Hooked
on phonics
- Find out more about this program.
Millions
of parents who have had concerns about the reading,
spelling, and writing capacity of their children
have looked to extra programs outside of school
in order to catch up with the rest of the class.
As all
kids learn at a different pace, it is certainly
not uncommon for some to lag behind or be easily
frustrated with the concepts of reading. Indeed,
children at a young age who are irritated at the
prospect of learning this new material convince
themselves that it has no practical purpose, a lesson
that may not be reversed for years.
It is
difficult, then, to find a program that not only
assists kids with learning to read, but entertains
and challenges them so that they willingly participate.
The
most popular out of school resource over the past
several decades has been the Hooked
On Phonics system, a literary tool that
combines basic reading, spelling and pronunciation
with the beat of music in order to both engage and
teach children of grade school age.
Human
memory is highly driven by context, and it should
be no secret that many lessons in a classroom are
difficult to absorb for students with difficulty
paying attention or with other issues on their mind.
This difficulty is compounded as learning to read
is nearly the equivalent of learning a second language;
the multitude of characters, symbols, and the amount
of rules that must be completely memorized to achieve
basic literacy are a massive challenge.
Even
teachers may be at fault; those who have not taught
reading before or who have difficulty communicating
with their classroom will add to the problem. As
such, developing the proper conditions to learn
about reading requires a very receptive audience
and a proper means of facilitating the exact lesson.
Hooked
On Phonics starts at a slow and basic pace
in order not to confuse or ostracize students with
very severe learning deficiencies. The first step,
naturally, is to pair the verbal sounds of language
with the written form of letters.
The
Hooked On Phonics program spends a good deal of
time ensuring that all letters will automatically
prompt a verbal cue. This is often achieved with
flash cards and a recorded program (originally on
CDs but now available in mp3 format -- many children
are encouraged to listen to the program on an iPod
or similar music player for familiarity) that repeats
again and again the sound of a vowel or consonant
with the image of the letter.
This
may seem overly simple, but the complexities of
training the ear to understand the stresses of speech
and their written form requires a great deal of
time. Vowels in English, for example, have no accents,
so that students must commit to memory the different
form of a single letter. E, for example, can have
no sound, as in the word "knife", or can be highly
stressed, such as the word "error".
Letters
are the building block of all writing, and once
basic mastery has been achieved, Hooked
on Phonics takes the next step to categorize
sound clusters -- better known to a literate audience
as syllables -- and recognize the pronunciation
and writing of each. An adult may not think the
word "cat" is complex, but a child learning to read
must apply their learning to decide between saying
a hard or soft C (the difference between the words
carrot and cease), a stressed A (the difference
between coral and corral), and ending the syllable
with low inflection, which is the audible cue to
bringing an end to speaking.
Once
syllables are memorized, complete literacy only
requires the experience to learn about words that
do not follow the basic speech patters; silent letters
or pairing an H with a consonant to turn it into
a vowel. This is the easiest step in the Hooked
On Phonics program, and once children have learned
mastery of syllables, many find it easy and enjoyable
to read anything they can get their hands on. Thus,
Hooked on Phonics is a very simple program
in essence, using this combination of memory retention
at ever higher levels to achieve function in reading.
While
reading was the only function of the program upon
its release in the late 1980s, the company has expanded
its capability to include spelling, math, handwriting,
and Spanish. Like the original, these learning systems
begin with very simple material -- in the case of
the math program, the first week's worth of material
is simply memorizing numbers from one to ten, and
then one to a hundred -- and slowly building up
the foundation.
With
tens of millions of customers over the past two
decades, the company has experienced considerable
success, frequently winning awards for their efforts
to assist in learning. Hooked On Phonics
has since been purchased by Educate Inc., the same
company that owns the after school tutoring program
Sylvan Learning.
The
overwhelming majority of parents agree that Hooked
On Phonics was a superior means of teaching
their children the basics of reading and writing;
the few that do not mostly say that their children
have difficulties pairing the sound with the image.
Hooked On Phonics does have a few image only
programs, but sell must less than their recorded
voice learning sets.
Indeed,
the popularity has become so widespread that many
parents find that being able to assist and structure
the teaching methods has prompted them to begin
partial or full home schooling. While Hooked
On Phonics and other similar programs
are not an acceptable substitute for a standardized
curriculum of schooling, they certainly assist students
at public, private, or in home schooling.
Parents
interested in home schooling should contact local
schools to determine the exact subjects their children
need to learn in order to properly advance to different
grade levels (and, at the highest level, to receive
an equivalency of a high school degree).
For
many home schooling parents, communication with
other home school parents and their children in
the community is important, as cooperative teaching
and tips can be beneficial to all parties involved.
