Every sound and pedagogical method of teaching reading must include two
basic principles.
1. Reading must begin in the life of the child, with real thought
content. Whether the thought unit be a word, a sentence, or a story, it
must represent some idea or image that appeals to the child's interests
and adjusts itself to his experience.
2. It must proceed with a mastery of not only words, but of the sound
symbols of which words are composed.
The child's love for the story, his desire to satisfy a conscious need,
gives him an immediate and compelling motive for mastering the symbols,
which in themselves are of incidental and subordinate interest. While he
is learning to read, he feels that he is reading to learn and "symbols
are turned into habit."
If the child is to understand from the beginning that reading is thot
getting, we must begin with the sentence, rhyme or other language unit.
If a story is the initial step, a few well chosen sentences that tell
the heart of the story will constitute the first black board reading
lesson.
The next step is the analysis of the sentence, or the study and
recognition of the individual words therein.
Finally the word is separated into its elementary sounds, the study of
the sound symbols growing out of the stock of words learned first as
purely sight words.
Following this phonic analysis comes the final step, the blending of
these phonic elements to produce new words. Thus gradually increasing
prominence is given to the discovery of new words by this
analytic-synthetic process, and less time to sight word drills, until
they are entirely omitted, except for the teaching of unphonetic words.
There should be at least two ten-minute lessons in phonics each day.
These lessons are not reading lessons and should not trespass on the
regular reading period, when thot getting and thot giving are uppermost.
While greater prominence is given to the thot phase in reading, the
technical drill and active effort in mastering the mechanical phase is
of equal importance as necessary preparation for good reading.