Please explain Vertical Phonics to Me

[5 Hikers]

I ordered AAR for my dd, but just realized it uses vertical phonics.

 

I thought I might ask for the reason to teach it before automatically sending it back.

 

Doesn't teaching a child the 3 sounds of A confuse them? How do they know which sound of A to use in bat?

 

Thanks!

[Chelli]

:bigear: I've always wondered this as well.

[AnointedHsMom]

I can't speak to vertical phonics but in AAR Level 1 the short sound of a is the only sound taught at first. The other sounds of a are not taught until lesson 44 and a lesson doesn't necessarily take 1 day to master. You can see where the additional sounds are taught in the table of contents in the sample at their website.

 

So the child has a pretty good handle on some basic reading before the other sounds are introduced.

 

We LOVE :thumbup: AAR in this house. My 5 year old has flourished with it.

 

HTH!

[houseofkids&pets]

Here is some info on vertical phonics vs. other methods of teaching phonics:

http://www.verticalphonics.com/vertphon.htm

http://www.verticalphonics.com/OtherPhonic.htm

[5 Hikers]

I can't speak to vertical phonics but in AAR Level 1 the short sound of a is the only sound taught at first. The other sounds of a are not taught until lesson 44 and a lesson doesn't necessarily take 1 day to master. You can see where the additional sounds are taught in the table of contents in the sample at their website.

 

So the child has a pretty good handle on some basic reading before the other sounds are introduced.

 

We LOVE :thumbup: AAR in this house. My 5 year old has flourished with it.

 

HTH!

 

 

That is good to know that only short a is introduced at first, that was my major concern. Glad it is working for you.

[5 Hikers]

Thank you for the links.

[MerryAtHope]

I ordered AAR for my dd, but just realized it uses vertical phonics.

 

I thought I might ask for the reason to teach it before automatically sending it back.

 

Doesn't teaching a child the 3 sounds of A confuse them? How do they know which sound of A to use in bat?

 

Thanks!

 

As someone else said, AAR starts with just first sounds and eases kids into it gradually.

 

Here's why kids do need to know the multiple sounds pretty quickly though--many first grade level words use all of the additional sounds. For example, O has 4 sounds, and all 4 are used pretty early on (pot, go, to, love). The 2 sounds of C--cat, ice. 2 sounds of E--bed, me. 2 sounds of S, sat, has. etc...

 

When they have full knowledge of how the sounds work, they can try the different sounds until they think they have the right one. The most common sound is taught first, and they try that first, etc... As adults, this is what we do when we come across a new word--if the first pronunciation doesn't sound correct, we try another one. Sometimes it's obvious which sound to use and phonics rules help. Sometimes it's not as obvious and we have to try the sounds out. HTH some! Merry :-)

[lcelmer]

I haven't used aar, but we have used vertical phonics, (learning all 3 sounds of a at once), but my kids never got too confused. If they can't understand the concept of a letter making one of 3 sounds, and having to try each sound, then they most likely aren't quite ready to read yet.

 

When they do get the concept & learn the first set of phonograms, they usually start reading really quickly. :-)

 

I have also seen that vertical phonics leads to less confusion later than trying to teach short sounds first and then long sounds later, ( a has 2) and then the long sounds. (a has1)

 

It isn't just vowels, S says ssss as in snake, and ZZZZZZ as in as.

Edited April 11, 2012 by lcelmer

[Tanikit]

The sounds of a: a in : sat, map, can

a in : car, far, star (also British English for words like fast and path)

a in : train, rain, sane, mane, day, play

a in : awe, paw, paul, taught, ball, fall

a in : said (as e) and read

a in : ear, hear

a in : each, teach, read

a in: air, hair, fair

 

That's all I can think of now (I believe there are 9 and I am not sure whether they were discussing the ea combinations either) and so no, I probably would not go with vertical phonics because they usually leave some of these out and most are taught as 2 or 3 or even 4 letter sounds more easily later on. But it does show that just because they see an a in a word does not mean that it will make the short vowel sound. As far as I know "a" is the worst of all the vowels in having numerous ways to say it.

