Johnny Can't Read
The classic book on phonics--the method of teaching recommended by the U.S. Department of Education. Contains complete materials and instructions on teaching children to read at home. "Why Johnny Can't Read..." is an excellent handbook for homeschoolers, elementary teachers and teacher trainers. The book offers a convincing argument why knowledge of phonics holds the key for decoding any word one encounters. Learning to read in any other way is but an exercise in memorization of word form - word correspondence which takes up about 600,000 memory slots in our brain. Such memory space could have been better used for other functions. In contrast, just by knowing the 44 phonemes of the English language one can read anything. The book clarifies that because there are 44 sounds and we only have 26 letters of the alphabet, some phonemes are represented by single letter symbols while others by a combination of letters. There are also several forms (letter combinations) of representing the same phoneme. The book further eliminates confusion of spelling by giving the rules for spelling such as the double consonant rule. The book systematically leads the reader to the sequence of learning these phonemes and reading carefully chosen words in a word list, utilizing only the phonemes so far introduced. This method facilitates mastery of new phonemes introduced as well as give suficient review of phonemes thus far learned. With only five main steps illustrated in 72 lessons, at the rate of one lesson a week, one can expect to master phonics in two school years (40 weeks per school year). This handy, systematic and comprehensive guide is a classic, a "must have" book for everyone, especially for those of us who never were taught phonics in our schooling.