What do you do after completing Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons?

[MrsRobinson]

After working through all 100 lessons and the majority of the book list in the back of 100 Easy Lessons, what did you move on to next?

A more advanced phonics program? Supplements of some kind? Or did you switch gears to language arts with spelling and grammar lessons? If you did the latter, what did reading look like for your dc at that point? 

I am probably okay in this area, I just hear things like "fluency" and "comprehension" thrown around and I get nervous.

Ds was reading a paragraph to me the other day and I asked a question about it and he said, "I have no idea what I just read." Granted, it was a paragraph from an article written to adults (this was not a school lesson) so we are probably fine but still, us homeschool moms like to double check we aren't missing anything! 😊

[HomeAgain]

We just read.  I picked books I thought he would like.  After a while we gravitated to the Elson readers.  It was a nice break before we started spelling and grammar and all the rest of language arts.

[forty-two]

Once my kids took off with reading - meaning they could apply their phonics knowledge to decode words they hadn't explicitly learned - basically, that they could read any word in their spoken vocabulary - I did the following:
*Started spelling at beginning phonics levels (CVC, blends)
*Continued phonics readers, at medium phonics levels (digraphs, second sounds, two syllable words, common suffixes)
*In 3rd/4th grade, started advanced phonics - aka learning to decode unfamiliar multi-syllable words.

I also started Writing With Ease at that point, as well.

Eta: I tend to stop with phonics readers once they have the reading stamina and interest to do 30-45 min of silent reading in non-twaddle books plus they can read aloud smoothly and well.

Edited January 16, 2019 by forty-two

[Bluegoat]

For a while we just practiced reading, with some reading exercises that built on phonics - but practice reading has been most important.

I would not do grammar until reading is well established. I probably would not do spelling either at that point.  

 

[MrsRobinson]

8 hours ago, forty-two said:

Once my kids took off with reading - meaning they could apply their phonics knowledge to decode words they hadn't explicitly learned - basically, that they could read any word in their spoken vocabulary - I did the following:
*Started spelling at beginning phonics levels (CVC, blends)
*Continued phonics readers, at medium phonics levels (digraphs, second sounds, two syllable words, common suffixes)
*In 3rd/4th grade, started advanced phonics - aka learning to decode unfamiliar multi-syllable words.

I also started Writing With Ease at that point, as well.

Eta: I tend to stop with phonics readers once they have the reading stamina and interest to do 30-45 min of silent reading in non-twaddle books plus they can read aloud smoothly and well.

Okay. This is helpful, the more I've thought about it today. I think we've done the first 2 asterisks. I'm pretty sure we are doing the 3rd asterisk now.

I know I sound flaky but I just have him read to me for 30 minutes a day. Usually we do three 10 min segments morning, afternoon, and evening. On a busy day we have to do two 15 minute time slots whenever we can get them in. And he chooses whatever he wants. So he could be reading anything. A graphic novel, a Highlights article, a chapter book about dragons or non fiction about dinosaurs (okay anything about dragons or dinosaurs!) So I'm trying to think about what he reads and what I'm correcting or explaining as he reads to figure out where he's at! 

Regarding your final point: he definitely reads for 30-45 minutes about dragons and I know he's comprehending it because he keeps me well informed on all the complicated plotlines! 😂 So I'm sure he can technically read non-twaddle but he 100% won't read any fiction that is not about dragons. I read lots of non twaddle out loud and he loves it all and asks me to read more than one chapter but he won't silently read those type of books himself at all.

The reading smoothly we need to work on for sure. I think reading aloud forces him to move much slower than his brain wants to. So he gets ahead with his eyes and brain and has to backtrack to let his voice catch up but then its a mess and it comes out as stuttering. Is this something that just improves gradually over time or is there something specific I need to teach him to do to help that? 

[ElizabethB]

Reading is too important to leave to chance!  I keep reviewing phonics at the beginning of the year for 3 years after they complete a good phonics program, and I keep teaching upper level multi-syllable phonics until they are reading at the 12th grade level.  Free with my syllables program, follow with other multi-syllable resources like Webster or Megawords or Marcia Henry's words.

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

Literacy is more highly correlated with earnings than IQ:
http://www.thephonicspage.org/On Phonics/profitable.html

And less than 25% of all Americans are reading at the proficient level, which I would judge to be somewhere around 12th grade level from the Adult Literacy sample questions I've seen.  They dropped the level above that, college level, and only 5% of Americans were reading at that level.

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

[MrsRobinson]

I wouldn't say I'm leaving his reading ability "to chance." I think his reading is very solid. We just can't seem to get his fluency to improve.

So I wondered maybe if it had to do with his reading ability or skills with phonics but after this thread, consulting the links and playing around with him this week with a few things, I think its more about the fact that he doesn't like to read aloud and I've been catering to that preference.

I am starting to increase the amount I make him read aloud to work on fluency. Thanks for the helpful links here, I appreciate it. 😊

[ElizabethB]

18 hours ago, MrsRobinson said:

I wouldn't say I'm leaving his reading ability "to chance." I think his reading is very solid. We just can't seem to get his fluency to improve.

So I wondered maybe if it had to do with his reading ability or skills with phonics but after this thread, consulting the links and playing around with him this week with a few things, I think its more about the fact that he doesn't like to read aloud and I've been catering to that preference.

I am starting to increase the amount I make him read aloud to work on fluency. Thanks for the helpful links here, I appreciate it. 😊

I feel very strongly about the subject after 24 years of tutoring students and just want to be sure everyone knows that there are upper level phonics skills, and that you should make sure your child is reading well for their age, even in the upper years!

Hisses' Reading Pathways have good fluency building pyramids:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787992895/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And Don Potter has some Blend Phonics fluency drills:

https://www.amazon.com/Blend-Phonics-Timed-Fluency-Drills/dp/153352033X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480027343&sr=1-1&keywords=blend+phonics+timed+fluency+drills+donald+potter

I also like working through the 1879 McGuffey readers, the difficult words are diacritically marked and defined so you practice them first in isolation and don't stumble on them when you get to the passage.  They also have passages from a variety of different genres. Since they are short, it is less work to read aloud, and you can alternate paragraphs at first to build up stamina. Free from Gutenberg press:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5671

Or, buy the set, the blue and orange ones:

https://www.amazon.com/McGuffeys-Eclectic-Readers-Set-Through/dp/0471294284/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1548101673&sr=8-5&keywords=mcguffey+readers

[MrsRobinson]

@ElizabethB Thanks So much! These look perfect!