bearing blog: How I teach my kids to read, an empirical approach: VIII. A quick overview to get to the advanced flashcards, with a phoneme index.

Eighth post in a series. See here for:

Introduction:
- Part I.

Materials:
- Part II. "Sandpaper phonemes," a basic set of flashcards
- Part III. Lists, slates, and readers
- Part IV. Advanced set of flashcards.
Method:
- Part V. Beginning with a one-to-one code.
- Part VI. Script for the first two lessons (including the Word Building exercise).
- Part VII. Script for two more early lessons (including the game of Honk).

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This post is a bit of a digression into the future, by request of commenter GeekLady, who wants to go straight to the phoneme index for the advanced set of flashcards.

Really I should already have given an overview of the basic one-to-one code first. I'll try to do a quick explanation as background, followed by an overview of the advanced code.

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Okay, to sum up: I divided my program into two parts: the basic, "one-to-one" code, and the advanced, "many-to-many" code.

Overview of the basic, one-to-one code

My goal, in the basic part, is to cement in the student's mind that what we're doing, when we read, is decoding: each spelling represents a sound. I try to completely avoid confusion during this crucial period, essentially, by concealing the fact that English spelling is difficult to read. There are already many difficult things going on here: the child is learning the symbols, learning to blend a series of discrete sounds into a smoothly pronounced word, and (eventually) having to sort out the digraphs (e.g., learning to recognize that "ch" as a pair is not to be read as /k/ /h/).

I teach those sound/spellings in groups, practicing each group until they are mostly learned, and then moving on to the next group. During this time, I never present the student with any words that contain a sound/spelling I haven't taught. I have pre-decided the order in which I will introduce the spellings, so that I could compose a progressive series of lists of available words. The list gets longer the more sounds the student knows.

Here's the order in which I introduce them. I've enclosed the sounds in slashes and the tilde ~ stands for "spelled."

Single letters, Group 1: /m/~m, /a/~a (as in hat), /s/~s (as in sat), /k/~c, /t/~t, /p/~p, /n/~n, /f/~f
Single letters, Group 2: /b/~b, /i/~i (as in hit), /r/~r (as in red -- not as in her), /u/~u (as in cut), /g/~g (as in big), /h/~h, /j/~j, /d/~d
Single letters, Group 3: /l/~l (as in lab OR as in pal), /e/~e (as in led), /w/~w, /v/~v, /y/~y (as in yell), /z/~z, /ks/~x, /kw/~qu, /k/~k (see note below)
Essential digraphs, Group 1: /er/~er, /sh/~sh, /ae/~ai (as in pain), /th/~th (as in bath), /ee/~ee, /ng/~ng
Essential digraphs, Group 2: /ch/~ch, /ar/~ar, /oo/~ew (as in threw), /oi/~oy, /ie/~ie (as in pie), /k/~ck
Essential digraphs, Group 3: /dh/~th (as in them), /oe/~oe (as in toe), /oo/~oo (as in wood), /ou/~ou (as in cloud), /or/~or, /ue/~ue (as in cue)

Note: In the Single Letters, Group 3, I've included a peek ahead at the notion of digraphs (qu) as well as a peek ahead at the notion of multiple spellings for the same sound. The child already knows that the sound /k/ is encoded by the letter "c," and now he is introduced to the notion that it is also encoded by the letter "k." Along the way, incidentally, he's encountered the notion that double letters like "ss" or "bb" encode a single sound -- which should set us up, later, to accept that "ck" also encodes a single sound.

At this point, the student knows 42 sounds, in nearly one-to-one correspondence with 43 spellings.

Then I transition to the Advanced Code by teaching just a few very important "code overlaps." Where "multiple spellings" means that the same sound may be spelled several ways (such as /k/ being spelled either by "c" or by "k" or by "ck"), I use the term "code overlap" to mean that the same spelling may represent several different sounds. Here are the code overlaps that I teach at the end of the basic one-to-one code:

Essential code overlaps: /z/~s, /ee/~e, /oe/~o, /ae/~a, /ie/~i, /oo/~u (as in truth)

The first gives us access to a great number of plurals, while the next five -- I hope it is apparent -- are the so-called "long vowels."

We get a little bit of practice reading words in which we have to try both the "short" vowel and the "long" vowel -- none of which involve a so-called "silent E" -- before moving on. What's that? Long vowels without silent e? Sure: a as in "safest" and "crater," e as in "helix" and "Swedish," i as in "tiger" and "wild," o as in "banjo" and "nomad," u as in "brutish" and "tulip." Plenty of words to work on without getting into silent e.

So that's what's known before moving onto the advanced code.

Overview of the advanced code

I teach the advanced code in groups of sounds, just as I did the one-to-one code. I introduce one sound every lesson for five lessons, and then I spend five lessons (or more if necessary) practicing those five sounds. There are two differences:

First: The student has encountered almost all these sounds before, in the one-to-one code, and already knows one or two spellings for each one.
Second: This time, I introduce the sound with several of the most-common spellings for that sound.

What is a most-common spelling? It's a spelling that occurs in more than two or three common-enough words (and I admit that I judged whether a word is "common-enough" sort of arbitrarily). If a super-common word or two contains a unique spelling, I taught that word as a one-off along the way: "Weird Words." There aren't very many of them. More on those another time.

