09 10

15 August 2007

Phonics Books - Help Please?

Been having a look at "The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading." It's pretty straight forward. Extremely scripted & step-by-step. But I have very little to compare it with. It's the only one our local library has.

Monkey's too little still, but although some of the techniques they use to teach sounds are familiar from my Mother telling me "sound it out" I think that I learned to read with a primarily whole-language style with a good bit of incidental phonics. I'm planning to teach with phonics, but feeling more than a little intimidated & wanted to preview some methods. Only I'm having a hard time finding any other than Jessie Wise's book.

Any suggestions? Our interlibrary loan is pretty good, but you have to know what you're looking for.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really like Spell to Read and Write. There is even a yahoo group by the same name where you can get information and help.

Dy said...

Hi! Thanks for your sweet and always thoughtful comments, and for leaving a link to this entry. :-)

We use Romalda Spalding's "The Writing Road to Reading", with a few variants that, I am certian, would cause Ms. Spalding to have a stroke. But that's okay. I love it. I'm a firm, firm believer in the efficacy of this program, and I love it. A few reasons: it is thorough; it is precise; it leaves no stone unturned (particularly as a phonics program, although it is, technically, a complete K-8 LA program in and of itself); the reading lists are handy; the spelling portion is easy to implement; it covers handwriting as well as phonics, spelling, basic grammar (although we don't use the grammar portion, as that's in our Latin program).

The drawbacks: it's dry. as. toast. (Seriously. Not written with a sense of humor, and not for the color-dependent. Very dry.); since it is an entire K-8 LA program in one book, it can be overwhelming to those just starting out with it (many people look, panic, and run, but it isn't that difficult, really); it's more difficult for the parent/teacher to learn than it is for the child (I spent a year agonizing over it before I finally decided we'd make no progress without at least trying it - things it had taken me all year to wrap my mind around, the children grasped instantly - boggling, how sharp the little guys are).

I wouldn't recommend it in it's most stringent form, for a little guy. We used magnetic letters and hours on the floor making sounds and nonsense words; reading, reading, reading; alphabet games just for fun; touching signs in public (not for the germophobe *grin*). When language is a large part of a child's daily life, the decoding process doesn't pose an overwhelming hurdle (barring learning difficulties, of course, which, hey, WRTR was written based on the work of neurologists, designed for children with dyslexia and other orthographic learning impairments!).

OK, that's all I can think of. Zorak has a new rocket design he wants to show me. LMK if I left something out, okay? I'm off!

Kiss that baby (OMGOsh, he is precious!)
Dy

Ritsumei said...

Thanks so much guys! I'll have a look at the yahoo group & see if I can get WRTR through interlibrary loan. And I've still got *2* years to agonize before anything gets serious!

Anonymous said...

I started with the Writing Road to Reading but got stuck once we got to the spelling rules. Spell to Read and Write is a much more teacher friendly version of Writing Road to Reading.

Let me know if you need any help. I am not an expert but I'm glad to help if I can.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin