Are There Books for Pro-Whole Word or Pro-Sight Word Reading?

[mathmarm]

Many books I read are about literacy in general or are phonics biased. I would like to find more books pro-sight words so that I can get a fuller understanding of something that has been bothering me a lot. I can find plenty of books anti-sight words but not many pro-sight words.

 

Am I over-looking them?

[AimeeM]

Explaining the method or using the approach?

I'm not sure, but I'm all ears - I'd love to know as well.

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

This page has good info on sight reading:

 

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

[NoPlaceLikeHome]

Here is another page with good info:

 

http://www.dyslexics.org.uk/main_method.htm

 

 

And another:

 

http://oilf.blogspot.com/2013/11/lets-learn-to-read-in-georgian-via.html

[Murmer]

You could look into Fountas and Pinnell articles or Marie Clay....but mostly they talk about what good readers do...from there others have created the current "balanced" literacy approach (I really wish it was balanced but sadly more pendulum and we are on the far side of it).  The basic idea is that good readers don't individually sound out each word but rather quickly word recall.  That is in conjunction with the use of meaning making (in other words good readers only put in words that would make sense in their story), grammar making (in other words good readers put in words that are grammatically correct i.e. would not say goes would say went), and phonics (using chunks and individual letter understanding to determine a word i.e. was vs saw using 1st letter discrimination).  For most good readers they don't break down into individual phonetic sounding out unless they are really unfamiliar with the type of text (i.e. a chemistry text book for an english major) or a new and unusual word for which there is no other way to use the other cueing systems.  

 

From this research about what good readers do others created this idea that sight word reading is best because it encourages quick word recall which was what was found about good readers, neglecting the other cuing systems including phonics.

[RootAnn]

I've never seen it, but there's "Problems in Reading" by Edward Dolch (of whom the Dolch Sight Word list is named). Whole Language's proponent Ken Goodman has a couple of books like: Ken Goodman's On Reading, What's Whole in Whole Language, and Phonics Phacts (his take on the role of phonics in learning to read).

[dbmamaz]

I remember reading an article that said sight words were first developed for use with deaf children, and the developer thought it would be the best method for all children, and had money to push his philosophy - even though all trials showed children did worse with sight words than they did with phonics.  

[stripe]

Yes. Teach a Child to Read With Children's Books: Combining Story Reading, Phonics, and Writing to Promote Reading Success by Marc Thogmartin

You can download the full text as a PDF for free at

http://eric.ed.gov/?q=thogmartin

He has a section in there about why Christians are so attached to phonics, that is fairly interesting no matter your religious beliefs. He actually advocates using real books to teach phonics, but he describes how to do it. It's a useful book, I think.

 

You can also take a look at the Free and Treadwell readers -- from an old post of mine, here are the links

 

Incidentally, you can get all the Treadwell/Free readers online up to grade 6 at least. I used them and liked them (and we discussed them in the recent non-babyish readers thread).

From Google Books -- where some are mislabeled --
Reading--literature: the primer

Reading-literature: Book 1 

Reading Literature: Second Reader
Reading Literature: Third reader
Reading-literature fourth reader
Reading Literature: Fifth reader (took me forever to find!)
Reading-literature : sixth reader

And the manual -- Primary reading and literature: a manual for teachers


Primer through Year 3 at Main Lesson (nicely formatted for reading off a computer screen).

 

 

[Farrar]

I've never seen a book that pushed for sight words as a basic method.  But there are many that push for whole language.  I know many of the phonics proponents on this board see them as the same thing, but I think "sight words" is what lazy public school curricula turned the very loosey goosey concept of "whole language" into when they didn't know what to do with it to make it more standardized.

[ElizabethB]

I've never seen it, but there's "Problems in Reading" by Edward Dolch (of whom the Dolch Sight Word list is named). Whole Language's proponent Ken Goodman has a couple of books like: Ken Goodman's On Reading, What's Whole in Whole Language, and Phonics Phacts (his take on the role of phonics in learning to read).

 

I own Dolch's "Manual for Remedial Reading" and have read Dolch's "Problems in Reading."  They were interesting and do explain the history and theory of why it was attempted.  My sight word movie has a bit of history of the Dolch words based on these books.  Here is my history of reading instruction page, another book that explains some of the earlier sight word methods and their theory is Methods of Instruction by Pyle, 1865, there were periods of whole word instruction tried from 1826  - 1876, he details them in his book available for free online from Google books.

 

I've never seen a book that pushed for sight words as a basic method.  But there are many that push for whole language.  I know many of the phonics proponents on this board see them as the same thing, but I think "sight words" is what lazy public school curricula turned the very loosey goosey concept of "whole language" into when they didn't know what to do with it to make it more standardized.

