How to Teach Your Older Child to Read with Phonics

Mom, Dad, are you grieved because your older son or daughter cannot read?  Do you feel that you're the only one in your child's life who really cares?  Indeed, you might be the only one who really cares, and that's exactly why you need to know that your child can learn to read every word on every page! 

DON'T GIVE UP!    THERE IS AN ANSWER!    YOUR CHILD CAN LEARN TO READ EVERYTHING!

Just like little Candy, so many American children have experienced a great deal of stress as they lived through one disappointing reading class after another.  Studies show that children who experience school stress tend toward:

•a decreased pleasure in everyday activities
•grouchiness
•fatigue or
•an increased sensitivity to criticism and adversity

Parents, before you read this page, it might prove helpful if you read a short excerpt that explains the latest findings of brain development.  The information in this excerpt explains more about the effect that stress might well play on the way a child's brain makes connections.  To read this short excerpt, click here.  Then, please, return to this page, because everything can change when a determined mom gets involved and arms herself with a step-by-step, systematic phonics program that works! 

Teaching an older child to read is not difficult.  Your time in teaching must, however, be carried out on a daily basis following a correct systematic phonics program.  Let's face it, you wouldn't be reading this page if your older child had learned to read every word on every page, and that is what every parent should desire for their child. 

                  HERE ARE THREE PIECES OF GREAT NEWS!

1) Your child can learn to read every word on every page! 

2) You can receive a COMPLETE Phonics program as an INSTANT DOWNLOAD including step-by-step instructions, 100 easy-to-follow daily phonics lessons,

phonics readers, rhyming phonics charts, rhyming phonics flashcards, phonics drill, multisensory vowel helps, and free email coaching -- all for just $9.97

3)  You will need to spend just 20 to 30 minutes a day with your child.

Before we go any further, however, you must know some things that might well have taken place in your child's reading education thus far. 

                   If your older student has gone through a public school Guided Reading program for reading

          instruction and, consequently, has received a strong concentration of look-n-say reading training (and

          that was largely determined by how much explicit phonics training his/her individual teacher received,

          how much his/her teacher applied that explicit phonics training in the classroom, and how much

          pressure his/her individual teacher felt to teach the elements of Guided Reading rather than to teach

          the elements of pure explicit phonics), then it is quite possible that your older child has been taught to:

• guess at words by looking at the first letter of a word

• guess at words by looking at the picture on the page

• guess at words by trying to fit them into the meaning of the rest of the sentence

• guess at words by looking at the shape of the word

• guess at words through a process of elimination

• guess at words by grabbing onto a word chunk that he recognizes inside a word (the difficulty with beginning a word with a recognizable word chunk is that it teaches a child to begin a word at any point he desires rather than to begin a word at the beginning of the word)

• guess at words by using a combination of any of the above

At the beginning of The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program you will notice an 82-page eBook entitled:

How to Teach Candy's Systematic 4WAY Phonics Step by Step.  This easy-to-understand book explains the reading methods being used today to teach children how to read and why and how those methods are so miserably failing to teach our children how to read every word on every page. 

If your child has gone through any of those reading methods or through a combination of those reading methods, then your child has been taught to memorize a great many whole words without ever gaining a complete knowledge of how to blend together the individual letters and letter combinations within words, from left to right -- those individual phonemes that make up words. 

For example, our main curriculum entitled the Candy 4WAY Phonics Program, takes children ages 4 through 4th grade, step-by-step, through 100 daily 4WAY Phonics Lessons, 4WAY Phonics Readers, and 4WAY Phonics Charts to teach them:

First, all the individual letter sounds (not the names of the letters but the sounds that the letters stand for)

Second, how to blend a beginning consonant with a vowel from left to right such as:  ba  le  fi

Third, how to blend together a three or four-letter word with a short vowel from left to right such as:  bed  can  fill  bend  raft  lint

Fourth, how to blend together a four letter word with a short vowel that begins with a digraph such as: bl  pl  st  tr  sw  sm  sc from left to right and onto words beginning with combinations such as:  spr  spl scr  str

Fifth, how to blend together four and five letter words containing long vowel combinations such as:   oa  ee  ea  ay  ie along with silent e words such as: cake  pale  crane

Sixth, how to blend together multiple syllable words that contain all the other phonograms such as:

aw  -ing  or  ough  oo  ear  eigh  -dge  -tion

We build children, step by step, into sentences that build from easy to more complex such as:

Dad is sad.  Mom is red.  Ken got a jet.  Kim is in bed.

As Mr. Bent did bask in the sun, Big Bug bit his back!  He bit it in fun!

Red and white candy canes taste so good. I would tape them to my shirt, if only I could.

