Article - Why Johnny Still Can't Read

[ElizabethB]

It is sad how long this has gone on, especially in light of all the evidence in favor of phonics over the years.  This article is good and links to another good article about the recent brain research in support of phonics.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/05/19/why-johnny-still-cant-read-and-what-to-do-about-it/#dae90582e221

Excerpts from my history of reading instruction page:

1955: Rudolf Flesch publishes “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” advocating a return to phonics.

1985: Flesch publishes “Why Johnny Can’t Read and What You Can Do about It.”

2011: Stanislas Dehaene's Article "The Massive Impact of Literacy on the Brain and its Consequences for Education," explains how the brain processes at the letters in a "massively parallel architecture" and recommends phonics without sight words.

Full History of Reading Instruction page:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/historyofreading.html

[plansrme]

I have no idea what schools in our area use to teach reading, as I homeschooled mine through those crucial years and taught them to read using nothing but phonics, but I thought it was interesting that the science (according to the article) says that reading comprehension largely can't be taught.  That matches my observation in my little sample of three, but I am pretty shocked to see a professional educator admit it.

[ktgrok]

Yup, at our local schools it is all about memorizing sight words and the "word wall" and prizes for memorizing the most. 

It's so NOT phonics that my niece just learned the order of the words, and so could spout them off as if she knew them, but couldn't recognize them out of order. 

[lulalu]

I read a study several years ago comparing groups of elementary aged kids. Those who spent a lot of time in K and possibly 1st on reading and reading comprehension. And the other group spent more time on science and being read to. They tested them when older and the group with more hands on earlier had way better reading comprehension. 

I have taken that and used it in my home. I prioritize times we can experience something or read deeply about something. My ds knows a lot about our world. Now I will say his experience is not common as he has lived in three countries. But I have seen in my family with another homeschool family the difference experience can make in understanding what is being read or talked about. If a 6 year old has never been on a bus, or swimming, etc it can be a challenge for comprehension. 

[Ausmumof3]

I was super lucky to have a teacher who did phonics even during the sight word teaching peak.  I already knew how to basically read but I'm sure it helped improve the skills.  

[Frances]

3 hours ago, plansrme said:

I have no idea what schools in our area use to teach reading, as I homeschooled mine through those crucial years and taught them to read using nothing but phonics, but I thought it was interesting that the science (according to the article) says that reading comprehension largely can't be taught.  That matches my observation in my little sample of three, but I am pretty shocked to see a professional educator admit it.

It also matches my experience. My son never did a single reading comprehension exercise, we just read good books and discussed them. And he read a ton on his own and listened to zillions of audio books. But he still managed to ace every verbal and reading test he’s ever taken.

It’s sad and astounding to me that we keep reinventing the wheel in education instead of doing what research shows actually works. And math seems even worse than reading when it comes to using bad methods and a lack of teacher training and knowledge.

[Ottakee]

This leads to another thing I want to do when I become independently wealthy.....tutor/work with marginal kids in school and teach them phonics.  It honestly pains me to sub in regular schools in their special Ed rooms.  Those kids need phonics soooo much but teachers are required to use their district wide program

[Bluegoat]

The schools here are deep into the sight word approach.  It just makes so little sense to me - why not just go back to hieroglyphics or some other character based approach, if that is what you are doing?  

It's only kids going into the resource teacher who get a phonics program, and it's not even a very good one.  My friend who is a resource teacher finds it frustrating because that's the program they have to use.

[plansrme]

It's not even that hard to teach kids to read using straight phonics.  It seems like it would actually be the path of least resistance.  My oldest two went to a small private school from K-3rd and 1st grades, but I certainly did not depend on the school to teach them to read.  I bought SWR (or is it SRW?  I still have it--it's the one homeschooling resource I will never get rid of), cut apart the phonogram cards, read the instructions and taught them myself.  Ten minutes a day (and not even every day) for no more than three weeks was enough for the first one, and she'd just turned 4.  My second took a little longer, but not much longer.  Barring a significant learning disability, teaching a kid to read is not rocket science.

[umsami]

When my kids went to public school, it seems to be a combination of phonics and sight words.  There was heavy emphasis spent on sight word lists in Kindy and 1st.  

There is zero emphasis (in my experience) on handwriting anymore.  At all.  When I broached a teacher with concern, she said...it's OK...they figure it out.  They didn't care how they held the pencil, how they formed letters, etc.  So, I got out my HWOT wooden pieces and such. ?  I think that harms reading, but no idea if that is proven in any studies. 

