Phonics is the ONLY way to teach reading.
Or so I thought.
When I began my life as a homeschool mom, I KNEW phonics was the best way to teach reading.
It made the best sense. Letters have sounds, which combine to make words. If you know the sounds, you can decode and read words.
Besides, after having grown up through the "Dick and Jane" look-say era, I knew the whole-language approach was lacking. Although I was a good student, I didn't enjoy reading as much as I could have. And I was only an above average speller.
When my firstborn was reaching school age, I found the very best phonics program I could find. He learned to read phonetically, as did his younger siblings. We changed programs over the years, but still focused on phonics, because phonics was the ONLY way.
But then my eighth student arrived.
With Down syndrome.
Faced with a child who could not talk well, whom the therapists had written off as "only getting more delayed," I wondered how I would help her succeed.
But then I found the solution: Sight reading!
Although it went against my homeschool grain, on the advice of my daughter's neurodevelopmentalist, I began teaching her to read with flashcards when she was 3.
I will never forget the night we started. She was sitting in her high chair after supper, and I flashed about 10 words to her. I went through the card stack three or four times in a minute.
Then I put three words in front of her, and asked her to show me a particular word.
Without hesitation, she pointed to the correct word! I asked her to show me three or four words, and she identified them all!
In just a minute, my non-verbal toddler with Down syndrome was reading!
Sight reading is the most efficient way to teach a child who is non-verbal to read. In fact, it's the primary way to teach babies and toddlers to read. (If you've ever seen videos of babies reading, chances are their parents used a flash cards and signs.)
Sight reading is especially good to teach reading to children with Down syndrome because these children tend to learn visually.
The process is easy. All you need are index cards, a black marker, and a word list. Some sight-reading programs use the Dolch word list, others use words that they consider more meaningful to little children. The Dolch list is available all over the internet. To these words be sure to add words that you know are meaningful to your child, including the names of siblings and pets.
The size of the index cards will vary with the age of your child. Toddlers do better with larger cards and larger letters. By school age, normal 3" x 5" cards with moderately large type (30 to 42 pt.) will work well.
Write a pile of cards in one sitting. This way your handwriting will be consistent, and you'll have the flash cards finished. Use lowercase letters unless the word requires a capital.
Begin teaching with 10 cards. If you turn the cards toward you with the words upside down, you can flash them faster. (I struggled for months until I figured this out.) As you read the word, pick the card up and put it down in front so the child sees it. Don't linger--the eyes and the brain go faster than your hand and mouth. If you can flash the cards one per second, that's a good speed. If you can go faster, do.
Go through the stack quickly. Reshuffle, and do it again. You should be able to go through 10 cards four or five times in a minute.
After a minute, you can offer your child a choice of three cards and ask him to point to the word you give him.
If he doesn't get the right response immediately, don't worry. Some children don't pick up on this the first time for many reasons. For example, if a child is not hearing or seeing well, more repetition may be required. If after several weeks your child isn't responding well, you may want to have the eyes, ears and visual processing assessed.
For many children, sight reading is a quick and dirty way to read.
For my daughter with Down syndrome it was much more than that. Sight reading gave her success in an academic area and earned her the esteem of her peers. At three, she couldn't walk and she didn't talk much, but she could demonstrate that she could read. With sight reading, she was reading larger words than her typical peers.
Eventually, phonics will be added to my daughter's reading curriculum. And when it is, she'll understand it better, because she'll be able to see how the sounds fit together.
Or so I thought.
When I began my life as a homeschool mom, I KNEW phonics was the best way to teach reading.
It made the best sense. Letters have sounds, which combine to make words. If you know the sounds, you can decode and read words.
Besides, after having grown up through the "Dick and Jane" look-say era, I knew the whole-language approach was lacking. Although I was a good student, I didn't enjoy reading as much as I could have. And I was only an above average speller.
When my firstborn was reaching school age, I found the very best phonics program I could find. He learned to read phonetically, as did his younger siblings. We changed programs over the years, but still focused on phonics, because phonics was the ONLY way.
But then my eighth student arrived.
With Down syndrome.
Faced with a child who could not talk well, whom the therapists had written off as "only getting more delayed," I wondered how I would help her succeed.
But then I found the solution: Sight reading!
Although it went against my homeschool grain, on the advice of my daughter's neurodevelopmentalist, I began teaching her to read with flashcards when she was 3.
I will never forget the night we started. She was sitting in her high chair after supper, and I flashed about 10 words to her. I went through the card stack three or four times in a minute.
Then I put three words in front of her, and asked her to show me a particular word.
Without hesitation, she pointed to the correct word! I asked her to show me three or four words, and she identified them all!
In just a minute, my non-verbal toddler with Down syndrome was reading!
Sight reading is the most efficient way to teach a child who is non-verbal to read. In fact, it's the primary way to teach babies and toddlers to read. (If you've ever seen videos of babies reading, chances are their parents used a flash cards and signs.)
Sight reading is especially good to teach reading to children with Down syndrome because these children tend to learn visually.
The process is easy. All you need are index cards, a black marker, and a word list. Some sight-reading programs use the Dolch word list, others use words that they consider more meaningful to little children. The Dolch list is available all over the internet. To these words be sure to add words that you know are meaningful to your child, including the names of siblings and pets.
The size of the index cards will vary with the age of your child. Toddlers do better with larger cards and larger letters. By school age, normal 3" x 5" cards with moderately large type (30 to 42 pt.) will work well.
Write a pile of cards in one sitting. This way your handwriting will be consistent, and you'll have the flash cards finished. Use lowercase letters unless the word requires a capital.
Begin teaching with 10 cards. If you turn the cards toward you with the words upside down, you can flash them faster. (I struggled for months until I figured this out.) As you read the word, pick the card up and put it down in front so the child sees it. Don't linger--the eyes and the brain go faster than your hand and mouth. If you can flash the cards one per second, that's a good speed. If you can go faster, do.
Go through the stack quickly. Reshuffle, and do it again. You should be able to go through 10 cards four or five times in a minute.
After a minute, you can offer your child a choice of three cards and ask him to point to the word you give him.
If he doesn't get the right response immediately, don't worry. Some children don't pick up on this the first time for many reasons. For example, if a child is not hearing or seeing well, more repetition may be required. If after several weeks your child isn't responding well, you may want to have the eyes, ears and visual processing assessed.
For many children, sight reading is a quick and dirty way to read.
For my daughter with Down syndrome it was much more than that. Sight reading gave her success in an academic area and earned her the esteem of her peers. At three, she couldn't walk and she didn't talk much, but she could demonstrate that she could read. With sight reading, she was reading larger words than her typical peers.
Eventually, phonics will be added to my daughter's reading curriculum. And when it is, she'll understand it better, because she'll be able to see how the sounds fit together.
