and now I have more proof that JRL and I need to spend some more time on blends before progressing to three-letter words. OOPS.
Back to the drawing board....er, phonics book.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
Why homeschooling?
Inevitably, this question arises whenever someone finds out we are planning to home school our children. I hesitate to say this too loudly for fear of everyone I ever encountered in education courses in college or in classes I taught in public or private schools hearing me:
"It is exactly because I was in education that I do not believe it is the place for my children at this time."
Perhaps that will change. Perhaps it will not.
For now, though, I am thankful we have the freedom to home school our children.
The 20-year-old education major in me is shaking her head in disbelief. But this time she's wrong.
JRL is THIS close to reading. It's so exciting. I gave her a few weeks off of formal instruction, and earlier this week we picked up Phonics Pathways again and had great success. She is now blending and can read two-letter combinations such as "sa," "mi," and "fo". I thought this process would be excruciating; why not just jump ahead and teach whole language/sight reading, ignoring the process that is inherent in a phonics reading education?
Fortunately it has turned out to be incredibly rewarding, and in the end I have decided that I can no longer condemn the public schools for not teaching phonics the way they did in "the good ol' days." Back then they also had the full support of parents at home, either to introduce such concepts before their children started school or to reinforce them once they were in school. Now such is not the case. I know I could not teach phonics well to 30+ students without every one of those students having someone at home to work with in the evenings! The concepts of "word walls," though not sound according to traditional phonics instruction, keep the students on board in a way that pure whole language instruction in the 1990s could not.
"It is exactly because I was in education that I do not believe it is the place for my children at this time."
Perhaps that will change. Perhaps it will not.
For now, though, I am thankful we have the freedom to home school our children.
The 20-year-old education major in me is shaking her head in disbelief. But this time she's wrong.
JRL is THIS close to reading. It's so exciting. I gave her a few weeks off of formal instruction, and earlier this week we picked up Phonics Pathways again and had great success. She is now blending and can read two-letter combinations such as "sa," "mi," and "fo". I thought this process would be excruciating; why not just jump ahead and teach whole language/sight reading, ignoring the process that is inherent in a phonics reading education?
Fortunately it has turned out to be incredibly rewarding, and in the end I have decided that I can no longer condemn the public schools for not teaching phonics the way they did in "the good ol' days." Back then they also had the full support of parents at home, either to introduce such concepts before their children started school or to reinforce them once they were in school. Now such is not the case. I know I could not teach phonics well to 30+ students without every one of those students having someone at home to work with in the evenings! The concepts of "word walls," though not sound according to traditional phonics instruction, keep the students on board in a way that pure whole language instruction in the 1990s could not.
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