[ScoutTN]

12 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

I was super lucky to have a teacher who did phonics even during the sight word teaching peak.  I already knew how to basically read but I'm sure it helped improve the skills.  

This was me too! My K-2 teachers all ignored the curriculum and taught us phonics. 

[Dmmetler]

My  local district used to have a focused literacy optional school-I taught at it for 8 years. We got all the kids who were struggling in reading who had parents who were willing to take the transfer. Basically, the only thing we did differently was that we had a waiver to teach Slingerland phonics instead of the district-wide program. And as a result, a majority of kids came to us for a year or two, learned to read, got back on track, and went back to their home schools. Those who didn't, we referred for evaluation, and were usually found to have some more significant learning challenges (and still often learned to read and improved their reading). We did other things as well (as a music specialist, I did a lot of auditory processing and beat bonding work in my classes and groups, often working very closely with speech and OT), but the primary difference was that we started with phonograms, not words.

Sadly, this was a casualty of the standardized test push. When you take the lowest 10% of readers or so in a large district and put them in one school, and send them back to their home schools when they are more like about the 50% level, you fail the state reading tests every single year. Even though our average student gained 2-3 grade levels in the first year they were with us, it wasn't enough to keep the school from being converted to a state-run charter. Which, now, does the same reading program every other school does, and is scoring lower on tests than the school it replaced.

 

[plansrme]

52 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

 

Sadly, this was a casualty of the standardized test push. When you take the lowest 10% of readers or so in a large district and put them in one school, and send them back to their home schools when they are more like about the 50% level, you fail the state reading tests every single year. Even though our average student gained 2-3 grade levels in the first year they were with us, it wasn't enough to keep the school from being converted to a state-run charter. Which, now, does the same reading program every other school does, and is scoring lower on tests than the school it replaced.

 

 

That's horrible!  I am officially a former homeschooler as of this past Friday, when I gave my eighth grader his last math test, as all of mine have gone on to B&M high schools, but these kinds of threads are great for reminding me why I homeschooled in the first place.  I am pretty burned out at this point, but I get all fired up again and want to go teach someone to read.

[wintermom]

30 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

My  local district used to have a focused literacy optional school-I taught at it for 8 years. We got all the kids who were struggling in reading who had parents who were willing to take the transfer. Basically, the only thing we did differently was that we had a waiver to teach Slingerland phonics instead of the district-wide program. And as a result, a majority of kids came to us for a year or two, learned to read, got back on track, and went back to their home schools. Those who didn't, we referred for evaluation, and were usually found to have some more significant learning challenges (and still often learned to read and improved their reading). We did other things as well (as a music specialist, I did a lot of auditory processing and beat bonding work in my classes and groups, often working very closely with speech and OT), but the primary difference was that we started with phonograms, not words.

Sadly, this was a casualty of the standardized test push. When you take the lowest 10% of readers or so in a large district and put them in one school, and send them back to their home schools when they are more like about the 50% level, you fail the state reading tests every single year. Even though our average student gained 2-3 grade levels in the first year they were with us, it wasn't enough to keep the school from being converted to a state-run charter. Which, now, does the same reading program every other school does, and is scoring lower on tests than the school it replaced.

 

It's interesting that you mention incorporating music education techniques in your language education, as research is showing that there are important links. Sadly, music education is also almost non-existent in most elementary schools. 

Sorry your program was forced to shut down. It sounds like it had a huge benefit for many children. 

[Farrar]

All the districts around here are doing some level of phonics. I have the impression that this may be a haves and have nots thing to some extent, though I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions... but I have wondered if affluent districts are more likely to choose phonics. They have nothing to lose on those early years testing by using a system that works long term - their kids are going to test well anyway. They're rich. Plus they have parents who are more educated and want the "scientific" practices. And their school boards and leadership may also be picked from people who are also more educated about the science of these issues. Less affluent districts may not have any of those advantages and they may need the early grades test score boost that can come from focusing hard on sight words.

I was chatting with my cousin in a small town whose dd is in 1st grade and it seemed like her school was doing all the things that schools around here have finally gotten better about - zero phonics instruction, tons of homework every week for first grade, very limited recess... It felt like I'd stepped back in time more than a decade in terms of school practices.

