Reading methods in public school Kindergarten?

[JulieA97]

We are currently touring all the private schools in our city along with the assigned public school just so we know what our options are for next year. The principal mentioned reading levels assigned by letters. By the end of K they are supppsed to be at level D.

 

I looked it up and it looks like its just sight words and figuring out the unknown word by the picture. One example had snow on the house and ground and the child is supposed to see that the word starts with h and then look at the picture to find the item that begins with the h sound.

 

How is that reading? If that is the standard, my son has been "reading" since he was 3 (he is now 4). Is this REALLY how they teach kids to read??

[nannyaunt]

Yes.  They teach guessing, looking at the picture and my all time favorite, this is red because it has 3 letters and this is yellow because it has 2 sticks in the middle. :banghead:

[Ellie]

We are currently touring all the private schools in our city along with the assigned public school just so we know what our options are for next year. The principal mentioned reading levels assigned by letters. By the end of K they are supposed to be at level D.

 

I looked it up and it looks like its just sight words and figuring out the unknown word by the picture. One example had snow on the house and ground and the child is supposed to see that the word starts with h and then look at the picture to find the item that begins with the h sound.

 

How is that reading? If that is the standard, my son has been "reading" since he was 3 (he is now 4). Is this REALLY how they teach kids to read??

 

Very few public schools teach phonics. Most do sight reading, even if they have renamed it "whole language." It's still sight reading. A small percentage of children (probably the ones who are strongly visual and very bright) learn to read no matter what, but the vast majority of children need specific phonics.

[arliemaria]

These posts always make me feel good about our choice to homeschool.  Good luck finding the right fit for your child and family.

[Farrar]

Actually, my understanding is that schools have been moving back toward an overall phonics approach, though still with more sight word teaching than most homeschoolers use and still with some "whole language" activities - but the basis is phonics. That's what they do in the public schools here. Not necessarily well, mind you. And, of course, it can vary pretty widely. Public schools aren't one entity and even with Common Core the methods can be pretty different from state to state, district to district and even school to school.

[MaryMak07]

Public schools are amazing here. Words Their Way/heavy phonics approach.

[rebbyribs]

Gah!  Yes.  This is why we pulled our oldest child out of private school.  Her school had a minimally academic kindergarten, which we wanted because she was on the young side.  There wasn't much focus on learning to read until first grade.  I was really surprised to fine that when she got to first grade, they didn't teach reading to the class as a whole and expected most kids to just pick it up from sight words and guessing based on the pictures.  Some kids got pulled out for more explicit reading instruction, but that was mostly the "squeaky wheels."  The quieter kids did not get any extra help until they were very far behind.  I hadn't realized how badly it was going, until the first grade teacher told me that I really needed to practice the sight words with my daughter.  We'd been faithfully drilling the big stack of sight words twice a week, all year, with few problems.  It turned out that dd wasn't recognizing any of the words in other contexts.  I stopped working on sight words with her that week and started looking into other methods for teaching reading.  After working through a big chunk of OPGTR that spring and summer, I withdrew her from school.

[Arcadia]

dp. browser ate my reply

[Arcadia]

We are currently touring all the private schools in our city along with the assigned public school just so we know what our options are for next year. The principal mentioned reading levels assigned by letters. By the end of K they are supppsed to be at level D.

...

How is that reading? If that is the standard, my son has been "reading" since he was 3 (he is now 4). Is this REALLY how they teach kids to read??

 

My reply was eaten up by edge browser so hopefully this works

 

The local school expects level C by end of kindergarten for those coming in not knowing how to speak English.   They expect progress much higher than level C for native speakers.  They also group the kindergarteners by reading ability and test for comprehension one to one with the teacher. DS10 was reading chapter books when he entered public school Kindergarten.  There were many at his level.

 

The academic preschools have the kids reading at level D by middle of preschool (3 years old).

