F▪am▪i▪ly Phonics

Readers

Hey! I'm Reading by Betty Miles: 1995 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. (Sources) This book talks to children about learning to read, introducing them to concepts about reading they can readily understand and seeking to demystify they subject. It includes intro to phonics concepts (pp. 22-28), but stops short of recognizing phonics rules (p. 28). The reading strategies ("Ways to Read") mentioned are obviously influenced by whole-language approaches, such as "Getting Help from Pictures" (pp. 14-15), "Expecting What Comes Next" (pp. 29-33), and relying on pre-knowledge of the subject (p. 8). Not that these notions are totally without merit, but that they are overemphasized and overvalued; in fact, they are not the actual reading of text, but at most can merely help to kick-start the reading process in it's initial stages. When you sit down with your child to go through the reading pages in the back, these can serve to illustrate how difficult it is for the child to accurately guess what the words are in a whole-language environment.