High-Tech Alternatives to Hooked on Phonics

As a homeschooling mom, I am all-too familiar with the reading strategy battle. The phonics vs. whole-language approach to reading instruction debate has waged on for decades, with each side taking the upper hand at various times, and providing independent research and professional studies to bolster their arguments. In the deep, dark halls of educational theorem, I'm sure these debates have been quite stimulating, and even entertaining at times, but for those of us in the educational trenches, we would prefer for someone to just tell us the best way to teach our children to read!

Parents with any access to media - - electronic or otherwise - - became pretty solidly convinced over the past couple decades that phonics instruction was the key to reading success. Programs such as Hooked on Phonics inundated us with television and magazine ads that declared phonics as the silver bullet that would solve pretty much every reading woe our children were having. And we listened. But unfortunately, the results didn't always pan out. Why? Because decades of reading research has also shown that not every child learns the same way.

Systematic phonics instruction seemed to work incredibly well for left brained, auditory learners. They learn well in step-by-step chunks, and with teaching that builds each new lesson on the foundation of the last. This method is the cornerstone of the Hooked on Phonics approach. And if every child were a sequential learner, this would arguably be the holy grail of reading instruction. But millions of children have rebellious brains that refuse to follow suit. They are right-brained learners, and learn better in a whole-to-part method. They are incredibly visual, and can recognize sight words with ease, but struggle immensely when asked to "sound out" a word by its individual parts. My twelve-year-old son is just one such of these type learners, and this homeschooling mom will tell you that no matter how creatively you present his phonics instruction, he isn't going to learn to read based on letter sounds alone.

Fortunately, new online educational technology programs have come along in the last several years that understand the need to teach reading multimodally. Certainly, even the most left brained learner will need instruction in recognizing words in context, and right brained, visual learners still must understand the phonemic concepts behind the words in front of them. Therefore the best current reading instruction moves away from the limited Hooked on Phonics formula, and focuses on a more balanced and comprehensive approach to reading.

Some online education companies are successfully doing just this. Time4Learning, a comprehensive home-education program, blends the best parts of the popular phonics programs, such as colorful, engaging activities, systematic instruction, and interactive learning with the equally necessary whole language components. As they explain on the Time4Learning web site,

"Time4Learning's reading program includes phonetic-based lessons, helping children to acquire blending skills, to deconstruct sounds, and to approach the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. In addition as a literature-based feature, children are provided vocabulary, spelling, reading comprehension and writing components. The strategic combination is a successful tool in giving children the opportunity to explore and identify all facets of reading."

Online reading instruction also has the benefit of immediate feedback for the student. Fun games and activities show the child's progress in real time, and allow burgeoning readers to experience the gratifying success of seeing that animated scoreboard light up, or hearing the congratulations from colorful online characters who are guiding them through the games. From my experience as a homeschooling mom, this type of positive encouragement is invaluable in the process of learning reading. The reading strategies that have been the most rewarding for him have always been ones that allowed him to see his own improvement, and study his own mistakes.

One of the biggest complaints of programs such as Hooked on Phonics is the cost. Comprehensive phonics packages can cost parents hundreds of dollars, with no guarantees of success. Online reading programs, on the other hand, are usually much less expensive, and sometimes even free because of advertising support. Even a complete online reading curriculum, likeTime4Learning, (which also includes math, science, and social studies instruction) is less than $20 per month per student. And parents can cancel their subscriptions at any time if they feel that the program is not a good fit with their child.

With the technologies available today, parents who are concerned about their child's reading progress have an incredible choice of programs and resources available to them. They don't have to settle for either/or when it comes to phonics vs whole language strategies. There are great programs, as close as your own computer, that can combine comprehensive reading instruction with a fun, engaging format. And no one needs to debate about that.

Sources:

http://www.time4learning.com