[MrsWeasley]

Our local public school, which receives wonderful ratings, uses both phonics and whole words. According to the website, the goal for a kindergarten child is to recognize upper and lower case letters, know letter sounds, and memorize "those little grammatical words that hold language together (e.g., a, the, to, of, from, I, is, are)." My eldest attended almost a year of kindergarten there. She entered as a fluent reader. They extensively tested kids routinely and send the results for the class home. My fluent reader pretty consistently came up two standard deviations above the class, so there were many kids not reading fluently in kindergarten. My daughter taught herself to read in her preschool years, and it was mostly sight reading. She now gets phonics through spelling with me, as she isn't a natural speller. However, having a kid who taught herself to read through sight reading, I don't think there's any harm in sight reading as long as a child eventually gets phonics instruction.

[Ellie]

Actually, my understanding is that schools have been moving back toward an overall phonics approach, though still with more sight word teaching than most homeschoolers use and still with some "whole language" activities - but the basis is phonics. That's what they do in the public schools here. Not necessarily well, mind you. And, of course, it can vary pretty widely. Public schools aren't one entity and even with Common Core the methods can be pretty different from state to state, district to district and even school to school.

 

I have not seen that. They talk about it and bandy about the word "phonics," but when you look closely at what they're doing, no. It's sight reading.

[....]

We are currently touring all the private schools in our city along with the assigned public school just so we know what our options are for next year. The principal mentioned reading levels assigned by letters. By the end of K they are supppsed to be at level D.

 

I looked it up and it looks like its just sight words and figuring out the unknown word by the picture. One example had snow on the house and ground and the child is supposed to see that the word starts with h and then look at the picture to find the item that begins with the h sound.

 

How is that reading? If that is the standard, my son has been "reading" since he was 3 (he is now 4). Is this REALLY how they teach kids to read??

 

Yes, that is exactly how my daughter learned to read in ps K in Missouri.  They would almost memorize these little readers in class and then they were supposed to bring them home and practice reading them with a parent.  One of my friends (who is not a native English speaker - and was really disturbed by this teaching method) did an experiment.  She wrote the words on a piece of paper, cut them out and moved them around - her son could no longer read the words.  

 

I was told by the K teacher that they learn to read faster this way...so the goal is to get them reading books as soon as possible and then everything else will fall into place.  I used the old Hooked on Phonics with my daughter while she was going to school and the teacher was actually kinda annoyed that I was supplementing.  I think adding phonics messed with their method.  They were supposed to "recognize" the word, not sit there and sound out all the letters.

 

My daughter was my only kid to learn to read this way.  She actually DID read sooner than my other kids.  She is a great reader, but she is the absolute WORST speller of all of them (and I really needed to capitalize that). 

 

They did the inventive writing, too...  Not sure if you've heard of that.  It took a long time to undo it.    

[HomeAgain]

It's party-trick schooling.

 

The goal is to get them to be able to "read" to meet the required goal (usually a list of words) and then start remedial work in 1st grade...er, I mean phonics.  My nephew's school does this.  One of the best school districts, and his first book that he was sent home with was "I Can Use".  I can use a pen.  I can use a pencil.  I can use a computer.  No lie.  They had the kids "reading" the words use and computer, without knowing what it was or how the word was formed.

 

Here, they balance it out.  They have two 1.5 hour reading sessions each day.  Half of that time goes to sight words and readers, half of it goes to Saxon phonics.  I look at the paltry 10 minutes a day /3 months that my kid did to get to their 3 year mark and wonder what on earth they're doing all day.  I'm not exactly raising a genius here.

[Butter]

They do teach phonics here.  They also teach high frequency sight words that don't fit phonics rules or are higher level phonics than they are up to (the, she, etc.) so kids can have faster success at reading.  Where I used to live they teach sight reading.

[MinivanMom]

It really depends on your state or school district.

 

When I taught elementary in a deep-South state, they taught intense phonics. There were absolutely no sight words allowed, and they used lists of nonsense words to assess the decoding skills of kids in K-2.

