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feature reviews |
Who could resist a program with such a great name: The Great Saltmine and Hifwip Direct Phonics Reading Program. No, I'm not kidding. Actually, it is sold under the easier handle of Teach America to Read and Spell (TATRAS), but the cover really does have the Saltmine name. Whatever you call it, if your kids need a phonics program, this is my pick, for five primary reasons:
It's cheap, only $39.95 (I have only seen it in Love to Learn's catalog). For that you get a complete package, with everything needed, including parent instructions and 2 tapes for the parent to listen to, a wall chart, blank books with lined paper for writing practice, and some other stuff.
It's brief, recommending about 5 minutes of teaching at a time, in a fun, quick format that most kids will enjoy more than a longer drill (although this does use drill).
It makes more sense than most phonics programs, which use horizontal phonics rather than vertical phonics:
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Horizontal phonics is what we're familiar with from schools: first teach short vowel sounds, then short vowel words; progressing to long vowel sounds and long vowel words only after mastery of short sounds. Beginning readers must use special controlled phonics books for practice reading, because they first learn only the short vowel sounds; they can't use real books to practice their reading. Teaching short vowel sounds first can also confuse some children who have trouble with the transition from "ah" to "ay" when learning long /a/. |
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Vertical phonics, on the other hand, teaches all of the sounds each phonogram** makes at once. So looking at the letter /a/ the child reads "ah, ay, aw" [first /a/ like apple]. These sounds are arranged from most to least common, so when a child comes to an unknown word, the "ah" sound is tried first to see if it works, progressing to "ay," then "aw" if the first sound doesn't work. Reading practice is right there with the phonics drilling, so they are reading real words very quickly, out of any simple children's book for reading (not just books with controlled phonics). TATRAS goes on to teach not only all the sounds of each vowel but each consonant (reading the letter /c/ the child says "ss, z"), and all the sounds for most common phonograms** like /ir/ /sh/ /igh/ /ough/ /kn/ etc. The sequence teaches the most needed phonograms first, based on the 500 most often occurring words in the English language. |
There are very few exceptions to the rules because of the manner of teaching vertical phonics. Most common horizontal phonics rules are true for less than 75% of words (some for less than 50%); so many irregular words can present a big problem to a struggling reader. By teaching all the sounds of each phonogram at once, and teaching the child how to try each sound beginning with the most common, almost all exceptions are eliminated.
It's a program that I think will work well for almost all types of learners, primarily due to the brevity of the lessons and the commonsense approach of vertical phonics. I don't believe that every child must necessarily be direct-taught phonics, as there are some children who truly do pick it up from being read to. However, obviously not all children do pick it up this way and will benefit from direct phonics instruction. Some will need a great deal of help; others will needs less help. TATRAS is intended for use as a direct, step-by-step instruction method, but even those who just need a little help will be able to easily modify it to fit their needs.
One final note: just because schools teach all children to read at the same age and at the same pace does not mean you must teach your child at the same age and pace. The wonderful thing about homeschooling is that you can custom tailor your child's learning. Many children are truly not ready at age five or even six, and there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, every school teacher knows that this is true! In my own elementary education major in college, we learned in Child Development class that each child develops at a different rate and that the visual, auditory, and cognitive skills need to be at a certain level for reading to "click"; perhaps most importantly, we learned that most boys lag around nine months behind most girls in their level of development. So don't push them too hard, especially the boys! Not too fast and not too slow and they will get where they need to be!
**A phonogram is the smallest unit that makes a sound; each vowel and consonant is a phonogram, as are /igh/ and /kn/ and so forth.
Copyright (c) 2002 Carma Paden. All rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced in any fashion without express permission.