Actually, most public schools that use Accelerated Reader and the Fountas and Pinnell readers or other leveled readers are doing a lot more whole language than most people think, these series are based on whole word methods.  The Dolch words are the most frequent sight words, then the schools teach Dolch nouns and each level of the leveled readers gradually includes just a few more words each book that are taught as wholes, and guessing from pictures and from context is encouraged.

 

Even the current phonics programs in schools are nowhere as good as the older phonics programs like the old Open Court or something like Phonics Pathways, they all include a lot of sight words and do not teach 100% of the phonics you need to be able to sound out anything.  The old Open Court series is one of my favorite programs that was ever used in public schools, the literature is based on Aesop, Grimm, Mother Goose, and other classics, it is way better than the usual pablum.  It also starts with long vowels, it is easier to make a better story with long vowels than short vowels.  (Although they don't get really decent until some short vowels are introduced and you have enough word possibilities to make an interesting story.)  

 

I'm not a big fan of many of the early readers, sight word or phonics, I prefer to quickly teach all the sounds and then move on to real books.  That worked well with my daughter.  My son needs a lot more repetition, so I ordered all the old Open Court books for him and we are working through them while finishing up his phonics.

[mathmarm]

Which Open Court books? Can you please post a link to the "Old Edition" I haven't a clue what is old, previous edition or current edition, etc. I'm just trying to wrap my head around "Sight words" and I'm really trying to get an idea of the method and see if I can find resputable, positive results of "Sight word" or "whole langauge" methodologies and I'm hoping that there is something out there.

 

Hubby and I looked at the Dolch Word lists for all the grades and 51 of them are perfectly phoneticwords that you'd expect a Kindergartener or first grader to be able to read after just a few weeks of work. Words like big, run, had, did, be, me, he, we, see, etc....

 

If you teach the alphabet as vowels (each with 2 sounds) and consonsants and the letter clusters that make new sounds "th" "sh" etc...then there is no reason why the typical, developmentally healthy 5-7yo wouldn't be able to read those words if they can smoothly put sounds together, right? Or am I missing something?

 

Hubby is now obsessed and read and rereading through the Dolch words and categorizing them by "complexity". So far, we've found only one word "one" that has to be learned by "sight" there is a rule for the rest of those words and how you teach 219 words as "sight words" is baffling my poor wittle head.

 

I'd like to read something Pro-sight words to try and figure all this out.

 

[ElizabethB]

Is your husband an engineer or stats guy?

 

My sight word page has the Dolch words organized that way, I have an engineering and stats background, here is the page and here is the file:

 

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

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/sight%20words%20by%20sounda.pdf

[Megbo]

I've spent the last few months researching the developmental process of learning to read and different methods of reading instruction, and I haven't found anything credible supporting "sight word" instruction. As far as I can tell, and according to a few experts I've been in contact with, the "sight word" method of reading instruction has absolutely no merit. 

[MamaSprout]

I "retaught" an 8 year old to read this year (with phonics) who had been taught with sight words (flash cards). I have her reading the American Girl books at the moment. She still randomly interchanges words from the Dolch list. So if a sentence has "when" in it, she might say "then". When a word has "she" she might read "the". Anything she needs to sound out is not a problem.

 

I do think the sight words can help with fluency, but after my experience with this kid, I wouldn't recommend them to teach reading.

[ElizabethB]

The old Open Court books are OOP and quite hard to find, it took a while for me to build up my collection.  An interesting book was written about how they were driven out of the education market, called "Let's Kill Dick and Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education"

 

The workbooks are the hardest to find, but the school phonics books follow the same open vowel first progression and can be used in their place.  The teachers manual is not that necessary, you can find how to teach phonics in general online, it is not rocket science.  You just need the student books.  

 

Here are the first few reading books in the old Open Court series, they follow the workbooks:

 

Blue-Pillowed Sky

 

A Shiny Golden Path

 

The Open Court workbooks are just called gold book and blue book.  They were consumable, so not many have survived.

[kiwik]

I don't really understand why people get so uptight about this. Surely the best way of teaching a child to read is the one that works for them - be it phonics, sight words or whatever combination can be dreamed up.

[ElizabethB]

 I'm just trying to wrap my head around "Sight words" and I'm really trying to get an idea of the method and see if I can find resputable, positive results of "Sight word" or "whole langauge" methodologies and I'm hoping that there is something out there.

...

I'd like to read something Pro-sight words to try and figure all this out.

 

I have been a volunteer tutor for 19 years, I started out with whole word methods for a month before I realized they were not working and switched to phonics.  (The volunteer literacy organization I started with pushed whole word methods and made them sound exciting and innovative.)  In my 19 years of tutoring and researching, I have not found any evidence that favors whole word methods.

