Is Explode the Code enough on its own...

[Rainbows]

to get DS reading? Or should I combine it with another book/program?

I tried to see an ETC book in person tonight but B&N didn't have any. Did see Phonics Pathways, Ordinary Parent's Guide and 100EZ but didn't like the lay outs of those (Wanted to see alpha-phonics but that wasnt in stock either)

I'm looking at ETC and McRuffy Phonics...would that be phonics overload? lol. My biggest goal this year is to get him reading

[Amber in AUS]

Not sure if it is enough. We have just started using ETC 1 but DD is already reading. We are using 100EZ for that.

For us ETC is to complement and reinforce the reading we are already doing.

This is our first year hsing so others will be better equipt to answer.

[melissaL]

I am using explode the code with OPGTTR.
I only do OPGTTR twice a week, and we do 2 pages of explode the code every day. we are also using Abeka little owl books for some reading. that way he feels he is reading books like his older siblings.

[Tabrett]

I use ETC with Phonics Pathways. Once you get to cvc words, ETC complements Phonics Pathways. Phonics Pathways wants the student to write from dictation the words you are reading. ECT takes care of all the "writing" of the words. WTM states that a dc's reading level may be ahead of their writing ability. It just depends on what you want to do (to add or not to add writing the words). If the reading program that you choose has sheets or exercises where the dc spells and writes the words they are learning to read, you would not need ETC.

I just looked at McRuffy and I don't think you need ETC. McRuffy already has phonic worksheets. I think ETC would be over kill with McRuffy. It also looks like you wouldn't need a separate handwriting program with McRuffy.

McRuffy looks like a really good program:).

[TaraTheLiberator]

We started ETC 1 in July after my dd was already reading CVC words. She learned to do that on her own, with no learn-to-read book used by me. After she learned her letter sounds, I showed her how to blend, and she was reading CVC words. She is now almost at the end of ETC 2 (she'll finish it up next week) and I'd say she's reading at a second-grade/early third grade level. (I gave her a decoding test a few weeks ago and she scored at 4th grade, first month.) I think that she has outpaced ETC now, but I plan to continue with it just to make sure we have all the phonics laid out for her.

So imo, yes, ETC is enough. But my daughter was six years old when we started it, so it may be different for someone who is itching to teach a younger child to read, or starting with a child who has no phonics knowledge.

Tara

[Jumping In Puddles]

It was not enough for my son, who when we started kindergarten (August) didn't know how to write his letters yet or do any phonics blending but he knew his letter sounds.

I thought ETC would be enough but it wasn't so I focused on handwriting first (using HWT) so we could do ETC. What happened was, he buzzed through HWT and is now writing beautifully so I pulled out ETC and I still didn't think it was enough so I am using Ordinary Parents Guide and that is doing the trick. I use ETC a few times a week but my ds is not really liking it.

[blessed3x]

We are also using HWT, Explode the Code with OPGTTR. We used the ETC K levels (A,B,C) and HWT last year, and now for first grade have added OPGTTR. He loves them! My son is 6, and we easily do one reading lesson daily, and usually two pages in HWT and ETC.

[~Summer~]

I love ETC...but I don't think it is enough on it's own. I think ETC is a great compliment to OPGTR, 100 EZ lessons, or another reading primer. We tried a few different things and have found our perfect combination to be ETC, OPGTR, and bob books!

[laughing lioness]

I have used ETC in conjunction with AlphaPhonics for all 5 of my kids- who all have radically different learning styles. They are all excellent readers (except the 5 yo who is well on her way). We do a lesson from AlphaPhonics and usually 4-5 pages of ETC a day. I have found it to be an excellent combo as the skills are reinforced- AlphaPhonics is more difficult so ETC seems like "fun"-kwim?

[mariposa]

ETC is a really great workbook to reinforce concepts and work on writing the letters, but I don't think it would really teach a child how to read.
I have done 100EZ (a complete failure with my kids) and OPGTTR (that is going very well). I haven't looked at many phonics programs, but I think that doing ETC and phonics would be too much of the same thing. What you really need is something to teach the basics about how to put the sounds together and all the "rules" of reading.

I HIGHLY recommend the BOB books - those have been a huge hit with my kids. They even have a pre-beginner set now that my 3 y.o. loves, about shapes, colors, etc. The kids love BOB books because they can read them right away and they progress slowly. We purchased some but now we have been getting them at the library.

HTH!
Sarah

[Mama2Three]

ETC + PP has been a success around here. For my DC, ETC is great for learning the phonics rules and getting in some writing practice, but PP has been key to getting DC reading more fluently.

[Rainbows]

Has anyone had any problems with the way PP approaches words (letter ladder as opposed to word family)? It seems the other books I looked at all do it by word family

[one l michele]

It would be a painfully slow process. I taught mine to read using the SWR phonograms and they were reading real books within months. If you'd follow the ETC sequence, it would take years to do the same thing.

I have two using ETC. My 1st grader is reading at a 3rd/4th grade level, but still doing ETC because he enjoys it and I use it for articulation work. I think of ETC more as pre-spelling, not a reading program. My 4 y/o is using Get Ready for the Code because he wanted his own workbooks and I didn't want them simply to be busy work. He's learning the letter sounds slowly. When he's in K I'll teach him with SWR the same way I taugh his older two brothers.

I don't think one needs ETC though, my oldest never used it or a replacement for it, simply learned to read via SWR phonograms and is doing well. He's easily at a 6th+ reading level.

[Tabrett]

Has anyone had any problems with the way PP approaches words (letter ladder as opposed to word family)? It seems the other books I looked at all do it by word family
This is just my 2 cents on word families. It works very well for most, but for some, it is just a rhyming game. I used a word family style phonics with my oldest dd and I would help her decode the first word and she would then look at the first letters in the list of words to decode and just rhyme the ending. When words were not by "family" she had a hard time because she really wasn't learning to decode the words. All she had to do during decoding practice was rhyme.
Ladder style phonics forces a child to decode every word.

Example:

Word families
an
can
tan
ban
man
pan all rhyming

Ladder style
sat
sell
sip
sod
sup forcing dc to sound out the words

[TaraTheLiberator]

This is just my 2 cents on word families. It works very well for most, but for some, it is just a rhyming game.

I agree completely. Just this morning my ds had a page of word families to read. He flew through them with uncharacteristic fluency, so I had him go back through them and read the words across the page rather than down the page. He struggled more with that because he wasn't just attaching a word ending to an initial letter. Word families don't work for him because he picks up on the pattern but isn't actually decoding the word.

I also give my son sheets of nonsense words to read: flup, dag, zin, pix, etc., because he tends to guess at a word if he thinks he knows it. Words that make no sense to him force him to actually sound it out and blend.

My daughter is an excellent reader and has required very little from me in order to get her going. It comes to her naturally. My son, on the other hand, struggles a great deal and we can work on a word for weeks and he still doesn't get it down pat. I suspect that it's a combination of maturity and learning struggles for him (he has deficits across the board) but as long as he is still enthusiastic about learning to read, I'll keep working with him even though he probably needs some additional maturity time for it all to really click. We've been working on reading for four months and he can read CVC words and is building a store of sight words, but he moves very slowly and needs constant review to retain it.

Tara

[cillakat]

IMO no.

I would use it with OPG, ABeCeDarian, Dancing Bears (my favorite), ReadWell, TouchPhonics (my fave if dyslexia runs in the family and/or there is this type of concern)

I don't like ETC very much though so ......

:)
Katherine

[Jumping In Puddles]

All she had to do during decoding practice was rhyme.
Ladder style phonics forces a child to decode every word.


That makes a lot of sense! The only thing is I have been wondering why my son has to decode every word when he knows the ending and it ryhmes.

I find myself getting a little frustrated - so if r-a-n is ran then t-a-n is ... and he'll look at it and say tuh - ah - n, tan! I am thinking, how does he not see that if r-a-n is ran then just say tan for t-a-n. But then again, we just started phonics about a week or two ago so maybe he'll get to that point.

[TaraTheLiberator]

I am thinking, how does he not see that if r-a-n is ran then just say tan for t-a-n.

My son does this too, and it also drives me bonkers. But what you have to remember is that, at this point, your son is not looking at the word as a whole. He is looking at each letter in isolation. Fluency in reading comes when people see words as units in and of themselves, not as individual units. It just takes time.

You know what drives me the bonkerest? When my son looks at the word "ran" and says "runned," which is how he says it normally. :banghead:

Tara

[KarenNC]

Our experience:
Phonics Pathways and 100EZlessons failed miserably for us---daughter wanted desperately to read at age 4, but cried and fought every time we brought these out.

Started ETC 1 when she was just over 4. Did the pretest on consonants and went back to the preprimers to fill in gaps, which took a couple of months doing them at her desired pace. She loved this, in fact kept begging to do more. We finished the second primer in a single afternoon of her asking "can't we do just a little more, pleeeeeeaaaase?"

After ETC 1, added in Bob books and stories I made up for her using family names and words she knew, letting her add in illustrations if she could read the page. Also added in Dolch sight word cards. This was at about age 4 1/2.

Around end of ETC 2, a couple of months later, we happened on Dick and Jane. This was wonderful for her---gave her the confidence to be able to read aloud to someone other than me. Also began picking up leveled readers from the library.

At about her 5th birthday (beginning of kindergarten) she was easily reading aloud fluently books listed as 2nd grade level in the Accelerated Reader program lists. We continued on and finished all the ETC books, finishing ETC 8 in mid 2nd grade. By that point it was primarily spelling for her. In books 7 and 8, maybe even 6, I quit requiring her to do the "check the box for the sentence that matches the picture" as she had no trouble reading it. She liked them, so she still did it. I tried subbing Spelling Power for her after book 5 or 6, but she wanted to stick with ETC, so we did. Went on to Spelling Power after ETC 8 and she placed in level D.

So, is ETC enough? Yes, in my experience it was for my child with the addition of sight words early on. How it would work for another child, I can't say. 100 EZ lessons was fabulous for my godson, so it depends.

[Jennefer@SSA]

I have not read the other responses so forgive me if I am repeating...

ETC was enough to get my ds reading. We started with Get Ready, Get Set and Go for the Code as well as Book 1 in pre-K when he was four. By the end of Book 3 in Kinder he was reading well.

We did use Bob Books and Primary Phonics Readers (published by the same company who does ETC) to supplement. So I guess I could say that ETC was enough to teach my ds the basic skills to start reading I choose to supplement to move the process along!

[ElizabethB]

My son, on the other hand, struggles a great deal and we can work on a word for weeks and he still doesn't get it down pat. I suspect that it's a combination of maturity and learning struggles for him (he has deficits across the board) but as long as he is still enthusiastic about learning to read, I'll keep working with him even though he probably needs some additional maturity time for it all to really click. We've been working on reading for four months and he can read CVC words and is building a store of sight words, but he moves very slowly and needs constant review to retain it.

Tara

If you stop all sight words altogether, it helps them learn the phonics easier and faster. There are less than a dozen words that need to be learned by sight, all the others can be learned phonetically:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

I also find that working with spelling and nonsense words is very helpful. Webster's Speller is a great program. You learn each section so well that you can spell every word in each section, there is not much need for review when you learn to that level. (I didn't have my daughter spell every word in each section, I just had her be able to spell one word of each type in each section, for example, in silent e words, all 5 vowels with silent e and tricky words such as nice and page.)

[TaraTheLiberator]

If you stop all sight words altogether, it helps them learn the phonics easier and faster.

Thanks for the link and the spelling suggestion. I am actually not working with my son on sight words, he has just picked up a few (maybe 10) from the readers that he uses and from sitting with me as I read to the kids. Perhaps what I consider to be sight words aren't actually sight words. To me, at this point, a sight word is any word that either isn't phonetic or any word that contains phonics combinations that we haven't covered yet but which my son knows simply from repeated encounters with the word. :)

Tara

[jplain]

You know what drives me the bonkerest? When my son looks at the word "ran" and says "runned," which is how he says it normally. :banghead:
Well, look on the bright side. At least you know his comprehension is good! :D

[jplain]

If you stop all sight words altogether, it helps them learn the phonics easier and faster.
Okay, I have a question about this.

