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Phonics for better fluency
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DD7 is reading pretty well for her age. She is in first grade, and I would say she is at a solid 2nd grade level based on the books she reads. She went quickly through Harriette Taylor Treadwell’s first grade reader and is now reading the 2nd grade reader. We threw in some Sonlight books off their 2nd grade list, and she has read the I Can Read level 2 books easily. When we hit a new word to her we break it down and work on phonics, and I take the principles from Delightful Reading to teach these more difficult words.
I am starting to wonder if this is enough or if we need to actually do a phonics curriculum. Her reading is not as fluent as I’d like it to be, but maybe that is due to the need to practice more. Should I stick to a specific poem or story until she can read it fluently before moving on? I just need some advice on how to move forward.
I’m not an expert as it sounds like my dd is in a similar place as yours is with reading, and we are approaching it about the same way you are (spot teaching phonics as necessary as we come across words she has trouble figuring out). I have noticed her increasing in fluency and confidence as we give more time to it. I don’t have her read the same things over and over again (she tends to memorize them and then I don’t know how much true reading practice she is getting), but we do read something every day, and often several times each day.
That all said, we did decide to use All About Spelling for spelling (even though it’s not really CM.) We didn’t really use a phonics curriculum when we were reading (I felt it was more important to keep her interested and moving towards fluency rather than get bogged down learning all the rules at that point), but I felt that it was important for her to have a familiarity with phonics rules anyhow. So, that’s something you may want to consider if you think it would be helpful for her – rather than doing phonics for phonics sake, perhaps you could try using a phonics based spelling program. I have yet to see how helpful this will be in the long term…but it’s a thought for you. Hopefully you’ll get some answers from some other more experienced folks as well. =)
Jen
When my daugter was just 7, or maybe 6, she was having a harder time with fluency as well. I started having her read the same story twice a day. Once to me, during the school day, and once more to daddy in the evening. This worked very well for us. HTH!
My second grader is in a similar spot and I found the McGuffey readers to really polish her fluency … not the revised versions, but the original eclectic versions. I’ve seen them for good $ at CBD lately. I have Gracie read aloud from this and Pathway for 10 minutes each per day and she is really improving her fluidity.
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