Phonics poll

[Korrale4kq]

Larry,

Your theory has some merit at enhancing the articulation of the speech of a 'normal' developing child.
I used phonics with 2 of the children I taught to read that have verbal apraxia. The phonics did nothing to help their speech. They are 5 and can read well, which is great. But because of their apraxia their speech can only be understood about 25% of the time.  Reading is essential in life, but speech is arguably more important. They are able to break down individual sounds with a lot of work. But they are unable to put together a complete spoken word. Cat for example is said as "da". But they can read d-a-t when broken down. Within their minds they read it and decode it as c-a-t. But verbally they say d-a-t. It is kind of confusing to explain.

My son goes to a speech language pathologist weekly and also attends a speech class. Thus far we know he has an oro motor issue, and though  it is  too early to diagnose the SLP thinks he might have apraxia also. Among other things...my son just doesn't talk. He didn't practice sounds as baby,  he didn't coo and giggle much at all,no babbling, no jargon. And trust me I tried.  My son says 2 words...Bye Bye and dada, and he says those words with perfect articulation. So...somewhere there is has the ability to say words...he just won't.
My sons SLP is working with his speech with a whole language approach. She wants him to work on saying whole words... CAT, BALL, DOG, MILK etc rather than c, b, d, m. He also signs whole words. So that is why I am currently doing a whole word approach. Yes I want him to read and I am trying to teach him...but reading is 2nd to his speech. And I am using written words to reinforce spoken words.

I am sure that these things are subject to change as we go along. I am really anticipating using reading bear and more phonics in the near future though. Just not at this stage yet.

[DadDude]

Well, I wouldn't pretend to contradict a professional on such matters.  My cousin, who is a SLP, wouldn't let me live that down.

[Korrale4kq]

I do think that this SLPs whole word speech approach is a little odd. But my son is also younger than the other children that I went to an SLP with....so....we will just see where it goes. Apparently at my sons age it is more about  all play and no drills. Also there is more of an emphasis on signs, and communicating in general.  I do think that within a year there were me more sounds being drilled. That is when the phonics will compliment speech therapy 

[kauaiheidi]

I did whole word ( YBCR & PP) with my son because I wasn’t aware of other methods.  When my daughter was around one I heard that schools usually teach phonics, but I still hadn’t heard of any established methods for teaching babies phonics so,  along with whole words, I showed my daughter phonics songs on YouTube.  This happened to work for her and she readily picked up phonics. So based on my extremely limited experience, I can’t help but recommend phonics songs (some like Silent E can be very helpful).  Though honestly, I don’t know if phonics songs would have made a huge difference for my son or a significant percentage of other very young children.  Phonics songs may work well for children who are not interested in other phonics methods, such as flash or sounding out, e.g., c-a-t. 

I probably would have tried other methods sooner if I’d known about them sooner.  I think sounding out words may produce readers that are more careful and accurate?  My impression, which may be incorrect, is that when children sound out words, c-a-t, they are somehow more conscious or actually thinking about what the word says.  Left brained?  I’ve seen videos of kids doing this and having a great time, so I’m not saying it isn’t fun, but that it can look like they are making a conscious effort. When very young children learn sight words I don’t get the impression that they are, in general, consciously trying to memorize the words, so there doesn’t seem to be much conscious effort or work in the process.  Likewise, if very young children can pick up phonics without the slowly sounded out phase it can appear to involve less conscious effort.  Though again, perhaps at the expense of accuracy.
 
I like that Reading Bear supports a variety of methods, such as sounding out slowly, quickly, flash, sentences etc.  Since most people in the poll favor using phonics and whole word, I wonder what other people would think about  Reading Bear having a specific Sight Word/Whole Word setting?   This could be done by using some of the existing word files but just regrouping them so they aren’t in the same word families etc.  I think (based on my limited experience) that for very young children learning whole words it is best to show groups of words that look substantially different from each other.  For example, instead of showing  cat, mat, sat together, show words like giraffe  and hippopotamus and include words like body parts or words that commonly go with baby signs for little ones not talking yet.  Just a thought ….that may have to be another “post-launch” feature.

[DadDude]

Heidi, I've actually thought of this.  In fact, it's sort of part of the long-term plan.  The idea is that different clusters (or parts of clusters) can be stitched together & reused in different presentations.  You're right that this will require new programming.  I'm not so interested in making a whole-word tool, however, as I am doing something like my old powerpoint presentations.

If you don't want to show your kids the words sounded out using Reading Bear, you don't have to.  There are a couple different settings that let you skip out the sounded-out bits.  But I get the point about the benefits of grouping words according to meaning rather than phonetics.

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