encourage it.

 

To answer your question, I would suggest taking it slow and steady with the phonics and seeing how it goes. In my experience, kids are very adaptable and receptive to that sort of thing, and, at the very least, the phonics instruction will really enrich her reading + spelling skills. Plus, the school says that it does use some phonics, so she'll presumeably be familiar with that method of instruction.

 

HTH,

SuperDad

[Roadrunner]

There won't be any confusion. Just teach phonics at home. Both my boys did OPGTR at home and by the time they started K they were reading very well.

We are in CA, the state that uses a blended phonics and whole word method. Kids out here are starting to pick up reading fairly well in first grade (meaning I am not seeing any serious issues from the blended approach so far), but not anywhere near the capacity of my kids (phonics based method). My 1st grader is reading through Harry Potter and Narnia series, while my k ( not even 5.5 yet) finished up My Father's Dragon. I think my kids performance is an endorsement of phonics and OPGTR. They do roll their eyes on school reading, so that's a problem, but not a bad problem to have.

In short, just go ahead and teach phonics :001_smile:

[ElizabethB]

Guided reading is very whole language, sight word based.

 

If you do send to KG, make sure you teach all the sight words phonetically or you may run into problems later on.

 

If you teach the phonics first, she will be better off.

 

I personally would not want my child in a class that had that much of a whole word emphasis, but I've seen a lot of damage from sight words and guided reading and whole language practices in my 18 years as a remedial reading tutor.

 

Here is how and why to teach all but 2 of the most commonly taught 220 Dolch sight words phonetically:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

 

It takes a lot of work to undo the guessing habits from my students, and the longer they have been exposed to sight words and other whole language practices and the more whole language influence they have received, the more difficult it has been to remediate them.

 

For example, I had a much easier time remediating children of formerly homeless moms who had been in and out of Los Angeles public schools than any of my prior students--even middle class students, but also other inner city students who had spent more time in school.

 

Since I didn't have any guessing habits to un-teach, once they learned the phonics, I had most of them reading well in record time even though most of them were older elementary students. In prior tutoring, my older elementary students took a lot longer to remediate than the younger children because there was more re-training necessary.

[Kathleen.]

"Basically, it's a combination of whole language and phonics through the framework of guided reading . We determine where each child's reading level is (though a running record) and place them in flexible groups at their instructional level. Skills are taught using texts at their individual instructional levels. Groups are made with anywhere from 2-6 children per small group. There is also a lot of opportunities for inventive spelling, which also supports print awareness."

 

 

You've just described my daughter's Kindergarten class in the quote above. In her class the whole language method is most visible with the sight word rings and reading groups. She'll bring home random words to memorize. Same with the books, her teacher showed me the list of words my daughter read and that determined her reading group. In order to read even the beginning level books one had to memorize every word. The phonics part is done through mini-lessons like talking about the short sound of A and then doing a worksheet, but it is not taught in relation to what the kids are reading in their groups. So phonics would be taught the same to all, but the groups be based on reading level. And there are many books for one level if for some posters it seems like it goes slowly to go to the next level.

 

My 5yo was home for preschool so I taught her (and still now) the phonics method using HOP-K and OPGTR with great success. I hate the idea of her memorizing these word rings and little readers. I did notice the first half of the year she would become hesitant to sound out words and wanted me to just tell her every word she didn't know. She's not doing that anymore, but now I see she has more confidence to tackle easy readers, not just reading the HOP-K books.

 

As for inventive spelling. I've read two sides - 1)spell the words correctly to create a visual memory 2)let the kids spell whatever so they're not afraid to write words they can't spell. Both make sense to some degree. I started out the first way and hated the second way I mentioned, but after a while I thought you can't hold their hand with every single word.

 

We're very happy with our 5yo's Kindergarten class (teachers/students) and the program except for the whole language reading part. So I'm glad I started teaching her to read before she went off to school.

[Lecka]

I think you should teach phonics at home.

 

Briefly explain the make-up of the non-phonetic words she gets in K, so she understands that ultimately she is doing more than memorize words.

 

My son had major issues in his K class and I have worked with him at home -- only good things have come of it. Nothing bad in any way, shape, or form.

