Well after months and months of trying again and again with phonics I have decided for my Children Phonics is not the place to start so we are going back to the older style of repetition!

After talking indepth with my lovely mother in law I have found where we have stumbled with my childrens reading it was the introduction of phonics. I introduced Phonics after my appointment with our lovely LEA, but trying to teach a concept that doesn’t make sense to me to my children isn’t the best option for us. Phonics is ok where you can use it but when you come across words like WHAT which is an exception to the general rule of phonic’s.

I can however see how it would be useful to a child who has already learnt the most common words and are a competant reader to aide in the expansion of their vocabulary, but do find that the whole concept of teaching the children through word recognition is a far better concept even if a bit repetitive for the me and having spoken to many home educators who use both techniques it has been my observation that those taught using the classic repetitive  way are far better readers from a far earlier age.

So for me Phonics are out of the window and tucked away in the too early pile for now and I will see how they get better but after having sat with them for about an hour today talking to them and reintroducing the whole read a book till they know it inside and out routine both Thomas and Jessica automatically sat up and paid attention with a brief look of relief so we are back to the start again with the first in the series of Puddle Lane. Considering how quickly their memories have come back while reading this morning hopefully it will not be long before they are back where they were before the whole phonics disaster I will continue to teach them Phonics as and when the time is right I just feel it is a very unstable way of teaching your children how to read and honestly I now how children are managing to leave school with out a solid foundation under them in reading. I wonder how long it takes for the schooling system to come up with the same conclusion and how much longer after that before they change the way children are being taught to read.

I feel for Children out there after READING is the Foundation to knowledge, and it should be the one thing they make sure children know how to do before leaving school after all if you can read you can learn anything else you need to know in life especially so in this modern age of gobal communication and the endless recources you can find online.

Everything is at your finger tips all you need to expand your knowledge in this day and age is a relatively up to date computer and access to the Internet and you away. Doesn’t matter if you want to know how to bang a nail into a piece of wood or if you want to learn to play an instrument or learn a new language.

Anyway hope this is help to any of you who are out there flogging the dead horse which is Phonics and wondering if it is just me or even if your weighing up as to if Phonics is for you. Like most subjects there will be those who love phonics and wouldn’t be with out it and think it is the best way to teach children to read but I disagree for My children It didn’t work and I for one am not willing to waste anymore of my time in trying to force feed it down my children’s throat I have wasted 9 weeks of my children’s life trying to get them to understand and use this method despite the fact that they were both advanced readers for their age when I started my son of 7 was reading me his Evolution and Dinosaur books before the 9 weeks and my 5 year old was reading pages of MR Gum before their only problem being that they were getting reluctant to read aloud and that was what caused me to give it ago wondering if they were coming across words they couldn’t read and hiding it by refusing to read out loud and now although the knowledge is still there and I know they still know how to read I feel it will take them a week or so before wanting to enjoy books again. All Phonics did for us was discourage them from reading and therefore making them loose their love of books.

Maybe I tried it too late but I found them saying What as W -hat instead of wot just because according to phonics that is the way it is pronouced.

If you have anything to say on this subject then don’t hesitate to comment I will try and respond as soon as possible.