My son was taught sight words and fell behind even though we spent 3 hours every night working with him. We brought him home and taught him phonics and with in a year he was a year ahead of public school.
We taught my daughter phonics when she was 4 years old. She ran rings around the gifted kids at the school that taught sight words. She was in 3rd grade and set the pace for the gifted reading program, which had up to 10th graders in it.
Phonics works, sight words don’t. Can’t convince me otherwise.
Then how do you explain that I was reading on a third grade level in kindergarten, with no phonics? Ditto my younger siblings.
In the early 60's my Mom had me read out loud to her while she was fix'n supper. That was my biggest help in reading. The problem was that my brain would skip printed words. Reading out loud exposed the gaps and forced my brain to bring those words back in to make a complete sentence.
It wasn't until college when a gal I was 'working' with discovered I was a dyslexic.
That was the reason I had to proof read everything several times and pay another gal a bucket of ice cream (Gandys) to do the final type my papers. Omitting words while typing did not make for a good grade.
You are correct, but you failed to mention another important factor of which I am sure you are aware and implimented. Learning phonics is the tool by which a child learns to read, but that desire to read must be instilled in the child by the parent. You obviously did a fine job!
My parents did the same. My father told me many times "Son, you can do anything you want in life if you will just read and study what it is you want to do." (I still believe that... Though it is often harder to find the time once we grow older.) Once I had mastered phonics during the first coupled of weeks of school, I kept my poor first grade teacher (kindergarten was not a requirement back then, you just started first grade) running up the hallways on a regular basis - she was having to go to other classrooms to get more books. I found reading to be one of the greatest things I had ever done! I could pick up a book and go to another country, another time, or even another world! By the time I had finished first grade, I was beyond the fifth grade level. I would read out loud to my mother at night until my voice gave out. Thank God that I had an old fashioned teacher that didn't believe in "sticking strictly to a curriculum" for the sake of not having to do a little extra. When I look back, I think about how different things could have been if my teacher had not fed my hunger for more books. I would have become a disruptive child that was bored and looking for something to do in the classroom. I would have soon been in the principal's office and headed down the road toward trouble later in life.
Regards,
Raven6
You are correct, but you failed to mention another important factor of which I am sure you are aware and implimented. Learning phonics is the tool by which a child learns to read, but that desire to read must be instilled in the child by the parent. You obviously did a fine job!
My parents did the same. My father told me many times "Son, you can do anything you want in life if you will just read and study what it is you want to do." (I still believe that... Though it is often harder to find the time once we grow older.) Once I had mastered phonics during the first coupled of weeks of school, I kept my poor first grade teacher (kindergarten was not a requirement back then, you just started first grade) running up the hallways on a regular basis - she was having to go to other classrooms to get more books. I found reading to be one of the greatest things I had ever done! I could pick up a book and go to another country, another time, or even another world! By the time I had finished first grade, I was beyond the fifth grade level. I would read out loud to my mother at night until my voice gave out. Thank God that I had an old fashioned teacher that didn't believe in "sticking strictly to a curriculum" for the sake of not having to do a little extra. When I look back, I think about how different things could have been if my teacher had not fed my hunger for more books. I would have become a disruptive child that was bored and looking for something to do in the classroom. I would have soon been in the principal's office and headed down the road toward trouble later in life.
Regards,
Raven6