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You know what really
bugs me?
It bugs me to see a
youngster stumbling through his reading with frustration all over his
face. Most kids like this don't have to be lousy readers.
But many kids do guess and hack through reading. This is because
a lot of kids are taught that it's o.k. - that guessing and hacking
are "reading strategies." Teachers are taught, and they believe,
that these habits are normal. "Don't worry, he'll grow out of it
on his own," they'll tell you.
At the
Phonics Institute, we take the opposite approach. To us,
guessing at words is a bad habit. A very bad habit.
And it should be nipped in the bud, right from the start.
From the moment the formal reading program kicks off, before the
student is told to read anything, he should be taught first
how to read it. You do this by
first teaching the student the sounds of all the letters he is
supposed to read. Again and again and again you show
the student how to read using the sounds of the letters. You
tell him he has to use this method to read just about every single
unfamiliar word. You draw the the child into the phonics
habit and away from guessing. This is the way you build
strong confident readers who can read easily, and understand to the
limits of their intelligence.
With an older
child who's having trouble, or who isn't as strong as he should be,
it's the same idea. Get him to use the sounds of the letters to
figure out every unmastered word on the page. The little ones
and the teenagers are the same, but they're different. Without
discipline (which is usually learned little by little), all of us -
some more, some less - tend toward guessing, laziness, and sloppiness.
With little kids it's just a tendency that usually falls before
consistent modeling and guidance. With older kids, you have to
root out entrenched bad habits and plant in their place a love for
working with precision. In all cases the job is the same - going
from frustration through work to mastery.
And yes,
every child is different, too. It makes for a challenge, but a
welcome one, since reading mastery should be commonplace. Just
about all of us are smart enough to master reading. But
we've got to learn to shun the bad habits of guessing. We've got
to use the letter sounds to figure out every word exactly right.
That's what the Phonics Institute was founded to do: to promote the
phonics habit. If you teach the kids this way, you'll
find reading mastery to be commonplace. You'll find a smile on
your face and a lump in your throat (tears of joy aching to get out).
Now,
there's more to "reading" than just reading. We all know that.
We want to see some understanding too. At the Phonics Institute we
recognize this. Reading precisely with phonics is the foundation
for understanding. Understanding also involves knowing the
meaning of the words (vocabulary), understanding how sentences are put
together (grammar), clear thinking (logic and the like), and a healthy
orientation in life. At the Phonics Institute we are well aware
of this.
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