 

[Kanin]

3 hours ago, plansrme said:

It's not even that hard to teach kids to read using straight phonics.  It seems like it would actually be the path of least resistance.  My oldest two went to a small private school from K-3rd and 1st grades, but I certainly did not depend on the school to teach them to read.  I bought SWR (or is it SRW?  I still have it--it's the one homeschooling resource I will never get rid of), cut apart the phonogram cards, read the instructions and taught them myself.  Ten minutes a day (and not even every day) for no more than three weeks was enough for the first one, and she'd just turned 4.  My second took a little longer, but not much longer.  Barring a significant learning disability, teaching a kid to read is not rocket science.

That's what I always say! Even with a significant learning disability, it's not rocket science to do a really good job of teaching. You just need to know what to do. Serious dyslexia may never been that well remediated, but to be teaching with the best research-based methods that we currently have... it's really not rocket science. It just takes knowledge and planning. It's sad to me that people think it's so difficult - maybe that puts people off training teachers? 

I'm starting at a public school next year after 4 years in private school. I don't even know what reading program they use, but I'll  certainly report back. There will be a huge fuss if there's not a good program! (Hope I don't get fired....)

[MistyMountain]

7 hours ago, dmmetler said:

My  local district used to have a focused literacy optional school-I taught at it for 8 years. We got all the kids who were struggling in reading who had parents who were willing to take the transfer. Basically, the only thing we did differently was that we had a waiver to teach Slingerland phonics instead of the district-wide program. And as a result, a majority of kids came to us for a year or two, learned to read, got back on track, and went back to their home schools. Those who didn't, we referred for evaluation, and were usually found to have some more significant learning challenges (and still often learned to read and improved their reading). We did other things as well (as a music specialist, I did a lot of auditory processing and beat bonding work in my classes and groups, often working very closely with speech and OT), but the primary difference was that we started with phonograms, not words.

Sadly, this was a casualty of the standardized test push. When you take the lowest 10% of readers or so in a large district and put them in one school, and send them back to their home schools when they are more like about the 50% level, you fail the state reading tests every single year. Even though our average student gained 2-3 grade levels in the first year they were with us, it wasn't enough to keep the school from being converted to a state-run charter. Which, now, does the same reading program every other school does, and is scoring lower on tests than the school it replaced.

 

Our school had a slingerland program housed in another school. It helped the students in the program but it got cut unfortunately. Pull out help is just more sight words with a smaller group and more of the same. I really like how you also incorporated audio processing and beat boxing. It is unfortunate that your program got cut too and that the way it was used with them pulling too soon. 

[Roadrunner]

While some sight words were taught in Kindergarten, our district teaches phonics. In fact they had a special teacher that cameninto the classroom and pulled kids out into small group to work on phonics in first and second grade. 

[PeachyDoodle]

3 hours ago, umsami said:

There is zero emphasis (in my experience) on handwriting anymore.  At all.  When I broached a teacher with concern, she said...it's OK...they figure it out.  They didn't care how they held the pencil, how they formed letters, etc.  So, I got out my HWOT wooden pieces and such. ?  I think that harms reading, but no idea if that is proven in any studies. 

I noticed this too, when dd was in ps K-2. I can't confirm that it negatively impacts reading skills, because my absolutely unscientific one-subject anecdotal study has always read well above her level, but I would think that for some kids it would have to play a factor.

My dd has legible handwriting, but to this day I can't stand to actually watch her write. The bizarre way she forms her letters physically pains me. ?

[ElizabethB]

15 hours ago, Ottakee said:

This leads to another thing I want to do when I become independently wealthy.....tutor/work with marginal kids in school and teach them phonics.  It honestly pains me to sub in regular schools in their special Ed rooms.  Those kids need phonics soooo much but teachers are required to use their district wide program

You could do a few "teach the teacher" seminars with their parents.  It actually is not rocket science, it just requires the basic knowledge of what to use and a lot of repetition.  With the I See Sam books being free to print, there would not be a big investment required for them, you could bring yours to show them how it works.

[Dmmetler]

If you search for threads on Interactive Metronome, I’ve posted at length about some of the methods I use for developing beat bonding and the sequence. For auditory processing, we use a lot of focused listening, sound discrimination, repetition, rote teaching and sound cuing (where a specific instrument is played by the student each time a specific sound is heard within a rhyme or song). 

 

[RootAnn]

9 hours ago, plansrme said:

Ten minutes a day (and not even every day) for no more than three weeks was enough for the first one, and she'd just turned 4.  My second took a little longer, but not much longer.  Barring a significant learning disability, teaching a kid to read is not rocket science.

I spend consistent time with my kids teaching them phonics. (We use SWR.) None of them learned in a few weeks or even a few months. Only one read on grade level by age 6. The rest were 7, 9, 10, and TBD on the last (at least 8, but probably 9 or older).

