Phonics/vs sight reading

[Guest guest]

Hi Cate. My son is the same age with the same issue (sight-reading is

fantastic). We found out in Kindergarten that he can sound out the

first sound of any word, but not further. They are planning to try to

teach him the principles of phonics using " nonsense words " . This made

sense to me because he can sightread just about any simple word put in

front of him so will need these 'novel/nonsense' examples so that we

can know he is using phonics & not sight. Maybe you could use nonsense

words to 'test' where he is with this right now? I don't really know

how they will teach phonics but I believe they will use the same

principles used in the book " Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy

Lessons " . Good Luck!

[Guest guest]

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From: Melinda <melindasmith@...>

Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 06:52:05 -0400

Geoff <G.KUROWSKY@...>

Subject: Re: [ ] Phonics/vs sight reading

Kate,

This will be somewhat of a rant. You've been warned! We have been trying to

teach phonics to Mr. for two years. He's made some progress but has

done MUCH better with sight reading.

You need to check your child's phonemic awareness. We checked Mr. 's

twice and his was always absolutely terrible. And Mr. is very verbal,

he just can't hear the sounds and identify them easily. And certain sounds

sound the same to him. If your child has poor phonemic awarenes (i.e. can't

answer questions like, 'what sound does cat END with?' " , I would be very

very careful about going full bore with phonics.

I believe teaching my child (and perhaps yours) phonics is somewhat like

teaching a deaf child phonics and makes about as much sesnse.

We slowly slowly made our way through the first box of HOP (Hooked on

Phonics--its a good program and my nanny's grandkids are flying through it),

but it was very very hard for Mr . It took him FOREVER to differentiate

between " b " " d " and " p " --they literally sounded the same to him. We are on

box 2 and just stalled in the water--he has trouble with " ch " vs " sh " and

heaven help him with " sm " vs " sn " vs " sl " .

Meanwhile, he's FLYING through Edmark sight reading part 2. Are you familiar

with their program? If not, I'll send you some posts about it. It's

expensive, but it is very very good. It's very ABA and teaches in an

organized way hundreds of sight words. It also introduces actual READING

early on so that the child is reading stories and little exercises for

comprehension (i.e. the child reads a phrase or sentence and matches it to a

picture). I would get the print version though. You have to order the print

version directly from Edmark (the software is on the website...but I don't

recommend it). It was written for special needs children in the 1970s. It is

billed by the company as the most effective means of teaching special needs

children--so of course--no one has heard of it...

I would use a commercial sight reading program to teach sight reading,

because most people on their own teach their children to sight read nouns

first, which is pretty useless. Reading only uses a few nouns.

Anyway, the last time started crying because he couldn't decode some

words and said " I'm TRYING! " with tears streaming down his face, I decided

to de-emphasize phonics. Why make reading a nightmare when he enjoys sight

reading? We will still teach the phonics words (only the useful ones,

though) and read the HOP books (which are cute), but we are going to

concentrate on sight reading and comprehension for the most part.

By the way, Mr. did Fastforword and is now doing Stepforword as well

as home AIT in an effort to improve his " hearing " and phonemic awareness.

But none of that expensive " scientific " stuff has helped his phonics

ability.

Phonics, by the way, I believe is overrated in figuring out new words. Many,

many words in the (non-phonetic) English language are read by what I call

syllibication. When you come to a word like " become " , or " without " , or

" replicate " , you don't sound those out. You divide them into syllables and

read the syllables. That's how adults read. Mr. can do this very well,

so we decided to use that skill rather than torture him sounding out " chop

chill chug chip " which are rarely used anyway. Or worse, sounding out

nonsense words (a ludicrous waste of time).

If this post sounds like an anti-phonics rant, well it is. I have strong

feeling about the politics of " phonics " . It's as if every educational

professional was brainwashed at gunpoint. THOU SHALT TEACH PHONICS! (and

nothing else).

Bah. I never took a day of phonics in my life. If you saw what they pass off

as phonics in school, you would laugh. Mr. brought home a worksheet

from first grade that had a long list of phonics rules. At the bottom it

said:

" Learn these rules carefully. When you come to a new word, determine the

vowel sound first, then blend the initial consonant sound to the vowel sound

and add the final consonant sound. "

Huh? What does that have to do with reading?

Anyway, the ONLY reason we started Mr. down the phonics road (he was

already doing well with sight reading), is that much to my usual regret, I

listened to the " professionals " who kept saying he couldn't learn to read

any other way.

There are tests around for phonemic awareness. I don't have one anymore but

they aren't complicated and a SLP should be able to send you one.

Don't teach phonics just because it's the current educational fashion.

Melinda

Mom to Mr. and

on 8/7/01 10:20 PM, Geoff at G.KUROWSKY@... wrote:

>

> Hi,

>

> Just a question for those of you who have faced this subject. My son is 7,

> and has been sight reading for about two years. I has been suggested

> recently to go to a phonics based program since he would be theoretically

> able to acquire many more words sounding them out then just memorizing by

> sight. What have others experience been with phonics. I would like to try

> out the phonics approach BEFORE we invest in a costly system, and find out

> IF he can or cannot handle the sounding out of words. Is there a way to

> test IF this would be a viable approach for him?

>

> He is a very language challenged child, and I somehow cannot picture him

> figuring out how to sound out words, it seems too complicated for him. He

> is not conversational, but can read sight words. He also can read

> sentences, but does not yet have a comprehension of what the sentence means.

>

> Any thoughts on this from parents who have taught phonics?

>

> cate

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