Ella Refuses to Blend the Phonograms!!!!

It has been a long time since I posted last and not much has changed.  Ella continues to know the phonograms, but absolutely refuses to blend them together to form words.  I’ve tried many different ways to convince her to blend, but she just flat-out refuses.  I’ve tried both rewards and taking things away to no avail.

For Christmas my wife got me a Nook Color, on which I have that omnipresent game Angry Birds.  Ella has become a big fan of it.  I rationalize that there is some value in it in that she has to problem solve in order to figure out how to get at those pigs.  Anyway, I figured cutting her off from Angry Birds would be the key to get her started blending.

Was I ever wrong!  When I try that strategy Ella just kind of shrugs her shoulders, says no and finds something else to do.  The only positive I see out of this is that she at least isn’t playing Angry Birds.

I preach that parents have to wait for their children to be ready to read, but I do not want to wait so long myself!  If you have followed this blog at all, you know that I started this process too early in the first place so the wait has been extended already.

I preach that parents have to wait, but I did not want to illustrate the need for it myself.   Oh well, since everything else is going so well I guess I should not complain.  Ella continues to love having people read to her, still enjoys nursery rhymes and is very vocal.  The last to extremes most of the time.  When she is ready to start reading, she will take off like a rocket.

The local library has agreed to host a presentation of my products.  Still waiting on a firm date, but tentatively it looks like I will present the evening of March 13th or 14th.  All attendees will receive a free CD containing both my reading and handwriting programs.  More on this after I get a firm date.

Ella has learned all the alphabet phonograms!

Ella now knows all the alphabet letter phonograms.  Unfortunately, I can’t get a video of her proving it because she either loses focus or decides to mess with me and give the wrong sounds for some of the phonograms.  She thinks she is funny when she does the latter.  I guess I will have to try videoing her doing small groups of phonograms and then combine the videos.

When working on the phonogram y with Ella I was reminded of something I saw often when teaching first grade.  For some children it was necessary to force them to make the first sound in a word before they would then continue sounding out the rest of the word, which they could then do successfully.  I don’t know why that was necessary.  It was like they had to kick start their brain.  I saw the same thing with the y sounds with Ella.  Ella knows all four sounds, but for a while, I had to give her the first one, after which she would confidently give me the rest of them.

I want to recommend the blog Beginning Reading Help by Michelle Breum.  There is a load of great content on her site.  Visit the site and spend some time exploring.

Recently Michelle wrote about the sight word/phonogram debate which I found very interesting.  I also discovered a link on her site to Starfall.com, which is an excellent resource for practice reading.  I’ve been looking for beginning reader books recently, but Starfall has this type of book online and one of the features that I love is the modeling of how words in the story are sounded out.  Since Ella is still not blending well to sound out, I can click on the word and it is modeled for her. I’ve no doubt she will pick that up soon.

Our neighbor’s daughter continues to do well, although she has run into a problem with three of the alphabet phonograms.  She just can’t seem to get them, but she will soon.  She confuses i with l and stuggles with u and y.  But she loves the phonograms.  Last night she and Ella were running in the sprinklers when she decided she would rather do the phonograms.  So she ran over to me and asked to do the phonograms on my phone.  We worked on them for about 15 minutes before she had to go home and go to bed.  Today she was doing very well with the books at Starfall.com that I mentioned earlier.

Again I’m reminded of first grade.  We used to get caught up in the phonograms so much we sometimes would forget to go to recess.  Well, they would forget to ask about recess.  I knew we were missing it but felt it was worth missing to continue focusing on learning to read.  I’ll never forget one little boy presenting me with a drawing of some of the phonograms flying through the air.  Most children love the phonograms because I think they understand how successful they are with them.

Here’s hoping for some video for the next post…

Phonograms update

It has been over a month since I posted, but we have been busy!  Ella has now learned almost all the single-letter phonograms.  We have continued to use the screenboard and practice in short bursts on the ones with which she struggled.  I just attempted to get a video of her doing the phonograms and the only thing that proved is that we have to keep practicing constantly in order for Ella to retain what she has learned.  Another issue with starting so early…

Since I last blogged I talked to our neighbors about working on the phonograms with their 4-year-old daughter and gave them a reading CD.   Ella plays with her all the time so since she is around I wanted to work on the phonograms with her as well.  The combination of being smart and a year older than Ella enabled this young lady to pick up the phonograms very quickly and start blending them to read words.  I’ve been very impressed.  This is one more reason to believe I should have fought my urge to start working on the phonograms so early with Ella and waited until she is four.