It may not be rocket science, hut it is exhausting when your kids have low visual memory (not enough to have a disability, just low) and need lots and lots and lots of repetition to get sound-symbol recognition.

My oldest went for Vision Therapy testing and scored three years above her age on phonetically decoding but terribly on what turned out to be a sight words test. The VT PhD was firmly convinced that sight words were the only way to go. (DH had to physically restrain me from leaning over the table and throttling her for her sneer toward my phonics-only approach.) Needless to say, we didn't pursue VT with her (and for more than just that).

So, all that to say that while I am firmly convinced of the benefits of phonics, even kids who don't have a learning disability don't all learn to read with a phonics approach in a matter of weeks. sometimes, it is hard work.

So far, I have three avid readers and the fourth is showing signs of turning into one this summer. But, late LATE and they would have been "behind" in the public school with no hope of getting into advanced classes. So glad I homeschool.

[Kanin]

3 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

I spend consistent time with my kids teaching them phonics. (We use SWR.) None of them learned in a few weeks or even a few months. Only one read on grade level by age 6. The rest were 7, 9, 10, and TBD on the last (at least 8, but probably 9 or older).

It may not be rocket science, hut it is exhausting when your kids have low visual memory (not enough to have a disability, just low) and need lots and lots and lots of repetition to get sound-symbol recognition.

My oldest went for Vision Therapy testing and scored three years above her age on phonetically decoding but terribly on what turned out to be a sight words test. The VT PhD was firmly convinced that sight words were the only way to go. (DH had to physically restrain me from leaning over the table and throttling her for her sneer toward my phonics-only approach.) Needless to say, we didn't pursue VT with her (and for more than just that).

So, all that to say that while I am firmly convinced of the benefits of phonics, even kids who don't have a learning disability don't all learn to read with a phonics approach in a matter of weeks. sometimes, it is hard work.

So far, I have three avid readers and the fourth is showing signs of turning into one this summer. But, late LATE and they would have been "behind" in the public school with no hope of getting into advanced classes. So glad I homeschool.

 

Definitely, it's a lot of hard work!! It also requires a lot of tracking... which is time-consuming, and if you have more than one kid you're teaching at a time, it's very challenging. I had reading groups of TWO kids, and even that was tricky when one kid got a sound, and another didn't... it made even teaching two kids together a challenge. It's not impossible, but classrooms would have to have groupings and the teacher would have to do a bunch of reading groups in a day. 

[ElizabethB]

4 minutes ago, RootAnn said:

I spend consistent time with my kids teaching them phonics. (We use SWR.) None of them learned in a few weeks or even a few months. Only one read on grade level by age 6. The rest were 7, 9, 10, and TBD on the last (at least 8, but probably 9 or older).

It may not be rocket science, hut it is exhausting when your kids have low visual memory (not enough to have a disability, just low) and need lots and lots and lots of repetition to get sound-symbol recognition.

My oldest went for Vision Therapy testing and scored three years above her age on phonetically decoding but terribly on what turned out to be a sight words test. The VT PhD was firmly convinced that sight words were the only way to go. (DH had to physically restrain me from leaning over the table and throttling her for her sneer toward my phonics-only approach.) Needless to say, we didn't pursue VT with her (and for more than just that).

So, all that to say that while I am firmly convinced of the benefits of phonics, even kids who don't have a learning disability don't all learn to read with a phonics approach in a matter of weeks. sometimes, it is hard work.

So far, I have three avid readers and the fourth is showing signs of turning into one this summer. But, late LATE and they would have been "behind" in the public school with no hope of getting into advanced classes. So glad I homeschool.

My daughter took hardly any time at all, but I reviewed phonics with her for the next few years.  

My son took until 4th or 5th grade and a lot of repetition to be reading well.  My hundreds of remedial students convinced me it was worth the time and repetition to teach him right.  He would have picked up on sight words much easier, but he would not have been as well off in the long run.  Now, he is reading above grade level and faster and more accurately than average for his age, but it did take work to get him there.

[ElizabethB]

4 minutes ago, Mainer said:

 

Definitely, it's a lot of hard work!! It also requires a lot of tracking... which is time-consuming, and if you have more than one kid you're teaching at a time, it's very challenging. I had reading groups of TWO kids, and even that was tricky when one kid got a sound, and another didn't... it made even teaching two kids together a challenge. It's not impossible, but classrooms would have to have groupings and the teacher would have to do a bunch of reading groups in a day. 