 

I started back at phonemic awareness with him but that is just him. And, I am still doing a lot at home, b/c the school reading goes too fast for him without enough review. Even without that -- I hvae read so much now about kids who have developed a guessing strategy, that I would want to teach phonics to any child. There are not always going to be pictures or circular sentences for them to guess the non-memorized words from!

[SKL]

My kids are in KG and they started learning sight words first. Only this week they started reading words phonetically (short "a" words) in school.

 

I'll focus on my oldest for this discussion, since my youngest was already a fluent reader before KG.

 

My oldest found phonetic decoding mystifying until around her 5th birthday (October, already in KG). We read together in the evenings, but I started with some whole-language books to get her used to the mechanics and cadence of reading. She could not read most of the words, but the books were so predictable that she could read the stories, if that makes any sense. We had just started on actual phonetic decoding when the school started requiring the kids to learn 10 sight words per week. This was a challenge for my dd, so I dropped the phonics in order to help her keep up with her class on the sight words. I did always point out the phonics rules that applied to the sight words - even though her teacher advised against this.

 

So my dd is primarily a sight word reader at this point. She knows at least 100 sight words and we read daily from easy reader books. Since we read together, I can correct any "guessing" tendencies and also encourage the occasional "sound it out" effort until this becomes second nature. I'm happy to say that she is starting to transition rather painlessly to "sounding out" small unfamiliar words.

 

The nice thing about whole languate / whole word instruction is that there are so many enjoyable books to practice with. Early phonetic readers tend to be written in such an unnatural way that comprehension (and related motivation) escapes a budding reader.

 

I understand that if a child gets used to "guessing" due to not learning phonics well, this can be a problem. But I think this can be mitigated or avoided by reading daily with the child. If a child's only reading practice is in a classroom setting, I could see how he could get into bad habits that are hard to eradicate.

[mich311e]

There won't be any confusion. Just teach phonics at home.

 

 

I agree. I helped my son learn to read with Hooked on Phonics prior to starting kindergarten. He's always been a strong reader and still is in 2nd grade.

 

Personally I didn't want to wait and see how and if the school would teach my son to read. I took responsibility for it. Good luck!

[Sneezyone]

We made sure our oldest had her consonant and short vowel sounds down in pre-K/K so the 'sight' words she learned in class ended up being helpful in terms of increasing her fluency and comfort with non-phonetic early reader texts. There's been no conflict whatsoever.

 

In fact, when DD hit a wall with reading earlier this year, I assessed her with ETC to see what her deficiencies were and we started up again with more intensive phonics. Her teacher was covering it, but not in a way that made it stick for her. Just in the last week I've seen a tremendous change in her word attack skills.

 

I haven't seen any harm come from introducing or supplementing phonics at home. Go for it!

[tex-mex]

It won't confuse her. Most affluent students here are afterschooled with a phonics based program, usually Spectrum Phonics since it is so easy to pick up at B&N. Pick up the "Read Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease and "Deconstructing Penguins" by Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone on the parenting shelf at your public library - good stuff.

 

The invented spelling is feedback to the teacher on what phoneme (or 'chunk' as they say now) the child has learned to 'hear', or discriminate when he hears a word. In our case, the school went away from inv.spel. by the time our second child entered, which meant that visual learners didn't embed the wrong spelling in the brain...instead the school started using word walls which worked really well.

 

The guided reading groups really are flexible; they'll meet by instructional need rather than do one size fits all. The usual parent complaint is that it is slooow progress....most children from print-rich households can move a little faster once they crack the code.

:iagree::iagree:

I used this methodology back in the stone age when I taught primary grades to at-risk children in inner city schools who did not have parental support with afterschooling. For the average to gifted learner, it is very slow process in guided reading groups. But the teacher does this to make sure the students are "reading" at their tested level based on her running records. I'm pretty positive she uses basic Dolch word lists and the spelling lists most likely reflect this methodology. But as stated before, the group mindset is most likely at a snails pace to meet the needs of the larger classroom's needs.

 

I do not see any issue in afterschooling with whatever reading method the OP wishes to use. It will not confuse the child by any means. Go for it.