Ella is doing great learning the phonograms, but blending is not going as well.  One of the first things I discovered her struggling with is the age-old conflict with d and b.  I started choosing words from the word list based on the lessons she’s already been through and it was quickly evident how many of those words contain either b or d.  When blending phonograms to read words, it is extremely important that the child know the phonograms well because the blending must be smooth in order for word recognition.  Even an instant of doubt of the sound breaks the blending.  When showing her the phonogram cards, a moment of doubt wasn’t a concern for me at all but it only took a few words and a look at the list to see how big a problem b and d can be when blending.

I have been involved in a few discussions lately about the importance of working with children before they reach a certain age when the brain becomes “set” and the child goes on through life with that brain.  I remember first hearing years ago that the cutoff age is three, but have since heard it is five.  Ella was a surprise child and our first two children have done very well, so I’ve been working even harder with Ella to make sure she has the best brain possible.

A Facebook friend posted a link to a study that says it is five.  I like this because it gives me a few more years.  A recently-retired early childhood teacher mentioned the importance of rhyming. I knew rhyming is important because it is so prevalent in nursery rhymes, but hearing if from an expert made me start talking to Ella about the rhyming words in nursery rhymes so she will start thinking about it more.  And then at our 4th of July party I spent some time talking with a friend who works in parent education at a local hospital about the value of reading to newborns.

So, if people only get from my blog or my CD that reading to their children is important and they start doing it with passion they way I have with Ella, I think that is great.

Learning to Read for Real

Being so old and having had two children, I should have known better than start trying to teach Ella to read so young.  Other than trying to have her learn the phonograms so early, I guess all that I’ve blogged about is legitimate.  But Ella turned three a couple of weeks ago and that is the age I’d been waiting for.  Last week I started breaking down the phonograms and concentrated on Lesson 1.

We hadn’t gone over the phonograms in a long time so she’d forgotten most of the four in the first lesson.  She had even forgotten f, which surprised me.  So we did have to start from the beginning.  I’ve put the phonograms on my phone so that is what I’ve been using to review the phonograms with Ella. We’d go over them multiple times during the day in short bursts.  Of the first eight phonograms in the first two lessons, Ella was really struggling with o and s.  So yesterday I tracked down a screenboard (http://www.boline-ed.com/?page_id=22) and used it to practice those two with her.  It worked even better than I’d hoped!  She learned them and seems to be retaining them.

Once those two were learned I moved on to Lesson 3.  Using the phone, she wasn’t making any progress so today I printed off the flash cards and we used the screenboard again.  After only a couple short sessions she’d learned them as well.  We will have to review them again tomorrow to make sure she is retaining them, but I’m confident she will.  I’ve already printed out the phonograms in Lesson 4 I’m so confident.

Learning the phonograms in isolation is great, but the real test will be if she can blend them together to read words.  I created lists of words that use the phonograms in each lesson so I think I’ll pull the list out for lesson two and see if she can sound out any of those words.  Below is that list:

sad

dad

cad

fad

sod

God

cod

go

so

fog

dog

cog

do

gas

One of the pluses to using the screenboard is that when Ella traces the phonogram, she is starting to learn handwriting.  She is doing well with following the directions I give her.  I can see Ella thinking about the directions each time so she is getting work with following directions.  That has to be good for her brain.

We are both very excited about this process.  I’ll try to post some video of Ella using the screenboard soon and after she knows more phonograms, I’ll show that off via video.  The only thing that will make this even more exciting is if she is ready to blend the phonograms and start reading!

Expectations

I can’t believe I fell victim to lowering my expectations of Ella.  I should have realized that we have not been putting in the time with the phonograms in a fun way.  Hayden and I and Ella were sitting together a couple of days ago and I got out the phonogram cards.  I decided to focus on ‘a’ for a bit.  I was doing the sounds one at a time instead of all three at a time, trying to get her to say them correctly.  She did a great job.  I was being loud and goofy with each sound, which of course she thought was funny.  No reason for me not to have been doing that in the past.  I rationalized and got lazy, that’s all.

