I recently discovered a marvellous pioneer of an easy, fail-safe method to teach children to read, Mona McNee. Her free resources to teach reading are now available at http://www.phonics4free.org/
Each lesson includes both a video and either games or worksheets to print.
Mona is one of several key people who have been advocating similar approaches over the past 60 years. The first that I am aware of was Rudolph Flesch who published his book Why Johnny Can’t Read – And What You Can Do About Itin 1955, and Why Johnny Still Can’t Read – A New Look at the Scandal of our Schools in 1981.
Mona started in the late 1960’s teaching her Down’s son to read because he was not learning to read at school. She has taught over 500 children to read successfully since.
“Parents can each their own child. It is truly enjoyable, and a much needed alternative to TV! In 2010 I am 87 and do not want profit or fame. I just want to end all this needless failure before I die. Will you help me, please? Teach your own child? Talk to teachers?” Mrs Mona McNee, B.A., T.D., P.C.T., M.B.E. 2010 <http://www.phonics4free.org/mona-mcnee-biog> accessed 18/9/14
I haven’t had a chance to look at all of Mona’s resources yet, but her snakes and ladders games that practise the most common sound of single letters, and later letter combinations (ai, silent e, sh …), look excellent. Children will have to learn a few capital letters to play the games and a very few sight words (a, the, go, to).
As always, when you use books or games from different sources, make sure that you have taught the sounds of the letters or letter combinations used in them before you ask your child to read them.
If you have been following my free videos at http://successwithreading.com/videos-children, children will now be able to play all of the snakes and ladders games from Mona’s first two levels. These give lots of enjoyable practice of the most common sound of each letter. They do include capital H, O, R, T and W, as well as B, J, S and M that they will have learned from my videos. (Note: One bingo game for Lesson 1 includes the sound of “u” in “bull”, and one for Lesson 2 includes words with “ng”.)
Finding enough books or games that children enjoy that don’t ask them to memorise a lot of sight words is quite difficult, especially in the early stages. Mona’s snakes and ladders games are great!
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