The Reading Lesson phonics question...

[hs.mama07]

We're working through the Reading Lesson and just finished lesson 5. While reading through the intro on lesson 6 it says, "the child should read only those letters which have a bar under them. The words which do not have bars under them should be recognized by sight." Well, DS5 only knows a few of them by sight. I guess I just missed that in the initial instructions and he's been doing so well sounding things out (needs no prompting), that I didn't think anything of the words without bars under them.

So my question is, do I need to stop and help him learn those words by sight before moving on to lesson 6? Was I supposed to have been going over those words outside of our phonics book time--doing flashcards and such? Any advice how to help him learn the words, or is it okay to just keep going and assume he'll pick them up as we go? Thanks so much for any help!

[MelInKansas]

Uhhhh no. You don't need to go back and review the "sight" words unless he has trouble decoding or figuring them out. Some of the sight words they teach are the ones that are not spelled phonetically, making them harder to sound out and then figure out. But for example, my daughter still sounds out "of" and "was" but she will say "ah" "f", "uv" or "wuh" "a" "s", "wuz" because she just knows that those sounds make that word..... crazy right?

This is just my 2 cents. I saw that too and said "well if she remembers them from the previous lesson, great, but if not, and if she can figure it out, I'm not going to tell her she was supposed to remember it." I didn't. Eventually she got them. TRL has a lot of repetition.

There are different kinds of readers out there. Depending on how early of a reader your son is and his personality or learning style, he may sound out a lot of things even when he has seen them dozens of times. That's how my oldest was. She sounded everything out for quite a while. She's not as good of a memorizer as my 2nd, my 2nd got the sight words much faster.

[hs.mama07]

Oh, thank you so much! It's great to know someone else did it that way b/c I was dreading having to slow down and go over all those words. He's doing such a great job sounding things out and really wants to go on. He does the same thing your DD did--sounding out odd words using their different sounds. Like "come" he sounds out "c-uh-m" even though the short "o" shouldn't be "uh" lol. I'm glad to hear that your oldest sounded things out a lot but still did fine Thanks!

[raindrops]

Here is a fun way to review and build reading confidence (someone on these boards mentioned it a few weeks ago)

Take a few days and just go back and read some of the stories of earlier lessons. Your child will notice how EASY it is now! My son just flew through the earlier lessons. Then when we returned to where we had left off, he was more confident and stronger reader. It was fun to see how he grew!

[hs.mama07]

I really like that idea. The stories are his favorite part anyway, so to go back and see how much easier it is now would be great! Thanks!!!

[raindrops]

On page 5-1, the last paragraph, they say that chapter 5 is likely THE hardest chapter because of the "b" and "d" issue. So it is a good time to go back and do a little review and then come back to chapter 5.

My son enjoyed the review at least. The stories are his favorite also.

We will probably do the review technique again soon, too! We're at the end of chapter 8 now and goin' strong- it is so exciting! Teaching phonics was the most anxiety causing part of Kindergarten for me. LOL. Carrie's recommendation of The Reading Lesson saved me. Haha. This book is awesome, fun and effective. I had never heard of it before finding HOD. I had bought Phonics Pathways first and what a nightmare! They taught ALL the vowels first- which all sound so similar. I wanted to cry; ds did. Sigh. But that was an older edition, maybe the newer versions of PP are better. But I am stickin' with TRL.

[TrueGRIT]

Thanks for the tips!
We tried a review today after my ds had been lagging a bit in reading. His first statement was "Oh, this is so easy!"
I think the reading went better after that.