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Teaching Reading CM style, have you done it?
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Hi all,
You will probably be seeing lots of posts made by me in the next couple months as I plan our first school year as CM homeschoolers lol
Anyway, I am wondering if anyone has taught reading or is teaching reading using the CM method, especially without use of the Delightful Reading program?
It isn’t in my budget right now, but I get the idea of Charlotte’s teaching method for teaching reading and would like to go ahead and begin lessons with my daughter. Does anyone have suggestions on how I would go about doing so? What must I have? Any suggestions for lesson selections/literature to use? Please share your experiences!
Thanks for any replies!
We are using Harriette Taylor Treadwell’s readers which are free online. I would print off some pages for DD since it became cumbersome to read off the computer. I was able to find them for a small fee as a download, so now they are on the iPad, which will save on printer ink and paper.
I am starting DS with the Primer. I have done one lesson with him already, and I made tiles out of cut up index cards. Both of my two older children learned to read on their own basically, and I just looked for words that were unfamiliar to them to work on the phonics. I am taking the concepts of Delightful Reading and using them with our own resources. The videos on DR were very helpful for me to figure out what I needed to do.
I don’t have a ton of ideas but one thing that has really helped my dc is letter tiles. If you can find an inexpensive set somewhere, great, if not, you can print some letters/draw them on paper and make copies (glue them to cardstock for durability). I’m using Delightful Reading with my youngest (and it has tiles), but the program I used for my middle son used a similar concept, and it worked beautifully.
That program was very inexpensive (I found the book for free). It is called Reading Reflex, and may be found at the library, not sure.
There is another free online reading program, hmmmm, progressive phonics, I believe. May want to check that out for some free resources (the internet really is very useful, isn’t it?).
This post here http://allthatsgoood.blogspot.fr/2011/02/last-year-we-learned-first-26.html shows how one mom used CM methods with her own materials. She used the McGuffey Readers, which you can also find free online, although the Treadwell Primer mentioned above would work well also. I used a Dick and Jane book with my dd which worked well also.
Hope this helps some,
Jen
I haven’t used these yet, but there are free downloads here, too. (You’ll need to scroll down the page to get to the reading lessons posts).
http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com/search/label/reading
The mom at allthatsgood that Jen mentioned used to have a complete McGuffey printable (56 pages) at hslaunch.com, but I can’t find it now.
Also, if you do have a little money, allthatsgood has some products on CurrClick for $5 each,
http://www.currclick.com/index.php?&manufacturers_id=442
HTH,
Karen
Thank you for the ideas and resources! I love Harriette Taylor Treadwell’s readers and I was lucky enough to find some great blog posts from moms who have used CM methods for teaching reading, including the two shared here. I found the link to the Mcguffey printable (http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/userfiles/0/44198863286.pdf )and I really like her currclick stuff. The internet is extremely helpful
I would have purchased Delightful Reading, but DD took off with reading about 6 months before it was available. The tools we used were:
– a magnetic white board with blue magnetic tiles, from Rainbow Resources
– some word wheels I printed off of a website that introduced different word families (ex. “and” had band, land, sand, hand, etc.) They were free when I printed them off, but now there is a cost to access the website.
– books from the library. At first things we used books like Little Bear and Frog and Toad readers (and Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa, because Grandma bought her one and she likes horses and pretending to be a cowgirl). However, she learns quickly and it was only a few months before we moved up to books on the FIAR booklist, simply because they were enjoyable and had a good mix of phonics and words she could learn as sight words. The Treadwell readers would be an excellent choice, though! Wish I had known they were free at that time.
We started a few months before DD turned 5, because she was blending three letter words while playing with her bathtub letters (cat, hat, sat, dog, bed) and asked me if she could learn more words that were in books. I printed off a handful of the word wheels, with three letter word families. I also used the tiles to build word families and introduce common sight words. After about a month, we started introducing readers.
