Thursday, October 9, 2008

Straight from the experts- Sight Words vs. Phonics!! Day 9

I've waited for today for a month. Sue and Frank Buckley joined our parent discussion for our Learning Program. They flew into to work on some projects between DownsEd and The Down Syndrome Foundation of Orange County. Anyway, this is part two to my post "Pets, Mommy, Pets"!

The following are from my notes- Sue Buckley said that when teaching a child with ds how to read:

1. Knowing phonics helps you guess or link the spoken languague with the written language.

2. Phonics is helpful as long as the word is already in your vocabulary.

3. The steps to teaching our children to read are a) sight recognizition- whole words b) read books- first with sight words, then adding words to full sentences. c) mix-up your vocabulary- traditional sight words, daily words, fun words.

4. After these steps are followed and your child can identify whole words you can use them to compare and start phonics. ie: they know girl, grape, green by sight but speak the word "go" as "doe".. you can show them the pattern of "g's" and their sound.

Our learning program starts with picture to picture recognition, then word to word, then word to picture. We use matching boards, books, worksheets and words strips. If you are interested in seeing some of the materials you can register for free and download anything you want!! Sadie's picture is on the left bottom corner!!

http://dsfoc.org/


It all made sense when I was there- if you have any questions you can comment and I will try to expand to my best knowledge.





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

did she say anything about rhyming words? it is a standard in kinder and first grade. i always forget to ask. obviously bc they left today our group won't have sue and frank sitting in with us (bummer!). what other words of wisdom did she share?

Nicki

Cherri Regnier said...

I love your blog and feel like I have learned so much about you and your beautiful family. I am glad you post regularly, it gives me something to do during the nighttime feeding. Thanks!

I am dying over your description for Muno's costume from Yo Gabba Gabba. Too funny.