Not sure where to post this: Questions about teaching reading

I posted what I have pasted below awhile back about my reading journey with my daughter. To summarize it, we basically did CM style lessons, but I extended the word building in word families (as is incorporated into the Delightful Reading lessons) into groups of words with the same phonograms to get more phonics knowledge in there. I personally think phonics is important and while there is some gentle phonics in DR, it didn’t quite go far enough for me. Now that she is reading well, we are using the phonics-based spelling program All About Spelling to address any phonics gaps that we have. While I do think phonics rules and such are important tools, it is also important to remember that a)they are only tools, not ends in and of themselves and b) are best learned in a meaningful context rather than an isolated list of words. If you are feeling out of your league in teaching reading, I highly reccommend Ruth Beechick’s book The 3 R’s – she has a whole section on gently and progressively teaching reading without a fancy program, and has a very “Mama, you really CAN DO THIS” tone to it. I found it very helpful when we got stuck around the same place it sounds you are now.

Hope some of this is helpful!

Jen

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We had started with a phonics book (Phonics Pathways) which we got really bored/bogged down with about the time she was reading 3 and 4 letter short vowel words. So, we dumped that in favor of a more organic approach that was a combination of CM ideas and Ruth Beechick’s ideas from The 3 R’s. (Great book BTW, if you’ve not read it.) Basically, we would read a page or 2 from a Dick and Jane book (any primer type reader or even Dr Suess book would work for this), if we came across words that she didn’t know I would just tell her what they were and she would essentially learn them as sight words. Then later, we’d get our letter tiles out on the table and take one of the new “sight words” she had learned and form other words with the same sounds. (I would still refer to our phonics book to get lists of words with the same sound/phonograms in them.) She made a tremendous amount of progress this way! I think it was in part that she was learning new words in the midst of a meaningful context. She too had struggled with the idea of the long vowel rule when I presented it to her as a rule, but after she had learned a few long vowel words (like Jane, here, etc) as sight words, she picked right up on it. When the DR kit became available, I bought it because it was built on a similar premise, but liked that it would have everything laid out for me. So, we started with that. Many things I do like about it (ease of use one of those things, and the engaging CM style format), and dd loved it. However, I recently decided to discontinue it. The biggest reason for that is that I felt we were spending too much time on word families that she knew already, and not enough time with the word families/phonograms that she is still uncomfortable with. I also kind of wanted it to have more of a phonogram-based approach to phonics as opposed to a word-families approach. I felt like it would be a better use of our time to just continue to read books together, little bits at a time, and work through the sounds she still needed help with on an individual basis (using the approach we were using before). If that makes sense. I will probably hang on to the DR program and try it again with my son when he is ready to start reading. But, I think it will be better suited for someone starting from the beginning rather than using it for a ‘gap-filler’.

Blessings,

Jen

I have three very strong readers (16, 15, 8) and one just learning to read. We do not use sight words and they have done beautfully without them. A year or more ago I gave dd#3 the complete sight word list to see how many she knew. She had not problem with any of them. Yet she has never been taught to memorize words only to analyze them. Even words like “said” are not true sight words as it is a past tense of say and the “i” replaces the “y” inside a word. (Y is known as the stand-in I.)

To me using sight words is like teaching a person to memorize math formulas without an understanding of what he/she is doing and it can actually cause confusion. It passes on the message that sometimes we guess at a word and sometimes we sound them out. 

@Delkroemer asked “Yet, I worry about the CM method because from what I understand it is not teaching phonics, correct?”

I don’t think that this is correct.  In Volume 1 of CM’s series, she says you should be alternating one day of phonics with one day of ‘reading at sight’.  (see the section on reading starting on pg 199) With my 2 that have already learned to read, this was a great balance.

Here is my view about phonics and sight reading, based on many years helping hundreds of struggling readers (at Sylvan Learning Centre).  Good readers use a variety of skills.  When children try to rely on one approach, they struggle. 

We need learn to recognize words that are familiar (ie. sight words), so that we don’t have to decode them every time, but we also need phonics to be able to decode new words.  Often we use a combination of the skills simultaneously.  When we come across an unfamiliar word, we look to see if we recognize any of it.  The thought process goes something like this (although not necessarily consciously, and usually very quickly): 

“Is it a compound word made up of words I already know?  Is there a base word that I know with prefixes/suffixes added?  Do any sections look familiar?  Can I break it up into parts I know?” 

Then we start applying knowledge of phonics patterns to the rest.  We also think about how the word fits into the sentence and/or paragraph, to see if there are any context clues.  We try a few words out to see which ones fit both the context and the letters on the page.

Of course, with experienced readers, all this is an almost instantaneous process, so that we don’t even notice doing it.  All the strategies are important, however.  Some children pick some of them up automatically, some need direct instruction.  CM definitely talked about using and teaching many strategies, and she didn’t leave phonics out.  I love how she blends all the skills into one overall approach to teaching reading.  I highly recommend reading that section of Volume 1.

Joanne