Learning to Read

I taught to read using the word method. All those early readers I memorised and it was thought I was progressing really well. But at  about 7 years old I was given books  to read at school that had many more words and few pictures and I could read nothing! I remember the experience well. Fortunately for me it was near the summer holidays and my dear Granny came to stay who was a school teacher. She was of the old school and even taught reading recovery so I was given some instruction ( for a few weeks) but it was not until I was over 9 year old that I read for pleasure.

When I came to teach my own children I wanted to avoid my reading experience and so was keen on using phonics: teaching the letter, digraph and diphthong  sounds etc. Phonics was a method that had been used for decades before these new fangled reading methods. One hypothesis is that the word method can even induce dyslexic like symptoms. I think perhaps it is teaching children to read without them having phonemic awareness the causes coping mechanisms that are less than helpful . Here is a great video

http://www.dys-add.com/
watch the video Dyslexia : Symptoms and Solutions.  (I am not recommending the program they are selling, I have not tried it.  I think the principles she explained in the webcast were very valuable.)

One of my children was faithfully taught phonics but made little progress. It is my opinion that he did not have this basic earlier skill.

Many children taught the word method pick up the letter sounds anyway. My sister did. Teachers used to exhort us to sound out the word when trying to spell it.  Certainly I knew what sound an “f” made but what about a short a. And it wasn’t until I began teaching my children to read that I learned the sounds of the short vowels. Perhaps there are others like me.  As explained the above linked video cat was just one sound for me. So before beginning to teach a child to  read do check your child has phonemic awareness ( and read this as well), and if not work on it. In brief phonemic awareness if the ability to manipulate sounds without even seeing or needing the written letters.

Some exercises are found here and here.

Here are a few videos that I made that might be helpful.

Phonemic Awareness

Try some phonic games

http://genkienglish.net/phonicsgame4.htm

Learning the Letters

I am going to use Word Mastery which is a free online book. It is old enough to be in the public domain.

Tom and I going through the first 10 pages. ( I would do this daily until it was easy for Tom and I was doing almost none of the talking, then we move on in the book.)

Part 2