Ella has started wanting to do things  herself, often saying, “I do it!”  So while Hayden was sitting there with us, I decided to have Hayden say the sounds of ‘a’ in addition to Ella.  She balked at that right away, saying “I do it!”  Even though Hayden is great with her, Ella saves some of her most severe chastisement for him.  She was very offended that he was trying to say her phonogram sounds and insisted that he not do it anymore.

I have to admit that one of the reasons I hadn’t been using the phonogram cards with Ella is that we had lost a few of them.  While cleaning under the couch recently, I found the missing cards and added them back to the stack.  Once the stack was complete again I was more motivated to work on the phonograms again.  Very sad, I know, but that’s what parents have to deal with and overcome.

The three of us had a fun time working on the phonograms together.  One of the reasons I encourage parents to teach their children how to read is so they don’t miss out on such great experiences.

Status Update

There has not been a lot of additional lesson activity as Ella has lost a little interest in studying the phonograms. She is not asking to run through the program and when I sit her on my lap and open it, she is not very interested. Since she is really too young to focus on learning the phonograms, she is in control and I must allow that. This is very important to remember when working with pre-school-age children.

Naturally we to read to Ella daily as she continues to enjoy that.   Green Eggs and Ham turned up a few days ago and we’ve both enjoyed reading that classic childrens book.  Ella gets a kick out of some of the faces the green eggs and ham hater makes on his journey to loving green eggs and ham. 

Ella is becoming more and more verbal all the time.  Earlier you may remember we had concerns about her talking, but were always confident that it would come in time if we continued to read and talk to her.  If given time, she will repeat back much of what is said and read to her.

I started Ella on lesson three on an informal basis before she began losing interest.  Should not have, but I struggle with wanting to push forward.  Having taught my other two children to read, I am finding this a problem because I want to get Ella there before she is ready.  As long as I don’t get too pushy, it will be fine.  Again, she has to stay in control.

I’ve included a checklist I am maintaining for lessons one and two.  Ella is so close on a number of phonograms, so the checklist looks worse than it really is. 

Lessons 1 and 2 Checklist

Finding Phonograms in Print and Word Lists

Today Ella saw phonogram f in a book, pointed to it and sounded it out. Totally new and I did not even prompt her by pointing letters out like this at other times, which surprises me now that I think about it.  That would be just like something I’d do.

OK, so I didn’t prompt her to do that, but writing about it made me think of the word wall I used when teaching first grade.  The word wall contained what is called environmental print, words taken from the child’s environment.  For example, first graders brought in words from such items as candy wrappers, cereal boxes, toy cartons, etc.  During the morning carpet time I would ask for environmental print and the children would get to tape theirs to the wall and we would discuss.  At that time we focused almost exclusively on whole words vs. the phonograms contained in the words. 

With Ella, I’ll choose the environmental print based on the phonograms she has already learned.  It will be a great way to review those she has learned as well as provide practice for the problem ones.  I will be very interested to see if this leads to her putting multiple phonograms together to form words.  I believe it will be 4-5 months before she is ready for that, but perhaps this strategy will speed it up. 

Speaking of reading words, I have a list of words that a beginning reader could read based on the first two lessons.  They are listed below.

sad
dad
cad
fad
sod
God
cod
go (This is the first word where the second sound is used)
so (Again with the second sound)
fog
dog
cog
do (This is the first word that uses the third sound of a phonogram)
gas

The words that use a sound other than the first force children to use analytical thinking combining the known phonograms, vocabulary and context of what they are reading.  If they try a word but it makes no sense in the sentence, they will try a different sound.  When working with your child on a list of words, you may have to prompt the child to try the next sound of a phonogram.  For instance, do uses the third sound of letter o, but the second sound makes the word sound like dough, which to a new reader would seem perfectly legitimate.

I think the discussion in the previous paragraph should help one to understand why it is so important to read and talk with children as much as possible.  If they have heard words used over and over and over in stories and conversation, they are much more likely to succeed with the analytical thinking required to be an effective reader using phonograms.

I have created lists of words through lesson seven and include the lists on the Learning to Read with Phonograms CD.  Below I list how many new words are unlocked for each lesson.

