I was talking to my friend about her summer visit with her grandson who is about to start first grade. Together the two of them were reading a beginner reader. The boy was reading the three- and four-letter words well.
But when he came to a longer word, he would look up with sad, sad eyes and say, “It hurts!”
“What hurts?” his grandmother would ask.
“That word hurts. It’s too big,” he would say.
It would be a funny story if the pain the boy felt were not real. I have seen this with other children too.
In particular I have seen children squirm when we first attempt CVCe words after mastering CVC words. That silent e at the end of words seems like an impossible hurdle: so intimidating that children would rather stop learning than face it.
I’ve seen the fear, too, when children are learning how to read two-syllable words. When there are twin consonants, as in “little” or “yellow,” and I tell them to split the word between the identical consonants, there is no problem. But when we attempt to read syllables in words with different consonants between two vowels such as “Wilson” or “random,” the children freak.
Their fear is real.
One time I moved from CVC to CVCe words with a girl who had had no previous phonics learning. She could read most CVC words easily, so I spent only a few lessons reviewing them before moving on to CVCe words. She looked at those words as if they were spitting fire. She stopped speaking, shook her head, crossed her arms in front of her and pushed back her chair. We had reached the limit of her understanding, and she feared what lay ahead.
If this happens to you, I suggest
Figure out where the student’s learning boundary is. What has the student learned fairly confidently, and what next step brings on fear.
Begin each lesson with a review of what the student already knows. Compliment the student. Make students believe in their abilities.
Introduce the next concept slowly, incrementally. For example, if you are introducing CVCe words, start with only one vowel such as a. Don’t try to teach all five vowels in the same lesson.
Show the child similar words with and without the silent e, such as “cap” and “cape,” and “tap” and “tape.” Or “mit” and “mitten,” and “kit” and “kitten.” Since replacing first consonants is easier than replacing second consonants, stick to the same second consonant for the first lesson. Keep as much of the words the same as you can so there are fewer variables.
If at the next lesson the student seems to have forgotten the previous lesson, accept that and start again. Some children move quickly through phonics, and others move slowly, or stall at learning certain skills.
If the child learns slowly, advance slowly. There is no right or wrong length of time to learn phonics skills. What you are teaching the child is a life-long skill, so if it takes five months to conquer CVCe, so what? Over a lifetime of 80-plus years, isn’t it better to learn to read well than to forever “hurt” when you see hard words?
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I suggest you give your child a pretest to see what reading skills your child has learned well, and what ones he has not yet grasped.
The words on this pretest are more or less divided into four kinds of words in this order:
1. Short (closed) vowel, one-syllable words. These include one- and two-letter words, words beginning or ending with blends and digraphs (black, church) words which end in twin consonants (fell, jazz), words which end in “ck,” and words to which an “s” can be added to make plural words or certain verbs (maps, runs).
2. Long (open) vowel, one-syllable words. These include words ending with silent “e,” words with double vowels which have only one vowel pronounced (goes, pear), and certain letter combinations (ild, old). They also include words with “oi,” “oy,” “ow” and “ou” letters.
3. Two– and three-syllable words which follow the above rules (catnip, deplete) and two- and three-syllable words which don’t follow the above rules but which follow a pattern (light, yield). These words include words with certain suffixes (le, ies) and words with a single consonant between two vowels (robin, motel).
4. Exceptions. These include words with silent letters (gnaw, lamb), words from other languages (debris, cello), and words which fit no pattern (business).
Ask your child to read the words in the pretest below. Each row across tests a particular phonics skill. If you child hesitates at all, that is the place to begin teaching him or her phonics. I will talk more about how to teach these four groups of phonics skills in my next blog.
Phonics assessment
bad, hem, fit, don, pug, am, if, lass, jazz
lock, Mick, bills, cliffs, mitts, catnip, Batman
grand, stent, frisk, stomp, stuck
chuck, shun, them, branch, brush, tenth
star, fern, birds, fork, purr, actor, doctor, victor
muffin, kitten, collect, pepper, gallon
complex, helmet, falcon, napkin, after
tantrum, muskrat, constant, fulcrum, ostrich
skate, bike, Jude, mole, dare, shore, tire, pure
need, cheer, aim, hair, bay, pie, boat, oar, Joe, low, soul
fruit, few, child, blind, fold, colt, roll, light, high
earn, worm, rook, pool
fault, claw, all, chalk, Walt
boil, so, pound, down
comet, dragon, liver, salad, denim
total, ever, student, basic, demon, vital
apron, elude, Ethan, Owen, ideal, usurp
inside, nearly, absent, unicorn, degrade, tripod
advance, offense, fence
gripped, planned, melted, batted, handed
sweeping, boiling, thinning, flopping, biking, dating
rapper, saddest, finer, bluest, funnier, silliest
easily, busily, massive, active, arrive, wives
keys, monkeys, armies, carried
action, section, musician, racial, crucial, nuptials
brittle, pickle, carbon, dormer
parcel, decent, gem, urge, badge
lose, sugar, nature, sure
graph, Phil, then, moth
bomb, thumb, gnat, gnome, high, sign
whip, whirl, echo, ghoul, knee, knob
could, calf, folk, hustle, listen, wrist
alone, bread, bear, chief, young, squaw, swan, waltz, word
decision, exposure, gigantic, polarize, occupant, quarantine
If you want to help your child learn to read, one of the best things you can do is not to let him guess. Most words can be deciphered if the student has a phonics background.
Also, don’t let your child depend on pictures for meaning once the child starts to read. Most adult reading material is not accompanied by graphics. Students must learn to gain meaning from the text alone.
If you have decided to help your child read this summer, good for you. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to help your child read better. Years of research show that the best way to teach reading is to start with letter sounds (phonemes) and then to combine those letter sounds into words (phonics). If you do this in a systematic way, such as following the four-part sequence I describe above, your child will learn to read.
comicphonics for early readers 