Reading material is pretty limited until a child has acquired at least a few of the Dolch sight words. If I eschew teaching sight words, I feel I'd have to hold back any remotely interesting reading material until we've done a LOT of phonics instruction. That seems like a recipe for frustration and boredom, doesn't it?

Or am I overthinking this? Should I give her reading that includes Dolch sight words we haven't gotten to with phonics, and just tell her what the words are as we read together, without instructing her to "learn" them?

[Veritaserum]

We use ETC and Hooked on Phonics K or ETC and 100 Easy Lessons (depending on the child). :) With ETC, you want to start with Get Ready for the Code A, B, and C (three books).

[Titus.Two.Five]

We really like ETC, however, we use it along with OPGTTR.

We do ETC A, B, and C and then begin OPGTTR at lesson 27 and also begin ETC book 1.

[KarenNC]

Okay, I have a question about this.

Reading material is pretty limited until a child has acquired at least a few of the Dolch sight words. If I eschew teaching sight words, I feel I'd have to hold back any remotely interesting reading material until we've done a LOT of phonics instruction. That seems like a recipe for frustration and boredom, doesn't it?

We ran into exactly this problem. "Mom, when can we do *real* reading?" To her, "reading" was the wonderful books and stories she had as audiobooks, bedtime stories and reading together. "Cat sat. Mat sat." simply wasn't cutting it to keep her interest. This is why I started writing stories for her that included things like her cats' names-- "Marco sat. Marco sat on Meg. Meg was mad. Meg bit Marco." I think this is why the Dick and Jane books helped so much to give her some joy in reading aloud.

Basically, my goal was not to get my child to learn phonics. It was to teach her to be an independent reader with a love of reading. There are many ways to get to that point, but the one I outlined (combo of phonics and sight words) was the one that worked best for us with the least frustration. Now at 8 we have a very fluent and advanced reader and speller, so my goal was accomplished.

[TaraTheLiberator]

We had the same issue with my daughter. For the entire year she was five she refused to "learn to read" even though she was learning to read because she did NOT want to read "Pat sat on the mat" types of things. She wanted to read Harry Potter and The Spiderwick Chronicles. What worked for us in terms of stimulating her interest in working at reading was borrowing my father's old Alice and Jerry first grade reader. The fact that there was an inscription in the front that said, "To Tommie, your first reader, love Mommie and Daddie" with the date of 1946 (when she knew that Tommie was Grandpa) combined with the fact that the older readers are more challenging and therefore more interesting did the trick for my dd. I have actually ordered used, original copies of the second and Alice and Jerry readers from Amazon.

Tara

[Tree House Academy]

We have used ETC from the beginning. We use ETC books and online lessons. However, we also use LLATL blue, Bob Books, and Calvert's Come Read with Me. I don't think ETC alone is enough because, while the phonics are there, the reading really is not. Not the everyday reading practice that he needs, anyway.

[ElizabethB]

Okay, I have a question about this.

Reading material is pretty limited until a child has acquired at least a few of the Dolch sight words. If I eschew teaching sight words, I feel I'd have to hold back any remotely interesting reading material until we've done a LOT of phonics instruction. That seems like a recipe for frustration and boredom, doesn't it?

Or am I overthinking this? Should I give her reading that includes Dolch sight words we haven't gotten to with phonics, and just tell her what the words are as we read together, without instructing her to "learn" them?

To give you some background, I'm remediated around 30 children over the past 14 years, all of them suffering from too many sight words. I've found as few as 20 sight words in Kindergarden causing trouble. Once you start guessing at words, it just sets up a bad cycle and makes the habit of sounding out words harder.

With my daughter, I didn't let her read anything on her own until she had learned enough phonics to read any word. If all you focus on is the phonics portion of teaching, you can get them to this point in 2 to 3 months. I also played fun games while teaching her (one here: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html), we also played games with magnetic letters on a cookie sheet, seeing how many words she could make with 6 to 8 consonants and a vowel. Once she got good, I'd see how many words she could make in a minute.

She also did Read, Write, and Type. It's very fun. It's a bit expensive, but you can try a free demo before purchasing.

I had let her read some books in the beginning, but noticed that they caused her to start guessing just like all my poor remedial students--and I knew I didn't want that for her. It takes quite a while and a lot of nonsense words to break them of their guessing habits.

You can also teach all but 5 of the Dolch sight words phonetically, I explain how on my sight word page. However, you don't really need the list, most of them are actually very phonetic, and a good program will end up teaching a lot of the sight words anyway. (sight word page here: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html)

When I read to her while she was looking at the words, I would sound out words we had not yet covered. If she wasn't looking at the words, I would just read to her.

After we finished all the phonics basics, she still guessed occasionally when reading a normal book. We then worded through Webster's Speller. That stopped the guessing altogether--it teaches how to sound out and spell 6,000+ words, including 3, 4, and 5 syllable words. Because of the way they are broken up into syllables, my daughter was able to read these long words even at age 5. She could not read any word longer than 2 syllables if it was not broken up at that time. After working through Webster's Speller, she has now learned how to break up words on her own and can read anything except strange chemical ingredients on junk food.

[KarenNC]

With my daughter, I didn't let her read anything on her own until she had learned enough phonics to read any word.

Glad this worked for you. It would have driven my daughter absolutely insane (not to mention me), even in 2-3 months. What she needed was more varied content, content that was real and meaningful to her. Isolated words, phonograms, nonsense words, etc just didn't cut it. As I said, she has not only not developed dyslexia from using sight words along with phonics but at age 7 last spring was tested as spelling on a 6th grade level or above and her letter-word identification was at a 7th grade level, with comprehension at similar levels.

I'm not saying that using the approach I did is a guarantee every child will automatically read easily or early, but I can say that using a combo of the two approaches is certainly not a guarantee that every child using such an approach will not learn to read well nor is it tantamount to dooming them to dyslexia. I am sure that there probably are some children who cannot handle even a few sight words without developing long-term issues, just as there are probably some who never need to have any phonics at all, but I don't think that either is the general case.

[jpklehm]

My son is five and in K, and we use ETC (K levels, A, B, and C), OPGTR, HWT, and Bob books. It's been a real winner for him. He has whipped right through the ETC books though, as he is into book C at this time. We cover OPGTR 3-4 times a week, read Bob books every day and do ETC every day, as well. He has completed his HWT book so I am writing out his penmanship practice on separate paper. I am having him write sight words from his reading.

PAM

[ElizabethB]

As I said, she has not only not developed dyslexia from using sight words along with phonics but at age 7 last spring was tested as spelling on a 6th grade level or above and her letter-word identification was at a 7th grade level, with comprehension at similar levels.

I'm not saying that using the approach I did is a guarantee every child will automatically read easily or early, but I can say that using a combo of the two approaches is certainly not a guarantee that every child using such an approach will not learn to read well nor is it tantamount to dooming them to dyslexia. I am sure that there probably are some children who cannot handle even a few sight words without developing long-term issues, just as there are probably some who never need to have any phonics at all, but I don't think that either is the general case.

I'm glad your daughter was not one that was harmed by it. About 30 to 40 percent of children have a problem when exposed to the Dolch sight words. I've tested hundreds of children, that's about the going rate. I've never found a problem with a child taught in the Catholic schools--they use a good phonics program with only a few sight words. Schools that use pure whole word methods run about a 60% rate of children with some degree of problems.

But, since I've seen so many who were harmed so much by sight words, I want to make sure as many people as possible know about the possibility of later reading trouble. A third grader I'm currently remediating can't even read her homework. After about 20 hours of remediation, she's finally at the point where she is starting to be able to sound out some simple words again, but it's a long, hard struggle--you have to undo a lot of guessing habits. One 5th grader I worked with was totally remediated after only 6 hours of work and was reading a bit above grade level, but most remedial students take a lot more work--way more work than it takes to wait a month or two and be sure you're on the safe side.

