explode the code as a stand-alone?

[IceFairy]

DS is a natural reader and speller. Adventures in Phonics is bogging him down and confusing him....his reading progress is halting as a result. Plus the writing is too much for a 5 year old, IMO. He has always loved ETC and learned to read with it. Can ETC 3-8 stand alone as a phonics curriculum. Would I keep up with his spelling? Or get through book 8 and add spelling back in?

[alisoncooks]

nm

:p

[Um_2_4]

Hmm, I think you could use it alone if he is a natural speller. I kinda use it to supplement AAS right now. Might want to "play" more with the words to add to it (some games or use the whiteboard, whatever works for him)

[tuckabella]

I don't make spelling a formal subject until phonics is completed. DS survived. :-) DD is on ETC 2 now but she is still in K. If at the beginning of grade 2 she still is not done phonics, then I might add in R&S Spelling for Grade 2, which is very gentle to start.

[kateingr]

I have been using ETC with my ds5 (who sounds similar to yours) as his only phonics and it has worked great. I found it to be Avery nice way to make sure that he's had practice and reinforcement with all the key sounds. Then, as he reads aloud to me, I occasionally notice that he needs work on a sound that ETC hasn't covered, so I then pull out OPGTR and do the corresponding lesson.

 

That said, I'm still working through AAS 1 with him so that he has the practice of transferring his phonics knowledge into learning how to write words automatically. Even though the spelling rules in AAS1 are quite easy for him (he's at the end of ETC 5) it is still real work for him to think about the mechanics of handwriting and spelling simultaneously.