Teaching Reading - phonics or whole language - opinions please

[EmmieAZ]

Hi everyone. I am already jittery about teaching reading. I was just wondering what your experiences have been with your children. Did you find reading was picked up faster when a whole language or phonics approach was used? Was it a different method for different children? Is there anyway to tell before starting which way a child would be inclined to learn best? Thanks so much!:hat

[MochaMel]

I"m still learning trial and error.. My older son; was in ps until end of 1st grade and really only had the VERY basics.. I don't know that did anything special with him; b/c we were limited on finances. BUT to this day he tells people his Mom taught him to read. :idunno

DD -- I thought she would be so much easier.. and she was with math! :faint My worst subject and she's awesome at it; really needs no help from me. :lol2Reading has been a challenge; but i PRAY ALOT and have her do the same for God to help us and her be able to get it. I am such a good reader it's hard for me.. I thought it will just come naturally to her too.. Lesson in that assume nothing.. Some get it easily and some do not. Now oldest son does just fine now and is excelling at his pace.. So whatever you do it will work with study, perseverance and PRAYER!!!!

We have been using the Hooked on Phonics program and she does like it and seems to be doing better this year then last. We are just getting ready to move onto the 2nd set of books and i can see her REALLY getting it now.. It's just alot of patience and positives for what they do get.

I do recommend this program but i have nothing to compare it too... And just read alot to them. They love that. I have also found for me personally some kids' just need a longer time to really grasp it.. and that's okay i just remind myself of that when i get worried. I only need look at my older ds to see that.

Hope that was helpful.... :)

[lisaann]

My ds seemed to do better if we mixed both approaches. We used Sing, Spell, Read and Write with him in K and 1st and he hated it. However, my dd who reads much easier than her brother loved the program. :idunno It really is just trial and error and a willing-to-adjust attitude.

[wife]

We do a mixed approach too. lots of sight words, but our foundation is phonics

[firstoftwelve]

we start with phonics but they quickly seem to pick up sight learning and memorization.

[WenC]

We do phonics only -with no pictures to give it away.

I was using some workbooks that had pictures, but I've noticed that dd makes no effort to look at the letters and uses the pictures as a crutch.

There is a family history of dislexia, and all of the problems DH has had with reading are exactly the critiscms that are leveled at whole language approaches (ie, he learned to simply memorize letter combinations without understanding how they form words, so the fact that he couldn't read wasn't caught until 4TH GRADE!). I'm very wary of whole language.

[antsinmypants]

I never did well with the phonics when it was being taught to me. Something about someone so very southern they're speaking dialect trying to teach proper English phonics just never worked out. :lol2

We did do extremely well when my parents were homechooling us with the McGuffy's Readers, and I actually love them... I began learning with my KJV children's bible and little golden books to be honest..

[Southern Lady]

One idea you might want to consider would be to have your child draw a picture of what they have read. You can count it as art and also let you know how well they put what they have learned on paper.

[Reason&Hope]

My three children all learned to read at a young age. (They are 14, 12, and 10 now and read at very high levels.)

English is basically a phonetic language, so in my opinion that's the best way to teach it - along with learning some of the sight words that defy sounding out, such as 'one'.

If children learn words only by sight, they will not acquire the skills to sound out longer words. Also, if they learn words by shape, they do not learn the individual letters (bad for spelling) or the affixes that make up words. Just today I was helping my 10-year-old work out how to spell some long words by putting their pieces together: eventually, bicentennial.

We used the Spalding phonics cards. They are excellent. We also found learning to read books at the library that concentrated on one or two sounds per book (e.g., one book would have several words with the short a- sound, while a later one had hike and bike, etc.).

Some things that worked very well to prepare them for learning to read:
1. Working with letters. When they were really little, I read through alphabet books (PD Eastman's, Dr. Seuss's ABC . . .). We also had a playdoh set that had molds for every letter. That was great!
2. Rhyming words. First orally, teaching that hat rhymes with bat, cheese with please. Then, when I used the cards, I'd lay out the cards a- and t-. When the child could put the sounds together to sound out 'at', then I put a b- in front. 'bat'. Then a c-, and h-, etc. It was a great game that really taught them.
3. Reading with my kids, and pointing out words or letters.

Does your child know the alphabet yet? Does he/she know the sounds the letters make? I loved teaching them reading. I loved all the steps, and I love what great readers my children have become, and I especially loved the Aha moment each had when their brains had developed to the point of being able to take C-A-T and say 'cat'!

[antsinmypants]

I'm taking German now (thru the state since I am married and must "assimilate"), and I found I am learning German like I did English.

The good thing though, is that I already had a basic knowledge and have heard German my whole life (dad's side and mom's side have German roots, dad's being more prone to learning German and encouraging the children to as well and be in German clubs). I grew up with dad speaking some German, listening to German music and off and on seeing movies with subtitles that are in German.

Enough words are similar, that once I learn the 'root' I can grasp where we're going with the word. My hard point are the compound words and the EI/IE switch.

It's the opposite sound phonetically to our EI and IE sounds... so I have to remeber when I see 'die' it isn't Die (physically, spiritually) but die as in 'the', just change to D in your head and on your tongue.

Something else that helps is that some of the pronunciation is similar phonetically to how we talk in my area of the South, so words come more easily and readily at times. What can be hard is some of the umlaut sounds, because we do not access them as much in English (We do but we don't in certain dialects).

I do well with hearing while I am seeing, so I connect the sound to the letters/word. I also noticed I watch how people speak and say the word, almost like lipreading... so watching tv that has been dubbed is really problematic for me, unless they did a great job dubbing (Star Trek is hard for me to watch for that very reason).

I seem to remember Disney and someone else having 'read along' books, that you pop in a cassette and 'turn the page at the sound of ____________' so you can read as you hear it read, and connect better.

I remember when my sister was learning phonics how it messed up her spelling. She honestly spelt everything phonetically, as it sounded to her in South Carolina dialect.
It was so hard to read, unless you knew where she was coming from linguistically... and it took years to break.

I do remember however that McGuffy's readers do use phonics to an extent ('Forehead is pronounced "for'id" as in "there was a little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead"), but not like Abeka or some other teaching methods do.

It seems to use a more proper pronunciation of English, about like what you will hear on more professional news casts (those broadcast around the world, whether from Canada, USA, Britain or Europe) rather than dialect heard in certain areas.

I picked up this English more by hearing and needing to fit in (and not be too obvious I am American) than being taught it. I go back home and revert to SC dialect, and I noticed in situations where people use dialect more than 'received English' I slip into dialect for better service without thinking about it.

Each person has a different learning method though, some more visual, some more phonetic, and some just by sight-reading. You have to find what works best for your family. :)