What's Wrong With Johnny's Reading, Spelling, and Composition?

 

"Why Johnny Can't Read" is a well-known book title written in the 1950's by Rudolph Flesch.  He wrote about how the 'Look-Say' Reading method was causing illiteracy in our country.  He emphasized a strong 'Phonics-First' approach over memorized words.

"So Why Can't Johnny Read? Or Spell..  Or Write a simple composition?"
The answer by many politicians is to throw more money at education.

The real answer to these questions is that Johnny has not completed a Phonics program in Kindergarten and First Grade.

Since 1929 most Americans who attended public schools, have not learned to read by Phonics, but by memorizing words taught for Reading and Spelling. This memorization of words is often assisted by little pictures for prompting in the early grades. Reading words memorized is known as the 'Look-Say' 'Sight Reading', or 'Whole Language' method.

This method has caused many students to plod along  slowly while reading, mirroring words like was and saw, mistaken words like feather or father.  Worse, in some cases has been the culprit of dyslexia!  Dyslexia is a sort of ‘short-circuit’ to the brain.  In most cases, there is no comprehension of what has been read.

It is important to let your student know, regardless of age, that their reading failure is not their fault.  They were not stupid or lazy, and most likely did not have a brain problem.  The blame rests on the educator who most likely did not teach the child the proper sounds of the letters, nor taught words in families or with reading rules.  Then it is also difficult to keep up with the rest of the class.  He is apt to feel like a reading failure!


Since Reading, and Spelling, and writing compositions are based on the sounds of the twenty-six letters of our alphabet and combinations of those letters, teach the sounds of the letters first.  Then Reading, Spelling, and composition- writing will fall into place.

1. Teach the long and short sounds of the vowels
2. The sounds of the twenty-one consonants
3. The sounds of the phonograms sh, th, ck, ch, and tch
4. The rule that if there are two vowels in a one-syllable word – the first is long and the second silent. The vowels may come together as in the word boat or separate as in the word cake.
5. If there is only one vowel in the word, then the vowel will be short as in hit, bed, bat, etc.
6. The vowels e, o, and y at the end of a word with only one vowel is long, as in be, go, my, etc.

This is all they need to begin reading!

I Recommend "How to Teach Phonics"  by this author, Janice Porter in the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/How-Teach-Phonics-Phonics-First-Approach/dp/1530549035/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1477510415&sr=8-1-fkmr0https://www.amazon.com/How-Teach-Phonics-Phonics-First-Approach/dp/1530549035/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1477510415&sr=8-1-fkmr0