 

Whole language is often explained as "natural" and sold emotionally.  The only studies in its favor are very small sample size and also are generally focused on comprehension questions, questions which use a small number of memorized sight words in the answers and questions and reading passages.  The largest longitudinal study of phonics is overwhelmingly in favor of phonics, and the books are very cute and available for free or cheap today, here is the website I would order from if you want I copy, several sites sell them but this is the one from one of the original authors of the series:

 

http://www.3rsplus.com

 

The longitudinal study is linked from his website, here is the direct link:

 

http://www.3rsplus.com/documents/The_Long-term_Effects_000.pdf

 

The books are also available to print for free online:

 

http://marriottmd.com/sam/

 

Also, a comprehensive book ananlyzing a large number of reading studies is Chall's "Learning to Read: The Great Debate."

[ElizabethB]

I don't really understand why people get so uptight about this. Surely the best way of teaching a child to read is the one that works for them - be it phonics, sight words or whatever combination can be dreamed up.

 

But the sad thing is, sight words don't work for many children. Phonics works for most children.  Balanced literacy doesn't work as well as pure phonics but has a higher success rate than pure whole word methods.

 

I have tutored hundreds of remedial students, and most of them had poor self esteem and thought they were stupid because of their reading problems.  In actuality, the methods used were failing them, they learned to read when taught with phonics.  Also, literacy is more highly correlated with earnings than IQ, so you aren't just affecting someone's self esteem when they don't learn to read well, but their ability to earn a good living.

 

Here is an older thread where I explain some of the numbers and how some of these children feel:

 

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/129724-sight-words/

[kubiac]

I think there's a distinction between words that might be non-phonetic and so must be learned by rote and high-frequency words, both of which are termed sight words in the parlance of teaching reading.
 
Even though you could teach a phonics rule for many of the high-frequency words (quite a few of which are semi-meaningless linking words or frame words), you could also just teach a kid what word they recognize from their own lexicon that goes with the word shape "of" "the" "my" "has" "there" etc. And then they can apply phonetic "sound-it-out" effort to less common words.
 
According to this page, "The first 25 [most commonly used English words] make up about one-third of all printed material in English. The first 100 make up about one-half of all written material, and the first 300 make up about sixty-five percent of all written material in English."
 
Basically by memorizing these high-frequency words (aka "sight words") instead of teaching them as part of a sequential phonics program, you can allow your little people to read "real books" sooner rather than later.
 

***

To answer your question, there's an interesting book called Native Reading which argues that if you get them early enough, little kids can be primed to learn speech and text simultaneously (if you read to them A LOT with your finger unfailingly under the word) and so learn all/most words by "sight."

 

***

 

Also, I've heard the rule of thumb that you can best use whole word before three and phonics after three, but I don't know of any research supporting that assertion. (But to be fair, there doesn't seem to be much research at all about preschool reading.) Just sharing in case you're interested!

 

*** 

 

{soapbox} Actually, if I may take this opportunity to make a suggestion: Don't worry about reading instruction until you have read and internalized The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. IMHO, it's the best and most important guide to kids+reading that has yet been produced, and it should come first in your study and in your thinking. {off soapbox}

[mathmarm]

Explaining the method or using the approach?

I'm not sure, but I'm all ears - I'd love to know as well.

I don't know. Both, I guess. I'd like to see the method explained, how it is actually implemented in classrooms and homes. I'm sure that learning words as pictures isn't the biggest deal in the world and I am sure that many kids can read this way. Honestly, I just want something that isn't overtly anti-sightwords/whole word.

 

You could look into Fountas and Pinnell articles or Marie Clay....but mostly they talk about what good readers do...from there others have created the current "balanced" literacy approach (I really wish it was balanced but sadly more pendulum and we are on the far side of it).  The basic idea is that good readers don't individually sound out each word but rather quickly word recall.  That is in conjunction with the use of meaning making (in other words good readers only put in words that would make sense in their story), grammar making (in other words good readers put in words that are grammatically correct i.e. would not say goes would say went), and phonics (using chunks and individual letter understanding to determine a word i.e. was vs saw using 1st letter discrimination).  For most good readers they don't break down into individual phonetic sounding out unless they are really unfamiliar with the type of text (i.e. a chemistry text book for an english major) or a new and unusual word for which there is no other way to use the other cueing systems.  

 

From this research about what good readers do others created this idea that sight word reading is best because it encourages quick word recall which was what was found about good readers, neglecting the other cuing systems including phonics.

Thank you for the references, I'll be sure and look into that.

