Guiding to Read

We’re calling this “guiding to read” instead of “learning to read” because in this entry we’re talking about what the parent/teacher needs to be doing to best facilitate a child learning to read.

We use a number of resources to help us in guiding our children to read. Those resources include: a list of letter groups and their possible English pronunciations (phonograms), a list of sight words in order of frequency, and High Frequency Word Books. If you don’t already have copies of these, consider printing them out or having them handy. For the first two, you may just want them as a reference for yourself.

Still hooked on phonics?

The method we use is really quite straightforward but it is something that takes getting used to, especially if you were taught to read during the phonics era. So with that in mind, lets make sure we first do our best to help any of our readers who are still in the clutches of the phonics lie. Here are some facts to help you break free:

• How many of the 26 letters of the English alphabet are sometimes silent? Answer: 23. Yay for q, v, and y!
  • Think about aisle, debt, indict, Wednesday, love, fifth, sign, honest, business, marijuana, know, could, mnemonic, autumn, colonel, receipt, February, island, listen, tongue, answer, faux, and rendezvous. When your language has words like these then approaching it from a grammatical “rules” mindset is not going to be helpful. As the old adage goes, the only rule in English spelling is that every rule has an exception.
• How many ways can the letter “a” be pronounced? Answer: 7 or 8.
  • [A] as in able
  • [a] as in pat (there’s also nasal [a] like in “pan”)
  • [i] as in message
  • [o] as in father
  • [ou] as in walk
  • [u] as in want
  • [🛇] as in aisle
• How many ways can the word “vase” hypothetically be pronounced? Answer: at least 12. At most 60.
  • The usual possibilities include:
    • [v A s] like “case”
    • [v A z] like “haze”
    • [v o s] like “boss”
    • [v o z] like “cause”
  • But look at how many ways above “a” can be pronounced. Even if we ignore that “e” is not always silent at the end of a word (e.g., “café”), and that “s” actually has four ways it is pronounced (although not usually at the end of words), we still get these other possible pronunciations of “vase”:
    • [v a s] like “pass”
    • [v a z]
    • [v i s] like “sis”
    • [v i z]
    • [v ou s] where the [ou] is like in “pour”
    • [v ou z]
    • [v u s] like “fuss”
    • [v u z]

When you think through the implication of these facts, you quickly realize there is no point trying to add on unreliable rules to the already complicated mess of deciphering spellings. For example, the most famous rule “an ‘e’ (following a vowel-consonant combination) makes the (previous) vowel say its name” is obviously not always true. I don’t know about you but the last time I checked “love” doesn’t rhyme with “clove.”

“Aww, I [l O v] you so much.”

“You loathe me!?”

“What?! No! … That dastardly ‘e’!”

In my experience this inconsistency in the phonics method not only confuses readers but also severely slows them down. If you take up all your reading time explaining unreliable rules that sometimes overlap and contradict and implying readers will know for certain how a new word is pronounced, then your readers will always go back to that foundation. They will take time examining every word they come across in the future even if they’ve seen it a hundred times before for any “rules” that might apply – rules that will inevitably fail them much of the time.

But if instead you provide your readers with the “answers” both on the letter level and the word level for them to memorize and to use for internalizing some rules on their own for the future, then that is the foundation they will return to. When they come across a word, they will first examine it to see if they already know it. If they do know the word, since they have been taught to rely on remembering indisputable facts instead of working to apply unreliable rules then they will simply recall its pronunciation and move on. And if they don’t already know the word they will begin trying out all the combinations of sounds they know for sure the individual letters and letter groups in the word can make until they find a combination they’ve heard and makes sense in context.

And we’re not just talking a few years of impact here. As I’m sure you know as a reader yourself, this kind of thing can impact you for your entire life and be very hard to change. It is extremely important.

Another point to consider: Using either method the reader may decide to ask for help, but when it comes to the reader brought up under the phonics method, since the underlying principle is that you should be able to use the phonics rules to figure it out on your own, the idea of asking for help will make that reader feel like they just weren’t smart enough or savvy enough. For readers brought up under a phonogram + sight words method, however, they will feel empowered to ask for help because the underlying principle with that method is that it isn’t possible to know for sure what a word says anyway unless you have been informed, and so the only way to get the answer is to ask, and if you can’t the best you can do is guess.

Note that between the two methods described above, only one is grounded in reality – the reality that you cannot ever be absolutely sure when you see a new word how it is supposed to be pronounced until it is confirmed by some authoritative source. The only English spelling that has a one-to-one correlation to pronunciation is the lonely letter “v” and, arguably, her friend “q.” There are quite a few blends that have no more than one pronunciation, except that without confirmation one can never be sure that a blend is meant to be a blend and not just adjoining letters. For example, since we we’re assured by phonics that “oy” says [oy] shouldn’t “yoyo” be pronounced [y oy O] like “boy Oh”? Or, since we’re assured by phonics that “rh” says [r] like in the word “rhyme,” is “barhop” pronounced [b o r o p]?

As a personal example that has more to do with spelling but is still related, I never remember how to spell the word “receive.” I always want to write it “recieve.” Now, I know that there is a “rule” that says “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’,” but actually…that’s the problem. The fact that this rule comes to mind so quickly shows that I have been trained to look for these situations instead of to simply remember how to spell the word correctly. I never remember to spell the word correctly because instead of training myself that the word receive is spelled r-e-c-e-i-v-e, I have trained myself that receive is spelled however you want and then you analyze it for rules that you you’re supposed to entirely trust with all your heart before feeling bad about having spelled it wrong, again. Which doesn’t even make sense as a reaction because “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’” isn’t a real rule…at least not if you’re trying to write “efficiently”.