 

I now live in an affluent district on the east coast where the emphasis is on whole language and memorizing lists of sight words. Most kids come to school already reading fluently (most parents are intense "after-schoolers" here and it's common to pass around phonics curriculums) so it isn't a huge problem unless you are one of the unlucky kids without a lot of home support. I know there is some phonics instruction for kids who get referred to reading intervention, but at that point they will already be far behind their peers who started kindergarten reading fluently.

[Jess4879]

It varies by school here.  My friends kids are in the public school near here and there is a strong phonics program in place.  My nephew is in public school in another area and he's been doing flashcards - and that's it - for "reading" for K and now 1st.  My sister in law drills him on his flash cards every morning and evening.  :(

[LMCme]

In the kids I see in my office (I'm a family doc) I think there has been a lot more "party trick" reading instruction in preK and K since the Common Core stuff rolled out -- and they seem to be spending an inordinate amount of classroom time to get them to do this.  It's okay for the kids with parents who read and are paying attention to what is going on, but in the part of the country I live in (poor/underserved) these parents are in the minority.  I feel really bad for some of the kids; they just get so frustrated.

 

LMC

[SKL]

I don't know, I think starting with a few sight words to build related skills is fine.  Encouraging kids to look at the picture leads naturally to using context clues once the kid can read more words.  I really don't see the problem.

 

Most of the phonics readers I have seen in schools have been horrible.  The language sounds so awkward, and a young child is often at a loss to figure out the author's intent.  I'm glad my kids' KG reading was sight word heavy while also teaching phonics.

[tm919]

My reply was eaten up by edge browser so hopefully this works

 

The local school expects level C by end of kindergarten for those coming in not knowing how to speak English.   They expect progress much higher than level C for native speakers.  They also group the kindergarteners by reading ability and test for comprehension one to one with the teacher. DS10 was reading chapter books when he entered public school Kindergarten.  There were many at his level.

 

The academic preschools have the kids reading at level D by middle of preschool (3 years old).

Here too -- I feel badly for K teachers. There is so much variation among children at that age depending on individual development as well as preschool/parents, it seems like an impossible task to teach them all within these mixed classrooms...

 

Most of the better school districts do seem to teach phonics, Wilson Fundations seems commonly used as does Lexia. I do notice there is a lot of teaching of "sight words" that are NOT rule breakers.

 

I was actually curious that they were teaching my daughter something that seems similar to (my extremely limited knowledge of) LiPS... my daughter is learning the sounds that the mouth makes (e.g., putting her hand on her throat). She's read fluently for years, but she enjoys thinking about the sounds in a different way. I do wonder though if it's a good use of time -- does it really help children who don't have learning disabilities?

[ByGrace3]

Schools here are varied. Public schools say they teach phonics, but it appears semi blended-- basically they focus on sight words to get them reading fast (for higher test scores) and do a few minutes of phonics pretty much just to say they are doing phonics it appears. The area charter schools don't even pretend-- they do only sight words. 

 

[wapiti]

FWIW, our neighborhood PS teaches a mixture of phonics and sight words.

[againstthegrain]

We are currently touring all the private schools in our city along with the assigned public school just so we know what our options are for next year. The principal mentioned reading levels assigned by letters. By the end of K they are supppsed to be at level D.

 

I looked it up and it looks like its just sight words and figuring out the unknown word by the picture. One example had snow on the house and ground and the child is supposed to see that the word starts with h and then look at the picture to find the item that begins with the h sound.

 

How is that reading? If that is the standard, my son has been "reading" since he was 3 (he is now 4). Is this REALLY how they teach kids to read??

 

That is how my son was taught to read in public K before we pulled him to HS. He came out struggling. We started over completely and now he can read about 4 levels ahead of his grade. 

[wendyroo]

My uncle is a fourth grade teacher in a Michigan public school (middle/upper middle class neighborhood).  He is pro-whole-language and anti-phonics.  This boggles my mind, because more than 50% of his students are entering his class reading below grade level after having received 4 years (K-3) of whole language reading instruction.  He says that their actual reading level is less important than how intuitively they are "interpreting the text."  He encourages the students to guess words based on context clues, length of the word, illustrations, phase of the moon...okay, maybe not that last one.

