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Phonic Pathways help


ca06c
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DD is coming out of a Montessori primary program. She has mastered phonograms and CVC words and was beginning to read words beginning with consonant blends. She had read through the first set of BOB books and was reading the Kindergarten sight word set at home. We had worked through the Explode the Code primers and ETC book 1 at home.

I wanted to use Phonic Pathways + ETC + readers this upcoming year but I'm stuck on where to jump in with Phonic Pathways. She is far past most of the CVC pages, but I still went back and tried reviewing the two letter blends in the beginning of the book with her and she was very frustrated with them. She sounds out individual letters in her head when reading and then says the word out loud perfectly blended without issue and she continued to do this even after spending time with the two letter blends. Meaning, she can easily read "se" but when she sees the word "set" she is not reading it se-t in her head but rather s-e-t - but the end product that she vocalizes is blended. I understand how the former leads to fluency faster but am I wrong to think that she will get there just the same with repeated exposure? Can I move on to a part of the book that is more aligned with the level of reading she's at? I feel like drilling these two letter blends are really dampening her enjoyment of the subject. To be clear, not the reading of them so much as the way PP wants them read. Also, these are two-letter blends for CVC words: se, pe, mu, ba, ra, and so on, not cl, bl, gl, cr, etc. which she had already been working on in her Montessori class. 

Or do I just drop PP altogether if the issue is less the pacing or approach of the book and more the style - which unlike ETC, the Montessori language work, or even BOB Books isn't very purposeful (as in, it's just reading words on a page with nothing to connect it to or story line to follow) - and stick to ETC, early readers, and some of the Montessori language work for supplement?

Thanks in advance. 

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I suggest you skip ahead to the lessons in Phonics Pathways of where she is at.

Do not make her suffer because she haz blending down and doesn't "get" a blending exercise meant to develop the very skill she has already mastered.

I would go ahead to her actual phonic level. You could use a bookmark and have her work in 3 sections simultaneously: have her read 1 page of cvc, 1 page of ccvc and 1 page of cvcc each day.

If she can read 'sip' and 'wig', then she can read 'ship' and 'wish' also.

Once kids have cracked the code--they sometimes benefit from going faster through the mundane until they hit something that stalls them.

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4 hours ago, mathmarm said:

I suggest you skip ahead to the lessons in Phonics Pathways of where she is at.

Do not make her suffer because she haz blending down and doesn't "get" a blending exercise meant to develop the very skill she has already mastered.

I would go ahead to her actual phonic level. You could use a bookmark and have her work in 3 sections simultaneously: have her read 1 page of cvc, 1 page of ccvc and 1 page of cvcc each day.

If she can read 'sip' and 'wig', then she can read 'ship' and 'wish' also.

Once kids have cracked the code--they sometimes benefit from going faster through the mundane until they hit something that stalls them.

 

Exactly what I would say.  

PP is really good at helping struggling blenders, so it spends a lot of time working on that blending technique.  Your dd doesn't need that, so just skip ahead.  I love PP exactly because you can speed it up or slow it down so easily.  

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Definitely skip the CV blends! Beginning readers sound out CVC words like "set" as "s-e-t". More skilled readers read "s-et". I have no idea why Phonics Pathways teaches "se-t", but it is not in line with current research on reading development. We began Phonics Pathways when my Ds was reading CVC words but needed more practice, so we started with the CVC section and carried on from there. When it asked him to blend words using the "se-t" method, we just skipped that step. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

and... I'm back. We skipped ahead but PP is still not working out for us. We seem to have much more success with ETC and beginning readers, but I worry it's not comprehensive enough? Can anyone speak to this? 

If not, what other reading programs are similar to ETC but more comprehensive? I'm eyeing LOE but I worry it may be too involved. I'd like something scripted but streamlined. 

I tried 100 EZ Lessons and TOPGTR and they didn't work out for us either. Maybe I need to revisit them though, but she seems to do much better with purposeful or contextual reading. 

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If you are game to try something see if this freebie is any help. I really like it and perhaps it will work for you http://donpotter.net/pdf/blend_phonics_stories.pdf

If you are eyeing LOE, also look into all about reading and barefoot meanderings reading and spelling through literature. 

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My DD hated Phonics Pathways. She kept telling me to get rid of the book. My friend used PP with all three of her kids no problem. Mine was different. 

She was the same as your daughter she liked to sound out s-a-t. She didn't consider the two letter blends as words and refused to do it. She told me she wanted to read "real words". The funny thing is she gets it. She just knew how to do it. I used blend phonics with her and a hodge podge of other things, for awhile.

She is reading very well now. We are ending 1st grade soon and she is reading "Little House on the Prairie " series.

I started her recently on Traditional Spelling from Memoria Press. I like how they focus on phonics and spelling rules more than memorization. It works with how her brain does and she is picking it up fast.

 

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On 5/30/2020 at 3:47 AM, ca06c said:

and... I'm back. We skipped ahead but PP is still not working out for us. We seem to have much more success with ETC and beginning readers, but I worry it's not comprehensive enough? Can anyone speak to this? but she seems to do much better with purposeful or contextual reading. 

She can blend. She can and does decode words reliably, but she hates reading phonics drills? If that's correct then I would move over to contextual reading. Most beginning phonics programs include stories/readers, but some series do a better job than others.

We used a lot of "Decodables". You can search on Amazon for Decodables. If you go with a school publisher, such as Open Court, Scott Foresman, Houghton Mifflin, you can get a book of "booklets" that you can make for her.

If you want something more durable, then you can purchase something like The SRA Beginning Reading Series which is from the 60s and built around progressively sophisticated phonetically controlled readers at every level. There are 7 books, in 6-levels
A - A Pig Can Jig pt 1 and 2 (level A has 2 books, every other level has a 1 book.)
B - A Hen in a Fox's Den
C - Six Ducks in a Pond
D - A King on a Swing
E - Kittens and Children
F - The Purple Turtle

The links are to eBay, but you can also find them on Amazon, Abebooks, etc...Since you know how to teach reading, you don't need the workbooks or teachers guides (their expensive and hard to find anyway)

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On 5/30/2020 at 10:47 AM, ca06c said:

and... I'm back. We skipped ahead but PP is still not working out for us. We seem to have much more success with ETC and beginning readers, but I worry it's not comprehensive enough? Can anyone speak to this? 

If not, what other reading programs are similar to ETC but more comprehensive? I'm eyeing LOE but I worry it may be too involved. I'd like something scripted but streamlined. 

I tried 100 EZ Lessons and TOPGTR and they didn't work out for us either. Maybe I need to revisit them though, but she seems to do much better with purposeful or contextual reading. 

For us ETC alone would not have been enough. It goes quickly. And didn't give enough reading practice until book 7- it had a paragraph to read. 

What isn't working? Just reading words and then the silly sentences? My son took a while to get over that he needed to do that. But I do like that PP has funny little sentences to read the words in. So it isn't just a long list of words like AlphaPhonics. For us PP worked when I put tabs on several different pages, then we only worked through half the page of each I had tabbed. So we usually worked through 3 different sounds. I would state the rule that was at the top of the page until DS could state it. Then we would flip way back and do oral spelling of words he could easily read. We used Bob books and ETC behind where we were for a different format. 

CLE Learning to Read is workbook format and more comprehensive. My sil uses it. It was way too workbooky for us. But it is very well done. And it comes with readers and the workbooks are very very easy to use. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

... guess who’s back, back again ...

apparently, I refuse to let this thread die. 

We sat with BOB books and Progressive Phonics for a bit. Revisited OPGTR and actually really into it this time around, though we’d be picking up more or less half way through the book. 
 

my plan now is to do some review using OPGTR to get her used to the flow. And use OPGTR with readers and maybe also Progressive Phonics. Possibly throw in some ETC. Currently a little over a quarter way through ETC 2 but starting to tire of the wacky illustrations. Was eyeing the FSR books from Memoria Press - book D would be a good review and E would be new material for her. Do these pair well with OPGTR or would they be overkill. Or if I like FSR should I just consider picking up Classical Phonics instead of OPGTR? 

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How old? 

It is ok and normal to have a time where you are just stuck in one stage. Children don't always move along each week reading harder and harder material. 

There are many many many options to pick from to get the job done. Finding ways to make it fun takes some work. Most phonics books are not fun, the ones that are fun cost a lot. 

Ways to add fun- write a book together with words your child can read and spell. Use shaving cream and have your child write in the bathtub blends- ch, th, wh, ing and so forth. Playdough and letter stamps. Write out cards that have instructions- sit on the floor, stand on the rug. Have a scavenger hunt with clues to a snack or prize. 

You may need to just stick it out for a few months at the level your child is at and slowly add more. Just add some fun ways to work on reading. 

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21 minutes ago, lulalu said:

How old? 

It is ok and normal to have a time where you are just stuck in one stage. Children don't always move along each week reading harder and harder material. 

There are many many many options to pick from to get the job done. Finding ways to make it fun takes some work. Most phonics books are not fun, the ones that are fun cost a lot. 

Ways to add fun- write a book together with words your child can read and spell. Use shaving cream and have your child write in the bathtub blends- ch, th, wh, ing and so forth. Playdough and letter stamps. Write out cards that have instructions- sit on the floor, stand on the rug. Have a scavenger hunt with clues to a snack or prize. 

You may need to just stick it out for a few months at the level your child is at and slowly add more. Just add some fun ways to work on reading. 

This. Ds6 spent 6-7 months on three and four letter words. (I am so glad we homeschool. I'm pretty sure if he was in ps, he would've felt like he was stupid.) Within the past month or two, he is solidly reading all the things he wants to read. He can certainly read Frog & Toad, as well as all the graphic novels that litter the house.

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Thanks all - we're perfectly fine taking our time. The issue was more so finding materials that were a good fit and I think we've done that with OPGTR but I'm still interested in Classical Phonics and their supplements and was interested in some feedback regarding those. 

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