Simon S10?

I have not seen the program, just a few screen shots. What bothered me is that there were a few with “word families”. Also they are mostly carrying whole language type phonic approaches for some reason.
This bugs me as I like a no. of their programs ie CoWriter, Draftbuilder, etc.

—des*****+

[quote=”des”]I have not seen the program, just a few screen shots. What bothered me is that there were a few with “word families”. Also they are mostly carrying whole language type phonic approaches for some reason.
This bugs me as I like a no. of their programs ie CoWriter, Draftbuilder, etc.

—des*****+[/quote]

Thanks Des. I know that the whole language type is not appropriate for my daughter. But why would you be bothered by word families? I thought that is a good way to teach vocabulary?

Debbie

I think you might be using word families in a different way. What I mean is probably the corrupted version but anyway what you do is teach “chunks”, ie “an” words like “man, pan, can, etc.” or “it” family “it, bit, hit”. The trouble with the whole concept is that you would likely need to teach thousands of these word families to teach the kid to read anything.
Reading Reflex has some appalling examples of the way some kids read if exposed to this. Also it is not really true in many cases. For example teach “ow” as a family and there is “how, cow, now” but what about “glow, show”. The truth is that “ow” is a representation of a couple different phonemes—“ow” as in “how” but also what is often called the long o sound, so to teach it as a family makes it iffy for kids trying to sound out words.

BTW, I may be wrong about SIO but I didn’t like the looks of the screen shots.

—des

[quote=”des”]I think you might be using word families in a different way. What I mean is probably the corrupted version but anyway what you do is teach “chunks”, ie “an” words like “man, pan, can, etc.” or “it” family “it, bit, hit”. The trouble with the whole concept is that you would likely need to teach thousands of these word families to teach the kid to read anything.
Reading Reflex has some appalling examples of the way some kids read if exposed to this. Also it is not really true in many cases. For example teach “ow” as a family and there is “how, cow, now” but what about “glow, show”. The truth is that “ow” is a representation of a couple different phonemes—“ow” as in “how” but also what is often called the long o sound, so to teach it as a family makes it iffy for kids trying to sound out words.”

My daughter’s school teaches spelling by using “ow” words with the different sounds. Her spelling is a strong area at least.

“BTW, I may be wrong about SIO but I didn’t like the looks of the screen shots.”

—des[/quote]

I will try and check on it more. Thanks!

Debbie

You might contact don johnston directly (www.donjohnston.com) and find out if they have a demo or evaluation CD. I know they have these for other programs. In fact, I have a whole CD from the “Start to Finish” books.

—des

SImon Sounds It Out is good stuff. It’s not one of those hybrid “oh, we’ll stick some sounds into the word memorization and group the words and call it phonics” programs. (I’ve played with an older version when I was at the U of South Carolina’s Educational Technology center some years back).
It’s a good sign that the teacher type in question was excited by it.
SImon spells is also good — when I get my time warp & clone myself, I’m going to model my adults spelling program after it.

[quote=”des”]You might contact don johnston directly (www.donjohnston.com) and find out if they have a demo or evaluation CD. I know they have these for other programs. In fact, I have a whole CD from the “Start to Finish” books.

—des[/quote]

Thanks!
Debbie