 

Recently, my 6 year old, Peter, was reading my uncle a Ranger Rick article.  Peter paused at the word "chimpanzee" and then guessed "chameleon".  My uncle thought this was brilliant because it was an animal (fit the context of the sentence), was about the right length and started with the right letter.  Plus there was an illustration on the page of a generic looking lizard which could hypothetically have been a chameleon.  I thought the guess was less brilliant because IT WAS WRONG!!! and what can you possibly learn from a non-fiction article if you are intermittently substituting random words!?!?  I'm sorry, but chameleons and chimpanzees are not interchangeable even if they are both long-ish words that start with c's.

 

Thankfully, Peter is not educated at my uncle's school and therefore does have the phonics skills to correctly sound out chimpanzee.  After I told him to take his time and sound it out it only took him a second to read it correctly and move on with the article.

 

Wendy

[Pink and Green Mom]

I will give you our cautionary tale.  This involved a highly rated Northern VA public school.  They strictly used sight words.  There was a list of 6 strategies for reading, and "sound it out" was 5 or 6.  "Ask a friend" was actually #4.  :cursing:

 

It was a disaster for my older son so I made sure my youngest knew all his phonics (through the vowel teams at least) before entering public school K.  By the end of the year he had given up his phonics for "guessing."  It took me several months of homeschooling first grade to get him back on track. 

 

Like others here have said, I was criticized by the teacher and the principal for teaching my kid phonics.  Never mind that he was testing light years ahead of any of his classmates.  It makes me so sad to wonder what happens to all these kids when they hit 3rd/4th grade and there are no longer pictures on every page and they are now reading to learn instead of learning to read.

[sweetpea3829]

I really do not understand the extremes of either of these approaches...

 

OF COURSE phonics only is wrong.  Especially in our english language where there are a plethora of words that do not phonetically "sound out."  

 

OF COURSE whole language/sight words only is wrong.  Many folks here have adequately pointed out why and it doesn't need to be repeated.  

 

 

Really...a blend of both of these approaches is necessary.  They have to learn phonics (and phonemic awareness...which really, seems to be the biggest piece lacking in most reading programs I've come across...that is...DIRECT phonemic awareness instruction), and they have to learn the sight words they will frequently encounter when learning how to read.  I mean..."the"....does NOT sound out.  

 

This argument has been around for years...I really would have thought that they would have sorted this out by now and come to a consensus that both are important.  

[kiwik]

It's party-trick schooling.

 

The goal is to get them to be able to "read" to meet the required goal (usually a list of words) and then start remedial work in 1st grade...er, I mean phonics. My nephew's school does this. One of the best school districts, and his first book that he was sent home with was "I Can Use". I can use a pen. I can use a pencil. I can use a computer. No lie. They had the kids "reading" the words use and computer, without knowing what it was or how the word was formed.

 

Here, they balance it out. They have two 1.5 hour reading sessions each day. Half of that time goes to sight words and readers, half of it goes to Saxon phonics. I look at the paltry 10 minutes a day /3 months that my kid did to get to their 3 year mark and wonder what on earth they're doing all day. I'm not exactly raising a genius here.

 

3 hours a day reading? When do they do maths, art, exercise, wroting etc?

 

My kids learnt to read well using a mix of those readers and phonics at school. The early ones are mostly memory but they get past that quickly if they started school with basic knowledge of letters, sounds and a few sight words

 

OP the books you describe sound very basic for the end of K unless you live in a deprived or non english speaking area.

[Butter]

3 hours a day reading? When do they do maths, art, exercise, wroting etc?

 

That's about how long they do reading in K here, too.  Elementary school is 7 hours a day and specials and lunch/recess only take 1 1/2 hours of it.  There's still 2 1/2 hours of time left for math and writing.  (Don't get me started on how wrong I think the amount of seatwork in K they do here is...)

[Tsuga]

My children both learned phonics and context-learning to help with unfamiliar phonics construction in words. I hated the guessing but they did get phonics. They would learn words through rhyming. They also got "chunking it out" and my daughter loved the "chunking" which was linked with syllables and word rhythm. They were encouraged to chunk out the syllables. I know that later they link this with root words because I've seen the older kids doing it.

