Hello,My name is Jacqueline S. Renaud Hills.
I am a FL Certified Teacher with an MBA.
A parent recently asked......
Instead of learning all the phonics sounds and putting them together isn't it easier and quicker for a child to just learn to memorize sight words? My child is in kindergarten and he has already memorized almost 100 words!
My reply....
Well, In my many years of teaching reading I have learned that if you teach a child 5 short vowel sounds: a, e, i, o, u, and 21 basic consonant sounds b, c, d, ..... you have already given them the ability to sound out over 200 words!
Add in 5 more long vowel sounds and now your child can sound out thousands of words.
Continue this process by adding in 132 Special Sounds plus the overlapping 52 of 73 Phonogram sounds and now your child can sound out 90-95% of English words!
Of Course there are millions of words in the English language but we currently use only about 170, 000 of them.
If the 184 sounds in groups that I spoke of earlier can be combined to sound out 95% of 170,000, that's 161,500 words that your primary level student is equipped to sound out and read.
It's the old Biblical proverb: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. TEACH him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime! Sight reading is like giving your child a small serving of fish daily or weekly. Teaching them phonics is like equipping them with the skills, fishing boats, nets, and gear.
Sounds are the building blocks to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to pages, pages to books, books to volumes, volumes to the world of reading.
I believe that it's worth putting in the "hard" work up front for a lifetime long benefit.
Teach your little one to f...i...sh.
(f (Step 1b-consonants) i (Step 1a-5 short vowels) sh (Step 5-special sounds)
Mrs.Hills Thank you!!! My daughter went from avoiding reading to doing exceptionally well with confidence! It’s second nature to her now. She’s an amazing speller because she understands what she’s doing.Her program goes far beyond reading ! My daughter is proficient in telling time and math !!! A thousand times thank you!!! I will continue to refer families to your program.