 

I've never seen it, but there's "Problems in Reading" by Edward Dolch (of whom the Dolch Sight Word list is named). Whole Language's proponent Ken Goodman has a couple of books like: Ken Goodman's On Reading, What's Whole in Whole Language, and Phonics Phacts (his take on the role of phonics in learning to read).

Thanks, I'll look into these books.

 

 

Yes. Teach a Child to Read With Children's Books: Combining Story Reading, Phonics, and Writing to Promote Reading Success by Marc Thogmartin

You can download the full text as a PDF for free at

http://eric.ed.gov/?q=thogmartin

He has a section in there about why Christians are so attached to phonics, that is fairly interesting no matter your religious beliefs. He actually advocates using real books to teach phonics, but he describes how to do it. It's a useful book, I think.

 

You can also take a look at the Free and Treadwell readers -- from an old post of mine, here are the links

 

 

 

This is a neat read, I'm starting it tonight. Thank you.

 

I've never seen a book that pushed for sight words as a basic method.  But there are many that push for whole language.  I know many of the phonics proponents on this board see them as the same thing, but I think "sight words" is what lazy public school curricula turned the very loosey goosey concept of "whole language" into when they didn't know what to do with it to make it more standardized.

I guess this is part of my problem, I can't quite figure out what the difference is and how you know when you are doing sight words, whole language, balanced literacy etc....Are these methods of teaching reading like phonics or what? It seems like as many people as I ask is as many variant answers I get.

 

Is your husband an engineer or stats guy?

 

My sight word page has the Dolch words organized that way, I have an engineering and stats background, here is the page and here is the file:

 

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

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/Resources/sight%20words%20by%20sounda.pdf

He's a stats and computer guy.

[mathmarm]

I've spent the last few months researching the developmental process of learning to read and different methods of reading instruction, and I haven't found anything credible supporting "sight word" instruction. As far as I can tell, and according to a few experts I've been in contact with, the "sight word" method of reading instruction has absolutely no merit. 

Yeah, I'm in a similar boat. Its odd to me, though I can't work out why.

 

I "retaught" an 8 year old to read this year (with phonics) who had been taught with sight words (flash cards). I have her reading the American Girl books at the moment. She still randomly interchanges words from the Dolch list. So if a sentence has "when" in it, she might say "then". When a word has "she" she might read "the". Anything she needs to sound out is not a problem.

 

I do think the sight words can help with fluency, but after my experience with this kid, I wouldn't recommend them to teach reading.

One of my biggest questions is why not teach the "high frequency" words as you learn to read them with phonics? If you've been taught to combine 3-sounds into a word and can decode words like: "Big Dog Can run fast." then why should we have to go and teach you to see each word instantly and say it? I don't understand why some of the kids I know between the age of 3 and 7 are flicking through stacks of flash cards

 

The old Open Court books are OOP and quite hard to find, it took a while for me to build up my collection.  An interesting book was written about how they were driven out of the education market, called "Let's Kill Dick and Jane: How the Open Court Publishing Company Fought the Culture of American Education"

 

The workbooks are the hardest to find, but the school phonics books follow the same open vowel first progression and can be used in their place.  The teachers manual is not that necessary, you can find how to teach phonics in general online, it is not rocket science.  You just need the student books.  

 

Here are the first few reading books in the old Open Court series, they follow the workbooks:

 

Blue-Pillowed Sky

 

A Shiny Golden Path

 

The Open Court workbooks are just called gold book and blue book.  They were consumable, so not many have survived.

Thank you for this. Do you know how many books are in the old Open Court books?

 

I don't really understand why people get so uptight about this. Surely the best way of teaching a child to read is the one that works for them - be it phonics, sight words or whatever combination can be dreamed up.

Honestly, at this point in time, I don't have a "stake" in the game one way or the other, I'm just trying to understand what whole word, whole language, balanced literacy, sight-word or whatever it is called actually IS. I know several PreK and K children who are learning "sight words" and I want to better understand the issue.

I think there's a distinction between words that might be non-phonetic and so must be learned by rote and high-frequency words, both of which are termed sight words in the parlance of teaching reading.

 

Even though you could teach a phonics rule for many of the high-frequency words (quite a few of which are semi-meaningless linking words or frame words), you could also just teach a kid what word they recognize from their own lexicon that goes with the word shape "of" "the" "my" "has" "there" etc. And then they can apply phonetic "sound-it-out" effort to less common words.

 

According to this page, "The first 25 [most commonly used English words] make up about one-third of all printed material in English. The first 100 make up about one-half of all written material, and the first 300 make up about sixty-five percent of all written material in English."

