I have just started homeschooling a second grader who is having problems with reading. The Sylvan Learning Center, where we enrolled her last year, is teaching her phonics. She is not doing very well learning phonics. She is naturally a sight reader. Should I keep pushing the phonics here at home? Or not? What reading programs do you recommend? She is still at the "emergent reader" stage. Please help and God bless. Candace
Two ideas for you... 1. Explode the Code if you would like a workbook style study for your girl. 2. Ringbound Reading if you would like a flashcard style study. http://www.birdseedbooksforkids.com/reviews.html Herre is a site with some good reviews. I have found it helpful for different subjects. http://www.cathyduffyreviews.com/phonics_reading/phonics-reading-index.htm
My inclination is to say, let Sylvan keep teaching the phonics, and at home you can do sight word things, like teaching her the Dolch list (you can find it online) by flash cards, and read books that have lots of repetition so she sees the same words often. I believe there are readers (which you could look for online) that are based on the Dolch word list. The Dolch words won't get you tremendously far, but they are necessary because the are high-frequency words. Some kids begin to "get" the phonics better when they can apply them to words they've already learned by sight.
Hi I don't know if this will help or not, but I've heard that that Dianne Craft info. can help a reader who prefers sight reading or is struggling. Here is a website... http://stores.diannecraft.org/Detail.bok?no=53 My son has a difficult time with phonics (word attack skills/chunking etc.) and prefers sight/whole word reading. I'm trying to help help him. We just practice reading every day. My son "should" be at about a 3rd grade level, but he's still at an early 2nd grade level. I wish you all the best with your daughter and her reading!
I'll second the Explode the Code option. I love it. It's not for everyone, though. It has a lot of writing (some of which you can skip), but once you get the lesson down, you can move on. If you're having trouble with a lesson, you can find extra practice in the half-level book (for example... book 2.5 is extra practice for book 2). Abeka is also a good, solid option, but I personally don't like it. That's just me. There's way too much "stuff" involved because it's designed for private school classrooms rather than single homeschool students. It's a great curriculum for a lot of people, though. Most of the people I know from church use it.
My oldest was a sight reader. She started out in ps and it was very frustrating for the teacher because she just didn't "get" phonics. She used to tell us, "I can't read that word, I haven't learned it yet." Her first grade teacher understood that some kids do not read phonetically and we started really pushing sight words. We did Dolch words and readers that repeated high frequency words (Dick and Jane books are great). Once she became more confident, she took off.
