Fawnix

One of the big mysteries of education is how to teach children to read. We have made great progress since I began teaching, but we have a long ways to go. There are a few things, however, I know for sure:

1. Reading to children gives them a boost. They learn to love stories, their vocabulary increases, and they are introduced to a variety of information and situations through books.

2. Children must learn phonics.

Phonics? Why phonics?

I have always believed in phonics, and it became abundantly clear how necessary they are with my own friends. Those of us who learned to read with phonics could decipher words and spell well; those who learned to read by sight learned to read, but it was harder and they frequently struggled with spelling.

The handicap we place on children if they don't have phonics was accentuated to me when I was a Girl Scout Leader. We had a little troop of darling girls, all in the first grade. Two of the little ones were in a program that did not teach phonics - the others were in schools with strong phonics programs. One day, in turn, each girl would read a sentence from a story. One of the girls who did not have phonics came to the word "hope." She had never seen the word, so we asked her to sound it out. Blank stare. So Coni, the other leader, said, "What sound does 'H' make?" Blank stare. The darling little one had no concept of how to attack the word. We, of course, told her, but the point is, she had no strategies, other than memorization, for deciphering words.

By learning phonics, at least students can make an educated guess of what a word is. Without them, it is just a guess. And sometimes the spellings still aren't accurate - such as fawnix - but you knew what I meant, didn't you?