 

I just can't believe the entire rest of the country is so nutty! Surely our district is not the only one that teaches phonics + context?

 

[Butter]

I just can't believe the entire rest of the country is so nutty! Surely our district is not the only one that teaches phonics + context?

 

Nope, it's not.  I posted earlier that ours does phonics plus high frequency sight words for earlier reading success and words that don't phonetically make sense :)

[forty-two]

I mean..."the"....does NOT sound out.

"The" does sound out, though - a voiced /th/ and a long /ee/. After they get some experience reading, they pick up that many times the 'e' gets schwa'd and "the" gets pronounced as a voiced /th/ and an /uh/. It's extremely phonetic.

[Ellie]

I really do not understand the extremes of either of these approaches...

 

OF COURSE phonics only is wrong.  Especially in our english language where there are a plethora of words that do not phonetically "sound out."  

 

OF COURSE whole language/sight words only is wrong.  Many folks here have adequately pointed out why and it doesn't need to be repeated.  

 

 

Really...a blend of both of these approaches is necessary.  They have to learn phonics (and phonemic awareness...which really, seems to be the biggest piece lacking in most reading programs I've come across...that is...DIRECT phonemic awareness instruction), and they have to learn the sight words they will frequently encounter when learning how to read.  I mean..."the"....does NOT sound out.  

 

This argument has been around for years...I really would have thought that they would have sorted this out by now and come to a consensus that both are important.  

 

"The" is absolutely phonetic. :-)

 

Phonics only works remarkably well. Study after study has shown that. OTOH, there are no studies which prove that sight reading is effective for most children.

[blondeviolin]

There is a lady in my circle who teaches first grade. She heard my 6yo read a verse from the KJV Bible and was very impressed. Knowing we homeschool, she asked me what I used to teach her to read. When I told her phonics, she scoffed at me and told me that wasn't effective. :001_huh: She said it's much more effective for kids to memorize the shape of the word, maybe stretch its sounds and use the context as clues. Wonder where my kids would be if I had taught them her way...

[kagmypts]

English is not purely phonetic.  Words such as of, was, could, would, again, and said are not phonetic.  Also, there are several other words that need to be "pronounced for spelling" in order to follow all of the phonics rules.  In some cases, my children do not know that the "pronounced for spelling" word is actually the same as the spoken word that they hear every day.

 

I would also like to add that while almost all English words do follow rules that it would be very unlikely for the average Kindergartner to have mastered those rules.  In many cases, it takes several years for children to learn and master the rules.  "Have" is a perfect example.  Since English words don't end in v, the e is used to protect to the v rather than make the e long.  While that word follows the rules, it will not be obvious to the average Kindergartner.

 

For these reasons, I prefer strong phonics instruction with some sight words in the early years.  There are words my kids need to know before the phonics rule has been formally introduced.  When the appropriate phonics rule is introduced, we circle back and talk about how those "sight words" do actually follow the rules.

[blondeviolin]

English is not purely phonetic. Words such as of, was, could, would, again, and said are not phonetic. Also, there are several other words that need to be "pronounced for spelling" in order to follow all of the phonics rules. In some cases, my children do not know that the "pronounced for spelling" word is actually the same as the spoken word that they hear every day.

 

I would also like to add that while almost all English words do follow rules that it would be very unlikely for the average Kindergartner to have mastered those rules. In many cases, it takes several years for children to learn and master the rules. "Have" is a perfect example. Since English words don't end in v, the e is used to protect to the v rather than make the e long. While that word follows the rules, it will not be obvious to the average Kindergartner.

 

For these reasons, I prefer strong phonics instruction with some sight words in the early years. There are words my kids need to know before the phonics rule has been formally introduced. When the appropriate phonics rule is introduced, we circle back and talk about how those "sight words" do actually follow the rules.

