I was talking with a lady yesterday that her child has some LD and is ADHD and she is in ps. the mother told me that Indiana ps do not teach phonics anymore. They teach you to read by memorizing the words! Does this seem crazy to anyone else?? I mean yea some words that may work for ( I, is, the ,by, etc) but what if they come across a word they dont know -- they will not be able to sound it out?? What if any logic is behind this??? Jill
It is different and in the long run it helps to know how to go to a dictionary to sound out words you don't know. But that being said I learned to read by the sight method when I was 4 years old. My mom read to me a lot. I wasn't introduced to phonics until I was in the 3rd grade and that really took me for a spin. I was confused as to these new rules I was supposed to apply to reading words. Still it is easier for me now to hear a new word and put it to memory rather than to try to sound it out myself from a dictionary. I think children learn differently and phonics maybe good for one child and not another! You have to figure out what works for your child. Laura earthmomma
I've heard people make comments like that before. It's extremely hard for me to believe that they are only teaching reading by sight. In kindergarten, they usually start with teaching sight words and letter sounds. In first, they move on to more phonics lessons and more sight words. I really think that lady misunderstood. I bet they are using both methods....I really can't see only learning to read by sight. If you did do that there would be so many words out there you could never read since you had not heard it pronounced and spelled for you. KWIM?
Some kids with ld problems can't hear and apply the sounds. It is a processing disorder. I know I live with one and it does make reading very hard.
I know for a fact that here in Michigan some schools are teaching to read by site. My girlfriend thought she was in a good school district and was shocked to see what her daughter was learning. In k-5 her daughter came home with site papers. They had all the words next to pictures of them so that the kids could "read" them. My friend went to the teacher as any concerned parent would. The teacher said it would get better that this was just the begining of school. So in February of the same school year her daughter still could not read unless they were words she was taught to recognize. Other schools around here are teaching phonics, some are not. It was shocking to see the papers from one of the "good schools" though. I would not have believed it had I not seen it. My friend is the one who told us the pros/cons of homeschooling. Her daughter can now read, but it took a long time in teaching her how to read and not recognize the words. Weird. Very, very weird.
My 5 yr old is "learning" to read with the Dick and Jane books. My mom gave him a set this summer, and today he finished reading a 193 page book! He read the last few stories to his grandparents today, and they were surprised. His favorite word is "something"- he will even tell you it is a compound word. But hand him an early reader and he struggles and struggles. I am slowly incorporating the phonics readings (we call it a school subject) using Noah Websters Reading Handbook... he just learns completely different from his brothers. He knows his alphabet, and letter sounds, he just prefers to memorize words. I asked him if 193 is more or less than 200, and he answered less. Then his grandma asked him how many less and a few seconds later he said, "7". So I know he is learning, I just have to be patient for the phonics to catch up to the sight! momx3
hmmm... Most of the schools around here seem to be teaching a mixture of sight and phonics. I could not imagine only working with sight words and I have to say I was rather annoyed when my son came home from kindergarden with a list of words that he needed to know by sight by the end of the year. I can see it with some high frequency words but not for everything. It fortunately has never been a real concern of ours though as my son was reading by the time he started kindergarden and is now reading at a 6th grade level easily according to the districts testing.
