KC in KS Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 My son's vision therapist just made a very strong case for ditching phonics in favor of word recognition by sight. Not only did her logic seem sound, she's an expert in her field AND a former school teacher (who left the field over differences of opinion in pedagogy!) so I have a certain degree of confidence in what she says. (She's also pro-homeschooling -- bonus!) But... I guess I've spent too long reading "back to phonics" sorts of things. Now I'm really confused! Anybody know of where I can find actual research? Or at least a balanced discussion of the issue? Thanks! KC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FO4UR Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 I have no research, only anecdotal evidence from teaching my own. (Though http://www.thephonicspage.org/ is a wealth of info, and the author of that site frequents this forum. Maybe she'll see this and chime in.) Don't ditch phonics for sight words. I think that would be a big mistake. It might get him "up to grade level" quickly for the short term, but it will hamper his ability to progress in reading for the long term. That said, you can use the dolch words to teach him to read phonetically. I spent a lot of time with my oldest working SWR, Recipe for Reading...researching other ways of implementing Spalding and Orton-Gillingham. By the time he was entering 2nd grade he knew phonics well, but he still wasn't reading. The assumption in these programs is that teaching them to spell teaches them to read. This is true for a VAST majority of people, but my ds has some visual perception problems. He was spelling grade levels above his reading (K level). Dancing Bears Fast Track is a good program for kids who need help training their eyes to track, training their eyes to see sound.by.sound, training their brain to think the sound for each phonogram, and otherwise applying all that good phonics info. My ds9 has not learned a lick of new phonics in Dancing Bears, but from the beginning to the end of the book (we have just a few pages left), he has jumped MAJOR grade levels in reading. (He's able to read the Bible with a bit of help!!!:D) I have gone through some "sight words" with my ds9, but I uncover one-sound-at-a-time and have him learn the phonograms & spelling rules that apply to the words. It helps to pick a reader, (Henry and Mudge, McGuffey, etc) and work those words right before practice reading it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 I don't have any research, just my experience with a child who underwent vision therapy. Several months ago she was just starting to be able to sound out limited CVC words, with great effort and some frustration. She started learning sight words right around her 5th birthday as it was required for KG (charter school). I expected this to be very difficult for her, but in fact, she picked the sight words up more readily than phonics. I did not ever drop phonics instruction, but integrated it with the sight word study to the degree I could. Since starting the sight words about 4 months ago, my dd has learned well over 100 words by sight and can also sound out cvc words pretty well. Right now she is reading Minarik's Little Bear fairly fluently (I do have to supply most new words that are not cvc). Having studied dyslexia, I thought that phonics was really the only way for a reading-challenged child to be successful, but I've changed my mind on that. I would say give both methods a chance, side-by-side. See what works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fhjmom Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 I'm typing from my phone, so I may be able to ad more later. I am currently talking a class on teaching literacy to students whoare Deaf or hard of hearing. Phonic awareness as a basis for reading has been a huge part of our coursework, even for students who are deaf and have no concept of sound. Students need decoding strategies in order to attack and reassemble written graphemes (letters) into a meaningful until (morpheme) and for most students, the best way to achieve this is through association with oral language through phonemic awareness. There are some whole language approaches for DHH kids and they just haven't been able to show the results in literacy improvement. I would be very interested in hearing the opinions of your vision therapist and what reasons she gives in support of sight words only. Just curious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroe1 Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 This certainly doesn't have any research attached, but it might be able to better explain your therapist's philosophy: http://www.ican-do.net/phonics_vs_sight_reading1.htm The ability to sight read, a visual process, develops much sooner, by several years, in the majority of people. This is why the baby can read by 16 mos. The ability to do phonics, an auditory process, develops much later, anywhere from 5 to 8 years of age for most. These abilities are processed in totally different parts of the brain. Trying to teach a kid phonics who doesn't have that brain development yet is no different than putting a newborn on the potty and expecting results. Perhaps your therapist has discovered that your child's visual processing capabilities are ready for sight reading and the auditory processing part of his brain isn't ready yet. I would suspect she doesn't mean to forgo phonics, forever, just temporarily until the child is ready. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Texican Posted March 14, 2012 Share Posted March 14, 2012 Star fall .com has "word boxes" that show word shapes. Enchanted learning has printable word boxes. It looks like this: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/alphabet/boxshapes/dolch1/index.shtml Starfall also has single letter phonics songs, "listen to the short a sound a..a..a.. The a in cat the a in a rat, ah, ah, ah, ah.". So I think you can work on visually looking at shapes, the shapes of letters, words, pages of words , and still work orally on phonics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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