...I'm finding that I don't know anything about teaching to read phonetically since my other two were/are learning by sight words.:)
I use/used two approaches when teaching my kids to read:
1. Teach sounds of letters including short vowel sounds (they got this at daycare and from Daddy).
2. Start with little lists of words (
cat, sat, hop, tub, etc.)
3. Teach reading through spelling. They all started writing on their own and then I enocouraged them. In fact, my youngest is having a tantrum outside the door right now because I won't let her in so she can type words (she was pounding on my photocopier and so I booted her OUT!).
4.
Have you tried Bob books? They're the best introductory readers that I've found. They come in 5 little boxed sets of increasing difficulty.
5. Move to easy consonant combinations (
st, tr, etc as opposed to
sh, th, etc that aren't so intuitive).
Stop, fast, trap, etc.
6. Introduce new non-intuitive ideas slowly so as not to overwhelm. If your child's name ends in -y, "
y sounding like e at the end of a word" is a good first choice. Alternatively, any non-intuitive combination in the child's name is a good place to start if there is no -y ending (
Amy, Sandy, etc).
7. Introduce silent e (
game, name, hope) once the child is very good at short words. I did NOT wait until they had learned all the consonant combinations but introduced when I felt the kids were ready. I found that using examples like
hop/hope, not/note etc. helps make the picture clear. Silent e takes time. My kids started by reading n-o-t....oh wait, nOTE.
Hope that helps. This is just an overview, but I hope it will give some guidance.
Val
