Phonics practice is crucial to successful reading.  Teaching reading without phonics is like setting someone adrift in a boat on the Atlantic Ocean without a map and expecting him to sail to New York.  No map, no plan, very little chance of success.  Phonics skills provide the map beginning readers need: the sounds that letters make, the sounds that blends make, and what rules govern the particular uses of sound combinations.  With this knowledge, students will read more easily and confidently.

Children taught to read by the “look-say” or “whole language” method without phonics practice struggle with learning to read.  What they are essentially asked to do is treat each word as a whole symbol, and separately memorize every word … Read the rest of this post…

Not every student takes to reading like a duck to water.  Some students struggle because of issues such as dyslexia.  Other students struggles because a school is not emphasizing phonics rules, but encourages children to memorize many sight words or rely on picture clues to decipher meaning.  In either case, good supplemental phonics resources can really help these students become better more confident readers.  Supplemental phonics resources could be phonograms flash cards; making phonograms out of clay; finger painting words, or workbook practice.

For students who struggle because of dyslexia and similar learning disabilities, exercises such as spelling words out of clay or painting them with finger paint while speaking the appropriate sounds can make a difference.  This tactile … Read the rest of this post…

Teaching phonics is one of the most important things a parent or teacher can do for a child.  There is no other reading method that comes close to giving students the lifelong fluency they will need for success.  Reading should be just as easy as talking or listening to someone talk.  To achieve this level of fluency, it’s essential that students are taught the basic concept that letters and combinations of letters stand for spoken sounds.

If students’ knowledge in this area is lacking, they will try instead to memorize whole words.  This leads to two significant difficulties for the student.  First, there is the sheer number of items he will need to memorize.  Rather than memorizing a mere 70 … Read the rest of this post…

Explode the Code, overall, is a wonderful phonics based reading program!

Strengths:
Books 4 and 5 are the books of the Explode the Code Phonics series that are intended by the publishers for the use during second grade.  These books move forward from the previously established basic phonics rules and build upon the foundation that was laid within the books prior to these in the series.  Each book has a half book as an optional resource in the case of a student needing a little extra practice before moving to the next step in the series.  All of the books have 15 lessons that we took one lesson a week and then a post test at the end … Read the rest of this post…