At five lessons per week, alternating weeks of introducing new sounds and weeks of reviewing sounds, this phase would take about sixteen weeks. There are eight groups of sounds, and about forty sounds. I tried to arrange them so that there were about the same number of spellings in a group, and so that we weren't forced to practice already-learned spellings using words with yet-t0-be-learned spellings.

Without getting into the minutiae of the lessons (yet), here is the index of lessons for the advanced code.

Index of lessons in the advanced code

Unit 1. Here I deliberately introduce "ld" for /d/ in the same week I introduce "ou" for /oo/ in order to use the words could, would, should.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/b/	b, bb, bu, be	bed, rabbit, build, globe
/d/	d, dd, ed, de, ld	dig, add, canned, side, solder
/or/	or, our, ore, oar, ar, oor	corn, four, more, board, warm, door
/oo/	oo, u, ou	book, put, could
/l/	l, ll, le	left, dill, bubble, stole

Unit 1 Weird Words: woman, Catholic

Unit 2. This unit merges the vowels in "cot" and "caught;" even though my family speaks a dialect that distinguishes them, I find it simplifies things to teach the two together.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/n/	n, nn, ne, kn, gn	no, cannot, nine, knit, gnat
/j/	j, g, ge, dge	job, angel, large, bridge
/o/	o, au, aw, a, ough, augh	pot, Paul, draw, father, bought, caught
/s/	oo, u, ou	book, put, could
/ar/	l, ll, le	left, dill, bubble, stole

Unit 2 Weird Words: one, once, broad, honest, honor, psalm, sword, answer

Unit 3. Did you ever notice that "ng" does not spell /ng/ in the word "hunger?" And I introduce the schwa here, over the course of a couple special lessons just for it. I call it the "Lazy Sound" with small children. Why do I teach it here? Because you need it in order to read nearly all the common words in which "i" spells /y/, like "million" and "billion" and "savior."

I'll write a post all about the schwa later.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/m/	m, mm, me, mb	map, hammer, lime, climb
/ng/	ng, n	ring, think
/oe/	oe, o, oa, ow	toe, most, boat, own
/er/	er, ir, ur, ar, or, re, ear	her, bird, turn, worm, Oscar, fire, earth
schwa	(lots)	(this is subject for another post)
/y/	y, u, i	yell, cure, million

Unit 3 Weird Words: soul, shoulder, though, dough, were, sugar

Unit 4.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/t/	t, tt, te, ed	ten, attic, stopped, gate
/f/	f, ff, ph	fan, stuff, phone
/ie/	ie, i, y, igh	flies, fly, wine, fight
/ue/	ew, u, ue	few, cube, fuel
/ou/	ou, ow	about, tower

Unit 4 Weird Words: cough, enough, laugh, rough, tough, goodbye, diaper, island, eye

Unit 5.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/r/	r, rr, wr, re	brick, carrot, wrap, share
/g/	g, gg, gu	gas, egg, guess
/w/	w, wh	water, when
/sh/	sh, ti	crash, lotion
/ae/	a, e, ai, ay, ey, ea, eigh, ei	bagel, very, saint, day, they, break, eight, reindeer

Unit 5 Weird Words: rhyme, rhythm, rhino, ghost, who, whom, whose, machine, special, passion, pressure

Unit 6.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/h/	h	hello
/p/	p, pp, pe	path, apple, hope
/k/	c, k, ck, ke, ch	garlic, milk, rock, alike, stomach
/u/	u, ou, o	shut, touch, some
/oi/	oi, oy	coin, boy

Unit 6 Weird Words: who, whole, yolk, conquer, unique, ache, was, what, blood, flood, does

Unit 7.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/i/	i, y	big, gym
/dh/	th	smooth
/gz/	x	exist
/e/	e, ea	chess, bread
/oo/	ew, oo, ue, u, ui, ou, o	chew, loom, glue, flute, fruit, soup, move

Unit 7 Weird Words: bathe, breathe, clothes, exhaust, friend, canoe, shoe

Unit 8. In this unit we mention one extra spelling of an earlier sound, "ure" for /er/, because it so commonly follows an "s" that spells /zh/.

Sound	Common spellings	Example words
/v/	v, ve	van, cave
/er/	ure*	injure
/zh/	s, si	measure, explosion
/ch/	ch, tch, t, ti	lunch, itch, picture, question
/z/	z, ze, zz, s, se, ss	zipper, freeze, fuzzy, is, close, dessert
/ee/	ee, ea, ie, y,e, i, ei, ey	wheel, speak, priest, empty, equal, ski, weird, turkey

Unit 8 Weird Words: calves, halves, beige, garage, xylophone, business, react, people, pizza

*Other spellings of /er/ were taught in Unit 3.

The way this works on the level of the lesson: We have three worksheet activities for each sound, given in three consecutive lessons.

The first activity introduces all the new spellings. I give a list of words containing the new sound, circle the spelling in each word, and have the child read it.
In the second activity, the child finds the spellings and circles them, then reads the words.
In the third activity, we study code overlaps involving the sound. Given words containing the same spelling but different sounds for that spelling, the child sorts the words.

More details another time!