My daughter has gone through about 2,000 flashcards now so it is getting harder to find new lists of words to teach her. I recently read Daddude’s essay & am fascinated by the idea of teaching phonics in this way. Originally, I thought it not possible to teach phonics in a child without a longer working memory - neurodevelopmentalists say that kids must have a digit span if 5 or 6 in order to llearn phonics. This made sense to me, & perhaps it is true in the traditional way that it is taught in school. I have noticed for quite a while that my dd is starting to intuite words (as Glenn Doman puts it). This, coupled with the information in Daddude’s essay has me convinced to try the fleschcards. I’d love to discuss this more if anyone is interested & has any thoughts about it.
I may have missed this information somewhere, but I am wondering how many of these cards can be taught at one time. I realize that they should be taught in order, but can I teach a number of sets at once? I often teach 40 to 60 words a week. Can I continue to do this & teach multiple sets at once?
To elaborate, I’m sure she will learn the words, I’m just not sure if teaching them all at the same time will affect her understanding of the patterns in the words.
Hooked on Phonics introduces words in families, the reviews the family group together but clumped together with other word families and then eventually mixes them all up. Maybe introduce them together but all the at words together followed by they ad words and so on. I’m sure she will get it
I would just try to teach them in “clumps”…so if you are going to flash or teach 40 words at a time, take those words from as few “sets” as possible using the maximum amount of words from each set (so pulling from the smallest amount of sets at a time while still teaching the desired quantity of words, rather than pulling words from 20 different sets, at least initially anyway). Or teach one set every couple of days or 1 set per day, whatever works for you or until mastery, doing one set at a time.
& I ditto everything WaterDreamer said. I started using Fleschcards with my daughter but stopped because there was too much overlap with HOP. Now I am using them with my son (18 months) because the HOP text is too small for him. The words are very similar and it’s a very similar approach. The only reason I went with HOP is because it was less work than Flesch cards (printing/cutting) and it was an all-in-one approach. We love LR very, very much but I think that just like language, it’s best to immerse them as much as possible in reading from various approaches. They all complement each other.
I can attest that phonics can be taught to babies/toddlers because I was only using Fleschards and My Montessori House Videos (along with LR) when my daughter sounded out her first word at 19.5 months. It was Hhhhh Ahhhhh Ttttttt…HOT! She already knew the word, but she showed me she knew how to break up the letter sounds. Then I showed her WAX which she had never see before, and she did the same so I knew she “got it.” Since introducing Fleshcards to my son at 18 months or so, he will say the letter sounds letter by letter as I point to them on the Fleschcards. I’m not sure if he is putting those sounds together yet blending them into words (he’s not quite as verbal as DD was at that age) but I really do think he gets the initial part of the concept at the very least.
I have been using a standardized grade level word list to see how my DD is doing and I caught this info on the webpage today while looking at the words. Seems relevant to your situation.
To further increase memorization efficiency, we have organized words into small
groups of similar vowel sound and reading-rule categories. Our research has clearly
shown that teaching words that share similar vowel sounds [b][u]dramatically[/u][/b] increases
the rate in which students can permanently master (learn) the new words. (emphasis theirs)
Thanks for the tips & ideas. I like the idea of teaching the sets in clumps. I am thinking that perhaps I could fast flash the words, then show the pics & talk about the definition, then move onto the next set. Hopefully that will put enough seperation between them, yet still allow us to go through them quickly.
TeachingMyToddlers - thanks for the link. That list sounds kind of similar to Dolch words. I printed it off for fun, just to see how many my dd can read ( probably most of them). Being able to read all of the words is considered a 2.0 reading level it said. Does that mean grade 2?
I never know where my daughter is as far as reading level goes. I’m guessing grade one, but because she doesn’t use phonics as well as I think a later grade one student should, so I am uncertain. Phonics is coming though, although it would be good if she listened to her mom once in a while! lol. Tonight she read me the book Duck in the Truck. When she saw the words TWANG by one of the pictures, she insisted that it said wiggle. I tried to get her to go back & read it again, she refused to even look at it & insisted on wiggle. She will probably read it properly next time, but was not willing to let mom be right!
