Sounding Out Phonics

Get the lowdown on why this teaching method is key to reading success.

If you're the parent of a beginning reader, chances are you're hearing a lot about phonics. Here's what you need to know about how your child will learn phonics and how you can help at home.

What exactly is phonics?
Phonics is knowing that sounds and letters have a relationship — it's that simple, and that complex. It is the link between what we say and what we can read and write. "Children need very explicit instructions on how the letters on a page correspond to the spoken word," explains Margie Gillis, Ed.D., project director of reading research studies at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut. A child who has mastered phonics can connect the sounds he knows with letters, then put them together to make words. (And then he can put words together to read sentences, and so on.)

Phonics offers your beginning reader the strategies she needs to sound out words. For example, she learns that the letter D has the sound of "d" as in "doll." Then she learns how to blend letter sounds together to make words like dog. It's not as easy as it sounds, because the 26 letters in our alphabet correspond to 44 sounds. But when your child has mastered it, this knowledge helps her read familiar words at an appropriate pace, and gives her the ability to decode and spell words she hasn't seen before.

Why is phonics important?
The ultimate goal of reading is good comprehension. But in order for your child to understand what he reads, he must be able to do it quickly and automatically, without stumbling over words. Phonics facilitates that process. With lots of practice sounding out words, in combination with other important reading skills such as phonemic awareness, letter recognition, vocabulary building, and concepts of print, he learns to read more fluently. Then he can turn his attention to grasping the passages.



How is phonics taught?
Systematically and sequentially. Teachers give children plenty of practice before moving on. Your child will read short, easy books, containing the particular letter sounds or words she's working on. Her teacher will give her lots of opportunities to read aloud, and will guide and correct her as she reads. There will also be lots of writing, to reinforce the sound-print connection. Here's what your child is likely to learn in each grade:

Kindergarten:
Letter recognition: learning the letters of the alphabet. Connecting some letters with their sounds (she'll know about 20 sound-symbol connections by the end of the year). Phonemic awareness: understanding that words are made of individual, separate sounds. She may be asked to clap out her name, make up nonsense words, or listen for the rhymes in a poem to build sound sensitivity. Reading and writing easy consonant-vowel-consonant words (in some schools). A few sight words.

First grade:
Mastery of short and long vowels. Letter combinations: The "b" sound plus the "r" sound makes the "br" blend, in which you can still hear both of the consonants you started with; "t" plus "h" makes a new "th" sound. Reading simple words, sentences and stories. Beyond phonics: word endings, like "ed" and "ing," and more sight words, such as is, was, have, and are.

Second grade:
Vowel combinations (what sound does "ea" make? How about "ai"?). Spelling patterns of increasing difficulty. Multisyllabic words and putting word parts together ("pan" plus "cake" equals pancake). Vocabulary and word recognition

How can I support phonics learning at home?
Reinforce schoolwork with easy activities.

Team up with the teacher. Ask how you can highlight phonics and reading. If you have concerns, share them. Struggling readers should be given extra-intensive instruction, either in the classroom, or in small groups with the school reading specialist. "Don't be satisfied if the teacher says 'Let's just give it some time,'" emphasizes Dr. Gillis. Children need help as early as possible in order to catch up.

Listen to your child read daily. "If he stumbles on a word, encourage him to sound it out," suggests Marci McGowan, a 1st grade teacher at the H.W. Mountz School in Spring Lake, New Jersey. But if he still can't get it, provide the word so he doesn't get discouraged. Take turns reading a paragraph at a time, to help make it more fun.

Boost comprehension. Ask questions like, "What do you think will happen next?" or "What did he mean by that?"

Revisit familiar books.
It's okay if your child wants to read favorites from earlier years. Reading easy books helps kids develop fluency, and makes them feel successful in those early stages, says McGowan. If a book has more than 5 unknown words on a page, it's too challenging, she adds.

Read aloud. Choose books on topics that excite your child, and read with gusto, using different voices for the characters. This is where you can expose your child to more challenging literature to enrich vocabulary. In the early grades, her listening level far exceeds her reading level.

Spread the joy. Show your child how much you value reading by having plenty of books and magazines around the house. And visit the library and bookstores often. You'll cultivate a lifelong love of reading in your child.

by Ellen H. Parlapiano

Child bedroom furniture

Give your child to feel his self like an adult by taking part in the selection of his bedroom furniture.

Each piece of child bedroom furniture is expertly made, attractive, and sturdy; you and your child will love how the new furniture in their room looks and feels.

When you are perusing through inventory of children’s bedroom furniture, pay close attention to the wide variety of beds featured. The styles of beds in youth bedroom furniture collection range from simple, classic wood bed designs that will look great in any room to fun, metal bunk beds, perfect for when your child has a guest. Also beds that are geared for little girls, like our canopy beds, and those that are tailored for little boys, like our Targhee Captains bed. Beds are made specifically for a smaller individual, yet comfortable and built to last. Your children will love their bedroom furniture for many years to come.

When you and your child are looking for children’s bedroom furniture, shop around. You will be looking for better price. Look for low price, and high quality.

Italian furniture

If you would like to know something about Italian furniture I can say that this is the finest brand I have ever seen, because of their individuality.