[TaraTheLiberator]

With my daughter, I didn't let her read anything on her own until she had learned enough phonics to read any word.

With all due respect, how in the world did you accomplish this? With my daughter, I'd have to hide all the books in the house and blindfold her whenever we went anywhere to keep her from trying to read the signs.

My son is not quite as eager to read, but he also spends at least an hour a day looking through books and sounding out words, and he reads every sign he can when we are out somewhere.

I just can't imagine "not letting" a child read "anything" or thinking that learning to read happens in 2 to 3 months. My kids have been learning to read since they joined our family.

I'm not trying to be snotty, I'm just trying to picture what "not letting" a child read "anything" would look like in practice.

But then again, I don't even know what the Dolch sight words are. I have heard of the concept, and the name pretty much explains it, but I wouldn't know a Dolch site word if it bit me on the hiney.

Tara

[KarenNC]

But then again, I don't even know what the Dolch sight words are. I have heard of the concept, and the name pretty much explains it, but I wouldn't know a Dolch site word if it bit me on the hiney.


Nothing terribly exotic. Here's the list http://gemini.es.brevard.k12.fl.us/sheppard/reading/dolch.html. For a child who is in, for example, ETC 1, which only deals with short vowel cvc words, it would include things like: a, the, and, said, I, my, me, we, you. The goal is to give the child enough of these extremely high frequency words for them to be able to read something beyond "Cat sat. Bob sat." with some fluency.

http://www.dolchsightwords.org/
The Dolch Word List is a list of commonly used English words that was originally compiled by Edward William Dolch, PhD and published in his 1948 book, "Problems in Reading". Edward Dolch compiled this list based on children's books of the period, and selected 220 "service words" which children need to recognize in order to achieve reading fluency. Dolch excluded nouns from his main list, but did compile a separate 95-word list of nouns. Many of the 220 words in the Dolch list, can not be "sounded out", and hence must be learned by sight. Hence the list is often referred to as "Dolch Sight Word List", and the words on it, as "Dolch Sight Words".


I incorporated them into our schoolwork by buying a pack of the cards listed "sight words" and then "more sight words". We would periodically play a game with them---if she could read the word, she got to keep the card, if not, I did.

Elizabeth B. said: "About 30 to 40 percent of children have a problem when exposed to the Dolch sight words."

I will hazard a guess that by this she means that these children have a problem because they were taught a certain way of approaching the words on these lists, not that the mere exposure of a child to the word "the" or "and" or "I" causes a problem. If that were the case it would not matter which method one used, we would have had a 30-40% rate of what on her site she terms "educational dyslexia" throughout the history of English literacy.

Let me be clear that I am not talking here about teaching a strategy of guessing words based on their shape or beginning letter or any of that sort of thing. Those strategies don't make sense to me. I am talking teaching that the letters t, h and e when together by themselves say the word "the", that capital I by itself is long i rather than short or that the combination of the letters "Arthur" spells the child's name, no different than teaching a phoneme. The difference is that one teaches that *along with* short vowel cvc words early on in order to allow the child to have some fluency and read something more interesting with a bit more richness of language.

As I understand it, and certainly as I experience it, one does not spend one's entire life sounding out every word one comes across. One comes to recognize that this particular combination of letters means a certain thing. So in the end, it is all "sight reading". I see it as rather like drilling times tables or addition facts until they are automatic in order to make doing word problems easier.

[TaraTheLiberator]

a, the, and, said, I, my, me, we, you.

My kids know all those words, not because I ever drilled or taught them, but because they are in practically everything the kids read. They just "picked them up." I would think that most kids do?

In our family, due to the fact that several of us come from different countries, phonics isn't a reliable indicator of how to pronounce our names, first or last. People outside the family constantly mispronounce our names because they pronounce them phonetically, so my kids got an early introduction to the idea that some things don't sound like they look. Our last name is a word lifted directly from the language of my husband's relatives, and my kids have taken to telling people, "You can't sound it out. It's pronounced like this." :)

Tara