My first grader knew last year why "have" uses a silent e. My 4yo this year also does. To read at grade level, a child doesn't need to know advanced phonics. Memorizing rules a Ker needs to read at grade level (which is ridiculous anyway) would serve a student much better than memorizing the 50 dolch sight words by sight. Teaching the rules is akin to teaching a man to fish.

[kagmypts]

My first grader knew last year why "have" uses a silent e. My 4yo this year also does. To read at grade level, a child doesn't need to know advanced phonics. Memorizing rules a Ker needs to read at grade level (which is ridiculous anyway) would serve a student much better than memorizing the 50 dolch sight words by sight. Teaching the rules is akin to teaching a man to fish.

 

Who on this thread has advocated memorizing 50 Dolch site words?  If someone did that, I must have missed it.  Many of the Dolch words are purely phonetic.

 

I still believe that there are some words that need to be taught as sight words - of, was, come, could, would, again, said, and one to name a few examples.  If you were able to teach your Kindergarten-aged child(ren) those words via phonics, I would love to know how you did it.  I am a firm believer in phonics based instruction (and use that with my own kids), but I don't know how one teaches a young child to read using only phonics.  Maybe I am just a bad teacher, but my kids never would have understood why were uses an e at the end of that word.  When they were first learning to read, all three of them automatically used the final e to make the first e long.  I repeatedly corrected them, and as a result, they all learned that w-e-r-e spells were... simply by sight and repetition.  Words like love, what, who, where, want, does, and they were also difficult for my emerging readers.  I don't think that those words are too advanced for a Kindergartner, but honestly I don't know how my kids using only phonics would have learned them.  As a strong proponent of phonics. I would love to educate myself and am open to suggestions.

[blondeviolin]

Who on this thread has advocated memorizing 50 Dolch site words? If someone did that, I must have missed it. Many of the Dolch words are purely phonetic.

 

I still believe that there are some words that need to be taught as sight words - of, was, come, could, would, again, said, and one to name a few examples. If you were able to teach your Kindergarten-aged child(ren) those words via phonics, I would love to know how you did it. I am a firm believer in phonics based instruction (and use that with my own kids), but I don't know how one teaches a young child to read using only phonics. Maybe I am just a bad teacher, but my kids never would have understood why were uses an e at the end of that word. When they were first learning to read, all three of them automatically used the final e to make the first e long. I repeatedly corrected them, and as a result, they all learned that w-e-r-e spells were... simply by sight and repetition. Words like love, what, who, where, want, does, and they were also difficult for my emerging readers. I don't think that those words are too advanced for a Kindergartner, but honestly I don't know how my kids using only phonics would have learned them. As a strong proponent of phonics. I would love to educate myself and am open to suggestions.

You might want to pick up Uncovering the Logic of English. It'd answer a lot of your phonetic questions. The ABCs and All Their Tricks might suffice too, but I don't have that one. When my kids come to an unfamiliar word like that, I explain the phonics behind the word and they either remember it and we move on or I explain it another 652 times (which is why SWB says teaching kids to read is like being nibbled to death by ducks).

[sweetpea3829]

You might want to pick up Uncovering the Logic of English. It'd answer a lot of your phonetic questions. The ABCs and All Their Tricks might suffice too, but I don't have that one. When my kids come to an unfamiliar word like that, I explain the phonics behind the word and they either remember it and we move on or I explain it another 652 times (which is why SWB says teaching kids to read is like being nibbled to death by ducks).

 

 

Or, you teach them to identify those words by sight and worry about the phonics rules behind them when they are old enough and advanced enough in their reading to understand. Then, you don't have to explain it 652 times.  Teaching them to read is still like being nibbled to death by ducks, but...not quite as bad.  

 

Mine learned why there is an e in have in level 3 (?) of AAS.  By then, they were reading above grade level, fluently and had been for a couple of years.  They didn't need to learn the phonetic reasoning behind have or any of the other common "sight" words in order to learn how to read.  More...they learned it as slightly older students in order to assist their spelling.  

 

Sorry folks but...there is no need to complicate learning how to read for a Ker.  They don't need to memorize a huge list of Dolch sight words...but learning the common sight words they WILL encounter in their early reading attempts is, imo, necessary.  