You can also use charts like these so that students who are still struggling with a few sounds can use the charts and students who have all the sounds memorized can sound them out on their own:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/40LChartsCombined.pdf

Don Potter uses a similar chart, the Phonovisual charts, and is able to work with students on multiple levels by having them use the charts.  He also has poster sized versions on his classroom wall.

[ElizabethB]

23 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

Yup, at our local schools it is all about memorizing sight words and the "word wall" and prizes for memorizing the most. 

It's so NOT phonics that my niece just learned the order of the words, and so could spout them off as if she knew them, but couldn't recognize them out of order. 

Now that is an interesting way to get around the memorization problem!  

That makes me laugh at the same time it makes me mad and sad...

[ElizabethB]

8 hours ago, umsami said:

When my kids went to public school, it seems to be a combination of phonics and sight words.  There was heavy emphasis spent on sight word lists in Kindy and 1st.  

There is zero emphasis (in my experience) on handwriting anymore.  At all.  When I broached a teacher with concern, she said...it's OK...they figure it out.  They didn't care how they held the pencil, how they formed letters, etc.  So, I got out my HWOT wooden pieces and such. ?  I think that harms reading, but no idea if that is proven in any studies. 

Both Don Potter and I think so, too, but I don't know of any studies.

I'm not that great at teaching handwriting and I usually have limited time with my students, so I don't spend much time with their handwriting, but Don includes cursive training as part of his remedial phonics teaching, he has a lot of experience teaching and fixing handwriting.

If my students have particularly bad handwriting, I recommend the parents work with them with a Zaner Blozer workbook, those have worked well for me.

[blondeviolin]

Interesting discussion.  My 5yo goes to special ed preK and they work a lot on phonemic awareness. However our district relies on a "blended" approach that's sight word heavy. 

For this particular son, the neuropsychologist and SLP both recommended sight words. 

He's learning phonics almost easier than a lot of the others. HOWEVER, he doesn't have as much vocab comprehension due to the processing disorder. 

[Rosie_0801]

2 minutes ago, blondeviolin said:

Interesting discussion.  My 5yo goes to special ed preK and they work a lot on phonemic awareness. However our district relies on a "blended" approach that's sight word heavy. 

For this particular son, the neuropsychologist and SLP both recommended sight words. 

He's learning phonics almost easier than a lot of the others. HOWEVER, he doesn't have as much vocab comprehension due to the processing disorder. 

 

What's the advantage of sight words for your son over syllables? It seems to me, that syllables are the best of both worlds.

[wendyroo]

15 minutes ago, Margaret in CO said:

I often compare sight word reading with round dancing (like square dancing as it's cued, but it's couples). We had a cuer and his wife come to the valley and teach one summer. They taught an insanely high (V) level dance, and man, it was fun! However, when they went down south at the end of the summer, the people in the class couldn't continue to dance--they only knew ONE dance! Those of us who had learned the individual moves for Levels I-IV could dance at many clubs. These folks could not, and so, left round dancing. They weren't interested in learning the basics, just the one flashy dance. Too bad--they missed out. 

I always think of sight reading like teaching arithmetic one problem at a time:

"Now let's all review our problem of the day:  117 + 74 = 191.  Look at how there are two 1's in the problem and two 1's in the answer -  that will make it easy to remember this one!!  Let's hang it up on our problem wall with all the other problems we have learned and then we are going to play sight problem BINGO.  We need to get really good at recognizing these problems so we are ready to learn tomorrow's really cool problem with all curvy numbers!!!"

Wendy

[ElizabethB]

52 minutes ago, blondeviolin said:

Interesting discussion.  My 5yo goes to special ed preK and they work a lot on phonemic awareness. However our district relies on a "blended" approach that's sight word heavy. 

For this particular son, the neuropsychologist and SLP both recommended sight words. 

He's learning phonics almost easier than a lot of the others. HOWEVER, he doesn't have as much vocab comprehension due to the processing disorder. 

 

49 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

 

What's the advantage of sight words for your son over syllables? It seems to me, that syllables are the best of both worlds.

I wonder as well.  

Do they know how and why to teach sight words phonetically?  (Here is a link:)

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

Also, they may not be aware of the new brain research showing how the brain of a good reader reads.  