The Italian furniture industry is the largest in the world. This furniture is valued for its style, quality and functionality. In Italy, there exists a strong relationship between furniture designers and furniture manufacturers. This allows the designers to be creative while knowing that their products will be made to the highest quality.

The Italian culture places a high value on beauty. The centre of the world fashion industry is in Milan and this influence has extended to the world of furniture design. Italian furniture, designed for all rooms of the house, is not just beautiful, but always useful as well.

Lexington furniture

I want to say that this furniture helps you to realize your personal vision of how life at home should feel.

Lexington Home Brands has grown over the last 100-plus years into a brand and lifestyle leader. As a full-line furniture manufacturer, Lexington Home Brands produce bedroom, dining, casual dining, occasional, home entertainment, home office, youth, upholstered, leather, and wicker furniture.
Lexington bedroom furniture, and Lexington baby furniture come in styles for every aspect of life.

The company produces furniture in a wide range of styles, including soft modern, transitional, sophisticated and relaxed country, cottage, and casual, American and European traditional, Victorian, and eighteenth century.

Furniture refinishing

As I know, old furniture can be refinished and if your furniture are with a little elbow grease you can make it handsome again. You just need to understand the basics of refinishing techniques.

When refinishing furniture, you must do the most unpleasant part of the job first. Removing the old finish can be a cumbersome and messy task. For a while early in the process, until you start getting down to the wood underneath the mess, you may feel that you have completely ruined the piece. Have patience. Once you get to the point of final sanding the wood, you will have graduated from making a mess to creating a masterpiece. When you are finished, you will be proud of what you were able to create.

You can remove old paint and varnish in a couple of different ways, primarily by sanding and by the use of chemical strippers. Heat guns can also be used for stripping and are sometimes used as a supplement to the other methods in the removal of a particularly stubborn finish.

Sanding is a good method only if you have good sanding equipment and are experienced in the use of such equipment. If you are trying to remove an old finish by hand sanding or with a common orbital finishing sander, you will work yourself into a puddle and waste a lot of sandpaper. On the other hand, belt and disk sanders can remove finishes quickly, but since they are capable of removing so much material, you must be very careful not to disfigure the piece by sanding too deeply. It is also difficult to sand varnish from round or decoratively curved areas such as turned table legs.

Chemical strippers, commonly called "paint strippers," are an effective means of removing paint and varnish from wood furniture or projects. Using these chemicals is probably the fastest and easiest method for most people. Despite what you may read on the back of a can, if you want to do a really good job, some sanding will still be required after the old finish is removed by the stripper.

Making Sense of Reading

Principals and administrators across the country can relate to this scenario. They know that quick fixes are not likely to help when children are not learning to read. The root of the problem is often related to what teachers know and understand about children's learning to read. Many teachers do not have a conceptual understanding of reading. In addition, teachers often do not know what parts of their reading instruction work or do not work, and as a result, why their students' test performances are high or low.

For years, teaching reading has focused primarily on curriculum and instruction. Teachers were expected to follow the teacher's guide and deliver instruction. As long as they were equipped with the necessary curriculum, administrators and the public assumed every child would become a successful reader. This expectation has not been met, however; not every child has become a successful reader.
To address the problem of low reading achievement, principals and district administrators typically have responded by adopting yet another "reading program" in hopes that just the right one will help children learn to read. If the new reading program again results in low reading scores on the achievement tests, as often happens, the cycle begins again. What can principals and district administrators do differently to help increase scores on reading achievement tests?
The focus needs to shift from teaching reading to learning to read. This means that teachers begin to weigh the results of their teaching. One question that helps teachers make this pivotal shift is " What reading skills have my students learned?" Depending on the answer, a teacher can determine whether to move ahead or go back and teach again, perhaps, in a different way, based on individual student needs.
Because children's backgrounds, learning needs, and skills vary, effective reading instruction depends upon three main components. Teachers must assess children's reading skills in an on-going manner and use assessment information to customize instruction to individual student needs. In addition, teachers must participate in on-going professional development to gain knowledge of reading and reading instruction.
In a meeting sponsored by SEDL, school, district, and state leaders explored issues that principals and other administrators face in creating and supporting effective reading programs. These leaders acknowledged that no silver bullets exist, that developing teachers who diagnose reading needs and prescribe reading instruction according to student's individual needs takes time, and that the capacity to deliver significant results on standardized tests requires a district of skilled teachers. Working from this perspective, principals and district administrators can build an effective reading program for their campuses and, ultimately, for their districts.

Furniture repair

From my point of view, to make your furniture repaired you must do the following things.

Never repair your own furniture unless you are absolutely certain you are performing the right procedure. Many "homespun" repairs do more harm than good. One of the most common homespun repairs is on wobbling chairs. The amateur handyperson turns the chair upside down, squirts some glue into the hole, lets it dry and assumes the problem is solved. Sometimes, the person will hammer a nail into the area making matters worse. By this time the correct repairs will be even more expensive because the glue and the nail must be removed without further damaging the wood.

Insist that your furniture repairs are not only strong and look good, but that they are also repairable in the future. Choose a finish that not only looks and wears well but that is repairable and refinishable. Choose a repair that recognizes that next time it might break on the next layer of wood fibers.

Know how you want to use the piece before you restore it. There is a difference in restoring an item for everyday use and restoring primarily for decorative appearance. It is one thing to simply refinish an item, but is another to restore it or make it match another item.