How do I teach DS to read?

[Garga]

He is 6 years old. When he was 4 or 5 we did the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. His friend learned to read that way. But it didn't work for my DS. He hated it.

 

So, now we're using Hooked on Phonics, and he barely tolerates it. He sort of is learning from it, but sort of not. He detests sounding out words, yet he can't read unless he sounds them out. So, we go round and round with me saying, "Sound it out," and him looking around the room randomly yelling out words that begin with whatever the word we're on begins with. It drives both of us nuts.

 

What have other people used to teach their kids to read?

 

Thanks!

[Blueridge]

I really love Reading Made Easy...it has worked when NOTHING else has!

Ginger

[Camy-7 boybarians 1 lady]

I have used Reading Reflex w/ 5 of my children so far. They are all excellent readers. Blessings...and good luck. Just as a sidenote, I do not begin reading instruction w/ my children until they are 6. Blessings.

[Mom2boys]

Both my boys really took off with their reading when they reached the age of 6 1/2. Maybe your son is just not ready yet. I read to my boys a lot, and we watched "Between the Lions" on PBS. One son did well with phonics and the other son never did really catch on with phonics. He was a total sight word kid. He is now 11 and devours books.

 

Hang in there! :001_smile:

[A home for their hearts]

Someone here recommended BRI to me a couple of weeks ago. http://www.roadstoeverywhere.com/3RsPlusRead.html

 

It is just a series of VERY carefully sequenced reading books. They go from the first book with just 5 sounds and 3 words up to a mid 3rd grade level.

 

I just started it with my ds7 who is struggling to learn to read on Friday.

 

Here's a link that has some info about it.

 

HTH

[Perry]

I like ABeCeDarian ( based on Reading Reflex principles, but much more user friendly) supplemented with BRI. You can't go wrong with those choices.

[jensway]

I used Sing, Spell, Read and Write with my son years ago and he loved it. We had friends that had bought it for their kids and my son fell in the year between their kids using it, so we borrowed it and only had to buy my son's workbook. So I bought 2 workbooks--1 for my son and 1 for their next kid that would be using the curriculum. This was a real blessing for us.

[Stacia]

Phonics Pathways has been a huge success for us.

[Crissy]

Hey, Lizard! Welcome to homeschooling!

 

I know that by age six (it's almost first grade for crying out loud!) you may feel as if your son is behind and you need to find The Answer to his reading woes Right Now.

I understand. I am one of those moms that wants It All. Right Now.

 

But I am going to ask you to relax for a little while. More important than your son reading by the end of the year is getting your son to Love Books. Really love them. And you can do this.

 

Read to him. Often. Read books that will excite his imagination. Read books on topics that he LOVES. Read to him in the bath tub. Over breakfast. After dinner. As he falls asleep at night.

At some point he will be interested enough that he'll want to read them for himself.

And he will.

Fear not! Your son will learn to read.

 

And until he's ready to start decoding the letters and sounds and the punctuation, you can help him on his way to a life-long love of literature.

 

Read TO him.

Edited October 6, 2008 by Crissy

[joannqn]

With my oldest, I did nothing but phonics workbooks like the ones Spectrum puts out.

 

My son learned to read using Teach Your Child to Read in Just 10 Minutes a Day. His special ed teacher began using it in her classes after I gave her the book. Since then, he's used Spectrum phonics workbooks.

 

I also spend at least an hour a day reading to the kids...anything from books that go with our history and science learning to classics.

[mazakaal]

Both my boys really took off with their reading when they reached the age of 6 1/2. Maybe your son is just not ready yet. I read to my boys a lot, and we watched "Between the Lions" on PBS. One son did well with phonics and the other son never did really catch on with phonics. He was a total sight word kid. He is now 11 and devours books.

 

Hang in there! :001_smile:

 

 

:iagree: My oldest could barely sound out words at the age of 6. Then something suddenly clicked and within a few months he was reading very well. Within a couple of more months he was reading at a 4th grade level.

 

I really like OPGTR now, but I used Alpha Phonics and Alphabet Island Phonics with ds#1 - OPG wasn't available then. 100EZ lessons didn't work for him, either. I'm not familiar with Hooked on Phonics, but if I were you, I would continue a little bit of phonics instructions every day, and read to him A LOT. Eventually it will click.

[mazakaal]

Hey, Lizard! Welcome to homeschooling!

 

I know that by age six (it's almost first grade for crying out loud!) you may feel as if your son is behind and you need to find The Answer to his reading woes Right Now.

I understand. I am one of those moms that wants It All. Right Now.

 

But I am going to ask you to relax for a little while. More important than your son reading by the end of the year is getting your son to Love Books. Really love them. And you can do this.

 

Read to him. Often. Read books that will excite his imagination. Read books on topics that he LOVES. Read to him in the bath tub. Over breakfast. After dinner. As he falls asleep at night.

At some point he will be interested enough that he'll want to read them for himself.

And he will.

Fear not! Your son will learn to read.

 

And until he's ready to start decoding the letters and sounds and the punctuation, you can help him on his way to a life-long love of literature.

 

Read TO him.

 

 

Great post, Chrissy. Well said!:thumbup1:

[LilyK]

I second Sing, Spell, Read and Write, if your ds likes to sing. Some boys don't like to sing, and would get angry. As far as Hooked-On-Phonics goes, I have it, but never used it because I had heard many lukewarm reviews. I have also heard that Phonics Zoo is a good program.

 

Don't forget to do lots of read-alouds if your ds is not reading. Lots and lots. This is something where you reap the rewards many years down the road, but the rewards are huge.