[happynurse]

"The" does sound out, though - a voiced /th/ and a long /ee/. After they get some experience reading, they pick up that many times the 'e' gets schwa'd and "the" gets pronounced as a voiced /th/ and an /uh/. It's extremely phonetic.

 

This was exactly my thought. 

[Butter]

"The" is absolutely phonetic. :-)

 

BUT it appears often long before kids are taught /th/ so it is almost always taught as a very early, if not the first, sight word.

[HomeAgain]

BUT it appears often long before kids are taught /th/ so it is almost always taught as a very early, if not the first, sight word.

 

Not in a good curriculum.  'th' is taught, and 'the' is taught as the first word for it before introducing the soft 'th'. (as in 'tooth')

[3andme]

My two sons went to public for K and they used a combination approach with more emphasis on the sight reading. I truly regret sending my one ds there as they do suggest the guessing strategy and it took me forever to break that habit. I'm sure it works fine for some but it really hampered his reading progression. 

[callapidder]

Public schools use a combination around here (the ones I'm familiar with, anyway), with an emphasis on phonics (including the nonsense syllables to practice and evaluate decoding).

[Tsuga]

English is not purely phonetic.  Words such as of, was, could, would, again, and said are not phonetic.  Also, there are several other words that need to be "pronounced for spelling" in order to follow all of the phonics rules.  In some cases, my children do not know that the "pronounced for spelling" word is actually the same as the spoken word that they hear every day.

 

I would also like to add that while almost all English words do follow rules that it would be very unlikely for the average Kindergartner to have mastered those rules.  In many cases, it takes several years for children to learn and master the rules.  "Have" is a perfect example.  Since English words don't end in v, the e is used to protect to the v rather than make the e long.  While that word follows the rules, it will not be obvious to the average Kindergartner.

 

For these reasons, I prefer strong phonics instruction with some sight words in the early years.  There are words my kids need to know before the phonics rule has been formally introduced.  When the appropriate phonics rule is introduced, we circle back and talk about how those "sight words" do actually follow the rules.

 

oul=oo=u, ÊŠ

 

a=e=u, schwa or /É™/

 

ai=e, /e/

 

It's just that there's not a 1:1 correspondence between sounds and letters. But it's phonetic.

 

​The words do follow the rules. The rules are just more complicated than explained at first.

[MinivanMom]

oul=oo=u, ÊŠ

 

a=e=u, schwa or /É™/

 

ai=e, /e/

 

It's just that there's not a 1:1 correspondence between sounds and letters. But it's phonetic.

 

​The words do follow the rules. The rules are just more complicated than explained at first.

 

This.

 

I haven't found it necessary to teach sight words to any of my kids. I use Reading Reflex. It's not a perfect program, but it does a good job of teaching phonics along with the idea that there are multiple letter combinations to represent each sound.

 

This morning my kindergartner was sorting words with the long /e/ sound based on which letter combinations represent the /e/ sound: "ee", "ea", "e", "y", etc. He is currently reading "Little Bear" out loud to me. He has no problem sounding out the word "the" (/th/, long /e/) or the word "could" (/k/, short /oo/, /d/). He isn't far enough in Reading Reflex to have learned that "oul" is one of the possible ways to represent /oo/, so the first couple times he encountered "could" or "would" I would just say, "Here the letters 'o', 'u', 'l' represent the sound /oo/." It only took a few times before he remembered.

 

English is phonetic! Delightfully phonetic! It really is not necessary to teach sight words. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", but it can cause significant problems for some kids. If a few sight words have not caused problems for your kids (general you), then that's great, but the memorizing and guessing do cause problems for a portion of kids. Which is all the more frustrating when the parents know that the damage was unnecessary since English is phonetic.

[Matryoshka]

This.

 

I haven't found it necessary to teach sight words to any of my kids. I use Reading Reflex. It's not a perfect program, but it does a good job of teaching phonics along with the idea that there are multiple letter combinations to represent each sound.