 

Basically by memorizing these high-frequency words (aka "sight words") instead of teaching them as part of a sequential phonics program, you can allow your little people to read "real books" sooner rather than later.

 

***

To answer your question, there's an interesting book called Native Reading which argues that if you get them early enough, little kids can be primed to learn speech and text simultaneously (if you read to them A LOT with your finger unfailingly under the word) and so learn all/most words by "sight."

 

***

 

Also, I've heard the rule of thumb that you can best use whole word before three and phonics after three, but I don't know of any research supporting that assertion. (But to be fair, there doesn't seem to be much research at all about preschool reading.) Just sharing in case you're interested!

 

*** 

 

{soapbox} Actually, if I may take this opportunity to make a suggestion: Don't worry about reading instruction until you have read and internalized The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. IMHO, it's the best and most important guide to kids+reading that has yet been produced, and it should come first in your study and in your thinking. {off soapbox}

Thank you, I actually had Native Reading, I need to find my copy. I will be studying the Read-Aloud Handbook ASAP, thank you.

[Megbo]

Even though you could teach a phonics rule for many of the high-frequency words (quite a few of which are semi-meaningless linking words or frame words), you could also just teach a kid what word they recognize from their own lexicon that goes with the word shape "of" "the" "my" "has" "there" etc. And then they can apply phonetic "sound-it-out" effort to less common words.

The problem with this approach is that when kids learn sight words, they are not recognizing them by the overall shape of the word - they are recognizing them by part of the word. So a kid could recognize the word "there" from "ere" and "of" because it ends in an "f". This then leads them to guess at similar words, so "there", "here" and "were" are all read as "there", while "of", "if" and "off" are all read as "of" - the exact type of guessing that elladarcy has noticed:

 

I "retaught" an 8 year old to read this year (with phonics) who had been taught with sight words (flash cards). I have her reading the American Girl books at the moment. She still randomly interchanges words from the Dolch list. So if a sentence has "when" in it, she might say "then". When a word has "she" she might read "the". Anything she needs to sound out is not a problem.

[KathyJo]

 

I think there's a distinction between words that might be non-phonetic and so must be learned by rote and high-frequency words, both of which are termed sight words in the parlance of teaching reading.
 
Even though you could teach a phonics rule for many of the high-frequency words (quite a few of which are semi-meaningless linking words or frame words), you could also just teach a kid what word they recognize from their own lexicon that goes with the word shape "of" "the" "my" "has" "there" etc. And then they can apply phonetic "sound-it-out" effort to less common words.
 

 

I honestly don't understand this. Why would I do that when I can just have my child sound out the words? Too many words have very similar shapes. More importantly, the shapes don't mean anything, but the letters and phonograms do. And, there are far fewer phonograms and rules than there are sight words.

 

Teaching sight words was always based on a false premise, that good readers take in the whole word instead of recognizing each sound individually. In Why Johnny Can't Read, the author mentions a study that was considered evidence of this. The study showed that people recognized whole words faster than they could recognize the individual letters. The conclusion was that people somehow took in whole words instead of individual sounds, and that phonetic instruction is merely a crutch used until the new reader can do this. But the study truly only showed a correlation, not causation. The matter is not that simple. I can recognize my phone number faster than I could recognize seven random digits. This doesn't prove that I somehow take in whole phone numbers and only recognize digits while I'm learning the phone number.

 

In Uncovering the Logic of English, Denise Eide's mentions that the latest brain research shows that good readers decode every word, they just do it very fast. 

 

The whole language approach that is supposed to be so fun and wonderful for the child, that's how I was taught to read. I hated it. I still remember sitting there and being encouraged to guess, look at the pictures, and all the other methods that are used instead of actually teaching children HOW to read. 

 

[dbmamaz]

I think the reason you cant find anything about the benefit of whole word teaching is because its inferior.  its not that confusing.  the school publishers still make money off of it, the teachers have been trained to teach that way, but it does not work as well, and it is directly responsible for dropping literacy rates.  and yes, thats statistically - some kids will read better no matter what, and a smaller number of kids do better with sight words (except that if they are not intuitively teaching themselves phonics, they will always struggle - how can you memorize every word in the dictionary?)

[wendyroo]

One of my biggest questions is why not teach the "high frequency" words as you learn to read them with phonics? If you've been taught to combine 3-sounds into a word and can decode words like: "Big Dog Can run fast." then why should we have to go and teach you to see each word instantly and say it? I don't understand why some of the kids I know between the age of 3 and 7 are flicking through stacks of flash cards

 

While I don't have my son flipping through a stack of flash cards, I do teach him a few words as sight words when he encounters them in books.  In his case, I did this to avoid introducing the phonics of long vowels (or secondary consonant sounds) until he could solidly sound out short vowel words with simple consonants and blends.  

