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I am teaching my third son to read. He is my first to teach how to read, my oldest learned at school. So I really don't know what to expect. He is 7yo and has been reading CVC and some CVCC words since this past Aug. however he still sounds almost all of them out everytime he reads. But I can tell him once or twice what a sight word says and he knows it from now on. Is this "normal?" Is there something I can do to help him out? Also, we are almost finished with his phonic book, McRuffy Phonics Kinder, that goes through CVC and some CVCC words. I don't want to use thier 1st grade book because it has phonics, spelling, English, and spelling and I want to follow the HOD plan. We have tried the two phonic books that HOD recommends, and they were a no go. So can anyone point me to another just phonics program or have any other ideas? I hope this made sense. Thank you for your help ladies!

ETA: He doesn't do well with the phonics games on the computer.

This Fall I was in a meeting over a book Denise Eide wrote and she talked about putting people in CAT scanners and having them read. They discovered the brain is still parsing words. The brain behaved the same on reading new words as well as reading old favorites. Sight words are actually being parsed just at a much faster rate because the brain will try to make it fit a word it knows. So don't stress about him reading words by sounding them out for a long time. She said this research blew the top off the whole word reading theory.

I used Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons... you will have a love hate relationship with this book... you will either love it or hate it.

The first time I picked up 100 Easy Lessons years ago I disliked it. However, I finally bought it our first year of HSing and have used it successfully with my oldest two kiddos over the past few years. They both finished it reading at a second grade level. We follow it up going through the last half of Phonics Pathways reviewing phonics rules while reading lots of books (including the ER titles). It's worked well for us.

I am fond of Reading Made Easy and we have also used a program called Go Phonics. I wouldn't worry too much about too much sounding out at 7yo. I would make sure you are moving beyond CVC to CVCe and blends. The more he reads simple phonics readers the more fluent he will become with the "parsing" as the early writer mentioned. Reading comprehension is related to fluency so developing that now is really the focus. Reading "easy" books is key. Bob books and other controlled readers are great at this stage.

In addition to sounding words out make sure your are encouraging other "tools" in your early readers toolbox: "take a running start" (read the sentence, say the first sound, keep reading) a lot of times the word comes out. "Substitution" - totally accceptable- mature readers do this all the time- substitute a word that makes sense (probably starts with the same sound or has a similar visual structure- letter patterns). Encouraging strategies that rely on word meaning and what makes sense in addition to sounding out are sound reading strategies to develop reading fluency and ultimately solid comprehension.

Remember too that for many kids writing the words and reading them go hand in hand. Play lots of sound awareness games too. Like write "cat" then say change this word to "bat" and have your student erase the c and write a b. This type of practice develops lots of fluency with sounds and sight.

Don't forget fun activities like syllable games - this helps with chunking words visually later when reading.

Creative Teacher Press offer two resources that are game based "Phonemic Awareness" and "REading Strategies that work"

Phonics and sounding out are important strategies for reading, writing, and spelling, but all readers also need instruction in using word meaning and letter patterns(structure) to figure out unfamiliar words. The three parts together are what create the fluent readers we are all want our children to be.

Good luck!

Thanks ladies for your replies.

Kim~ could you tell me more about these two things?

"Don't forget fun activities like syllable games - this helps with chunking words visually later when reading.

Phonics and sounding out are important strategies for reading, writing, and spelling, but all readers also need instruction in using word meaning and letter patterns(structure) to figure out unfamiliar words. The three parts together are what create the fluent readers we are all want our children to be. "

I am not sure what "syllable games" are. And I don't understand what you mean by "all readers also need instruction in using word meaning and letter patterns (structure) to figure out unfamiliar words."

No wonder my DS is having such a hard time learning to read.

All really simple stuff! Thank goodness. I noticed that when my daughter who is dyslexic was learning to read I dove into the phonics very deeply with her and forgot some of the other good stuff I used to do as a reading teacher. And it wasn't until I took a couple of classes recently and listend to my next up and coming reader automatically doing some of them that I remembered the importance of these activities.

So here are a couple of examples:

Syllable game we like: "Beats on the Body" (Laura Rogan) Say a word like "Dinosaur" with right hand tap Left wrist (Din), Left elbow (o), Left shoulder (saur) Then we chant its a shoulder, its a shoulder, its a shoulder - it has 3 beats. With beginning readers we do this almost everyday. The tap marks are Wrist, elbow, shoulder, head, other shoulder, other elbow, other wrist. As they get good at it they try to find longer words with more beats. I've found that this works better than traditional clapping because the count is the body part. Also, later for spelling kiddos can put the word on the their body and spell each part.

Another is " compund Boom"(Laura Rogan) this is probably considered structure since your teaching your child to notice two words that make one word. If you read cupcake: punch "cup" with your right hand and "cake" with your left hand. Then "boom" your fists together. So we'd say "cup" (while punching) "Cake" (punch other hand) "Boom" fists together. Huge hit! My kiddos like to look for compound words just to be able to do the chant/cheer.

Finally a 'meaning' activity you could do is cover words in a story you are reading with post it notes. Your child can then guess what the word might be using context clues )the meaning of the sentence or picture clues). This refines another decoding strategy besides sounding it out. In simple books the picture will tell you the word and as books get more words on the page the meaning in the sentence will tell you. So if I was reading "The big yellow retriever bounded after his ball." I might cover retriever and as I'm reading along pointing to the words I would pause and let my child use the sentence and picture clues from the page to substitute "dog" most likely. Then to challenge him I might show just the first letter and see if he can come up with another word that means the kind of dog in the picture that starts with r. (this was a horrible sentence example - but hopefully you get what I mean)

Even simpler - as you are reading aloud pause and let your child fill in a word that would make sense. The more naturally he can do this the more fluent his reading will become.

As kids are learning to read it is totally OK to accept substitutions that are contextually correct and do not change the meaning of the sentence. Reading is for meaning - not for word for word accuracy. Then after reading the passage I might pick one or two words that were read "wrong" and teach another decoding strategy. (Chunking, running start, teach the phonological pattern etc)

And a great way to play with sound is to work on the erasing the sound in the word and substituting another to make a new word. I gave the "cat" example above. If I was doing it my dialouge might go something like this:
write "cat"
change one sound to make "bat"
change one sound to make "bit"
add a letter to make "bite"

I would only do this advanced sequence after he had mastered changing first sounds, then changing last sounds, and finally medial sounds. Changing to blends also advances the activity. I think the author does some of this in Reading Made Easy but I'm not sure.

The book I mentioned by Creative Teacher Press "Reading Strategies That Work [Paperback]
Jo Fitzpatrick" has lots of ideas for these kinds of activities.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Kim, thank you so much for your time and help! May God bless you for it.
Oh, and I am not finding " Strategies that Work", could you maybe PM me a link if you have time?