Where to Start Ordinary Parent's Guide

[ReadingMama1214]

A little background. DD will be 4 next month and is in a public PreK-3 Program that is 3 hours per day/5 days per week. It has been great for her socially and we plan to keep her there and begin at a classical school for K in the 2016-17 school year.

DD showed interest in learning to read on her own. We had started working through All About Reading Pre-Reading and were less than 1/3 of the way through when DD suddenly seemed to grasp all of the letters and sounds. One day I caught her sounding out the word "hot" on a toy. She has an excellent grasp on rhyming, can recognize beginning sounds of words, and can read CVC words fairly easily. She's gaining fluency with the "at" word family, but could sound out any CVC word. We are currently reading the Progressive Phonics Beginner Book 1 for the second time (to gain fluency). DD continues to want to learn to read and tries to sound out words in our environment. We do a lot of reading aloud.

 

My plan is to use Ordinary Parents Guide and to continue some of the games in AAR Pre-reading since DD hasn't mastered segmenting or counting syllables and AAR has great games for this. Plus she loves Ziggy from AAR. 

 

We started OPGTR today and I skipped the 1st 26 lessons which cover letters and sounds. My question is, do I skip further ahead since DD can already read CVC words? She didn't complain about the easiness of  the lesson (taught short a sounds and endings "an" "ad" and "am"). We completed the lesson in 5 minutes and then played a word building game with those endings. 

 

Would it be best to skip ahead to where DD currently is or to just start at lesson 27 and keep going from there? I don't mind going slow since DD is still incredibly young and can't start K for another 1.5 years. 

[mom2bee]

I would compact and combine a lot of the basic CVC lessons, you want to practice a little so that she gains fluency in decoding, but also you want her to encounter new phonic rules and patterns that expand her abilities. Try doing 25-30% of the words from 3 CVC lessons, instead of each lesson in order.

 

Or mix and match vowels, so do some short-a and short-e words, not just short-a.

[ReadingMama1214]

Thanks. Today we combined 2 lessons and it did take up about 15 minutes.

 

I had another question. Dd can read all of the words in the 2 lessons, but her fluency slows down comprehension of the sentences. I'm assuming this is normal. I found the sentences to be a little long. "Nan can pat the tan cat". Dd could read it but it was choppy. She has greater fluency with "at" words, but has to sound out the others. Should I keep moving on and let sentence fluency develop as we continue?

[LMCme]

I'd probably try to separate out decoding as a seperate skill from comprehension.  Comprehension skills can be gained during read aloud time.  OPGTR mainly focuses on decoding.  So I don't worry if my son doesn't understand the sentence, although after he reads a sentence I always repeat it after him to model fluency and tonal patterns.  If he has particular questions, I address them but I'm careful not to get off on a tangent where we don't actually do the lesson (he's in the delaying/negotiating phase). 

 

With regard to fluency, I've found that he gains it by just progressing through the book, so I haven't ever stopped progressing to gain fluency.  I do, however, include a lot of review: once we found where DS4 was in the program, we only wind up doing about 1 new lesson per week and spend the rest of the time reviewing old lessons.  It helps him build confidence, but also probably helps his fluency a lot.  The other thing we do to build fluency is when we read a book together I point out words that he has been introduced to and let him sound them out in  an unfamiliar context.  We've also tried speed drills from time to time with varying levels of interest and success.

 

LMC

[ReadingMama1214]

Sounds like we do a lot of the same things! We do read aloud a lot and if it's a word she knows, I will stop and let her read it.

 

We are only on lesson 30, so it's still review for her. Once we hit new things I plan to slow down and do a lot more review. I think the different phonograms and sounds might slow her up. So we will take it at her pace.

 

She also doesn't seem to mind review. We've read the progressive phonics 1st beginner book twice and she doesn't mind. She actually begs to do it and I had to stop her!

 

Did your young reader struggle with more difficult phonograms and various letter sounds for vowels? We haven't gotten there yet, but it seems tricky!

[LMCme]

When we hit two consonant blends I was very nervous and planned to really slow down, but OPG starts with blends where both letters are the same 'ss', 'gg', etc.  and he got the concept with that.  Then it does 'ck', which was a little bit of a leap, but a gentle one since c and k both say /k/.  So by the time there were other consonant blends introduced, he had the concept down and it went pretty well (although -ank is still a little bit of an issue due to the change in the 'a' sound with -nk; he does it well but it needs to be reviewed often).  After Thanksgiving we're going to take a stab at consonant digraphs, and I'm again all worked up about it :)  So we'll see how it goes.  We haven't gotten to the various sounds of vowels formally yet, although we've started to talk about it when he asks about a particular word in a book or on a label.  It's introduced pretty late in OPG, but I'm excited to get there because I feel like his ability to decode the early readers will really take off once he has that down.

 

We also enjoy Progressive Phonics.  For a while I was dressing up other books like PP by photocopying and tracing the words he was to read in red marker.

 

LMC

[ReadingMama1214]

Yes we use progressive phonics as well!

I'm glad you gave me the scope of the lessons and that blends are introduced gently. She is doing great with CVC words, but I don't expect her to necessarily progress as quickly.

 

she loves the progressive phonics and we read from the daily. We are on our second read through of the beginner books book 1. And she insists on reading 3-4 stories at a time even though I offer to stop after 1. We just got some Now I'm Reading books from the library and she woke up saying "mom I want to read those books!" And is sitting looking through them.

