Dear Parents,
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B64onpbVZLdxYjE0OTVkZDctMDg4NS00Y2Y3LWExNWQtNTQ0NzU0M2E3MjQ0&hl=enThe above link is to the schedule that I have been working on with my children. I wanted to share it with you for your benefit. I am a full-time working mom and I know how hard it is to find the time to sit down and plan everything out so that I can stay consistent and ahead of my kids. I want to share this with you as I had only wished someone had done this before me. So please use and adapt and enjoy!
I have a son who is turning 3 and has been reading from YBCR since he was 18 months old. After finishing YBCR we got stuck at the word level and wasn’t able to get to sentences. I think the big problem on my part was not being able to sit down and plan out a program so that I could stay ahead of him and be consistent.
I am also a 2nd grade teacher and had the pleasure of working with some intensive needs students this past year. I found a very remarkable sight reading program for these students. (Edmark) I realized that if I adapted it for my children it should probably work quite well with the Doman program. Thus I began to adapt the program to use with my then 2 ½ year old. He is now reading sentences successfully! ☺ However, he has difficulty if it is a word he has not seen before. Therefore, I began to adapt a phonics program and “Doman-ize” it. It is based on the
www.a-zreading.com phonics program.
I also have a 5 month old who I started out with YBCR at 3 months of age. I decided to start showing her set 2 (Edmark) and set 3 (phonics) along with her brother. She may not be ready for this but I strongly believe in input, input and more input. If she doesn’t get it now she certainly will eventually and the input can’t hurt as long as we do it joyfully and without testing.
Set 1 – is based on the words from Your Baby Can Read. I show 5 words a day, retire one each day and add a new one. I show my children the videos based on which words we are working on. When I finish all of the YBCR words I plan to use Little Reader cards from the deluxe set and their schedule they have set out. I may also purchase “Your Child Can Read” at some point. If any parents are able to sit down and list the words shown on those videos, I will happily plan out a schedule and make a flashcard template.
Set 2 – The Edmark-based program. This starts at week 3 for no special reason except that it took me 3 weeks to get comfortable showing the YBCR – I was also doing Doman Math at the time – and getting all my flashcards ready for this set. With Edmark the child quickly progresses to sentences and couplets. According to Edmark, “Edmark level one teaches 150 basic sight words plus endings (-s, -ed, -ing) taking a non-reader to approximately a 1.0 level.” If you email me I can give you more details about how Edmark works – but I just adapted the 150 words, couplets, phrases and sentences to use in my Doman program. I am looking forward to making personalized stories with my children and you will see where I planned out where to create a story. (after about every 10 words or so) Up until now I just didn’t have the time to make the books because I was stuck just getting to the sentence level with the Doman program. I will share my stories as I get them done and added to this folder.
I also wanted to say that one of the reasons I really wanted to adapt off the Edmark system is that I found it really brain-wracking to try to get to the sentence level. I don’t think YBCR does an effective job at it and so far I found the LR takes too long to get there. Doman says that sentences should start after 50 words – however, his book leaves it very much up to the parent to plan the program. Perhaps I’m not that creative or didn’t have the time to figure it out so this is why I was anxious to adapt the Edmark program to use (which by the way is a scientifically –based program).
Set 3 – The phonics based set starts at week 10 – again only because it took me that long to get it planned out. Doman advises against using similar words on the same days. He says that that is confusing to the child. He also is against teaching Phonics explicitly and wants children to be able to deduce the rules through exposure. I have various thoughts on this and I’m not sure what the final results may be. You have to remember that Doman started his program when the whole word method of teaching reading was very popular. Eventually the field of education went to what we now have which is supposed to be a balanced approach, meaning I teach children to read using BOTH sight reading and phonics. Some children do better with one over the other. I think a good reading program needs to include both. If you want to stick exactly by Doman than I would say don’t use set 3.
However, I “domanized” my phonics program, meaning I am not teaching my son to “sound out” words but am systematically introducing words from the same word family or with the same phoneme. Asking a 2 or 3 year old to sound out words may be beyond his/her ability, too left brained, etc. However, to expose him to those sound sets and allow him to deduce the rules himself seems to me to go along with the Doman philosophy.
Having strictly done the YBCR cards with my son – I have found that he often confuses words that are similar even if they aren’t shown on the same day. For ex. ball and bat or any word that starts with “b”. I think he is now ready to start decoding with some guidance. I don’t feel that I will have to explicitly teach him the rules so I have “Domanized” the phonics program so that it focuses on one sound at a time, building in phrases and sentences and eventually a decodable story. I based these on the readinga-z phonics program that I have used with my 2nd graders, but it needed to be adapted for young children. I have included the words, phrases, and sentences for the Doman part. Due to copyright laws I didn’t feel I should upload their decodable books but you might like to download the read aloud books and the decodable books from their website. (they do give a free 3-day trial in which you could probably download all that you needed) I can give you more information if you email me.
Finally I have started to create flashcards. This was the hardest part for me. My flashcards are to be printed on either A4 tagboard or cut sentence strips so that the size is 3”x12”. Doman recommend a font no smaller than 1 ½ inches – 3 inches. 72 size font = 1 inch. So I have made the letters no smaller than 108- point font (which is 1.5 inches) and the biggest I could fit is 144 -point font which is 2 inches. I tested it out on my 5- month old daughter and she seems to have no difficulty with the size. I decided to use chalkboard bold font so that the letter “a” is written similar to the way primary school students learn to print. This is actually a big deal in the classroom, so I highly recommend chalkboard font. So basically all you have to do is cut your tagboard or paper into 3x12 inch strips and for some sentences you will have to tape them together. Right now I have up to week 40 done and will add more as I can.
My reading schedule is not perfect. You might find some overlap in words. I tried to avoid this but wasn’t perfect at it. I don’t think some repetition will hurt the children at all. Doman recommends 5 sets a day but 3 is all I can handle right now along with the Math program. If you find a typo let me know and I’ll try to revise the schedule.
I can’t wait to see how well my children are reading by the time I get to the end of my schedule. In my head I am expecting that they will be able to read independently by that point.
I hope this helps and I hope you enjoy the program. Use what works for you. I think the most important thing is the Joy and consistency everything else will fall into place.
Obviously someone could have tried to make and market something along these lines – but I didn’t want to. I am a bit disenfranchised by the whole money making aspect of early childhood education. Yes, I would have paid money if I had found a program all laid out for me. But if you truly believe in the achievement of all children to their highest potential you will want to make it as free to access as possible. I would however, like to add a survey at some point – whether this program works for you or not – because I would like to see these methods written up in a scientific education journal for the education community as a whole. So please look for my survey and keep notes of how your children are doing so that I may one day write this all up for the benefit of early childhood education.
And if you haven’t found it already – I have already posted a 32 week Doman Math schedule as well. Here is the link:
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B64onpbVZLdxYTY0NTEzM2UtN2E0ZC00OWVjLTg5OTctZjJhZGE4MjQwZjA3&hl=enI look forward to hearing from you and how you like what I have done and what I can do to improve it.
Very Truly yours,
Kristina
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