Reading and phonics

[Guest guest]

Hi there.

Reading the posts about the reading programs which are currenlty being used

is very interesting. The little guy that I am working with just started his

reading program about two weeks ago and we started with both Phonics ( the

traditional 'what sound does G make' cards) as well as sight words. We don't

have a full program in place ie: a specific reading book which we are

following- as of yet, anyway. He picked up around 15 sight words in about a

week in a half ( not that that means he knows what they mean, just that he

can decode the words when we ask him to ) and now, before we add more, we're

working on giving those words meaning ( ie: match them to the objects ) as

well as having him be able to identify them in all diffent fonts.

But, anyway, to get to the point, I am wondering how many people are working

on 'phonemic awareness' skills with their kids and what exactly they are

doing with them. I don't mean just " what does g say? " but the actual hearing

that words are made up of sounds. ie: that the word pretzel has two

syllables and that 'home and comb' rhyme, ect. If so, could I ask what ( if

any ) methods you are using?

I ask this because I was recently reading an article regarding Learning

Disabilites and reading defiicts and they brought up something which they

referred to as the Double -Deficit Hypothesis. Roughly, this means that kids

who have trouble reading and gaining comprehension from reading (I know a

couple of AI kids who are readers but who find it difficult to answer

questions about stories, for instance ) may do so because they fall into one

of three categories. They either can decode ( sound out and read ) words (

with phonics ) but don't have the rapid recall of sight words- which causes

them to have to laboriously decode every word they find, consequently

slowing them down and preventing the fluency needed for accurate reading ( I

don't remember the actual number of words which need to be scanned which

account for this ) OR they have a vast knowledge base of sight words but do

not know how to decode unfamiliar words which also throws up onstacles, OR

they have both of these problems. In order for a person to be able to

understand text they have to have both of these skills and a major beginning

part of understanding phonics is to understand the relationships between

words and sounds- I believe that this is what they call phonemic awareness.

I don't mean to give a lecture ( after all, who am I? ) but I just found the

idea of breaking the process of reading down into these components very

interesting. And since, with this kiddo, we are just beginning down the

reading path, I want to be sure that he's got all the pieces in place to

help him out.

Like most everyone, I don't relish the idea of drilling phonics into a kid (

Geez, I hated it with I was in school ) especially a three-year-old, but if

you are doing anything with regards to phonemic awareness ie: Rhyming and

clapping syllables and " say the word Pizza, Now say it without the 'P'

sound " type stuff I would love to hear your suggestions.

The only one I've heard so far is that we should expose him to a lot of Dr.

Seuss. Um . . .I think he's already got volumes of Dr. Seuss stored in his

head.

So, if anyone has any other ideas . .

Thanks a lot!

Take care,

Leah

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