Dolch List, phonics, basal

I’m a parent certified in Phono-Graphix. The PG approach is to teach just a few common consonants and a few common vowel sounds at the beginning, so the children can immediately start to decode simple words such as fat, cat, sat. My advice is to teach a few of the short vowel sounds now and start combining them with the consonants they already know, so they can start to practice decoding skills.

The book “Reading Reflex” by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuiness is only $16 at most bookstores and would clear up a lot of your confusion!

Mary

you could start just with teaching the single vowel sound /a/ as in apple. Then the students could start making and reading quite a few words, such as: fat, cat, sat, bat, at, can, pan, ran, car, bar, tar, fad, mad, bad, am, Sam, tap, rap, lap, as, etc. You could use these words to practice skills — blending, segmenting, and phoneme manipulation. Next, you could add the vowel sound /u/ as in bug and do the same thing.

“Reading Reflex” would be very helpful with the above and more!

Mary

Dee,

The book series you are using is what my 9 yr. old 3rd grade special ed son is using. Do you personally think it is a good program?

My son thinks it’s a baby book and would rather read some other book. I guess I agree that the topics aren’t interesting enough the word part is easy.

I just bough Reading Reflex myself since our schools in our County even spec ed have never heard of anything new. I will work with my son this summer and see how it goes. I will try to keep you posted because if it helps I will be jumping up and down.

Here’s how I combine things:

I’m working with an hour for tutoring. If you have two hours, fantastic, double these times and do more repetition and more depth, as suggested below.

Part 1: 20 minutes — Phonics.

I work through the Scholar’s Choice Check and Double Check series, which I recommend highly as clear, complete, effective, and not too deadly dull (many different types of puzzles on different pages). Reading Reflex or an Orton workbook or anything equivalent would work as well.

Work throught the instructions step-by-step, continuing each day from where you left off yesterday to give the kids consistency and a feeling of steady progress. We do anywhere from one to four pages of work a day, depending on the student and difficulty level, so in a month or two they have a whole book completed and a feeling of accomplishment. I start at a level that is quite easy (tell them we start by reviewing) (your consonant sounds and short vowels would mean starting in Book 1) and do ALL the basics, step-by-step; in 90% of reading difficulty situations, this continuity and connectedness is what went missing and ruined the foundation so the rest of the reading collapsed.

Whatever materials you use for a structure, remember that phonics is by definition ORAL, related to sounds. If doing a workbook, don’t fall into the trap of using it as “seatwork” or “busywork”. (Conme to think of it, this may be why so many parents have succeeded with Reading Reflex when other programs have failed — finally someone is actually saying the sounds to the poor kid!) Each word and sound has to be discussed, sounded out, stressed, and repeated until the student’s ear for the sound is trained.

Part 2: Guided oral reading. 20 to 30 minutes

Choose a book of at least some interest to the student(s). For very very beginners (Grade 1.0 to 1.5) I prefer Ladybird Key Words (recently reprinted by Penguin!!) If your basal is good, use it. If you’re required to cover it, read it quickly, finish it, and do something else for enrichment. For grade levels 1.5 to 3.0, I use any old basals that have good short stories in them, with nicely graduated vocabulary. Using the method I recommend here, you can cover three basal series in a year, so collect any you can that have topics of interest — cover the required book and then add enrichment. After grade level 3.0 I move into good children’s literature, from Dr. Seuss to Laura Ingalls Wilder to Harry Potter to Lloyd Alexander, as well as a good basal reader if I can get one, or use my out-of print treasures.

Reading is done “cold” — let the book speak for itself. If it can’t hold up as something to read for a self-contained story-line, it isn’t worth reading.

Every student reads out loud *at least* a page a day, preferably two or more. The others follow along in their texts, using a pointer such as a retracted ballpoint pen. Rules are everyone reads, no interrupting (particularly not show-off), no making fun, everybody is in this boat together. If a student has trouble with a word, I ask him to go back and look at it, and then I help him sound it out, giving the first consonant, the first syllable, etc. The student repeats the sopunds after me, pointing at the letters. If one of the things we have recently studied in phonics applies (as it almost always will) I mention it to tie the phonics lesson to the reading lesson.

Discuss what is happening as you read. Since you don’t waste time telling the kids what the story is about before they read it, their interest isn’t killed off and there is real suspense and discovery.

If the books are really read with full attention like this, there is no need to reread the same story over and over; rather, use the time to read another story on the same level and get more practice while being really involved with the reading.

Part 3. Word Study. 10 to 20 minutes

I write down all the new vocabulary words. In planned-vocabulary basal readers, we use the lists provided. When we get to children’s literature I use a combination of the words kids have trouble reading, words with notably irregular spelling, and words which seem advanced for the grade level (ie today “dishevelled”, “pate”, “larder”, etc. for a Grade 6 boy doing Llloyd Alexander).

The kids read the words out loud if they can, and I sound out *with* them (everybody gets into the act saying the sounds) piece by piece any word they can’t yet do by themselves. I write the words either on the board or with large marker on large file cards (These are study cards, NOT flash cards — speed comes with skill, not force); we discuss regular sound-spelling patterns and irregular or tricky sound-spelling patterns. Each word gets gone over five or more times throughout this process, with modelling of sounding-out and blending. If the phonics skill has already been taught, the kids can do it for me; if not, I present the phonics rule in the context of the word and it will come more easily when met in the phonics book later — double feedback.

Every now and then, say once a week, we go over our words and talk about them — what they mean, how they sound, and we try some for spelling.

Part 4 for classroom teachers: you can use workbooks that come with your basal readers for further word study and comprehension, you can use other comprehension workbooks as a sort of puzzle or game (start a grade level lower than where the students are, so they can do it independently, and let them work up fast), and you can ask real meaningful questions about the story (eg “Describe Mr. Dursley”) and have the students write paragraphs and small essays.
For spelling, you can group words that have come up in the phonics book and the reading by phonetic patterns — this week all short-vowel CVC words, next week long-vowel CVCe words, next week double-consonant divides off short vowel syllable words (rabbit, hopping, sitter), etc.

This is a dynamic process, phonics feeding reading and vocabulary improvement, and real and meaningful reading and writing leading to an interest in applying phonics.

The same general plan works from the very beginning until the student demonstrates reading mastery by pulling the book out of your hands and insisting on reading it himself because he’s better at it. (At that point you teach literature and writing style).

I would like a copy of the up-to-date Dolch list please. Thank you. Joanne Solander.Dee wrote:
>
> My LD students are just beginning to read. They know all the
> consonant sounds and I have been teaching them some sight
> words. Should I teach sight words and short vowel words
> simultaneously? I like my reading series, Macmillan Spotlight
> on Literacy, but it doesn’t give enough phonics practice.
> How do I teach sight words, short vowel words, and
> instructional vocabulary? These kids can only handle small
> chunks at a time. Help! I am overwhelmed trying to decide
> what to teach next!

Hi, I am not a teacher, but I have experience tutoring a neighbors child in reading. (my mom was a teacher K-1) and I like tutoring reading a lot.
I used School Zone workbooks from the local drugstore (Walgreens), but you can also access them in the web and order from them. They have quite a number of workbooks for various levels and the books are quite well done. Cheap too! About $2.50 each.

Also contact Highlights for Children. They have a catalog of learning books from a company they are working with. These are practice books and they are half size books.

Scholastic Books has several catalogs that are full of ideas. You could order one from them and make photo copies maybe.

I hope you are able to get the things you need. If all else fails, creat your own stuff on Word.
Best Wishes,
Gerthy

Another place where I find GREAT help is through catalogs designed for home schooling. I like the Alpha and Omega publishers catalog. There are others.Check out homeschooling sights and see if you can order catalogs that may be advertised. There is a home school magazine too that you can find out about on line and in just one issue, which you can get free, you will find a number of publishers.
Good Luck.
Gerthy

Somehow I think we’ve done everything here except honor Dee’s original request. The Dolch list really doesn’t change since it was developed by Professor Dolch at the University of Illinois many years ago. It can be found many places on the internet simply by typing “Dolch list” in the address box. Here is one of those lists:

I hope you find it helpful.
Grace at where you might also find some help for your struggling students (Chuckle).

Grace,

I just checked out these sites they are great. I will get back to you next week.