Rowdy the hound is the chat of the town. He can chow down on brown bones by the hour.
He can slouch on the couch and munch prime ribs ‘till dark, and slurp grapes that are oh, so sour!

“Yes!” said Marcie’s teacher. “If we make out a plan to go and read it to Mr. Clay, we would not be bending any of our school rules.  We could go fishing and reel in a big catch.”

I saw a crawfish all long and all red, crawling over a rock in a swampy riverbed.
Its claws were so awesome!  It had ten scrawny legs.  So I picked up that crawfish and gave it to Peg.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning to jog, and the bright, green hue on the grass was still wet and
glistening. As Katie flew across the countryside, she spotted only a few patches of mud, though
a hard rain had beaten down upon the earth earlier that morning. Worried thoughts from the evening
before were still brewing in the back of Katie’s brain, but she resolved to just ignore them.

Just as quickly, both girls recognized little Cole Glover. Cole was snuggled into a tire swing that swayed back and forth on one of the big branches of the old willow tree that stood proudly in the
Andersons’ backyard. The tree’s long, golden branches hung almost down to the ground creating a cozy canopy of shade from the bright morning sunlight.

Douglas Delay had developed technology that could only be understood by the F.B.I. His automobile was under investigation, but, as yet, no one had traced Doug’s whereabouts or knew of the delivery date for the resources he carried. The extent that his enemies would go through to secure that valuable information could only be interpreted by his most loyal friend, Eddy Exit, otherwise, known as: “The Envelope Man.” 

This was not just a neon sign, it was a symbol of hope.  This was a marker designed to manifest beauty, culture, achievement, and reward to a struggling Appalachian mining town. These hard-working people would now be able to link their children and their grandchildren together
by connecting them with the discovery and delight of classical music.

Parents, learning to sound out words is an essential skill for a child to be able to read every word on every page, and yet, it is so very possible that your child has not learned to properly "sound out" words from left to right and has, most likely, developed his own decoding system, a system which includes guessing at many, many whole words and word parts.  That decoding system will be different for every child depending upon which combination of methods were used to teach him in his reading lessons and which parts of those methods he latched on to.

This is why it is so important to start your child over again with a correct, already-laid-out, phonetic reading program which includes a systematic 4WAY Phonics Daily Lesson Plan that will carry your child, step-by-step, through every necessary reading block, until he can read every word on every page.  Systematic 4WAY Phonics builds children from one letter blend to another, and gradually increases the complexity of the words.  Children are never asked to read a word unless they have already mastered all the sounds within that word first. 

God has given us two principles that apply to the struggling reader.  If we place these two principles into our lives and if we practice patience, cling to hope, and give sincere love, then God can use our reliance upon Him along with a simple, workable phonetic reading program to bring about amazing wonders in the life of a struggling reader.   Those two principles are:   

1st Principle - Our Hope for God to intervene in our lives will never cause us shame!

"And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us." Romans 5:5

2nd Principle - God often waits to give us what we strongly desire because He knows that we would never hope for something that we already have.  He wants our exercise of hope to build in us the patience we need to wait on Him and the faith we need to believe on Him.   Meanwhile, God really does have it all under control!

"For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?  But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." 

Romans 8:24b, 25 

So for your child's sake and to prove God in your life and in your child's life, do not stop hoping and never quit giving with all patience.  Success never comes by "giving up" or by "giving in."  Success only comes when we rely upon God and keep on "giving."  Keep on trying; do not allow yourself to become weary, and eventually, "in due season" you "shall reap,"  if you "faint not." (Galatians 6:9)

The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program was created for you, Mom, and for you, Dad, to give you a step-by-step, proven 4WAY Phonics linguistic plan -- a plan that teaches the parents as well as the students everything necessary to sound out every word on every page.  

Keeping that in mind, here are 10 Steps to follow with an older student (again, having this very affordable program in front of you would be a great help in carrying out these steps.) 

          Step 1) Tell your child that you have come across a reading method that helps children

                         and adults to become better readers.

          Step 2) Explain to your child that the methods that have been used in the past to teach him

                        to read were missing:

     a) step-by-step lessons that teach all the sounds that make up words
     b) phonetic spelling rules taught alongside daily phonics sounds
     c) a proper training of the left-right reading sequence

     d) a system of reading that is step-by-step and easy to follow

Don’t pull any punches. He already knows that something was missing in his reading education, and he's hoping beyond hope that the problem was the reading method used and not him!  Explain to your child that these are the four missing areas that your new reading method provides, and that filling in these missing elements is very essential in order for anyone to be able to read every word on every page.

