Phonics Reading Program: Introduction

The professional education world has long been fighting the "reading wars", trying to decide between phonics and "whole word" or later "whole language" approaches to reading. Phonics aims to teach children to read by telling them which letters make which sounds, while whole word has them learn, predictably, whole words (by sight). More recently (but not very recently) the whole language approach has largely replaced whole word. It aims at children reading lots of books and writing lots of stories (as well as they can; at the early stages pretending to do so is a substitute) and gradually absorbing the information they need to become readers and writers.

The name of my reading program may betray which side I'm inclined toward. I think most children learn best when they are taught, logically and explicitly, how something works. However, the whole word and whole languages approaches are not without their merit. Learning by rote common words who follow complicated rules or no rules at all offers children early success and opens up much more reading to them than a pure phonics approach does. And hearing lots of stories, making stories up, and playing at reading and writing provides the joy of these activities even when actual reading or writing is very tedious. Whole language, moreover, focuses on students doing a lot of real reading and writing once they've learned to - a practice not peculiar to whole language, of course, but owing some innovations to it.

With this in mind, I ordered the sounds and rules of language children would need to learn for reading and spelling from most immediately useful and simplest to most advanced. I made a list of words students would be able to read after each lesson (for use in teaching the rules and for students to read off and practice writing). The fifth through twenty-sixth lessons also include words to learn by sight; these are either irregular or use advanced rules. Each of these lessons has an accompanying passages using the sight words for extra practice.

The tenth through twenty-fifth lessons have accompanying readings that are mostly decodable for the student who has completed the lesson. These should be read with an instructor in most cases; a few words will be beyond the student's knowledge. Some of the lessons also have poetry accompanying them. I will add to the poetry section as I find or come up with more pieces that help teach the rules.

I designed copywork for the first twenty-five lessons. It is very simple, but will reinforce the spelling and handwriting and expose students to sentence structure. Once children have the basics of reading down, hopefully, they can copy passages of more inherent value.