Thread: Weekly Poll: What approach did you use or are will be using to teach reading?

(Thanks to Maramade and Lovingmychildren for this week's poll question!)

There is a lot of ideas out there on how to teach your child to read. For myself, growing up it was learning the whole word, without much in the way of phonics at all. Now for my oldest son,he went through the system until he was in 5th grade. He was taught with phonics, and the sight word approach. The youngest only went through kindergarten and they did basically the same thing. Now that both boys are home with me, I am finding that even though they both can read really well that we still have problems with sounding out new words. (Truth be told there are some words I can't even pronounce! Thanks be to GOOGLE for Google translate that says the word out loud so you can hear it!) So we are back to phonics mostly for spelling but also for sounding out words that are hard for them

I know that this weekly poll will help out a lot of new to homeschooling or someone with a struggling reader. So let us know what you did for your kids and anything new, different or fun you did that worked!

With my older dd, she asked me to teach her to read when her sister was born, because she wanted to read to her. She knew her letter sounds already, so I thought we would give it a shot in a relaxed way. I didn't know anything about approaches or phonics vs. whole language or any of that, but someone recommended BOB books so we used those. I guess that's a combination of the two, more or less. I basically explained how to put the sounds together and she was reading in about a month. So I thought, "Hey, I'm a natural. What's so hard about this?" LOL At 8 she's a great reader and speller, and very confident about reading words that are long and/or unfamiliar.

My younger dd is far less motivated and seems to be learning in a whole language style. She likes to be read to, and will sometimes now point out words that she recognizes. She doesn't like it at all if I try to help her sound out words and will shut down, so I don't do it (she's still really young anyway), but she's learning anyway.

I guess we're using a combination of phonics and sight words. I'm not even sure what some of those others are. My son is doing really well with phonics and sounding out words but I know there are some words he's just memorized.

DD knows all her letter sounds but doesn't seem ready to blend yet. She seems to recognize some words (can read Milk Bone off the dogs treats) but very few.

We have a lot of games like Sight Word Uno and bingo, etc. that we play quite a bit, and we do OPGTR, AAS and ETC for phonics. Seems to be working okay.

I selected "phonics" because that's what I'm using right at this very moment....I know that in the future I may have to change things but right now phonics is what I understand and I can easily convey this to my son. He seems to be doing well with it so we are sticking with it. But I do have two other children to teach to read!

I voted "several of the above". For my 3 oldest it was the LeapFrog Letter Factory video first, then BOB books, then sight words. Can't say enough about the BOB books. Each kid worked through those and then took off. Next thing you know, they are reading Frog and Toad. My 4 year old also likes to listen to audio easy readers and follow along with the book in hand.

I replied Other. We didn't teach DS to read, he started reading on his own somewhere between 2.5 and 3 yo. We did read to him ALL THE TIME. He is a book junkie And honestly I think that is why he started reading so early... At first we thought he had just memorized some of his favorite books/certain sight words. But then he started making the fridge magnets into words. Then about 2 months before he turned 3, we were sitting in B&N reading to him when he picked out a book and started reading it to us. One he had NEVER been exposed to before. He did that with 3 more books.
At that point I realized that *I* was behind and tried to catch up. We had fridge magnets and had learned basic letter sounds but nothing fancy - I thought I had plenty of time! LOL I got the Hooked On Phonics and he HATED it. I tried a bunch of other great phonic programs over the years and he hated them all. He is still a very advanced reader and doesn't ever seem to struggle with figuring out words. BUt he sure won't try to sound something out. He guesses based upon what it looks like and the context of the sentence (atleast that is my assumption from watching him read). I got AAS to work on our phonics the sneaky route.

That said, I HAD planned on a good solid phonics approach to learning to read. Combined with lots of exposure to books and quality snuggly reading time. Each kid is so different though. Some kids learn best thru phonics and some just don't. I think that as long as you find a way that works for your kiddo, go with it!

I voted "Other". Basically, I read to my kids a lot. Both just started reading. I suppose I could call this whole language. I think that reading just came naturally to them. One was reading by 6 (boy), very fluently by 7. The other started reading by 4, reads at a grade level of at least second/third grade now at 6. Neither is a perfect speller, however.. so that is something we will work on this summer!

I voted all of the above because I will probably end up using them all. When I was teaching in PS I taught students w/ very severe learning disabilities and I found that with one of my students the whole language approach worked the best, but with another the only thing that worked was sight words so I g=have to vary my approach. With my kids my oldest went through Kinder in PS and learned the basics in reading, now he reads everything! So, my approach with him will be to just keep reading and introducing higher level books and focusing on comprehension and fluency. Right now we are reading Harry Potter together. With my 5 yr old it is a different story. He wants to read but he has no patience for it. He knows some of his letter sounds but seems to mix them up a lot. I am not sure of the exact approach I will take with him, but I know whatever I decide its going to be a challenge. He is very stubborn and had little tolerance for things that he's not excited about...sigh.

I have used several different approaches. My daughter learned to read with phonics. Her twin brother learn to read using a whole language approach. My youngest son taught himself to read. I read to him constantly, and he had the leap frog fridge magnet set. I think those things contributed to his early reading.

"Other" here also. Both of my kids read on their own before kindergarten. We read out loud to them ALL THE TIME and were at the library at least once a week (still are, actually!).