[Christie_P]

The sounds of a: a in : sat, map, can

a in : car, far, star (also British English for words like fast and path)

a in : train, rain, sane, mane, day, play

a in : awe, paw, paul, taught, ball, fall

a in : said (as e) and read

a in : ear, hear

a in : each, teach, read

a in: air, hair, fair

 

That's all I can think of now (I believe there are 9 and I am not sure whether they were discussing the ea combinations either) and so no, I probably would not go with vertical phonics because they usually leave some of these out and most are taught as 2 or 3 or even 4 letter sounds more easily later on. But it does show that just because they see an a in a word does not mean that it will make the short vowel sound. As far as I know "a" is the worst of all the vowels in having numerous ways to say it.

 

I use Spell to Write and Read. My 6 yo daughter has learned all 70 phonograms and can "read" them within 3 minutes. Her favorite is "ough" which says /O/ /OO/ /uf/ /off/ /aw/ /ow/. It's quite a fun game.

 

This program only teaches the 3 sounds of A because the words you listed above use different phonograms.

* AR says /ar/ as in car

* AI says /A/ as in train

* AY says /A/ as in say

 

Did you ever notice that AI and AY are a pair. One may be used at the end of an English word (AY) but the other never is (AI) because English words do not end in I. (spaghetti is not an English word, it's Italien.)

 

SAID is an exception. In Spell to Write and Read there are only 15 exceptions in 2,000 words.

 

READ uses the EA phonogram which has 3 sounds: /E/, /e/ and /A/ (as in meat, head, and great)

 

EAR, HEAR, EACH, TEACH and READ also use the EA phonogram and where it says it's first sound /E/

 

AIR, HAIR and FAIR use the AI phongram which says /A/. You have to think about how you're making the sound and how it's blending together. say /A/ /R/ and you can get it to blend to be AIR. The r and the l often make our mouths distort the vowel sound as we're "sliding" into the r sound while saying the /A/.

 

Spell to Write and Read has one powerful component, the THINK TO SPELL. My daughter was stuck on HAIR but we kept drilling, "Think to Spell /h/ /A/ /r/" and she got it.

 

 

I typed this without looking at any notes. Don't be intimidated by vertical phonics. It's an incredibly powerful tool for analyzing our language. You learn the phonograms one at a time along with your child. You learn to analyze the words one at a time along with your child and suddenly it all makes sense!

 

I would absolutely HATE to be unable to explain why the A in father says /ah/. Our children's minds are amazingly flexible and they'll pick up on this stuff before you do.

 

There's a yahoo group for Spell to Write and REad that is active daily with wonderful trainers who are ready to answer any question. I learn a ton from reading the daily digest and get much encouragement from it.

 

IMHO, Vertical PHonics is the only way to go.

 

Christie PHillips

[Chelli]

I use Spell to Write and Read. My 6 yo daughter has learned all 70 phonograms and can "read" them within 3 minutes. Her favorite is "ough" which says /O/ /OO/ /uf/ /off/ /aw/ /ow/. It's quite a fun game.

 

This program only teaches the 3 sounds of A because the words you listed above use different phonograms.

* AR says /ar/ as in car

* AI says /A/ as in train

* AY says /A/ as in say

 

Did you ever notice that AI and AY are a pair. One may be used at the end of an English word (AY) but the other never is (AI) because English words do not end in I. (spaghetti is not an English word, it's Italien.)

 

SAID is an exception. In Spell to Write and Read there are only 15 exceptions in 2,000 words.