We only spent about 15 minutes a day on the subject. Some days, she would read a chapter from a Frog and Toad reader. Other days, we would use the letter tiles to play a game, where she would spell five words for me to read and I would spell out five words for her to read. (We chose them from the reader/book she was working on that week.) Other days, she would choose three word wheels and we would go through those. We dropped the word wheels after a few months, when she had a mastery of those words. DD wanted to drop the game after about six months, and ever since then, she’s just been reading to me from library books each day (and on her own during quiet time in the afternoon, when I’m at work and she’s at home with DH. He can hear her reading aloud quietly in her bed.)
DD just turned 6 last week, and I would say she’s reading at about an early 3rd grade level, based on AR levels listed at our local public library.
We don’t do any formal grammar or spelling, just reading and copywork. We do, however, incorporate them into parts of our everyday life. For example, we talk about starting a sentence with a capital letter and choosing to end it with the appropriate punctuation (a period, question mark, etc.) while she is writing a thank you note, or a letter to a pen pal, etc. And she learns some spelling when she volunteers to write out part of the grocery list (eggs, milk, etc, flour, etc.)
April
Thanks for your input April.
Another question came to mind on this topic, should I try to find very short reading selections for teaching CM style reading lessons?
We just started Hymns in Prose, offered on this website. I really like it! I think it’s recommended for after they finish Delightful Reading, though.
April
I used this method with my daughter based on a series of blog posts Sonya wrote before Delightful Reading came out. It is what FINALLY worked for my daughter. I think it made sense to her because she could first learn words by sight, and then use them to figure out similar words. Just learning phonics rules did not make sense to her. She HATED reading until we tried this approach.
We alternated days of sight words and word building, using nursery rhymes and Bible verses. At first I tried to find nursery rhymes with more common words and fewer unusual, irregularly spelled words, but I gave up. As it turned out, she enjoyed learning and using odd words. And after learning the word “knave,” without me teaching her, she has never tried to pronounce the k at the beginning of any other “kn” word she has come across. I think you could use passages of any length, but I found that using something short gave her a sense of accomplishment sooner. With these lessons the child will memorize the passage without even trying. The shorter it is, the sooner they can recite a whole poem or verse for the family, which is exciting.
We started out writing all the sight words she had learned in a notebook and would use that for review, but after a while she started forgetting them. She is very hands-on and wiggly, and I have found that she retains words better if we play games to review them. An easy game is to write sight words on index cards and lay them in a circle on the floor. Turn on music and have them dance around the circle; when you turn off the music they have to stop and read the word they are on. My daughter would groan if I got out the sight word book, but she would play this game all day! She also likes to spell out the words by trying to form her body into each letter. I have no idea how this could be helpful, but it works for her. A good source for games is “Games For Reading” by Peggy Kaye.
We started out alternating days of sight words and word building, and after a while once a week she would read a Bob book instead. Gradually she chose to read more often and we did fewer real lessons. Now every day we play a reading game and she reads a book to me. If I notice her having trouble with a certain word I will make sure it’s included in a game. If I notice her having trouble with a certain letter combination (for example, “igh”) we will have a brief word building lesson.
Thanks so much Amee, that all was actually very helpful. The games sound fun and like a great idea! 🙂
I printed the word wheels I have from here: http://superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-word-wheels.html
I printed them like someone else before they were charging for some of them, but they do still have free ones. I wonder if you could find some on-line somehwere else for free? Or you could make them really easily, even with just a marker and two circles of paper as well as a brad.
My children will work a lot longer on blending with these wheels than if I’m just drilling them. I am using Alpha-Phonics and it is working well for DD. I have it on my Kindle.
Thanks for sharing the word wheels. My daughter will love those. You’re right, they would be easy to make.
I have made word wheels before, but found a different format that doesn’t use brads, only paper. I would write the letters of the word family on paper and draw a blank where the first letter or blend should be. Then cut vertical slits before and after the blank. On a strip of paper that will fit through the slits, write the first letters or blends. Hope that makes sense.
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