Here are some videos explaining it:

 

[blondeviolin]

 

[JessieC]

31 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

I always think of sight reading like teaching arithmetic one problem at a time:

"Now let's all review our problem of the day:  117 + 74 = 191.  Look at how there are two 1's in the problem and two 1's in the answer -  that will make it easy to remember this one!!  Let's hang it up on our problem wall with all the other problems we have learned and then we are going to play sight problem BINGO.  We need to get really good at recognizing these problems so we are ready to learn tomorrow's really cool problem with all curvy numbers!!!"

Wendy

I do not think of it like this--I think of sight words as similar to learning math facts. When I say sight words, I really mean "trick" words--commonly used words like of, was, one, some, would, etc. that do not follow regular phonetic rules. In my years of teaching reading to children, I find it most efficient to teach these as separate trick words to memorize rather than sound out. There is little benefit to requiring application  of more obscure phonics patterns to these oddballs in the early reading stage, and without having them automatic, kids can't access easy texts to practice their decoding of more phonetically regular words.

While I am certainly pro-phonics, I disagree with the idea that teaching reading is just teaching phonics. There are a number of complex factors at play as a child learns to read.

[blondeviolin]

I didn't question the sight words recommendation because we were in that information dump after an evaluation. I hesitate to deviate from what the evaluator recommended, but he's doing well with beginning phonics and phonemic awareness is an IEP goal of his so I'm sure it's not hurting. ?‍♂️

[wendyroo]

33 minutes ago, JessieC said:

I do not think of it like this--I think of sight words as similar to learning math facts. When I say sight words, I really mean "trick" words--commonly used words like of, was, one, some, would, etc. that do not follow regular phonetic rules. In my years of teaching reading to children, I find it most efficient to teach these as separate trick words to memorize rather than sound out. There is little benefit to requiring application  of more obscure phonics patterns to these oddballs in the early reading stage, and without having them automatic, kids can't access easy texts to practice their decoding of more phonetically regular words.

While I am certainly pro-phonics, I disagree with the idea that teaching reading is just teaching phonics. There are a number of complex factors at play as a child learns to read.

I'm pretty sure that such a limited view of "sight words" is the exception, not the rule.  I just googled "sight word activities", and most of them focus on "tricky" words like "red", "like", "in", "with", "went", etc.  Truly, I just pulled those off the first couple images, and I could have listed dozens more perfectly phonetic words that are routinely taught as "sight words".

I agree with your method.  I don't explicitly teach my kids those words as "sight words", but I do simply tell the child what they are when we run into them, so in essence they are memorizing them by sight rather than sounding them out.  I just don't think that method of "almost completely phonics with only a few exceptions" is what most people mean when they talk about sight reading instruction.

Wendy

[scoutingmom]

This does remind me of a sad (to me) interaction I had about a year ago.   

Apparently the schools use a lot of sight words.  My adult step-daughter askec if I had any resources for a friend who's child was struggling in K with the sight words.  She needed to work with the child over the summer before grade 1.

I asked the friend "are you looking for resources to teach him to read, or flashcards to teach sight words?"   Yeah.... flashcards.   I gave her a set I had for visual learners (picture as part of the word)...  but I shake my head.  Isn't the whole point to learn to read?   "I See Sam" could have had that child reading basic stuff by summer's end with just a small effort each day, and reading well not much longer afterwards.

[ElizabethB]

4 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I'm pretty sure that such a limited view of "sight words" is the exception, not the rule.  I just googled "sight word activities", and most of them focus on "tricky" words like "red", "like", "in", "with", "went", etc.  Truly, I just pulled those off the first couple images, and I could have listed dozens more perfectly phonetic words that are routinely taught as "sight words".

I agree with your method.  I don't explicitly teach my kids those words as "sight words", but I do simply tell the child what they are when we run into them, so in essence they are memorizing them by sight rather than sounding them out.  I just don't think that method of "almost completely phonics with only a few exceptions" is what most people mean when they talk about sight reading instruction.

Wendy

Yes, most schools send home lists of the most common 220 Dolch Sight Words, 70% of which are completely phonetic, a few are: "had, and, can, big, him, ate, came made, all, call, fall."  They send them home alphabetically and break up similar words over grade level.  For example, they send home "am, at, black" as part of the K list, then "an, ask" on the first grade list, then "best, wish, cut" on the 3rd grade list.  They send home "by, fly" on the 1st grade list, "why" is 2nd grade, "try" 3rd grade.  It is ridiculous, and damaging for many of my remedial students.

A few more are easily learned after learning some simple rules or patterns, for example, 12 words on the Dolch sight word list have s as z, "as, has, hers, is, his, etc."  You simple teach that s sometimes has its consonant pair z sound and then teach some words with that pattern.  4 of the words have a beginning a schwa, "again, about, around, away," an amazingly common pattern that applies to hundreds of words.