Step 3) In order to find out “which” letters and blends your child does not know, take your older student through the Candy 4WAY Phonics Lifetime Phonics Charts starting with the very beginning Rhyming Alphabet Charts.   Make a note (privately to yourself) of every mistake your child makes. If he reaches a phonics chart in which he is obviously “guessing” at the letter sounds or blends (in other words, he cannot sound out every letter sound and every blend on the chart from left to right without errors), then stop! At that point, you will have a pretty good idea which letters and blends he is does not know.  

Step 4) Explain to your child that what you are going to be teaching him is essential to the “meat” of the whole reading process. That “meat” is this:

 Reading begins with single phonemes (single letter sounds), and then progresses to:

             a) word beginnings using pairs of phonemes blended together
          b) three or four phonemes blended together to create words with short vowels,
          c) beginning consonant digraphs blended together with short vowel sounds.
          d) beginning consonant digraphs blended together to create words with long

               vowel sounds.
          e) the use of a systematic phonics plan to learn all the rest of the possible phoneme

                        sounds that make  up words.

Step 5)  Grab a pencil -- you will be using it as a Pointer.  For those of you who have already bought The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program and who have already read through the 82-page eBook entitled, How to Teach Candy's Systematic 4WAY Phonics that is included with the program, you'll remember the section that explains the importance of using a pointer to help your child develop a left/right reading sequence?  This rule does not change for older children, and, in fact, is even more crucial for struggling readers because they have not been taught to approach words at the beginning of words.  Rather, they have been taught to approach words at recognizable word chunks in the middle or at the end of words.

           Step 6) Follow the program from the very beginning all the way through to the end explaining to

           your child ahead of time that learning to read involves:

          a) starting with individual letter sounds

          b) moving onto simple words and simple sentences that give way to more

               complex words and more complex sentences containing more and more

               connective words

          c) gaining the skills necessary to read descriptive and persuasive paragraphs – the

               types of paragraphs your child is going to need to read in order to survive in

               this world.

Step 7) Don’t mince words. Teach your older student the definition of a phoneme (a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in any language.  A phoneme relays a distinction in sounds such as the sound of m of mat and the sound of b of bat).  Teach him all about consonant digraphs. Teach him the difference between a consonant digraph and a vowel digraph. Teach him the difference between a digraph and a diphthong.  Let him know that he needs to be able to distinguish, out loud, between the vowel sounds (both short vowels and long vowels sounds) so that he will be able to read every word on every page and to, eventually, be able to instruct his siblings or his own children with a proper reading method. Let him know that he will be learning every spelling that makes a Long A sound and every letter combination that makes the Long E sound etc. Stand firm and stand confident, and let your child know that he is BRILLIANT and that learning to read correctly is vital for everything he wants to do in the future, both in his academics and in his future career choices.


Step 8) Expect the best from your child!   Insist upon his best!  Believe in God and believe in your child!  God believes in your child and God believes in you, or He wouldn't have given you HIS child to raise for Him! 

Tell your older child every day, “Be patient with yourself, you will learn to read!” 

Tell him often, "You are bright, gifted; you are God's perfect design for a wonderful, talented person!"  For every correction your child hears that he must make, he needs 13 words of praise to balance it all out.  And please remember that at some time in his future, he will need to hear 13 words of praise for every feeling of inadequacy he has had through his years of reading failure, for every word of discouragement he has heard, for every moment of humiliation he has endured.  This is why it is so important for Parents to do the teaching.  No one else is going to have the desire, the patience, and the knowledge to know "which words" of praise your child will need and when he will need them. 

Step 9)  Exercise patience and give your child an abundance of praise.  Praise your child often.  As you teach him each new concept, stop and praise him for some part of that concept that he already knows.  Begin your praise with where he's at.  Point out to him what he has already learned, and encourage him that he can learn even more because he is able, and because he is intelligent, and because he is above average, and because he is a unique child of God -- a child that God has especially endowed with specific gifts and abilities given to him so that he can carry out God's divine plan for his life!  Sincere praise convinces a child of his unique brilliance and encourages him to see that it is worth his efforts to start again with a fresh, new reading program. 

Step 10) Admit ignorance.  Nothing ever changes with our children until we admit that there are things that “we do not know.” Until we, the God-given teachers for our children, admit that we have a great deal left to learn, nothing will be learned.  Knowledge is everywhere. Opportunities are created for our children by God through their parents – but parents must be willing to go that extra mile to learn whatever is necessary, step by step, to help their children to succeed.

          Our children are never too old to learn – and neither are we!

        Isn't God good!

Parents, just because your older student is catching up on his reading adventure,

doesn't mean your child cannot also be gaining higher thinking and vocabulary skills

through inferential thinking.  Click here to learn more. 

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