I’m sorry I haven’t been posting on the blog. Here’s something I posted on facebook and wanted to share here as well.
The McGuffey Readers are for learning by sight. Your child is to look at the word and remember what it is. We all read by sight. You are doing it right now. Learning to read this way will produce a faster, more fluent reader.
When you are using the McGuffey Readers, there are a few things you can do when a child is stuck. I don’t expect you to teach them to sound out those words. There are too many rules of phonics to do that. Sounding out words and phonics rules will be taught systematically in Getting Ready 2. If you let phonics take its natural place of being for new words, not every word, it will be much simpler for your child.
However, there’s a reason they learn their alphabet sounds before learning to read. I also give them a few Starfall exercises where they put in the first sound of a word. If they are stuck on a word, the first thing to ask is, what letter does the word start with? What sound does that make? Maybe saying the sound will jog their memory about what word it is.
Another strategy if your child is stuck is to have your child look at the picture. Does the picture offer a clue as to what the word is?
A third strategy is to ask your child if what he read makes sense. If a word is out of place, have your child think about what word would make sense.
A fourth strategy is it to look for words you know inside the new word. Words that end in the same letters will rhyme. Some examples: the word “at” inside “sat,” the word “or” inside “for”