 

He was a young reader; he started asking what a ton of things said right before his third birthday.  He already knew all the letters and one sound that corresponded to each - the most common consonant sound and the short vowels.  I demonstrated how to blend sounds together to sound out CVC words and he was off.  

 

We read all sorts of books together - he reads what he can and I read everything else.  As he asks about other words sometimes I explain the phonics and sometimes I don't.  He asked about zoo and I happily explained the oo sound.  He asked about see and I explained ee.  As he asked about fish, then and chip I explained those digraphs.  However, until very recently I was not ready to introduce long vowels, so when he asked about me, a go, etc. I did not delve into open syllables or any phonics rule, I just told him how to pronounce the words and over time he learned them by sight.  Same with the word gem...he pronounced it with the hard g, I told him that actually that word said gem and pronounced it correctly and then I moved us right along.  The last thing I want to do it muddy the waters at this early stage in the game by telling him that g makes two sounds when really there aren't many soft g words he needs to worry about for the time being.

 

I am a strong proponent of phonics and my son and I are working our way through Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading so he will learn all the phonics rules...but, I don't think he needs to know them all right now.  Personally, I don't think it does any harm for him to pick up some words (a, go, he, to [as opposed to too which makes perfect sense to him]) as sight words for now and then revisit them when he learns the necessary phonics to see why they are pronounced as they are.

 

Just my opinion based on limited personal experience,

Wendy

[ElizabethB]

The old Open Court series has the 2 workbooks and then 11 readers. If you are interested, I can post the titles is order later.

[ElizabethB]

 

He's a stats and computer guy.

 

I had a feeling, LOL!

 

I had to analyze them, I couldn't help myself.

 

I did later use the grouped list to help people who want to teach them phonetically on my website, but the original analysis was done just because.

 

My husband is a pilot, but he has a degree in computer science and also ops research, he finds the whole sight word thing baffling as well.

 

I also started analyzing the most common 2,000 words--those are the words taught and used in schools and in the Accelerated Reader program.  But, most public school teachers are not interested in phonics, teacher training really emphasizes whole word ideas.  Most parents are more receptive, so I made my sight word page for parents that are interested and want to teach the sight words phonetically.  Private schools are a mix, most Christian schools already use phonics or are receptive to phonics, secular private schools sometime use phonics and sometimes use balanced literacy methods.  

[Farrar]

There are many books out there that are whole language.  It's been eons since I was in grad school and I didn't do much with early literary stuff at all at the time as I was preparing for secondary teaching, but I know books by Ken Goodman were about whole language.  And there are others as well.  On the more pop end, I know Mem Fox (the children's book author) has written some stuff about early literacy that is definitely more whole language influenced.  The idea that there's nothing out there simply isn't true.

 

For writing, especially the practical end, there's a ton of stuff out there and some of it is stuff that people here use.  The Peggy Kaye Games for Reading and Games for Writing books are very whole language based.  The book No More, I'm Done, which several people here really liked, struck me as very whole language when I read the excerpt - is very whole language for writing.  Your Child's Writing Life is another in that vein.  All of these are books that are focused more on getting kids to get words on the page and not worry so much about the mechanics or the spelling.

 

I also think whole word is not the same as whole language, at least not as it was taught to me in grad school.  I know that's an anathema view here, but that's simply not how anything I was presented was depicted at that time.  Whole word or sight word approaches seek to explicitly teach children to read through teaching them to memorize individual words - they may have some mild phonics or word pattern things going on too and they may use some other bits from whole language, but the centerpiece is that word memorization.  Whole language, on the other hand, is focused on bringing a language rich environment to kids, reading aloud, showing kids the *why* of reading and the joy and whole picture of reading as the centerpiece instead of the mechanics of reading - whether those mechanics are word memorization or phonics - the idea is that the mechanics should be subservient to that big picture - a sort of whole to parts kind of thing.

 

I think there's something to having a loosey-goosey overall approach to reading like that.  And I've definitely seen parents pushing too much phonics practice and not letting kids look at the pictures of anything they read and ending up with a 5 yo who hates the whole idea of reading.  But I also believe if you don't do a firm foundation in phonics you're taking a huge, probably reckless gamble in terms of reading.

[RootAnn]

We all eventually look for 'automacy' in reading - when you've sounded out a word so many times that you know what it sounds like without sounding it out for the 10,253rd time. Those of us with struggling readers say we are looking for 'fluency.' I've had kids who are stuck in the sounding-out phase forEVER and one that just seemed to 'get it' without the thousands of exposures the other three have needed. (That's my only one so far with a good visual memory.)

