Carpenters, Musicians & the ABC’s

Consider carpenters.

Before starting projects, they must understand their tools and how to use them.

Consider musicians. Before joining orchestras, they must understand notes and how to follow them.

Consider readers. Before reading, they must understand letters and how to blend them.

Uninformed carpenters will lack craftmanship.

Untrained musicians will not harmonize.

Unprepared readers will not blend letter sounds into words.

Ultimately, the carpenters, musicians and readers will fail. They will not be carpenters, nor musicians, nor readers.

Understanding Letters and How to Blend Them

Definitions

Phonemes: Letter sounds, blended to make spoken words

Phonemic Awareness: The reader’s ability to recognize that words are made up of blended sounds (like the carpenter’s knowledge of tools, and the musician’s understanding of notes)

Graphemes: The written representations of phonemes

Decoding: Sounding out words

When phonemes are written down, they become graphemes. (We hear phonemes. We read graphemes.) Readers’ eyes must move from left to right across a single grapheme or a combination of graphemes (which make up words). Readers’ memories convert the graphemes to the sounds they represent, and readers use their brains to blend those sounds in order, to hear words. These processes must be practiced until they become automatic. That’s how you learn to read.

For example, try this:

When you see “a”, say /a/ (as in cat).

When you see “m”, say /m/ (as in mom).

/a/ – /m/

Now blend the sounds /a/—/m/, and read am.

Next, try this:

When you see “h”, say /h/ (as in hay)

When you see “i”, say /i/ (as in pig)

When you see “tch”, say /ch/ (as in cheese)

/h/ – /i/ – /tch/

Now blend the sounds /h/ – /i/ – /tch/ and read hitch.

The word “am” is made up of two sounds (phonemes) – /a/ and /m/ (in spoken form).

The word “hitch” is made up of three sounds (phonemes) – “h”, “i”, and “tch” (in spoken form).

The word “am” is spelled with two graphemes – “a”, and “m” (in written form).

The word “hitch” is spelled with three graphemes – “h”, “i”, and “tch”.

That’s how to “crack” the alphabetic “code”. The process is referred to as “sounding out” words (decoding). It’s not necessary for the reader to know or understand the words phoneme, grapheme, or decoding. They just need to know the concept, and the process of interpreting them. Then they need to practice. Phonics is a rule-based system. Rules teach how the various graphemes are read, with only a few exceptions from the rules.  English readers only need to learn 44 graphemes made from 26 letters (which either stand alone or in combination with other letters).

Oh Mommy, My Wish is Coming True!

The irony of this whole fiasco surrounding illiteracy is this:

When using systematic phonics, reading is easy to teach!

It only requires one essential ingredient:

The love of literacy!

Evidence for this can be seen in testimonials from people who have used phonics to teach their children to read.  The publisher of one familiar phonics program: (Sam Blumenfeld’s Alpha-Phonics: A Primer for Beginning Readers) printed an amazing testimonial on the back cover of his book. This publisher, Peter Watt of Paradigm Books, tells that he has received endless letters, phone calls, and emails from parents and teachers over a span of nearly 40 years. Here is one he chose to print.

“My daughter is almost six years old, and we are home educating her… I have tried a couple of reading programs most of which were game type learning. None of these produced any results. I recently ordered Alpha-Phonics because I have heard Samuel Blumenfeld speak on several shows.

Dianna and I are just beginning lesson 7. After going over lessons three and four Dianna was so excited that she could read, that she hugged my neck and told me she loved me. She said, “Oh mommy, my wish is coming true. You and Daddy are teaching me to read.”

Yes, Dianna was reading. Lesson 6 in the book has short sentences like, “Dan has ham.” By lesson 7 Dianna would have learned to sound out the following graphemes: a, m, n, s, t, x, h, x, d, and w. She would have read words like: had, dad, sad, mad, ham, tan, tax, hat, and more. The letter concludes:

“By the way, we only spend about five to ten minutes a day on this.”

Coming next: Chapter Three — A Convicted Murderer, a Columbia Grad, and a Missionary

from Dyslexic no More: Saved by the ABC’s

by Meg Rayborn Dawson (homeschooling mom of 9)

MS, Exceptional Student Education (Univ. of W. Florida) emphasis on Applied Behavior Analysis

MA, psychology (Grand Canyon University)

Bachelor of Arts (Northwest Nazarene University)

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