Progressive Phonics
Aug. 19th, 2009 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
entirelysonjaA few days ago, I heard about a free reading program called Progressive Phonics, and thought it might interest Erika. One of the features that distinguishes it from other programs is that, although it does teach the phonics rules, it emphasizes the acquisition of sight words. Since I believe that true reading is done by sight words, this appealed to me. Also, one of its main teaching methods, at least in the early levels, is through the reading of amusing stories where the parent reads most of the words, and the child reads only a few words on the page. This allows the stories to be more interesting, and creates a fun atmosphere of reading together. Erika really likes the kind of story where the adult reads most of the words, but the child "reads" pictures representing some of the nouns, so I thought she might enjoy this kind of collaborative reading.
She enjoyed reading the first book together, but what she really loves is the associated card game. The program comes with a lot of worksheets and other materials to go with each book; in this case, there was a memory game featuring 9 high-frequency words with the "short a" vowel. I enjoyed printing up and laminating the cards, and we've played twice now. She clearly reads all of the words well, and I'm pretty sure she didn't know some of them before we read the book. One of the things I love about memory is that it's possible for me to play together with Erika and have her win; of the 8 times we've played, I think she's won about half the time, including one game in which I got no pairs.
Some pictures of the game:
I'm not entirely convinced that I ought to be doing this kind of thing with Erika at her age, but I think I've decided that as long as we're both having fun and I don't have any expectations of how often she'll want to do it or what kind of progress she might make, it's OK.
She enjoyed reading the first book together, but what she really loves is the associated card game. The program comes with a lot of worksheets and other materials to go with each book; in this case, there was a memory game featuring 9 high-frequency words with the "short a" vowel. I enjoyed printing up and laminating the cards, and we've played twice now. She clearly reads all of the words well, and I'm pretty sure she didn't know some of them before we read the book. One of the things I love about memory is that it's possible for me to play together with Erika and have her win; of the 8 times we've played, I think she's won about half the time, including one game in which I got no pairs.
Some pictures of the game:
I'm not entirely convinced that I ought to be doing this kind of thing with Erika at her age, but I think I've decided that as long as we're both having fun and I don't have any expectations of how often she'll want to do it or what kind of progress she might make, it's OK.