Carrousel Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 DS enjoys ETC and has flown thru everything so far. We are in Book 4, and starting the open/closed syllable and "mark the long and short vowel" parts. Does he need this? Can we skip and come back later? He can read the words just fine, but is getting frustrated with the "diagramming" part. I don't remember this from my own phonics education, but am unsure if he can read it, how neccessary memorizing the syllable rules is. Could we skip to Book 5's Word Families, which would seem to be more helpful to him right now, without totally throwing him of course? We would come back to "diagramming" syllables and vowels at the end of the phonics program. Is there something I'm missing? Will I ruin him if I do it that way? ;) For background, DS just turned 6, and is technically K. We are working thru ETC both in workbooks and online, he can read Magic Tree House, Amelia Bedelia, that kind of thing, but we are planning to finish phonics just so I'm sure he has a solid foundation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Yes, you need to understand syllable division and types to have a really good grounding in phonics and spelling. Yes, many people skip it and come back to it later because it is genuinely harder than the books that come before... or books 5 and 6 after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatholicMom Posted January 22, 2013 Share Posted January 22, 2013 Once my boys got to Book 4 I started having them do ETC less frequently and then quit totally by Book 5 as we focused more on fluency & less on decoding (they were also getting extremely sick of ETC by then, though they enjoyed it for a while). Seemed to work for me. As for those specific exercises, I can't even remember off the top of my head what those exercises looked like, but we might have quit ETC by then. I focus on the goal of getting them to read accurately and fluently. If you feel this deviates a bit from that goal and he's frustrated by it anyway, I would just skip it and move on. Come back to it later. FYI, I think a lot of people use ETC until the child gets reading and then leave off, rather than going all the way through book 6 or whatever it is. It usually gets mighty old by then and if kids are reading words like "whimpered" and "constructed," IMO they are well on their way and I think time is better spent with them reading actual books, personally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KarenNC Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 We did and had no problems. Actually, I'm not sure we ever went back to it, as she didn't seem to need it at that point. My daughter is a natural speller and read early and easily, so YMMV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KathyBC Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 We did. DD skipped from 3 to 5 because it better matched what we were doing in our phonics program. She did end up doing book 4 after book 8, mostly because there was a delay in our SWO order. She blew through it fairly quickly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bree Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 ETC book 4 was torture for us so yes skip it. We are on book 5 but we use it more for spelling than phonics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JessieC Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 We skipped it. DD is doing great with Book 5--I didn't feel the need to go into the open and closed syllable thing. We also use ETC more for spelling than phonics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay3fer Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 On advice of others here, we skipped Book 4, did Book 5 first, then came back to Book 4. That worked nicely and I plan to do the same with ds5, who's on Book 2 now. It worked very well. We just took it slow and, okay, to this day she doesn't quite get the idea of open / closed syllables, but I just keep mentioning it and hopefully it'll sink in. The concept of syllables does pop up again in Book 8 (where dd7 is right now), so you'll want to get to it before then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartsjoy Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 All 3 skipped book 4. We did start sentence dictation about bk 6. We then moved to Sequential Spelling and have not any problems. My kids are now 9, 11, and 13. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 It seems like a lot of people stop somewhere between 4 and 6, but I have to say, we found 7 and 8 to be the best ones. But then again, we weren't trying to do them in K. The upper books just aren't geared toward most K'ers. In general, I don't think it's a great learning to read program. I think it's a great program to come behind and make sure a kid got all the phonics they needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeeterbug Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 It seems like a lot of people stop somewhere between 4 and 6, but I have to say, we found 7 and 8 to be the best ones. But then again, we weren't trying to do them in K. The upper books just aren't geared toward most K'ers. In general, I don't think it's a great learning to read program. I think it's a great program to come behind and make sure a kid got all the phonics they needed. :iagree: We use ETC as phonics reinforcement. We went straight through book 4 but it jived with what we were learning in AAS. Not sure I'd do it with a K'er who hadn't been exposed to the concepts already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay3fer Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 :iagree: We use ETC as phonics reinforcement. We went straight through book 4 but it jived with what we were learning in AAS. Not sure I'd do it with a K'er who hadn't been exposed to the concepts already. I can't imagine doing Book 4 in K, if that's what you mean - ?? In any event, ETC has their own series for K: Get Ready, Get Set and Go for the Code (levels A, B, C) Ds5 did them last year. They are VERY basic - he was already able to read himself all the instructions, then find the sounds etc., which was very silly, but he felt cool and never commented on the irony that he was doing this "baby" phonics book. I did those with him because he wasn't up to the level of the writing in Book 1. Now he's past that and onto Book 2. We love ETC around here! :-) (I use it as a very informal spelling program, by the way... we do each lesson in 2 parts and quiz my dd7 on the lesson words before she goes on to part 2, so about once a week or so) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 Yes - we skipped that book and never came back. Hobbes has never needed to know what a closed or open vowel is. Never mind that his accent would have made some of the definitions wrong (he says zeb-ra not ze-bra, for example). He's an excellent reader and a natural speller. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carrousel Posted January 23, 2013 Author Share Posted January 23, 2013 Thanks everyone for the comments and advice. ETC is the only phonics we're using, and DS asks to do it first most days and is reading fine, so I'm not worried about it instructing reading, just giving him tools to read more fluently and with less frustration on new words, more a fill in the gaps thing. I think we'll plan to skip 4 for now, and go onto 5 and forward, coming back to 4, or not, down the road. Glad to hear others have done this without regrets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*Jen* Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 My DS is just finishing book 8. We went straight through. Now that I have been through the other books I wish that we would have skipped 4, done 5 and 6 first. Book 4 was just too frustrating for DS at the time. DD is in K and is almost done with book 3. We will definitely be skipping book 4 and doing 5 and 6 first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bear23 Posted January 23, 2013 Share Posted January 23, 2013 We just finished 4 and 4 1/2. I could have skipped and gone back but I didn't have the other levels yet so we just went thru and repeated with extra worksheets and reading (we'd talk a bout some words in the stories) and he finally got the hang of it. I am sure if I had the other levels I'd still go in order because of me. I have to go in order, going out of an order drives me nuts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.