I have little ones that I’ve begun to use Doman program to teach reading, but for my 5yob (5 years and 2 months to be exact), I am hesitant because I read sometimes that after age 4 or after age 5 it is best to use phonics approach. I could do this… it worked for the 3 older kids… but he isn’t enjoying it… he is bored with learning letter sounds (and he only knows a handful yet). As a side note, when I was doing math with my 9yob today, and he didn’t know the multiplication facts he needed, he asked me if we could do those flashcards that we used to do because that’s how he learned the 3X (several months ago). In Teach Your Baby to Read (Doman), they talk about teaching 48months to 72months (4-6yrs), so I assume they feel that it’s still a better approach for that age group than using phonics. To support their theory about right-brain teaching, they talked about how some soldiers in a war were being flashed pictures of fighter planes they should be able to recognize (as friend or foe) because that was found to be more effective than ‘studying’ them like an adult normally studies things… so that leads me to wonder if my 5yob would learn to read faster with a flashcard method. When I hear people suggest that after 4 or 5 then phonics would be better, then I am confused and uncertain which method to use. Why are they suggesting phonics after a certain age?
Has anyone had success to teach to read at a later age? What was your experience?
In general all children (even those 8-9 years old and even adults) need to learn whole words as well as phonics. That is because the most used words in the English language are mostly not phonetical. (“one” “two” “though” etc) I am not too sure about actually flashing them at older children though or whether showing them whole words stuck on the wall might be better - flashing implies more right brain knowledge and it would probably depend how right or left brained your child is as to how well the flashing might work.
If your child is 5 years then I would most certainly teach him some interesting words as whole words to limit his boredom - what does he like best - if its dinosaurs try “pterodactyl” etc. Ask him what words he’d like to learn to read or write. I’d still continue with the phonics but you need to make reading more interesting too. Get a book he’s really interested in and teach him the most exciting words in it as sight words and then let him read those words to you as you read him the book (stick to only a few words)
Good luck - he is definitely going to need the phonics (he won’t pick it up by himself at this age) but you will have to try to make that fun too by doing phonics with whole words he knows and likes.
Thanks for your reply… I agree that even the phonics kids still need to just memorize some of those words in English that don’t follow any of the rules (boy, we sure have a lot of them! I think a language like Spanish is much more sensible.) So what influences how right or left brained a child might still be? Maybe how much traditional math or phonics teaching they have received so far? What are some of the activities that might prolong their right brain learning ability? (I’ve heard of the idea of extending right brain learning ability with Tweedle Wink or something… what’s that about?) I’m not worried that he won’t learn to read… I know that any method, no matter how poor it is, if it’s done consistently will result in a reading kid… but I want it to be fun for him and I’d like to choose a way that gets him to reading-land the quickest. Maybe I need to incorporate more of the natural reading method… but the words in the library books are so small… and the pictures are so much more fun to look at… maybe I need to adapt his favourite story books with the photocopier to make our own homemade books with bigger words and have some of the words separated from the pictures more.
I saw some posts by someone who STARTED Doman when her child was 5 or almost 5 or something. I read she even used some of Doman math… 'didn’t read much about her experience with reading though and I can’t find where I read it now.
Anyone with successful experience using a flashcard method on such an ‘old’ kid? (I’m just kicking myself for not sticking with Doman with him when I first got these books about 3 years ago, but babies kept coming and we moved and also I think I was too uncertain and looking for evidence that it was working so I stuck to the same words a little too long and ‘tested’ him more than I should have… his excitement about learning to read soon dwindled). This forum is great for building confidence and faith that it will work… thanks to all who are sharing the details of their experiences teaching their little ones!
I have NO experience teaching older kids to read but I used to tutor some young early readers when I was in high school. The ones that only knew phonics and relied totally on phonics to deconstruct the words really had some major fluency problems, and zero level of comprehension. I think with a 5 year old that you should start with phonics, and try to make sure they know all of the Dolch sight words. I think a combo of those two would bring the child close to fluency pretty quickly. Also, read the same books at home again and again so that they can memorize the words to their favorite books.
If you have LR I would strongly recommend showing him the Pattern Phonics sets. It lets him figure out phonics rules all by himself in a natural and intuitive manner. It’s basically teaching phonics using the right-brain flash method, though you can also slow it down. I’m using it with Felicity, except I turn off the pronunciation and have her read through the entire set herself.
hi kl
do you mean by phonic (alphapet)cuz according to doman method its difficult for children to understand the alphapets and its much easeaer for them to know the whole word
from my experience with my 2 1\2 years daughter she refuse to accept the alphapet and can memorize difficult word even better
Little Reader sounds just awesome… and very time-saving too!.. but we are one income and baby #7 on the way and it just isn’'t in the budget. Making flashcards is more time consuming and doesn’t have some of the advantages of LR (flashing faster, varying colour/font,variety of ‘dot’ icons, native sounds for foreign languages) but we have a cheap supply of ink and paper is fairly cheap and the effort I put into cards will be for several children.
Yes, by phonics I mean learning the sounds of the letters, then words with short vowels (cat, bed, sit), then words with long vowels (eat, time, see), then adding the blends (trip, black, clap), then other special sounds (break, knob, thumb), etc, and the readers start with “The fat cat sat on the mat” and gradually progress to more and more difficult text.
But my little 5yo guy, very eager to ‘do school’, is not very excited about learning those letter sounds. He does understand that you put together ‘c’,‘a’, and ‘t’ and then you get cat. But you really can’t get going with reading stories until they know the sounds that those 26 letters make. When I talked to IAHP yesterday, the very nice lady said that it was probably an advantage that he doesn’t know his letter sounds yet (he only knows a few) if I’m planning to use flashcards/whole-words with him. I started this thread just because I want to know if anyone has had success teaching their 5yo kid with flashcards to read. He’s not too happy with what we’re doing, and I’m preparing to do Doman with the 3yo and 11mo… if it’ll work, then why not the 5yo also. But I’ve heard people say to do phonics after 4yo or 5yo, and not flashcards, so I am uncertain what to do.
HI,
I’ve been teaching 4-5 year old children English as a second language and found that sight words work best. When I take out my phonic books they cringe. I usually have to promise to do something “fun” after. I think that motivating them to read what they want to read works best. If they like cars they pick up words like trucks, dumper and so on faster. There is a thing called brain gym that helps work both sides of the brain. Remember that the right hemisphere may recognize the picture (word) but if you want them articulate that well they have to go through the left hemisphere and the coordination of both sides is important. Brain gym (google it) is exercises that work both sides before you start learning.
Thank you, townlily, and welcome to the forum. That is very encouraging to show that whole-word approach is not only working for 4-5 year olds, but it’s working better and they are having more fun…I read that the right brain is more receptive to learning when they are in a good mood and not feeling stressed about something (so important that learning is fun!). Also that you are teaching them to read at the same time that they are learning English as a 2nd language… I am hoping to teach my children another language and I didn’t think to teach them to read it at the same time (maybe too confusing I thought, or too difficult at the same time). What are the native languages of the little students in your class? What sort of different methods do you use in your classroom?
I remember learning how to read when I was little. Personally, I learned to read by memorizing what certain words were. I figured out the rest from the rules that I had learned on my own. In other words, by knowing that what words went with what like “house” “dog” “fire” and etc, I learned what sounds when with what. I’m not the brightest so if I could do this intuitively, I know that probably a lot of other people could do that too.
Later, in first grade, my teacher really grilled the phonics. I hated it. It was useless to me.