Has anyone used this form of teaching instead of phonics? My 6 year old is not a phonics learner. He does know his alphabet sounds but will not sound out a word. We hit a wall whenever it's time for "phonics reading". He blends the words and then guesses or says the word, but adds invisible letters! I thought he had a reading problem...but now i think it's the phonics. Everything he learned to read, he did through sight. He can read the tv guide channel and all the sight words we have covered so far. He is at a 1st Grade reading level (had a reading/math assessment done online) so he is at his grade level. Is there a whole language reading curriculum/program available? It seems like most things are more phonics based, and just frustrates him. Right now i've just been winging it! lol. I take poems and books and make flash cards for them. We learn these words and once he learns them well he can read them anywhere, and read the books they came from.
I hate to be a downer, but every person I know who learned to read with "whole language" is a horrible reader and speller.
:lol:LOL it's ok, thanks for the honesty! I don't really remember learning to read, bit I always thought phonics would would be easy. Learn the sounds, blend, and boom, a word! Lol. I did find an article with some really good ideas for Visual-Spatial Learners on education.com. It is following the whole word approach, so i'll see how it goes.
Whole word should absolutely be a last resort. Not all 6 year olds are ready to read yet. Let him play around with starfall.com for 6-12 months and relax a bit. Both of my kids had a big jump when they started reading. For a while, I suspected they could read because they knew a lot of sight words, but they were purposely missing words that I knew they knew. I realized it's because they were afraid of failure and would rather pretend not to know something than to try, and prove they really didn't. In time, they both had the skills and confidence to take off on their own, reading everything in sight. Give it time.
Reading by sight is different from whole language. Whole language approaches the different aspects of language (including phonics) through the context of the sentence. Sight words are memorization. Schools used the Dick and Jane series from the 1930s through the 1970s. Many people who used that method went on to read fine. I just switched to Dick and Jane readers for my youngest. You can read many of the old readers online at openlibrary.com. I was just looking at some of them and I remembered the stories from childhood. I learned to read without phonics. I had no problem with reading as a child through graduate school and adulthood. It could be his age, but from your description it sounds like you may have a visual leaner on your hands (I have one, maybe two of them). I have a child who really struggled with phonics and picked up reading quite well. I just kept working with the phonics until we completed a program and then moved to pattern-based or phonics-based spelling. If the whole word method is working, I would continue that and do a full separate phonics program at whatever pace your child can do. Don't expect the phonics to match his reading ability. Phonics trailed way behind my visual-spatial learner's reading ability. Or, I might teach phonics a bit backwards using a little of the whole language method where you go over the new memorized words explaining the phonics in the word.
@2littleboys-I was thinking of starfall. He didn't seem interested the few times he has been on. He liked the math, but not the reading! I'm going to bring it up again and see what he thinks. My 3yo likes it a lot! @Embassy-Thanks for your reply! I do think he is a visual learner. Our phonics is trailing a bit behind his reading ability as well, but we are seeing progress so I guess it's working lol
I worked in public school for 20 years, and in all that time, I found only ONE little boy who did not seem able to learn phonics. Every other child I ever worked with learned phonics first and (eventually) did fine. I would highly suggest that the known words be used to teach the phonics, so that both can be absorbed. I forget whether it was Sam Blumenfeld or Rudolf Flesch who said that learning whole words first by sight "rewires" the brain so that it makes phonics learning more difficult, but that learning phonics first was more to be preferred, so that you can sound out any word you encounter instead of having to learn every single word in the English language...
As said before, Whole Language and Whole Word are NOT the same, and are often confused! They are absolutely DIFFERENT!!! Whole Language is awesome!!! I really can't say enough about it. And it's what 90% of elementary teachers used without knowing it, before the government got involved. Whole language believes that phonics is an essential part of learning to read, but it ONLY a part. English has so many exceptions to the phonics rules!!! Contextual clues also play a part. For example, if you see the word READ in isolation, you will probably give it a long E sound. But in the sentence I READ A BOOK, it has a short E sound. You'd only know that from the context. And there are some words, many of them sight words, that you need to just learn "whole word" because they defy phonics rules. Whole language involves ALL aspects of language, not just reading. It includes writing and grammar as well. It also includes using literature to teach, rather than basal readers. For this reason alone, I am convinced that Charlotte Mason would be a Whole Language proponent! It pushes teaching IN CONTEXT, not in isolation. I took a workshop on Whole Language many years ago. It really revolutionized how I taught, and my kids really excelled with it. But again, I AM NOT SAYING TO THROW OUT PHONICS!!! PHONICS IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL TO READING!!!
