I LOVE PHONICS!
I know it’s a bit crazy to say that, but I really like how using phonics rules (many that native English speakers don’t even know) can help a reader decode up to 84% of English words.
In my former life, I taught students who were Deaf or Hearing Impaired and then I switched to teaching 1st grade. In both of these positions, teaching language was the majority of my job.
Phonics gave me something specific to teach that the kids could fall back on to help them with unknown words. (Plus it’s got rules and I was always a rule follower.)
Now I know what you’re thinking…phonics doesn’t always work.
No, it doesn’t, but for the majority of English words (at least 84% and maybe more)…it does. And for some kids…that’s enough to give them a real leg up on figuring out how to read.
Teaching Phonics
When I taught 1st grade I discovered an amazing woman named Alice Nine.
I worshiped this woman and wanted to be her! She was the ultimate phonics (language) guru as far as I was concerned. She created a program called Johnny Can Spell. This is a systematic program that is quite intense for teaching phonics, language and writing.
I used this program in my 1st grade class and saw AMAZING results. These kids could read anything. They could spell much better than their peers and they knew a heck of a lot more about the English language. (My 1st graders could parse (diagram) sentences…it was so cool!)
What Am I Using
Now I have two (soon to be three) little English language learners living in my house!
I think Connor’s a little too young for the full-blown Johnny Can Spell lessons quite yet, but we do review the phonogram flash cards each day. And trust me…we’ll get into it soon!
For now, we’ve started working through Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use: For Beginning Readers of Any Age. (For some reason Amazon’s price was $50 for this book so this link is for Walmart.com because that’s where I found it online the cheapest.)
This Systematic Sequential Phonics book walks you through 140 lessons of making words.
I give Connor a sheet with the letters that we are going to use in each lesson. He has to cut out the letters so that we can manipulate them. (Scissor practice too!) Then I read through the lesson step by step giving him smaller words and building to larger words. Each word he makes, he then writes on his paper (handwriting practice) eventually leading up to the secret word (the word that uses all the letters). Each lesson creates 10 words and sometimes we make words with the letters if we have time.
He’s really enjoying playing with the words and he doesn’t even realize that he’s learning phonics and doing word work.
So if you’re looking for a fun way to help your child/student with phonics…this is a good one!
Disclaimer: None of these links are affiliate links. Just good information!