I learned to read by sight words only. I read fast and with good comprehension. When I encountered new words I was taught to guess by using context clues or look it up in a dictionary and figure it out based on the definition. If I was still baffled I was allowed to ask an adult. I remember being really annoyed that my teacher felt I needed to know the name of the letters. I thought that was a rather stupid thing to have to learn. I also remember driving my mom nuts cause I'd try to read medical journals and want her to tell me words constantly, especially when I found the awesome BIG word phrases like "Symptoms include constipation and intestinal discomfort." :mrgreen: For some reason, momx3, 'something' was always one of my favorite words too. LOL I will always remember my introduction to phonics. I was in fifth grade (new school), in the top reading group in my class and found a word that had me totally lost. I asked the teacher what it was and she told me to sound it out. "Huh?", was my well educated reply. She gave me a 5 min phonics lesson which I thought was the neatest thing since sliced bread. I went home and told my mom... It never occured to me before that the letter ment anything at all, they just made a diffrent kind of pictures. I never did really learn more than that 5 min lesson on phonics. The way words are sounded out in dictionaries might as well be greek as far as I can tell. I did pick up after that that there is some sort of rhyme and reason to it all. I just natuarally picked up the sounds that letters make once I knew they DID make specific sounds. I can't, however claim to know the phonics rules, just the basic letter sounds. I'm using the book "teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" and It's way more phonics than *I* ever learned, but I have read a few reviews of the books and most of the complaints about it were that it leaves out lots of phonics rules. I think if you make anything have too many rules it sucks the fun out of it, but that is just my opinion. Advantages of sight reading: -Fast reading speed -great reading comprehension (kids don't forget the first three words they read while they are sounding out the last 4.) -large vocabulary, little kids seems to memorize easily so they can memorize lots of words quickly. -Being able to read early and fast with good comprehension made reading FUN! Disadvantages of sight reading: -a, e, o and c are similar shapes. So are d, b and h (there are others like these sets as well!) So I mix them up sometimes, even now. Makes for lousy spelling. -kids resist learning the letters individually (they don't get the point to it) -they never how how to pronounce words from just looking at them alone About spelling... I see lots of jokes about phonics creating bad spelling .. i.e. "Huked on phoniks wurked 4 me!" or something like that. Sight reading was blamed for my bad spelling.... Maybe spelling is just hard no matter what! I use spell checks alot. Also, I have to read everything after I'm done typing it. Looking for words that look funny. Then when I find one that "looks funny" I know it's wrong but often don't know what vowel should be in there! (rarely mix up i's and u's but a and e are occasionally hard.)
Ya know, I hardly know any of the phonics rules by heart. Yet, I learned to read and read very well. I know we were taught them but somehow they just didn't stick. So, I started dd off early...in 1st with phonics lessons. I was truly shocked at all the rules. She will continue with phonics I think until 5th or 6th. I was surprised it went to those grades. Amazing what you learn when you homeschool!
This is totally off the topic...just an observation. In Syele's last post she mentioned not learning phonics till 5th grade and she picked it up in 5 minutes. For all who dispair about their 1st grader being "behind" in reading....the older they get the more cognitively advanced they become and they WILL learn to read...it's just a matter of time so RELAX! (self-reminder, really :lol: ) Now on-topic....when ds was in ps they used a combination of phonics and sight words....mostly sight words in the early elementary. Ds was more interested in looking at encyclopedias than "Reader Rabbit" insanely stupid and dumbed down sight word stories. They tested him in 2nd grade at a first grade reading level but at home he was reading dictionaries. Turns out their sight word tests were all computerized with a visible clock ticking away in the corner of the screen :shock:--DUH!!! Take a young, bored boy and combine him with Tourette's Syndrome and see how far ya get on a timed computerized test with a ticker up in the corner. Anyway, he was not at all a sight word kinda kid and when they gave him a non-computerized phonics based test for higher grade levels he tested at about 5th grade (while still in 2nd). Long story short, it depends on the kid.
Okay call me crazy. I just wonder how you do a word if their isn't anyone around to tell what that word is. I learned on phonics and taught Vicki on phonics except sight words. She takes big words and sounds them out. I guess some people do things different but I couldn't do that.
I'm putting on my Educator's Cap now, LOL! First of all, I've not read every word of every post here, rather just skimmed over them. I believe it was Lorna that mentioned some special need children. I use to teach special kids, and with SOME I would use a program that was 100% sight words. It was very drill, where you showed a word, then asked the child to point to the word again and again. Lots of review with previously learned words. IT WORKS, but is NOT the best method for most children. We used it to teach very functional reading with kids that could not learn otherwise. As Lorna said, it's how their brain is wired. Keep in mind that Deaf children also cannot learn phonics very easily. How can you ask them to imitate sounds they cannot hear? Many of them also learn by sight methods. The program I mentioned above I've also seen used in Deaf classrooms. However, the average Deaf person reads only on a fourth-grade level. Someone also mentioned context clues. Phonics in and of itself won't teach a person to read. There are too many "exceptions" to the rules. READ is a fine example. How you pronounce, with a long or short /e/ is dependent on the context. Some words are pronounced one way for a noun and another if it's a verb. Again, context is necessary. I am a strong believer in Whole Language. It holds that ALL language is interconected, and we can't teach any one way by itself. It says that you take into account ALL clues...phonics, context, pictures, etc. to decide what something says. Unfortunately, most school districts that have supposedly adapted a Whole Language program only do bits and pieces, which has given it a bad name. Phillip is now working on phonic skills. He has a workbook, and I am teaching him words both in context and in isolation, but am expecting him to "sound them out". At the same time, he has to learn that TO does NOT have an /o/ sound, but a long /u/. It does NOT rhyme with NO and GO. Go figure! We are also reading "good books" together, and I'm trying to have him do other stuff "in context".
This is all my opinion but maybe it will help someone. trish, context and looking it up were the main focus points when I learned to read.... Asking someone was supposed top be a far last ditch effort if you are really confused. I like that Idea because it forces kids to really think about the words and what they might mean. I didn't have to ask adults about words very often (as long as I stayed out of the medical journals!) once I learned the main words because this was focused so much. So basically if they see a big word they don't know, first the kid reads the rest of the sentance or paragraph and thinks about what that all means and tries to figure out what would fit in that spot where the unknown word is if that dosn't give enough information to figure out what the word is you have the kid go look it up in the dictionary and use the definition to guess what the word is. I suppose kids who sight read need to have a strong foundation of vocabulary words that they really know the meanings of before introducing materials with new words. But I think Diffrent kids need diffrent styles of learning, some will pick up Sight reading so easily that they will memorize a favorite story you read them at bedtime first and watch as the words are read each night, then they will "pick out" those words from a new story and memorize it the same way. Pretty soon they can read all the words at their reading level because they have learned so many. These are the kids that you Sometimes hear of that just taught themselves to read! Other kids need to know the whys and hows to get into it and that's fine, it's just a diffrent learning style. I started with sight reading with my Daughter because that's what I knew well already. She didn't take to it well like I did, she wanted to memorize only the first two letters of the word and guess after that. I had to move to something that teaches the importance of the whole words for her. Another little boy I was teaching regularly was being taught phonics by his mom but when I played word games with him I quickly saw that he was ignoring the phonics rules and memorizing the words (He was trying to hide that fact so his mom would think he was learning all the rules!) I told her I thought she should at least start with some sight words for him and teach phonics later if she wanted him to use phonics so much. He would read faster and be happier. This is part of the beauty of Homeschooling! We can teach according to the kids learning styles and not have to do it the way that more kids learn best unless your kid is one of the "more kids"! I don't know much about Whole Language methods, I'm no expert. I just think that with any subject we should use the methods that fit the individual kids the best. Schools have to use what works for most kids because they have too many kids to have special programs set up for each individual kid. Personally, I see nothing wrong with having one sight reading program followed by a quick explanation of the idea behind phonics when the kid is older to fill it out for one child and the opposite (phonics with sight words thrown in for those odd words that don't fit the rule) for another kid so long as both kids learn best the way you teach them. Anyway this is one of the biggest reasons that I HS, I want my kids to be taught in styles and methods that are easiest for them. Teaching the way that isn't the easiest way for a particular child just makes them hate school instead of cultivating a love of learning.
I had this "issue" with my younger daughter....... I started out homeschooling 6 years ago and taught my oldest daughter to read using Abeka's phonics/language arts/reading program. I still think that it is a wonderful program and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good method to teach reading. However, my youngest daughter gave me a lesson in learning that not everyone wants to or does learn the same way! Jackie~ remember my frustration last year at this time, when Gracie wasn't one bit interested in taking the time to learn the phonics rules?! I had to learn to relax and follow her lead, instead of the other way around. Gracie wanted to read words by sight, so she basically taught herself to read. She knows all the letters and their sounds, she knows the blends now (2 consonents together) and she can sound a word out if need be. But, she'd much rather just ask me the word, and commit it to memory. So, maybe she's a "whole language" kind of girl- much like Jackie described. She just turned 5 and today she read an entire Junie B. Jones book. I know there are some words in there (such as "communication") that she has no idea what it says or means, but can get enough out of the rest of the sentence or paragraph to get the general idea. I noticed one of the words- "glove"- and commented to my mom that the English language is so stupid! If you follow the phonics rule that says "if there are 2 vowels in a word, the first one says it's name and the second one is silent" that wouldn't be glove as we know it! Alot of other languages, such a greek, are strictly phonetic languages, making them much easier than English to learn. Those of us trying to teach reading/phonics in English don't always realize what a tough job we have! SO, consider it an accomplishment when you teach a child to read!!
Yes! That is how I learned to read. After seeing "communication" in context several times I then knew and understood the word. many times when I tried to use words I would pronounce them wrong the first time just because I had only ever seen them in print, Sounds like your Daughter has a head start on that compared to me because She can sound out words on her own. Long words are especially great for sight readers because they are really no more of a struggle to learn than the short ones and it impresses Adults. That's why I liked reading those medical journals when I was a kid... I just wanted to know more long words. I was also excited about compound words because I recognized their smaller parts and it made one of those impressive long words.
