ETC Book 4 on syllables- what exactly is practiced?

[Sarah0000]

Is it limited to primarily counting syllables and identifying the vowel sound in the syllable or does it include practice in the different types of syllables and how that affects pronunciation, the type of vowel (long, short, silent e), and maybe the very basics of spelling rules associated with spelling? Does the 4.5 book cover all the same stuff with the same amount of variation in types of questions, but just less practice of each concept?

 

I'm considering starting my son in these books and trying to figure out where to place him. He is a natural early reader and his phonics skills are definitely not so linear in progression as this workbook series.

[lanabug]

Here's the table of contents for book 4:

Lesson 1 - Compound words

Lesson 2 - Common endings: -ful, -ing, -st, -ed, -ness

Lesson 3 - Syllable division between double consonants

Lesson 4 - Syllable division between different consonants

Lesson 5 - Review

Lesson 6 - Open and closed syllables

Lesson 7 - Syllable division with open syllables

Lesson 8 - Syllable division with closed syllables

Lesson 9 - Syllable division with syllables ending in -y

Lesson 10 - Syllable division with syllables ending in -le

Lesson 11 - Vowel digraph syllables: ai, ay, ea, ee, oa, ow

Lesson 12 - Syllable division with three-syllable words

 

My almost 8 year old, 2nd grader is working in this book right now.  

 

Lana

[Sarah0000]

Thank you. So definitely not for young readers. It's hard to find anything beyond short and long vowels and rhyming words but still aimed towards a roughly kindergarten level. Oh well.

[blondeviolin]

Logic of English Foundations!

[Hobbes]

We love ETC, but we did Not Like book 4. The syllable rules seemed clunky and confusing and I never remember thinking about them that way. I found it hard to remember, which made me wonder about the usefulness for my first grader. Though the vowel diagraph and common ending parts were good.

 

Probably useful and helpful for some students, but we did not find that it clicked in the same way as all the other ETC books. Next time I'll just skip that one.

[Laura Corin]

We skipped book 4 and didn't regret it.

[Farrar]

If your dc can read longer words and ETC is working for you, then you can skip book 4 with no regrets. I think the place it comes back is with spelling. So things like open and closed syllables don't mean as much when you're sounding out a word because you're getting stuff from context (even if it's not in a sentence, saying it one way makes sense and not the other way) but with spelling it becomes a problem. But that's later. If you look at the TOC for book 5, it's likely that you can go ahead and use that.

 

But, that said, it may be a good opportunity to consider other programs. Down the road, I'm a lot less pleased with what ETC did for us overall.

[Sarah0000]

I was really just looking for an easy way to occasionally practice and refresh the more advanced phonics stuff that doesn't come up as frequently in reading. I don't think this is it though.