My kids had no interest in starfall either. We bought a subscription to ReadingEggs and it helped tremendously!!!
My son is six and is just starting to sound words out. (Before a couple of weeks ago he couldn't even do that.) I was told not to worry about it, the blending of letters into words is a developmental milestone and kids reach it at different ages. I was really worried until I remembered my oldest couldn't read until about halfway through kindergarten and he started PS kinder at 6..... (my boys have tendencies similar to each other.)
I never even thought about that! I suppose we also teach whole language (as do most people?). But I agree... phonics is an essential part of learning to read as well.
When Faythe was little, I remember have a long conversation with a kindergarten teacher from my church while nursing. We got talking about curriculum, etc. I had just quit teaching, and we were discussing a math workshop I had taken. This led to a conversation on Whole Language, and it turned out that this gal had been trained in it. She was amazed that I was a homeschooler, but was also a proponent for Whole Language, because all the homeschoolers she meant felt it was of the devil :wink:. She also never used the phrase "whole language" in her classroom, because it would upset parents. And she said she'd have parents come in, thinking she "didn't do" phonics. When they would ask, she would tell them that phonics was essential to being able to read. What she DIDN'T do was an intense dwelling on phonic skills.
Not that I know of. And to be quite honest, the workshop I took was before I was married, and I've been married 21 years! It's a lot of "common sense" stuff. Like for preschoolers, it's pointing out signs that start with a certain letter. Or giving them your grocery list and having them check off the items. ("Here's bananas. Can you mark off the word that starts with the "b" sound?") It's having them draw a picture and telling you about it, and you writing what they say. And it's using "invented spelling" to encourage the writing process. which My instructor preferred calling this "temporary spelling" because she wanted it clear to the child that it's OK to guess it phonically when you're trying to write, but you must eventually go back and make the corrections. It means using real books to teach reading. For my classroom, it meant trying to get my kids to understand that what we did in Reading Class was transferable outside of that class. I did that by commenting when we went to the library, "OH!!! Here's a book by Arnold Lobel! That's who wrote the Frog and Toad book we just finished! You might really like this one!" It means using "living books" instead of textbooks for teaching the content areas. It might mean (speaking phonics here!) copying a page from the book and circling every word with a "long A" sound, and perhaps recording all the different spelling for that sound. You could do some math, and graph the number of times each is used. Or you could then come up with one or two additional words for each spelling pattern. (But the idea is that it comes originally from a story, not from a worksheet.)
Thanks ladies. I'm going to research about whole language some more as well. We have been using a scholastic program with good progress, but today he asked if I could help him learn to read by using interesting books instead...like sharks! So i'm going to see what I can do!
You might have him "write his own" books then. Pick a topic (like SHARKS). Go on-line and have him find pictures of sharks. Then glue a picture on a page (or he can draw if he wants!), and have him write a sentence or two about each picture. Or he can tell you what he wants to say, or you can write it and he can copy it (depending on his current level!). Then staple your pages together. Also look into Lap Booking.
Good ideas Jackie! He actually said that this morning. He wants to write a chapter book, but i have to write it while he tells it to me, and he will illustrate. I will definitely use the idea, and lapbooks are a great idea too. Thanks!
Phonics is immensely essential for any learning to read program. It systematically builds from letters to sounds, then to words and sentences, and ultimately to reading fluency. We had signed up for a 30 days free trial before really committing to any phonics program. It really does help.
ABSOLUTELY!!! But it is only ONE PART of reading. The other components are also essential. Am glad you found something that has worked for you!!!
Hello My name is Dr. Suki and I came across your site accidentally and was interested in replying to Jena about the differences in reading programs, phonics vs whole language. I was unable to find her question, but I have been a teacher for over 30 years and currently a teacher educator at a university. I also teach my own literacy program bringing children to reading proficiency in 14 days for children with reading challenges. So I hope to find her question so I am able to respond to her. I am happy to answer any question or provide resources for parents.
