I'm like lily -- I don't remember before I could read -- I know I was reading well enough in K to read directions on the worksheets and work ahead! And I zoned out and didn't pay attention when they *were* working on reading, and was subject accelerated over first grade reading ... I'm almost positive I learned to read with whole words.
I'm pretty sure they did phonics, but I'm not positive. I'm one of the younger parents on here, I'm pretty sure (I'm 26).
With the whole word method, textbooks used by students included only the words these children had already memorized. However, once children got into the 3rd or 4th grade, the 1,000 to 2,000 words they had memorized were insufficient for reading at an advanced level, and they had no way of sounding out new words.
In my experience this is completely *not right.* Aren't thousands of examples intuitively enough for sounding out new words? Ds6 was an early self-taught whole-word reader, was never "taught" phonics beyond "b says buh" (until K when he was already reading longer chapter books) but made the leap to being able to decode unfamiliar words by the time he was 3.5 or so. He just internalized the rules from the words that he knew by sight, no phonics instruction necessary.
He may have used sight words as training wheels (and adults read using whole word recognition!), but it certainly wasn't "only the illusion of reading"! If a kid is reading Beverly Cleary without overtly being taught phonics, I'm pretty sure he was really reading.
I guess ND kids have a harder time making that leap when they do whole-word instruction? Well, obviously, I guess ... I'm not trying to sound snotty, it just seems odd to me! It doesn't seem like that much of a leap, with thousands of sight words under your belt, to not internalize many phonics rules without the overt teaching. Say, you recognize the word "apple" without sounding it out. Well, you know a says "ah", p says "puh", l says "ll" ... can most third or fourth graders really not make the leap from "apple" to, say, "apply"?
I guess I don't know.
My "normal-dar" is a little skewed.
ETA: Oh. I see that this quote is from a website called "The Phonics Page." Maybe a little skewed, ya think?
I should check sources before I go on rants!
