Oh, I definitely knew that I didn't look at the world (or experience it the way others did) by the time I was in third grade or so.
What I mean by "if you have a choice" about reading pedagogy is that many GT kids teach themselves out of sheer determination.
Unfortunately, you can't "un-learn" the way you learned to read.
While phonemic methods are certainly just about the ONLY way to teach struggling students how to read...
the phonetic method is definitely superior for teaching a variety of HIGHER literacy skills later.
That is why seeing literacy in those terms is a distinct advantage-- even for gifted learners.
Spelling, root word identification, prefix/suffix identification, and contextual vocabulary building all are given a little boost by reading phonetically rather than with a purely whole language approach.
It's the way that higher mathematics is taught, as well. It's an algorithmic approach rather than a one which is based on empirical experience. (Reading words you've never seen is much less intimidating if you've learned how to approach things phonetically.)
That's all. I'm well aware that many gifted children initially learn to read using other means, and that fluent literacy tends to eventually rely pretty heavily on whole language skills. But I don't think that speaks to the superiority/efficiency of those methods of
acquiring basic literacy so much as it does that we aren't offering little ones anything that they can get their teeth into, so they improvise instead. It's certainly where my daughter was headed, in spite of our AVOIDANCE (so not kidding) of direct instruction.
Why not offer a little phonemic awareness and see where it goes, YK? There's a lot of difference between that and pushing academics.
Between the Lions was a PBS show that DD was enthralled by at two and three. Well, that and Elmo. LOL.