 

This morning my kindergartner was sorting words with the long /e/ sound based on which letter combinations represent the /e/ sound: "ee", "ea", "e", "y", etc. He is currently reading "Little Bear" out loud to me. He has no problem sounding out the word "the" (/th/, long /e/) or the word "could" (/k/, short /oo/, /d/). He isn't far enough in Reading Reflex to have learned that "oul" is one of the possible ways to represent /oo/, so the first couple times he encountered "could" or "would" I would just say, "Here the letters 'o', 'u', 'l' represent the sound /oo/." It only took a few times before he remembered.

 

English is phonetic! Delightfully phonetic! It really is not necessary to teach sight words. That doesn't mean it's "wrong", but it can cause significant problems for some kids. If a few sight words have not caused problems for your kids (general you), then that's great, but the memorizing and guessing do cause problems for a portion of kids. Which is all the more frustrating when the parents know that the damage was unnecessary since English is phonetic.

 

:iagree:  :iagree:   Yes, this.

 

[sweetpea3829]

I have to disagree with this idea that English is phonetic.  At least...perfectly phonetic.  

 

The given example...oul representing the /oo/ sound.  Ok...ou can say /ow/, /oo/, etc.  The l?  L says /l/.  Except for when it it doesn't.  I mean, we can sit here and come up with any number of phonics "rules" that explain the myriad of phonetic intricacies within the english language (such as...l usually says /l/ but if you pair it with an ou, it will say /oo/) but we are not proving that English is "phonetic" by doing so.

 

Instead, what we are doing is making up rules to explain the myriad of phonetic intricacies within the English language!  Its working backwards to explain what really doesn't "fit" within our phonics rules!    

 

The English language IS wonderful!  But it is derived from a mish-mash of many other language roots.  I teach my children that English words *usually* do not end in i, j, u, and v.  My son says, "What about the word 'ski'?"  So we explain that the English language has borrowed many of its words from other languages that do not necessarily apply the same phonetic rules that we use.  So a word such as 'ski' isn't REALLY an English word.  

 

Folks mentioned that the word 'the' is phonetic.  Well...if we pronounce it as "thee" giving that e its long sound...ok...that's phonetic.  But we don't pronounce it that way.  We pronounce it...and read it with the short u sound at the end.  We can create a phonics rule to explain why we do that...but we didn't prove English to be phonetic by doing so...we worked backwards to explain a non-phonetic word so we can call it "phonetic."  

 

I mean...to each their own!  Use what works for your family.  But complicating the process of learning how to read for a Ker is, imo, not the best way to go about teaching reading.  

 

Again...I'm not suggesting folks should drill and kill the Dolch list.  But teaching them the handful of high-frequency sight words they will encounter as they begin their reading journey?  I have never known such an approach to be detrimental in any way.  

[sweetpea3829]

Just to add....this has been an interesting discussion.  I am absolutely open to other suggestions, suggested books on this topic, etc.  

[ScoutTN]

City schools here use mostly whole language/sight words with a bit of phonics. County schools in affluent areas and private schools are heavier on phonics but still teach sight words.

 

How did you learn to read?

I learned with phonics before I started K.

[ktgrok]

Our schools here send home lists with a dozen sight words at a time, and pressure them to memorize them as quickly as possible so they can get the next list. They go through many such lists. 

 

In contrast, so far in AAR this year we've had 3 "bad guy" words. A, of, and the. Thats it. Yes, it means stories are a bit boring or silly, but she's sounding things out, not guessing. If she was trying to remember 25 sight words too she'd be constantly guessing which was a sight word and which was something to sound out. 

[ktgrok]

Our schools here send home lists with a dozen sight words at a time, and pressure them to memorize them as quickly as possible so they can get the next list. They go through many such lists. 

 

In contrast, so far in AAR this year we've had 3 "bad guy" words. A, of, and the. Thats it. Yes, it means stories are a bit boring or silly, but she's sounding things out, not guessing. If she was trying to remember 25 sight words too she'd be constantly guessing which was a sight word and which was something to sound out.