MOMS AND DADS,
Have you ever talked with a child that just seems more capable of drawing conclusions or engaging in more "adult-type" conversation than the average child? Children that have this capability have received training in how to read, think, and reason. First, they were taught how to read every word on the page and second, they were taught how to make inferences from what they read.
When a child learns to make inferences, it simply means that he can read a page and draw a particular conclusion of his own, not just from the basic information stated directly in the text, but also from the information that he gathers from clues or hints that he finds inbetween the lines of the text.
Inferential thinking is being able to answer more than just the questions: Who? What? When? Where? and How? Inferential thinking is when a child learns to answer these questions:
1) What did you find in the material you read that is relevant to your life, and why is it relevant to your life?
2) Can you relate any portion of the material you read to someone or something else in your life?
3) How do the conclusions you've drawn from the material you read relate with the choices you make or will make in the future?
4) How do the conclusions you've drawn from the material you read relate with your personal values?
A child will know how to answer those questions after he learns to add together:
a) The actual facts he reads in the text
plus
b) The hints and clues he finds inbetween the lines of the text
plus
c) The conclusions he has previously drawn from his own knowledge, research, and experiences.
Of course, gaining the proper phonetic skills to actually be able to read every word on every page is the first step to inferential thinking. A child who can sound out all the words in front of him has a much better chance of drawing conclusions about the details given in the reading or of making inferences based upon what he reads inbetween the lines of the reading. After a child learns to read fluently, he can then learn to proceed beyond the standard facts given on a page and to surmise research-based conclusions of his own.
How do children learn to draw those conclusions? Children as young as four and five years old can learn to connect bits and pieces of information from the reading of a text from their own stored knowledge, and from their personal experiences through conversations that result from listening to stories and readings that their parents read aloud to them.
Reading aloud to your child will not teach your child how to read. However, reading aloud to your child will enable your child to hear numerous words that are not in his regular vocabulary, to hear ideas and opinions that are not necessarily his own, and to hear written material read through the oral expression of an adult.
The biggest advantage to oral reading, though, is the opportunity it affords to you, Moms and Dads, to discuss with your child what he can "imply" or "infer" from the selections that you read out loud. For example, let's take the opening lines of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The opening lines of this classic story read as follows:
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.
She went for a walk in the forest.
Pretty soon, she came upon a house.
She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.
Those wonderful opening lines can open up whole channels of conversations between parents and children, conversations that begin with questions such as:
Why would you think that Goldilocks felt it was safe to walk in the forest alone?
How do you think Goldilocks felt about having the name, Goldilocks?
What kinds of names do you want to give to your future children, and why?
Have you ever seen a house hidden away in a forest?
Would you walk into a house if no one answered the door?
Moms and Dads, it is easy to teach our children inferential thinking when we begin reading aloud to them at a young age. However, be prepared for the inevitable, because children who learn to discuss stories with their parents will eventually desire deeply to read those stories and draw those conclusions independently, by themselves. Be prepared to make certain that your children receive the proper phonetic training in order to do that.
If a child does not receive the proper phonics training to read for himself, he'll give up on reading, he'll give up on books, he'll give up on his own abilities to draw research-based conclusions, he'll lose confidence in his own abilities to express himself, he'll miss out on the adventure of using his thinking skills to help others etc.
However, children who do receive the proper reading instruction can carry on with inferential thinking. Inferential thinkers are not just smarter children, but they are wiser children who can:
a) Read and gain information.
b) Mesh that information together with their own research, knowledge, and experiences, and
c) Use that whole package to serve their family, friends, country, and God.
Parents, smarter, wiser children don't just happen. They are trained.
May God Bless Your Efforts,
Carol Kay, President, The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program
Phonics has a place in reading, but keep it in its place.
I learned to read phonetically and I can sound out new words. It is a tool that works for me and for many others. But there are students for whom it is not an effective tool. Let me give one simple example. Would you teach the deaf phonetically? Clearly, they need an alternative method, a method that might be effective for others who have a specific disability.
Let me give you an idea of what this disability is. Everyone has had a "tip of the tongue" experience. You know the word you are trying to say. You can talk around it and it triggers valid memories, but you cannot get the word from your mind to your tongue. Think of how frustrating it is and your reactions when someone tries to get the word out. There are children who have a chronic "tip of the tongue" and phonetic decoding gives them the same kind of torture that you feel with an acute "tip of the tongue". We call these kids reading disabled and they need an alternative. Giving them phonetic remediation is akin to teaching a visually disabled child to see. The neurological substrate is damaged.
What is the purpose of reading? Very simply, it means getting meaning from the printed word. This is done very well from some cultures whose language are not phonetic. Phonetic decoding is one way to get meaning from the printed word and is called the indirect phonological route to meaning.
As I said previously, I learned to read with the help of phonetic decoding. Suppose I am reading something and come across a new word. I can try to sound it out, but English is not a completely phonetic language. Phonics does not help with words like rough, though, through, etc. Furthermore, phonetic decoding assumes I know the meaning of the word if I heard it. If I saw the word "glain" I could make a good guess at what it sounds like. But that will not tell me what it means and I would have to look it up in a dictionary. I would do that by what the word looks like, not what it sounds like.
Phonetic decoding can be a useful key to help readers, but reading does not mean sounding out a word. It means getting meaning from a word. Don't let phonics get in the way of reading.
The Problem with Phonics
I am concerned that too often phonics is pushed by for-profits to parents of struggling readers. Many parents probably would see improvement in reading any time they get more involved in their child's education. Finding books at their level --not too easy, not too hard; no more than five tricky words per 100ish words-- from the library and reading with them every night or getting them onto reading activities, also at their independent level, like starfall.com is probably the best thing a parent can do to help their child learn to read, along with reading to them every night until they are in chapter books or 3rd or 4th grade. Reading in a home language or telling them stories is also beneficial.
As a teacher of English Language Learners, and some children with reading challenges, I caution putting too much focus on phonics. Children need phonemic awareness before phonics can be very useful. I've heard the analogy that phonics must be hung up on phonemic awareness. Learning word families is a good way to scaffold the use of phonics because the words rhyme.
When reading meaning, grammar and visual cues are the three sources of feedback to readers. When a reader makes an error that effects all three cues, we should always ask first about the meaning: "Does that make sense? What word would make sense?" We do this to teach that reading should always make sense and that good readers notice if what they're reading doesn't make sense. We don't want to ask does that look right, a phonics question, because good readers are first concerned with making meaning.
Phonics should be taught along with phonemic awareness and comprehension skills. It should be taught to the student's level or they will not be able to use it in their reading and writing. Phonics should be systematically instructed, short vowels before the long, etc. Too often I see phonics activities that do not differentiate enough and leave struggling readers behind.
At my school, the resource room or SpEd teachers do less phonics and more work with sight words and fluency activities. One teacher told me that phonics work doesn't help most their students will reading disabilities move forward like working with sight words or read along fluency programs do.
Second Grade Classroom
I am currently a student at Indiana University-Bloomington studying elementary education. I am placed in a second grade classroom where I see a lot of students struggling with reading. One program that seems to have really helped the children in my classroom is headsprout.com This is a read along fluency program. It helps the students sound out words and read stories. If the students are reading through the stories and have problems with the words all they have to do is click on the word they are having trouble with and the computer will say the word, sound out the word, and then say the word again. This helps the children learn the words by practicing. I have talked to my cooperating teacher and a girl in the class was at a below kindergarten reading level and has now reached a third grade reading level by just using this program.
I think it is very important for children to understand what they are reading and if their reading is making sense to them. If students are not reading at their own level they will just be left behind and may never be able to catch themselves back up. I agree that parents should play an important part in their child's life and try to ask them questions to make them read between the lines.
Of course, Phonics works!
Most children who are learning to read are NOT disabled, so phonics is the best thing for them. One poster said that phonics "does not help with words like rough, though, and through.
That's nonsense!
Of course phonics helps with these words, because phonics teaches children all the sounds for the letters "ough." For example, my wife and I are using the Candy 4WAY Phonics Program (www.candy4wayphonics.com) for our grandchildren and it teaches in Lesson 13 of the Frostings lessons all the sounds for "ough."
Of course, there are exceptions to phonics rules, but it's much easier for children to learn phonetic rules and their exceptions than to memorize WHOLE words.
A sight reader only learns approximately 1500 words by the end of 4th grade. That's because children cannot memorize very many whole words before they cap out. A phonics-first reader, however, can read over 40,000 words by the end of 4th grade.
There is no comparison between the phonics and sight reading. Phonics works for MOST children and sight reading fails MOST children. I'm sorry, but when children are only capable of reading 1500 words by the end of 4th grade, that's failure as far as I'm concerned. Teachers defend sight reading because that's what the public school curriculum has stuck them with and because they don't know explicit phonics -- they've never learned it. They only know how to teach implicit watered-down phonics mixed with guided reading sight word techniques.