 

I've certainly done "flash cards" (sort of) for words we are learning to spell (and read) after we've analyzed them phonetically and continue to sound them out as part of our spelling lessons. The repeated exposure to them has helped build that automatic recall of what the word says without having to sound it out again and again. So, I can see the value in flash cards for high frequency words.

 

The Peggy Kaye Games for Reading and Games for Writing books are very whole language based.

:iagree: This. I was so excited when you first posted about this (the Reading book) & I got it from the Big City Library. 

 

My overall impression:   :thumbdown:

 

Ugh! I didn't see more than one or two activities that appealed to me (as a pro-phonics person) and none that I wanted to implement in my house. But, I'm sure they could be great for more 'balanced' or whole language types. I didn't realize it was going to be so whole language based.  :blink:

[ElizabethB]

Others may want them as well, so I'll go ahead and post the whole old Open Court series while I'm at my computer:

 

1. The 2 workbooks, gold book and blue book.  You can substitute the School Phonics workbooks by Didax.

 

2. First Star.  This is a very small paperback book, I don't own it and was able to use other things for this stage.

 

3. The Blue-Pillowed Sky.  Also a small paperback book, but a bit longer.  I have this one.

 

4. A Shiny Golden Path.  Medium length paperback, finally enough sound spelling patterns learned so getting some decent stories, mainly fairy tales and fables.

 

5. Rainbow Bridge.  1st Hardback.  All the rest are also hardback.  Lots of fables, folk tales, nursery rhymes.  Upper 1st grade level.  Great collection of stories.

 

6. Slide Down the Sky.  More good fables and stories, also a bit of non-fiction, mainly science.  Lower 2nd grade level.

 

7. From Sea to Shining Sea.  U.S. History/Social Studies.  Mid 2nd grade level.  Fairly balanced, should not offend either conservatives or liberals.

 

8. Time for Dreams.  Early 3rd grade level.  An anthology, mainly stories and poems from around the world but a bit of science.  

 

This is the last one I own, after this you really do not need a reader (and actually probably don't need anything after Rainbow Bridge or Slide Down the Sky.)

 

9. Across the World

 

10. Over the Moon

 

11. Sound of the Sea

 

12. Promises to Keep 

[Lecka]

Just for information -- smoothly blending words after you know the letter sounds is actually very difficult, it is a hang-up for a lot of kids.

 

It was very difficult for my son.

 

So taking that as a given for a beginning reader is a thing that can hurt kids who happen to have that need.

[kubiac]

For the record, I am totally pro-phonics and we're working through Phonics Pathways, doing BOB Books (and similar) and playing with some circa-1980s phonics drill lift-the-flap cards, BUT we also got the Preschool Prep Sight Words videos from the library. Kiddo liked them and after a few viewings, he started delightedly pointing out sight words in the environment and in text. 

 

His joy at being able to easily pick out some key words in text ("oh, that's an easy one!" he says) and in the environment is reason enough for me to continue doing some sight-words work as an supplement to a proper phonics program. I feel like automatic recognition of some words can't be bad, so long as he also has all the other word attack skills he needs. YMMV, but so far it's working for us.

 

FWIW, I feel like having some automaticity with sight words smooths out the reading of a basic sentence, so that the majority of the words are automatic so that he can really practice whichever element of phonics we're working on without getting hung up on little words. I didn't think I'd teach them when I first started out (and I would scoff at mention of teaching kids to recognize signs/symbols/logos as a pre-reading skill), but I've found it quite worthwhile.

 

Also, sordid confession: I don't know phonics myself, so I'm learning the rules with him. I can't teach him the finer points of why every single word is spelled the way it is, because I don't know myself, even though I feel that I can read, write and spell with relative ease. I was a fluent reader from an early age and somehow skirted all the instruction on phonics rules. When listening to reading instruction in class, I could never even figure out what the teacher meant by long and short vowels!

 

So as a home teacher now, I lean on some sight words instruction to fill in the gaps while we study phonics, rule by rule.

[stripe]

 On the more pop end, I know Mem Fox (the children's book author) has written some stuff about early literacy that is definitely more whole language influenced.  

Yes, I've heard or read various things from her that are emphatically anti-phonics/pro-sight reading.

 

I think the Free and Treadwell manual (linked to earlier) gives a pretty lengthy description of how to use their readers for teaching via sight. (I used Reading Reflex, personally, and just used those readers because they were less corny than most others, because they are based on folk tales rather than dull families.)

[MerryAtHope]

Hubby and I looked at the Dolch Word lists for all the grades and 51 of them are perfectly phoneticwords that you'd expect a Kindergartener or first grader to be able to read after just a few weeks of work. Words like big, run, had, did, be, me, he, we, see, etc....