[Squawky Acres]

I had a 3-year-old in a similar situation.  We actually continued with AAR Pre because he loved Ziggy and the coloring sheets, but added in OPGTR.  I began after lesson 26 and continued in order without skipping or condensing.  Some was review, some was new -- and it was difficult for me to know in advance what would be easy for him, so we just did it all.  I only had him do one lesson a day, even if it only took 5 minutes, as he was a wiggly little boy.

[ReadingMama1214]

Thanks. We are doing a combination as well. We're on lesson 33 of OPGTR and DD is doing well. Depending on the lesson we do 1-2 a day. We're doing the phonemic awareness games in AAR-Pre so she still gets ziggy. So i don't use the parents guide for AAR-Pre, just the game cards and some of the sheets

[Jacbeaumont]

Ya, doing the long and short vowel sounds got tricky. We already had some experience with it with one of the leap frog videos with scout (I think it's phonics farm?) They have a great song that explains both sounds.

As long as you drill it home constantly that what you are doing now is the SHORT vowel sound, and later say this is the LONG vowel sound. I always get nervous introducing terms to him. Don't want him to get bogged down in the details, but know its helpful.

 

If it were me, I would just do every lesson for fluency AND comprehension.

 

While I agree with LMCme, that comprehension is not terribly important, it is extra practice.

 

I'll always remember the day he read a silly sentence in OPGTR turned to me and said "That's so funny!"

Up to that point I hadn't been aware or focused on his level of comprehension, just his fluency in decoding. It was a pleasant surprise!

 

Sent from my U9200 using Tapatalk

[ReadingMama1214]

Thanks! We do have access to that Leapgrog video and I plan to get a phonogram app for her to play. I am surprised with how well she does with rules. While reading she'll say "when I is alone it says 'ai'" and she's taken to writing out her own vowel flash cards. I think she may be naturally a rule follower. She started decoding CVC words on her own, but I am excited and nervous to move past that point.

 

So you would go over comprehension as well? I tend to ask some basic questions pertaining to the sentences and she seems to understand. I think this will come with fluency as well. Even though she knows words by sight she'll sometimes sound them out and then say it. I think this lends itself to choppier reading and a bit of a lack of comprehension.

 

She's doing great wth the Progressive Phonics books. We just finished book 2 and she is comprehending those. We read each one twice.

[LMCme]

We treat comprehension as a separate skill.  Part of that is that I feel like his brain might explode with "just decoding", but the other half is that I find phonics sentences to be much harder to comprehend than normal speech or the other things we read aloud.  As an example, "The  tank went on the bank.  It sank in the mud.  The man in tan did yell, "Yank the tank!"  The men put a link on the tank."  [OPGTR p 127]  Now, as the mommy, I get what they are trying to say, but as a 4  year old, it's a bit of a leap to understand what is happening here. 

 

So we do comprehension when we do our read alouds: Why did she do that?  How do you think she felt?  Where is the story set?

 

Best,

LMC

[ReadingMama1214]

LMC, thanks! I do find that she asks more questions with read aloud. We don't do every sentence in OPG if there are a lot in one lesson. I usually choose ones that practice the new skill as well as previous skills she needs help with. Since we do progressive phonics and some BOB books (if she chooses these), I find she practices the skills enough.

 

We just made it through lesson 36 (qu, and s as the /z/) which I thought would be more challenging. It was the first lesson I thought she might struggle on, but she did great. She seems to like the rules and remember them.

[ReadingMama1214]

LMC, how long has it taken you to do OPG? We do about 1 lesson a day 5 days a week. I know future lessons could be split over 2 days and we will occasionally have a week off.

[ReadingMama1214]

as I look through the book some of the material seems difficult to imagine a 4/5 year old grasping.

[LMCme]

We're now at the consonant digraph /ch/ (can't remember what lesson number that is).  We started in August of this year, skipped about the first 27 lessons (he already knew his basic letter sounds), initially went at about the pace you're going, and then at some point found our current pace as he hit some of the harder material.  I'm finding that what I think will be a huge leap (/sh/) isn't, but there are things that trip him up and need to be reviewed regularly.  Doing lots of review also helps fluency a lot. 

 

The other reason for our slower pace is that he's so young, and I want him to feel like he's gaining mastery of something.  When we were doing new stuff every day, he wasn't enjoying it as much.  Now he'll comment, "Mom, I'm going so fast now!" or he'll tell his little brother, "I read like mommy and daddy now.".  Like you, I've looked ahead and have a hard time imagining him reading the last lesson before second grade.

 

It's hard striking a balance between letting him (and encouraging him to) progress where he's ready and recognizing when even if he's academically capable of learning something, we're spending too much of his time on it and cutting out other important things.

 

LMC

[ReadingMama1214]

We are taking a break this week since my brother is in town. But I am impressed with how well she did with what I thought would be difficult concepts. She's consistently pronounced "was" "is" "has" etc. correctly.

 

I'm not in a rush either. I think she'd like to be able to read more "real" books, but she loves Progressive Phonics and I let her read all the words that she knows (even if they're not red highlighted ones).

 

She's young as well (turns 4 in a week) and we still have 1.5 years until K due to cut offs