Lesson 1 – 0
Lesson 2 – 14
Lesson 3 – 33
Lesson 4 – 130
Lesson 5 – 291
Lesson 6 – 143
Lesson 7 – 8

That is 619 words in seven lessons.  Lesson seven drops off because there are only two phonograms, y and z.  I did not continue with word lists because lesson eight includes er, ir, ur, wor and ear.  That will be an explosion of new words for a child to know. 

This is the power of the phonograms.

Another Written Phonogram

Just a quick post to share Ella’s latest accomplishment.  She was drawing on the driveway with chalk while I was working.  Suddenly Ella was standing beside me making the sound of the phonogram f.  I looked down beside her and saw the f you see below.  This was very exciting for both of us as she stood there beaming and I started clapping and telling her how smart she is.

Ella's f

I think she may have inadvertently made the first part and then saw that if she made the cross, she would have one of those shapes Daddy is always showing her while making that sound.  She knew I would get excited and that makes her happy.

It was no surprise to me that Ella could make the sounds once she started asking to see the phonograms on the computer.  What is very surprising to me is her writing the phonograms.  I don’t anticipate seeing a lot of that for another year or so, but who knows? 

It sure is fun to go through this process again!

Moving on to Lesson Two and First Handwriting

Although I’m not completely satisfied with Ella’s mastery of phonogram ‘a’, we have moved on to lesson two. She has mastered the other three phonograms and will probably struggle with the three sounds of ‘a’ for a while . This is where the parent/teacher has to make a command decision to move on or stay with lesson one until all are learned. I think moving on and continuing to work on ‘a’ will work out just fine.

The lesson two phonograms are shown below in a screen shot from the Learning to Read with Phonograms program.

Lesson Two Phonograms

I covered the phonograms page from the program back in February, but will make a couple of comments anyway.  There are sample words with each of the phonograms that highlight the sound(s) of the phonogram.  This is important so parents can deduce what those sounds are in case there is ambiguity with the accompanying sounds files.  For some phonograms, there are also notes included when necessary.

We just started on these sounds today.  It appears that three of them are going to be a challenge (g, s and qu).  Ella has trouble with the second sound of g, the second sound of s and qu.  With g, she is making the sound of d on the second sound.  With s, the second sound she uses varies.  With qu, she just has not figured out how to form the sound.  I am surprised that she is able to make all three sounds of o.  Since she struggles with the three sounds of a I anticipated she would do the same with o, but she got that one right away.  This is going to be an interesting process as I watch it so much more closely with Ella.

Ella spends a lot of time with sidewalk chalk.  We have seen her become more and more focused over the months, going from random scribbles to lines and then circles.  I think she is starting to draw pictures, but that may be due to a father seeing what he wants to see.  I contemplated adding some of those drawings here, but that is outside of the purpose of this blog.  What I did add below is a picture of Ella’s first purposefully-written letter (if you have been following the blog, you may remember the letter v on her hand from back in March) .  It is a rough implementation of the letter c, but directly after she drew this, she got my attention and said the sounds of c.

Ella's First Written Letter

This was an exciting moment.  We will have to see if it is a random incident or if Ella continues to try to write the letters.  When I added this picture, I realized that it would be possible to construe the shape at the top of the picture as an a, but since I have never heard her attempt to give me those sounds I can’t give her that.  She is not ready for the sister program at Boline Educational Resources (Handwriting with Flash Movies), but I will be excited to get Ella started on that one someday.

There was a guest reader in the Boline household a couple of days ago.  Ella’s Aunt Amy came down for a visit and was allowed to read to her.  I love the classic book they picked!

Aunt Amy Reading to Ella

If you know Ella, you know it is no small thing for her to deign to allow someone outside the household to read to her.  The more people that read to her the better, so thanks Aunt Amy!

Lesson One Phonogram Test

As the blog has reported, Ella has been working on the lesson one phonograms.  I was finally able to get video of her showing that she knows the first four phonograms.

I know she has a long way to go to reading, but this is more evidence that she is getting closer. When I ask her what a phonogram says, she normally gets c, d and f. But a’s three sounds are still a challenge for her. I’m thinking about moving on to lesson 2 and continuing to work on a.

Ella’s talking continues to improve. I was keeping a list of words, but once she got to 100 words, I gave up. She has reached the point where she can repeat almost any word under three syllables. So the first 100 words will be interesting to have for posterity.