My wife was not spared. I had to tutor several of our kids in reading and my basic text was Bob Books, a great phonics curriculum. When I explained basic rules like what a silent "e" at the end of a word does to the preceding vowel, my wife thought I was speaking Greek. She was never taught any of that.
So-called process teaching or factory teaching.
Teacher make presentation, kiddos get it or not, teacher (Unionized mostly) don’t need to know or care.
Phonics works. I learned to read that way. All of my siblings leaned to read using phonics.
The last time I took a test, I was off the scale to both speed and comprehension. Two of my brothers have a PhD, thee rest a MSc.
Dad? He worked as a lineman for the telco....
I went to a Catholic school in Los Gatos, CA. I can picture my orange paper “Phonix” workbook from 3rd grade - 1965ish....I credit that with being able to read and spell and decipher nearly any word...I love words and language....
The Cadillac of reading programs is “The Writing Road to Reading.” It was developed after much research in how the brain learns how to read. Dr. Samuel T. Orton, the earliest neuroscientist to research the functioning of the human brain in learning language skills, began working with brain-damaged WWI American veterans to help them relearn how to read and write. Dr. Orton used a very similar phonics base and collaborated with successful classroom teachers to combine his non-discriminating multi-sensory techniques with Classical Direct and Socratic instructional approaches to teaching. Other physiological organic or trauma-induced brain-damaged individuals (i.e. stroke patients) were treated similarly until his death in 1948. His method was modified for primary school children to both prevent and correct learning disorders, and most importantly to establish high literacy in virtually all primary children. The schools which use this method have students who can read and spell and write legibly. Interestingly, a spin of this program is used on kids to correct reading difficulties.
These are two great sources: