I just finished reading Reading Reflex today and found it very insighftul and informative, but I was a little confused. I’d really like to read the opinions of teachers who use this philosophy. The authors state to not teach rules (silent e at the end of the word) and not to teach letters, but their sounds. My students come into my class (second) with these rules and letters already taught. Also, my school is really into Pat Cunninghman and “chunking/word families” (bat,cat,chat etc) This book states to not do the word families. Am I misreading parts of this book? I am a reg ed teacher and am wondering if these strategies should not be applied for the average learner? Although I am not an LD teacher, I always have students that are LD in my room, some indentified and getting services, some not and I am their reading teacher. Is this book and its theories considered to be effective? I never heard of it until recently reading it on this message board. I have a son in kindergarten who is learning his letters (they do a letter a week). Should I teach him this approach, or will I confuse him with what he is doing in school? Thanks for any input! I’m going to go check out the readamerica website now.
Re: a little confused about reading reflex
The Phono-Graphix approach works well for regular ed children as well as LD children. If it were my son, I would teach him using the PG approach. Once a child can read well, orthographic rules and letter names are useful for spelling. Before that, they get in the way of learning to read.
Go to http://www.groups.yahoo.com and join the ReadNOW list (free email group). There are a lot of teachers and reading tutors there who have worked with children of different ages and abilities, and I think all of them have used other reading approaches as well as Phono-Graphix.
Mary
I am using Reading Reflex. I have had to undo the letter names. They really got in the way. I have had to undo the rules. They could remember the rules, but they didn’t help. This book has really helped us! I also joined up to their new kids’ website. It is homegrownchild.com. We’ve used the spelling game two days in a row and I’ve already seen an improvement. I hope this information helps you.