Reading education is very cyclic in nature and the whole language and phonics debate changes from one side to the other every 30 years or so. At present it seems that the world is turning back to phonics as the best method of learning to read. One

     Some children will learn to read no matter what method teaches them and others will struggle. So it is easy to change the method. But last time they changed to the whole language method reading scores when backwards, so I am not surprised to see phonics coming back. 

     Whole language is when the child learns to read by looking at the whole sentence and guessing what they don’t know. It became popular because back in the 1930’s as the ‘look see’ method, but as is still the case nowadays it was created by marketing. 

     The publisher who made the books was very good at marketing and the ‘look see’ books were very colorful with meaningful sentences. While phonics books were and still are made up of rhyming sentences that usually don’t make sense. And because the story doesn’t make sense you can’t have very good pictures in the books. Even today phonics books are still quite drab compared to the picture books that are used for the whole language method. 

     But it is not always in the materials and phonics is now back in vogue. I like phonics because the Montessori method uses it and I teach using Montessori sandpaper letters. I have found her method to actually teach most kids with very few getting left behind. 

     For more information about the phonics programs I recommend including a Montessori program with sandpaper templates and how to make them, see our teach reading page.