[Lizzie in Ma]

What a fabulous way to learn to decode! I thought it was brilliant.

I mean when you know things like "eigh" always says long a? Genius!

[jamnkats]

I"ll be another advising restraint. My 14yo learned to read at 7. I did NOTHING in the way of instruction with him. Seriously. Not one single solitary thing. I read to him a minimum of 1 hour daily though.

 

My 12yo learned to read at 10. He said he liked the phonics approach when we'd talk about things, but again, other than a very short introduction to phonics vs. whole word approach absolutely NO instruction whatsoever. He mostly learned Runescape to learn to read. The other day he was up until 2am reading "The Year of Impossible Goodbyes".

 

My 9yo (just turned 9 a month ago) is reading very short words and sounding them out. I just introduced the concept of sight words to her. She has very slowly been getting to this point and just started using Headsprout to flesh out her phonics. This is the first child I will have done any instruction with but she was already reading short words before she began Headsprout with NO instruction whatsoever. I think the boost to her self esteem from the ability to read will be a real boost to her, which is why we started the Headsprout.

 

My 6yo really wants to learn to read but she isn't ready. So we're working on her small letters (she knows the capital ones) by using starfall.com. I am doing no instruction whatsoever.

 

I wanted to give you my experience so you could see that barring learning dysfunction (and you can feel your kid out for that without reading instruction), they will learn to read in a print rich environment (I read to all of them a minimum of an hour a day) without any instruction on your part.

[threetreasurs]

I second a program such as Writing Road to Reading etc that works on phonics from the spelling stand point. That way the child is learning the necessary phonics without the pressure to read unknown words. Just MHO:)

[laughing lioness]

I have used AlphaPhonics in conjunction with Explode the Code for all of our kids and they are all excellent and copious readers.

 

I am in totaly agreement with what others have said regarding read, read, read to your child. I would add audio tapes to your home as well. The Story of the World is terrific. IEW's Language Aquisition Through Poetry has a CD and is great. There are lots of audio songs, books, etc and I would fill your home as much as possible with words. I would also limit T.V. and computer time. This does not count as words and teaches your childs brain to passively take-in information vs. gathering it.

 

I would also suggest that you follow up with something gentle that re-inforces the phonics, such as ETC. This will keep your sons mind engaged with decoding and further enforce the rules that he'll need to know to do so.

[Deidre in GA]

Reading Reflex worked very well for us.

[Garga]

Thank you, everyone, for all your responses!

 

Here's my plan:

For the next year, I'm going to relax a bit more about the reading. I think I will not entirely stop teaching him, but we'll just do the teensiest bit each day without a lot of pressure from me. He hates sitting still long enough to sound things out, so maybe he just needs to mature a bit more.

 

I'm going to research the various resources everyone has named, to see if one of them seems to jump out at me as a good match for us. We might switch to a new program and try it slowly over the next year.

 

I already do read a lot to him, and he's insatiable with it. (insatiable!!! Which is why it'd be GREAT if he could read on his own!) My ds3 gets bored listening to the more advanced books I read to the ds6, so I read what I can without frustrating ds3. I do use books on tape for the ds6 when ds needs my attention.

 

Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH for responding. You know how it is when this is all new. It's nice to hear from others who have been there/done that!

[SapphireStitch]

Yesterday at church I was talking to a friend about this. She's just starting out and worrying about how to teach her 4 yo to read. I told her that, in my experience, it's like potty training. You can start young and work at it really hard and they will eventually learn it. Or you can wait till they're a bit older and have an easier time of it. Which you choose depends on how you're wired.

 

My son learned his sounds by watching Leap Frog DVDs. For some reason they clicked with him when nothing else I tried worked. We made the decision to consider him "pre K" when he was 5 and "K" when he was 6. For his pre-K year we worked a little bit on sounds and a lot on coloring, paper-folding, cutting, counting, etc.

 

In the middle of his K year, when he was 6.5 yo, we started working through Abeka's Handbook For Reading. This is NOT their full-blown learn-to-read program. It's a little book that works through the sounds and phonics rules one page at a time...adding in words, then sentences, then little stories as soon as the child knows enough sounds to use them.

 

I also used an Abeka "Letters and Sounds" K workbook for reinforcement. Almost any phonics workbook would have worked, I imagine, but I found it easy to use Abeka because some of the same words and sentences popped up on his workpages and that made for good reinforcement.

 

Teaching him this way ended up being almost effortless for me, and I truly believe waiting till he was more mature was the key.

[Alenee]

Hey, Lizard! Welcome to homeschooling!

 

I know that by age six (it's almost first grade for crying out loud!) you may feel as if your son is behind and you need to find The Answer to his reading woes Right Now.

I understand. I am one of those moms that wants It All. Right Now.

 

But I am going to ask you to relax for a little while. More important than your son reading by the end of the year is getting your son to Love Books. Really love them. And you can do this.

 

Read to him. Often. Read books that will excite his imagination. Read books on topics that he LOVES. Read to him in the bath tub. Over breakfast. After dinner. As he falls asleep at night.

At some point he will be interested enough that he'll want to read them for himself.

And he will.

Fear not! Your son will learn to read.

 

And until he's ready to start decoding the letters and sounds and the punctuation, you can help him on his way to a life-long love of literature.

 

Read TO him.

 

:iagree:This is a great post with probably the best advice a homeschool mom can hear! I also have a 6yo and she hated sounding out words. She saw no point in it, got antsy quickly, would beg for "only one page"! I let up on it for a few weeks and VOILA! She got to the point where she was ready and now she's off and running. He'll get there, I promise!:grouphug: