Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Sight words vs Phonics

Re: phonics vs sight words
Since this is an opinion question I'll feel free to cite a forum post as my info source.
http://www.mothering.com/community/...about-the-importance-of-studying-grammar

What does diagraming sentences have to do with kindergarten or emerging readers? �Not much, but it might have to do with your homeschooling decisions. �If your first goal is to teach your little 'UN to read, then read. �Read and run your finger under the words. �Point out repetitive large sized words, such as a characters name. �Have dc read that word everytime you come across it. �This is tracking. �Eyes are muscles. �And it builds habits and confidence. �Also point out matching. Look for the words on this page that matches this word "the". �This is scanning. �These build up speed and endurance. �This is why some people read to their kids every day.

But go read that link and the arguments for diagramming sentences. �The same argument can be used for teaching phonics. �Reading teaches reading. �Phonics teaches rules and how to deconstruct the language arts in a way I guess will come in handy later on in school.

Dolche sight words. �If you hothouse those 60 words like they told you to a kid could decode half of the print in the newspaper or chapter book. �Memorize all few hundred Dolce sight words and a kid could decode 80% of all printed material. �It's a shortcut for moving through the learning to read stage to get to the reading to learn stage. �

I think it helps to think, "what's the point of education beyond just what we're doing right now". What is the whole math, language art, history experience from start to finish? �That's where you get the debate, "school should teach you how to follow steps to learn something."
Vs. "forcing them to follow steps to learn something only teaches them to follow steps". �Both arguments are kinda flat views of a 3-d world.

Readingeggs.com costs, but it rocks!!!

I was an oldest sister and often a teachers helper as a kid. That's how I know. I remember teaching others so what I'm reading about education now isn't foreign to me.

I think it's good to work on both things- sight words and phonics. Knowing alot of sight words will help the child read well and quickly. knowing phonics will help them sound out unfamiliar words.
I've made my son 10 sight words each week- we flip through them briefly. It's helped him ALOT with reading. He does one page out of a phonics book daily, which has also helped him read alot too. We use Middle Curriculum press for the phonics.

Sight words is the whole language approach to reading and does not address breaking down larger words such as ridiculous into parts that phonics does.

At school #1, my ds was given 10 dolche/sight words a week. The teachers also gave him a letter and phonics workbook. I also think they were doing some phonics work in class, which the teacher directed.

At school #2, the teachers told us that the sight words or the whole language approach to reading only goes so far and does not address breaking down multi-syllable words into parts. They advised us to go back and review sounds and phonics with books such as Bob books or other phonics based books.

You might try to pick up a copy of Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington's book, Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, at the library or elsewhere if you're working on phonics and breaking down parts of multi-syllable words.

I think one of the issues with whole language vs. phonics involves what type of learner your child is. Some people have an easier time breaking down parts into whole; others have an easier time seeing the whole rather than parts - visual spatial learners.

I agree that it's best to work on both whole language and phonics as well as daily practice.

Yes, I think this is true and is one of the reason the argument continues to rage--if one way worked for everyone, it would be so obvious by now. Readers need to be able both to sound out and break apart words and to understand the sound-symbol system. Most of the argument has to do with which skill should be developed first. There also tends to be an alarming oversimplification of both "whole language" and "phonics" in debate and--too often--in practice. The field of education has not avoided the current cult(ure) of polarization.

My own kids are a great reminder to me that it isn't "either/or." DD was all about sound-symbol connection and was stringing sounds together to create words before she was reading them on the page. DS was much more of a whole word reader initially--something that was apparent when he would read multi-syllablic words and jumble the order of the sounds or syllables. He wears pretty strong glasses and I've often wondered how much that impacted his reading development. It took him longer to be comfortable with tiny print and I'm thinking that a phonic based development would require better control of visual tracking skills than would be needed to recognize the whole words.

Texican, I was thinking that before... reading teaches reading. I learned how to write and read from reading a lot. Then I learned everything else quickly because I had learned how to read quickly and understand all of it.

I can see the benefit of both whole word and phonics. You guys are right that one way doesn't work for everyone.

My brain sees a whole word and automatically breaks it into parts. That is how I can figure out the meaning of words in English and in some other languages. I think learning some Latin would benefit me, but I can see the roots and I understand the meaning of new words intuitively. (This was very useful in all my college science classes!) When I was learning Spanish, I kept coming up with all these connections between English and Spanish that my husband didn't even notice and he speaks both languages perfectly.

So, perhaps I will just keep reading to DD and we will work on learning some sight words and eventually learning some rules when she needs to sound out more advanced words.

Now if I only knew what to do about the boy licking the pages of books or chewing on his hand until drool runs down to the pages. Yuck! I'm just hoping he's not the kid who keeps eating glue in school, and I don't want to say anything because I don't want to give him any ideas.

Definitely keep reading to your DD. I wouldn't stress learning sight words over phonics. I would just follow her lead. My DD was very drawn to learning phonics first. She was figuring it all out from the beginning and wanted nothing to do with whole word learning. Now, we never did anything like "your baby can read" or flashcards. Maybe if we had she would have went that direction. All I know is that by the time she turned two she saw "cat" as /c/ /a/ /t/, and never just /cat/, even though it seemed to me like it would be super easy for her to just memorize some words. It did come a few months later, which was when I considered her a reader.

LMNOP
Totally agree, forcing a style the kid is not comfortable with is so fruitless, following their lead, whether it comes to focus on learning style, or what to focus on, has been so much better for us. Although it took me awhile and help from this board to recognize the differences between what I thought was necessary and what he needed to do. My
DS hated phonics but now as an advanced reader is more open to me showing him how to sound out. And in his pre-k they were doing letter sounds and stuff, which he didn't need but actually fleshed out what he intuitively knew. Going back and filling in is so much better than pushing what they aren't comfortable with.

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