 

If you teach the alphabet as vowels (each with 2 sounds) and consonsants and the letter clusters that make new sounds "th" "sh" etc...then there is no reason why the typical, developmentally healthy 5-7yo wouldn't be able to read those words if they can smoothly put sounds together, right? Or am I missing something?

 

Hubby is now obsessed and read and rereading through the Dolch words and categorizing them by "complexity". So far, we've found only one word "one" that has to be learned by "sight" there is a rule for the rest of those words and how you teach 219 words as "sight words" is baffling my poor wittle head.

 

He might enjoy this blog categorizing the Dolch words.

 

I "retaught" an 8 year old to read this year (with phonics) who had been taught with sight words (flash cards). I have her reading the American Girl books at the moment. She still randomly interchanges words from the Dolch list. So if a sentence has "when" in it, she might say "then". When a word has "she" she might read "the". Anything she needs to sound out is not a problem.

 

I do think the sight words can help with fluency, but after my experience with this kid, I wouldn't recommend them to teach reading.

 

Yes, instead of teaching sight words (where words like house and horse, or maybe and maple, form the same visual picture), teach them how to blend and then use tools like flashcards, readers, activities etc... to build fluency (some kids need a lot of reinforcement in building fluency, while others pick reading up more easily).

 

 

I don't know. Both, I guess. I'd like to see the method explained, how it is actually implemented in classrooms and homes. I'm sure that learning words as pictures isn't the biggest deal in the world and I am sure that many kids can read this way. Honestly, I just want something that isn't overtly anti-sightwords/whole word.

 

 

It can lead to word guessing for many children though, and that's when it can be an issue. There's a difference between using methods like flashcards to "teach" reading, and using them to help a child build fluency--but maybe the latter is more what you would like to see in a program?

 

One of my biggest questions is why not teach the "high frequency" words as you learn to read them with phonics? If you've been taught to combine 3-sounds into a word and can decode words like: "Big Dog Can run fast." then why should we have to go and teach you to see each word instantly and say it? I don't understand why some of the kids I know between the age of 3 and 7 are flicking through stacks of flash cards

 

 

You absolutely CAN teach them with phonics. Some kids may still need additional practice to read them quickly and fluently though--fluency rates develop at different times. Some kids need to see a word as many as 30 times before they can read it easily. So, teach them phonics and how to blend, and then give them as much or as little practice as they need to do so fluently.

[RootAnn]

As usual, Merry says things a lot better than I did. So,  :iagree:  Also:

Some kids need to see a word as many as 30 times before they can read it easily. 

 

For a couple of my kids, it seems more like 300 . . . 

[Korrale]

My 2 year old son learnt to read via sight words. We used the preschool prep meet the sight words DVD/apps. It was smooth, effortless and fun. Then I gave him the preschool prep readers and he hit the ground running he flew through those book. As he approached a word he didn't know, he was able to figure it out by context, or the picture. We then moved onto devouring book after book from the library. Each time we came across an unfamiliar word I would slowly sound it out and my son kept reading on and on. Over time I realized that he was able to figure out suffixes like -ing, -ed, -tion. He was then able to read many unfamiliar words. He figured out that every time he saw -at that is was at. And every b was (buh), so bat was the only word that made sense.

When he turned 3 I intended to teach him all the phonics rules, but he just didn't need them. He knew every single Flesch word with no issue. I even tested him with made up phonetically decodable words. He had no issues.

It all just came to him with lots of reading. Me reading to him, him reading to me, and best of all, us buddy reading.

Now at just turned 4, I don't do any reading instruction anymore. We just read for pleasure and information. He is well above a 5th/6th grade reading level as far as mechanics go. But he is young so we stick to picture books and easy chapter books until he grows into harder material.

We will eventually cover phonics more when he is a little older and we use a full spelling program like LOE.

 

I am not saying whole word reading will work for every child, but it can kick start a child's confidence and be a precursor to more in depth phonics instruction. Likewise, I don't think phonics instruction is easy for all children either. Basically I believe in a balanced approach. But more importantly I believe in the approach that works for you and your child.

[kubiac]

mathmarm, don't know if you are still reading these forums, but I found something for you!

 

A book called What's Whole About Whole Language? by Ken Goodman is referenced in another book I'm reading about reading instruction. It says that Goodman is one of the founders of the movement. The original was published in 1984, the current version is from 2004.

 

From what I can tell, no book advocates whole language as a specific reading-instruction method, but rather as a holistic philosophy or something. It sounds to me like there's no there there, but maybe I'm missing something esoteric.