Delightful Reading 2 – Gaps?

Hi, Thank you for reaching out with your feedback and questions about “Delightful Reading, Level 2” as well as this whole series. We are happy to hear that you have enjoyed this series with your child so far and we are happy to answer any questions that you have about it!

In keeping with Charlotte Mason’s approach to teaching reading, the “Delightful Reading” kits use a basic phonics approach. As you mention, there are so many phonics rules out there and not every single one is taught in this approach. This approach uses the basic phonics rules, sight words, word building, and practice with previously learned words. This blogpost shares some additional details on this approach to teaching reading.

https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/a-variety-of-tools-for-teaching-reading/

In many of the examples that you share, each of those letter combinations are going to be pronounced differently depending on the word that they appear in. As you transition to “Delightful Reading, Level 3: From Words to Books” you will notice that words continue to be taught systematically by word endings with notes as there are exceptions with pronunciation within a word list. So many of these example letter combinations that you have given appear at different points in the word and therefore will be taught as exceptions to pronunciation as they come up. As they can make so many different sounds, the approach taken is teaching the pronunciation of the word as it comes up in the context of reading that word. English is a challenging language because of all of these differences in pronunciation and exceptions to sound and spelling rules, therefore it would be a challenge and hard to engage our students in learning every single rule. This approach balances learning the functional rules that are most common and will come up often as the student is reading. Certainly, if you feel there are patterns you are seeing and you feel that it would be helpful to your student to point those out, you can do so and practice with those words.

Personally, I have used this series to teach my three oldest children to read and I have another student in process with these kits. I have found that the approach taken with the “Delightful Reading” kits has been sufficient for them to transition to continued practice using the “Pathway Readers” and then on to reading other books as they were ready. I did not personally feel like it left gaps that I needed to fill in. As words came up that they were uncertain of, I would allow them to attempt the word; I would highlight the vowel rules or the two different sounds that consonant can make; and I would model the word for them if I felt it wasn’t one they could decipher with these supports or if they asked for my help. Specifically in “Delightful Reading, Level 3” there are familiar word endings used in the “more sentences you can read” section and if they struggled with that part, I would point them back to the word that was modeled in the passage that they could typically still read and we would walk through: what does the word ending say if you take off the beginning sounds, then add the new sounds, and they could typically come up with the new word on their own.