I am a firm believer of phonics versus sight words. My general theory is phonics is a superior form of reading. That was what I once believed and thought to be true. Today, a new thought came to mind. Some kids just can’t blend.
My dear son, is struggling and I am aware and assessing what can be done better. For background, the kid is a logical thinker with the ability to solve any puzzle. Unfortunately, I think his speech is part of our problem.
Here we go, daughter number one took a month or two to understand how to bring the letter sounds together to make a word. Since then, she has become a great reader and attempts to sound out most everything.
My son is not. We are doing the Bob book methods and are at a snails pace. I am very aware that we will be slow, slow for a while; then all of a sudden one day it will all just click.
Using the teaching with bob method, we have introduced a, m, t, and s. We built at, mat, and sat. We read pages 1 and 2. Mat. Mat sat. Those three words were a chore. So I set it all aside, keeping these little exercises to 10 minutes.
Today, I was hoping for a little more. We used the same letters, reviewed our at based words and built am and Sam. We reread pages 1 and 2, then added 3 and 4. Sam. Sam sat. He was frustrated.
From these 2 days, this is what I now understand. My son cannot blend the sounds past 2 letters. Hurray, he can read at, but that is it. It seems like he can’t hear the sounds to register the word that he is saying. Now I really think this goes back to his speech.
His articulation has more to do with knowing when to breath when he says each word, or he is taking breathes during the words. So as he sounds the letters out, he takes breathes that then confuses his listening for the word. Of course, this is my unprofessional, but practical assessment.
What’s a mom to do? Well, my first instinct is to throw this plan out the door and search the shelves for something new, but that would be ineffective. I would spend every week and a half looking for something new. My best bet is to tweak our method to teach phonics. So this is what I am going to try:
1. I am throwing out the notion that we must sound out these words to read them and replacing it with a sight word memorizing method. yikes!
2. Introduce the root phonically. Teach the word by sight and review the sounds in the word. So at, is sounded out. Mat is sight with review of m-at. Do this for all the words, move on once all words in the book are known by sight. Mat, sat, Sam, and on.
Here is my hope, once we are a few books in, the sounding out notion will start to click in his mind. Then once it clicks, we can go back and review the phonic structure of the word.
I also plan to use the tools by www.1plus1plus1equals1.com for learning sight words. She has a great sight word program called You Can Read with printables (FOR FREE) that gives the kids a hands on approach to learning 4 sight words at a time. So I have them printed and will be introducing the 4 words from the Bob book and the words in set 1 (a, and, see, the).
I sure hope this works. I just don’t want to burn him out on 4 words, just because he cannot blend or hear the sounds correctly. Please if you have any advise, I am all ears. I truly think he will just be a slow to read kid like his parents, but I do not want him to lose his love of books because of it. I also noticed, he does not have a good reading comprehension to retell a story after hearing it. It seems as though he is a visual and hands on learner.
By the way, 1st grade daughter #1 is doing awesome. I should do a post on how amazing she is doing.
~trish
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