My sight word page explains all of this and shows how and why to teach all but 5 of the 220 Dolch sight words with phonics (the list also includes the Fry 100 instant words, some schools use the Fry lists instead, they are very similar.

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

[ElizabethB]

4 minutes ago, scoutingmom said:

This does remind me of a sad (to me) interaction I had about a year ago.   

Apparently the schools use a lot of sight words.  My adult step-daughter askec if I had any resources for a friend who's child was struggling in K with the sight words.  She needed to work with the child over the summer before grade 1.

I asked the friend "are you looking for resources to teach him to read, or flashcards to teach sight words?"   Yeah.... flashcards.   I gave her a set I had for visual learners (picture as part of the word)...  but I shake my head.  Isn't the whole point to learn to read?   "I See Sam" could have had that child reading basic stuff by summer's end with just a small effort each day, and reading well not much longer afterwards.

That is sad.  I agree, she could have taught the skills needed to sound out 1,000+ words in the same timeframe.

For anyone wanting a similar list that can make it easy to learn while still teaching phonics, I have an easy to use sight words in UPP document. The arrangement makes it super easy to learn them phonetically, and they have diacritical markings for the 30% that are slightly irregular, making them easy to sound out.  It is linked from my sight word page, but here it is:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/sightwordsinUPP1.pdf

I also have a document that groups them by sound and teaches how to teach them with phonics:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Reading/Resources/Sight Words by Sound1.pdf

[linders]

I started homeschooling in 2005 or so with DS, then 5. Teacher friends were alarmed - "That's the critical pre-reading year!" - and graciously offered me piles of material, most focused on learning core sight words (a magic list), with lots of associated games, word walls, etc. All lovely stuff, but ridiculous. I left it all in boxes and bought Phonics Pathways, our "Dewey book." A perfect phonics-based program, for us at least, and led to excellent reading and spelling skills.

When I'm subbing now, I see the dismal results when phonics were not a core of the learning process.

ETA: The Forbes article mentions that teachers fear phonics won't be fun - well, Dewey the Phonics Pathway worm made our phonics lessons totally fun and is still fondly remembered by DS now 17!

 

[DawnM]

At one time, in CA, when I was still in the classroom, I had a group of students (middle school), who still couldn't read.  There was a program developed for them called Language! put out by Sopris West.

The program went back to basics and used Phonics.....even though the Elem school at the time didn't.  

I found it all very odd.  Why not teach it right the first time?

[Bluegoat]

The whole thing seems illogical.  Even with phonics most kids will just come to know certain words, like "the," by sight.  I can't see how it is more difficult to teach phonograms than so many sight words, or why it would be less fun.  And then, it does little to help with the ability to spell so then you have to spend time on rote memorization for that.

[ElizabethB]

3 hours ago, Bluegoat said:

The whole thing seems illogical.  Even with phonics most kids will just come to know certain words, like "the," by sight.  I can't see how it is more difficult to teach phonograms than so many sight words, or why it would be less fun.  And then, it does little to help with the ability to spell so then you have to spend time on rote memorization for that.

 

It is illogical.

Even more so in light of recent brain research with MEG, which can see what the brain is doing down to the millisecond.  Recent research has found that in the brain of good readers, every letter and letter team of every word read is being processed on the side and in the area of the brain where sounds are processed, just super fast and in parallel.  So, it is likely that you are reading the word "the" with phonics, just so fast and so automatically that you don't even realize you are reading it by sound, and not by sight.

From my sight word page:

Recent brain research has found that the adult brain of good readers does not process words as wholes, but instead, as Stanislas Dehaene explains in his article, The Massive Impact of Literacy on the Brain, by analyzing the individual letters and letter teams at the same time in a "massively parallel architecture." [1] The speed of this parallel processing led early researchers to believe that the brain was processing the words as a whole, but recent brain research using more powerful technology has found the opposite. 

Stanislas Dehaene's book "Reading in the Brain" goes into this process and what goes wrong with a truly dyslexic brain. (Most of my remedial students just have symptoms of dyslexia from sight word teaching, not true dyslexia.)

Mark Seidenberg's book "Language at the Speed of Sight" reviews the brain research and attempts to explain why the ed schools keep teaching balanced literacy in the light of all the research.

On page 9, he states:

Quote

Very little of what we’ve learned about reading as scientists has had any impact on what happens in the schools because the cultures of science and education are so different. These cross-cultural differences, like many others, are difficult to bridge.

On page 387:

Quote

If a strong culture of science had developed, the ideas that now dominate educational thinking might have been critically assessed from within, with far more impact than the challenges that pour in from outsiders. Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman’s influential theorizing about reading was also based on the latest and greatest science, the interdisciplinary cognitive science that emerged in the 1970s with behaviorism’s demise. They were not the only cognitive scientists interested in reading, however. Their claims were contradicted early and often by such researchers as Charles Perfetti, Marilyn Adams, and Keith Stanovich, but too few people within education had the tools to weigh the evidence or the motivation to do so.

Seidenberg has a website with some additional info that is not in his book:

https://seidenbergreading.net

[Ottakee]

ElizabethB.....would your program work well with the I See Sam readers or something else for adults needing to learn to read?  I ran into a friend today that teaches GED classes in the local jail.   They are looking for a special Ed interventionist to teach reading to the lowest scoring inmates.

[Ausmumof3]

On 5/23/2018 at 7:13 AM, RootAnn said:

I spend consistent time with my kids teaching them phonics. (We use SWR.) None of them learned in a few weeks or even a few months. Only one read on grade level by age 6. The rest were 7, 9, 10, and TBD on the last (at least 8, but probably 9 or older).

It may not be rocket science, hut it is exhausting when your kids have low visual memory (not enough to have a disability, just low) and need lots and lots and lots of repetition to get sound-symbol recognition.

My oldest went for Vision Therapy testing and scored three years above her age on phonetically decoding but terribly on what turned out to be a sight words test. The VT PhD was firmly convinced that sight words were the only way to go. (DH had to physically restrain me from leaning over the table and throttling her for her sneer toward my phonics-only approach.) Needless to say, we didn't pursue VT with her (and for more than just that).

So, all that to say that while I am firmly convinced of the benefits of phonics, even kids who don't have a learning disability don't all learn to read with a phonics approach in a matter of weeks. sometimes, it is hard work.

So far, I have three avid readers and the fourth is showing signs of turning into one this summer. But, late LATE and they would have been "behind" in the public school with no hope of getting into advanced classes. So glad I homeschool.

Yes my experience has been similar.  Mine learned to blend but moving from that stage to fluency was still a long painful stage.  I thought teaching reading would be easy because learning to read was easy for me but actually it's been a long process.

[ElizabethB]

17 hours ago, Ottakee said:

ElizabethB.....would your program work well with the I See Sam readers or something else for adults needing to learn to read?  I ran into a friend today that teaches GED classes in the local jail.   They are looking for a special Ed interventionist to teach reading to the lowest scoring inmates.

Yes, it starts with short vowels and would work well with the I See Sam readers.  It would also work well with the entire Blend Phonics and the Blend Phonics readers.  It is fast moving, most students will need another program for review.  Also, I usually follow on with more of the 2+ syllable tables from Webster while reviewing basic phonics from Blend Phonics or Phonics Pathways or one of my other books.

[Rosie_0801]

20 hours ago, Ottakee said:

ElizabethB.....would your program work well with the I See Sam readers or something else for adults needing to learn to read?  I ran into a friend today that teaches GED classes in the local jail.   They are looking for a special Ed interventionist to teach reading to the lowest scoring inmates.

They worked well together for for dd, but I wouldn't try using them with adult learners. They're horrifically dull!

I bought a couple of the old fashioned readers to have in hard copy, to use with my tutored lady, and we drill on individual syllables, work on multi-syllable words and read the story paragraphs for about 15 mins a few times per week.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

They worked well together for for dd, but I wouldn't try using them with adult learners. They're horrifically dull!

 

Additionally, some older learners can be hypersensitive about using material made for kids.

[Rosie_0801]

2 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Additionally, some older learners can be hypersensitive about using material made for kids.

 

My tutored lady and the guy who tends to watch our lessons seem to feel a few awesome points from reading out of books as old as the spellers. Yay for awesome points.

[Tanaqui]

?

I figured that if this was a problem with your students you'd have found an alternative!

[ElizabethB]

1 hour ago, Tanaqui said:

 

Additionally, some older learners can be hypersensitive about using material made for kids.

Some are, some aren't.  Some like it, they keep copies and read to their kids or grandkids!

The worst age for being hypersensitive is the middle school years, actually.  Young kids, fine with whatever; old enough to realize there is a problem and be mature about using whatever to fix it, fine with anything, on average.  I have a ton of stuff so can cater to whatever kind of material they want and need.