Phonics Book

I've been looking for resources to further define my phonics teaching, since I am not working with a hooked on phonics or any similar program.  Much of my phonics so far has come from refreshing my memory using a 2nd grade phonic workbook that I had my daughter use for learning and practice, or just running into them while we read.  It's working as my daughter is reading quite well and sounding out words, but I want to refine my instruction further.  There are a number of words that just don't follow the phonics rules and by further refining to make sure I'm not missing anything, I am hoping to reduce the number of these "strange" words, or to perhaps explain them better.

The following is a list of phonemes - in a nutshell, sounds that you find in the English Language.  For the most part I agree with this chart, but there are some that I will point out below that I question.

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/spellings.html

The left column in the table below shows a particular sound.  Capital letters represent the long vowel sound - effectively just saying the name of the vowel.  The second column provides examples, and the third column (which I pretty much ignore) shows a name that is supposed to help you remember the phonemes - such as for  long A, Fonzi's AAAA...

As for what I'm not sure I agree with.... For the OO sound, ue should be included, as in blue, glue and due.  I'm also not sure about hw, which too mean just seems like an example of a silent h.  And, the zh sound seems as if it should just be a z sound, showing where a s sounds like a z.  

One thing I have done is to work the chart backwards, taking the combinations in the second column, such as for "ow" listing the sounds that ow can make, as in cow and blow.  I think it is easier to remember what ow says than to focus on a sound with a list of all the letter combinations that can make those sounds.  I taught most of these on the list to my daughter that way, with flash cards that I use every so often (not every day) as a reminder/refresher.  I've also made some combination that are not on this list, such as eigh, which has a long A sound.  Using this list, I am accurate because the ei sound is in the list for A and the gh are silent.  But we have found it easier to make a rule out of eigh.  That helps us with neigh, neighbor, eight, and numerous other words.  We've done something similar for tion, which we've learned as shun and cious, which we've learned as shush.  That's easier than isolating the ti and the ci sounds as this chart would have us do.

My other recent resource is a book I purchased from Amazon.com, "Phonics from A to Z" by Wiley Blevins, published by Scholastic.  I have been through a good part of the book, but am still reviewing it.  But from my initial impressions, although it is geared more towards a teacher, it is a good resource for parents with little or no phonics rules recollection or parents who need to make sure they are covering everything necessary.  The book has helpful word lists for the various sound combinations as well as useful explanations.  It also contains a list of the blends with word lists, such as bl, sl, st, br, cr, and others. There's a list of the 15 most common silent letter combinations, some of which we have covered, some we have not yet.  

My new phonics book also has discussion of teaching reading by the use of "phonograms" which you may have heard referred to as "word families."  The author agrees that there is a proper role for using these but cautions using them as a sole focus of early reading instruction where the students are taught these phonograms by sight and without analyzing the vowel/consonant sound relationships, such as where they just learn "at" as in "cat" without learning to put the "a" and "t" sounds together.  In such cases, the children also focus a lot on the first consonant sound (sound familiar?).  

The author also recommends against early readers that have a high number of phonograms for content, such as "Fat cat. Fat cat sat on a bat."  The Bob books that I use with my 4 year old, at least the beginning ones, appear to do that a little, but not as much as that sample statement.  We have not focused together directly on the phonograms.  But I'll have to think about this some more, evaluate the later books in the series, and then decide whether these books are ok given the white board work we do too.

Another gold mine in this Phonics A to Z list, is a list of the various "rules" that are often used, such as when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and the silent e.  The book lists 45 different rules and identifies, as a percentage, how reliable they are to use.  I am finding this very helpful not only because I'm finding new rules but the reliability rates are helpful as well.  The author does recommend, as well, that in teaching reading the teacher should be careful to be selective and not to use too many rules, and states some other precautions in using the rules. 

There are also so many other things in this book that I did not mention that I find are or will be helpful to me.  Overall, I am very pleased with this book.