 

READ uses the EA phonogram which has 3 sounds: /E/, /e/ and /A/ (as in meat, head, and great)

 

EAR, HEAR, EACH, TEACH and READ also use the EA phonogram and where it says it's first sound /E/

 

AIR, HAIR and FAIR use the AI phongram which says /A/. You have to think about how you're making the sound and how it's blending together. say /A/ /R/ and you can get it to blend to be AIR. The r and the l often make our mouths distort the vowel sound as we're "sliding" into the r sound while saying the /A/.

 

Spell to Write and Read has one powerful component, the THINK TO SPELL. My daughter was stuck on HAIR but we kept drilling, "Think to Spell /h/ /A/ /r/" and she got it.

 

 

I typed this without looking at any notes. Don't be intimidated by vertical phonics. It's an incredibly powerful tool for analyzing our language. You learn the phonograms one at a time along with your child. You learn to analyze the words one at a time along with your child and suddenly it all makes sense!

 

I would absolutely HATE to be unable to explain why the A in father says /ah/. Our children's minds are amazingly flexible and they'll pick up on this stuff before you do.

 

There's a yahoo group for Spell to Write and REad that is active daily with wonderful trainers who are ready to answer any question. I learn a ton from reading the daily digest and get much encouragement from it.

 

IMHO, Vertical PHonics is the only way to go.

 

Christie PHillips

 

What I've never understood about this approach though is do you teach all the sounds for the phonograms and then begin to teach reading? Or what?

 

I actually have an O-G phonics program that I bought four years ago, but I never knew how to go about teaching reading with it. There was no TM.

 

I also read WRTR, but at the time I was looking at using it for spelling not phonics so I'm not sure what the procedure was for teaching reading using that approach.

[5 Hikers]

Thanks for explaining it all to me. My older 2 boys are dyslexic, so this is my first child to teach phonics in a more traditional way.

[Dinsfamily]

What I've never understood about this approach though is do you teach all the sounds for the phonograms and then begin to teach reading? Or what?

 

I actually have an O-G phonics program that I bought four years ago, but I never knew how to go about teaching reading with it. There was no TM.

 

I also read WRTR, but at the time I was looking at using it for spelling not phonics so I'm not sure what the procedure was for teaching reading using that approach.

 

Teaching reading is pretty easy using SWR. Some will call it "spontaneous reading" but it isn't. After they've learned the first 26 phonograms (the alphabet) you start spelling. They learn how to spell and read the same words each week. This worked well for us because they are coding and decoding the words at the same time and getting a good understanding of how words are formed. Reading the spelling words several times each week is very important. Five new multi-letter phonograms are taught each week and those new phonograms appear in the spelling words a few weeks later. By the time they get to List I, they've learned all 70 phonograms and they start reading real books. This method was MUCH less frustrating for my oldest than my failed attempts at teaching him through basal readers. He was very happy the day he could pick up a real book and read it with no problems. He did all of this in Kindergarten and was at a 3rd grade reading level by the end of the year.

 

My 2nd ds taught himself to read very early but has still benefitted from the phonograms and spelling. I've noticed his reading level skyrocket this year as well.

[Amy Jo]

The programs I've used help you explain the sounds. A says it's second (long) sound at the end of a syllable (ba-ker), and when paired with a silent E. Often it says its third sound, /ah/, after a W or at the end of a word. (Usually AY spells the long /A/ sound at the end of a word.)

 

Anyway, I like the vertical method. I haven't found the kids being confused by it at all. And I have one natural reader and one who struggled, but vertical phonics was never a problem with either.

[Tracy]

I don't know what the approach is in AAR, but in SWR, you learn all of the 26 phonograms first and then you start learning to spell with those phonograms. Meanwhile, you spend a few weeks learning the multi-letter phonograms. So within a month or two, the student knows all 70 basic phonograms.

 

As far as how to know which sound a phonogram makes while reading, one big clue is that the sounds of the phonograms are given in order of rate of occurence. With vowel sounds, the short sound is most common, and the beginning lists are largely CVC words. The long sound can often be predicted because of a silent E, a syllable ending in a vowel, or some other rule.