…See what I did there? Hah.

Reading is the same way. You want reading to be a process in the mind where the person first examines whether or not the word is known and then if it’s not known they looks for what is known and test for possible matches, or better yet, look up the answer.

So, are most phonics rules usually accurate? Yes. Are they always accurate? No. But are they helpful? Well, actually – no. Not really. It’s better to emphasize completely accurate information, even if it means admitting the truth that you can never know how a word is pronounced until you’re informed. (I’m looking at you news reader. I’m sure you’ve read some word in the news that you have your own personal way of pronouncing and you’re just been waiting to discover one day how it is actually pronounced.)

The phonograms + sight words method

Now that I’ve gone on and on about what we don’t do. Let’s get into what we do.

When you sit down with your kids to read, you want it to be an adventure, not just of getting through a book or even a page, but each word. You want to see the little joy that shines in their eyes when they put the sounds together and then realize what word they have been saying all along, albeit drawn out and sounding funny.

Below are the steps we take to accomplish that. (Please note that this would look drastically different if the reader has hearing or vision impairments.)

1. If the reader knows how a word is pronounced, let them say it and move on. There is no need to work through a word they know.
   • Make sure the reader’s finger is going from word to word or from letter group to letter group.
   • Make sure they are looking at the page instead of at you. Put your finger on the letter or letter groups when pronouncing them if necessary to help them focus. (Often times they will only look at you to make unreasonable guesses.)
2. If they don’t know a word there will be an obvious pause. Go ahead and start coaching them through recalling the potential sounds each letter or letter group can say. This will sound like, “What sounds can “g” make?”
   • There is no need to wait for them to ask “what does this say?” before you start coaching since although that is good practice for them asking, it distracts from the flow and will make it harder for them to remember any of the previous words they just read. Try to jump in right when it becomes obvious they don’t know the word.
   • If helpful, have a phonogram list nearby to check with them.
   • Keep in mind that vowels have a lot of variation so it may be best to simply tell them how to pronounce the vowel(s) in the word. This will sound like, “In this word the “oo” says [oo].”
   • In a word with a lot of consonants you might also intentionally have them mumble the vowels and just focus on the consonant sounds since it is usually pretty easy to figure out what a word is by the consonant sounds alone (although they’ll still need you to confirm it when they “figure” it out).
3. Once you have talked through all the combinations (and given the answers for or an easy way to approach the vowels), have the reader try out some of the combinations. For a word like “good” this is what the reader might sound like: “Hmm….[g oo t] [j oo t] [j oo d] [g oo d] Oh! ‘Good’! That makes sense with the word before. Does it say ‘good’?”
   • This does not need to go on long at all. They don’t have to go through every combination. If possible, it is nice to see them discover the right sounds on their own, but it is really just a way of practicing what to do if they find themselves without any resources in the future for finding out how a word is pronounced for certain.
   • Remember this is not the same as trying out unreliable rules. The possible pronunciations for each letter or letter group are extremely reliable and this is just putting that knowledge into practice.
   • Remember that if they do discover the pronunciation they will still need you to confirm that the pronunciation is indeed correct. There is no way to know for sure otherwise.
4. If they are not able to discover the word by trying out combinations of pronunciations, the reader will need you to give them the answer for how to pronounce each letter / letter combination. This will sound like, “‘g’ here says [g], ‘oo’ as I said before says [oo], and ‘d’ in this word says [d].”
   • You will need to use a phrase like “here” or “in this word” in order to emphasize that the fact is only true in the word you are reading together.
   • IMPORTANT! Do not pronounce “d” as [duh] or “s” as [suh] etc. Pronounce for the reader the actual sound the letter will make in the word without adding an [uh] on the end or your child will repeat that sound and not be able to hear the word. If they repeat after you and say [g oo duh], they won’t be able to hear that the word is actually [g oo d].
5. If they are not able to blend the sounds together after a few tries, try pairing up the letters or letter groups, and telling them how to pronounce those. Something like, “the first two letters together say [goo] and the last letter says [d].”
   • See the important note above about not saying [uh] after consonants you are pronouncing.
6. If the reader is still not able to hear the word from what they are saying, tell them that you can do it together. Pronounce the same pairs that you created before but very slowly. Eventually speed up to a normal pace until they hear the word. If they still don’t hear it, just say it for them. You never know if it might just be a word they don’t recognize or haven’t heard before.

So there it is. A phonogram + sight words approach. It’s not glamorous and can feel a little long, but because it is all about discovery, as long as your moving on quickly enough to the next phase of helping the reader hear the word when they’re just not getting it with the current phase, then they shouldn’t get too frustrated by the amount of time – instead they’ll be relieved to be closer to discovering the answer. Of course, when things take longer like this it also naturally gives readers a greater incentive to remember the word. And that’s not to mention how more time interacting with a word always gives more opportunity to build a good memory of it.

Please note that although the basics surrounding what a phonogram is remains rather consistent, there are many lists online of phonograms, some that include some letter groups and some that include others. We have produced our own phonogram list based on compiling many of those lists and doing our own aggregation process, but it is still a work in progress. If you find mistakes, please let us know!

So what do you think? Do you like it?