Candy 4WAY Phonics is Phonics 4 Ways!

  

QUESTION: What should a printable systematic phonics reader do for a child?

ANSWER: A systematic phonics reader should show a child what he has already learned, give him extra practice reading phonetically, and prove to the child that he can read. 

QUESTION: So how are Candy 4WAY Phonics Readers different from other story readers?

ANSWER:   Candy 4WAY Phonics Readers  are different from other story readers in 5 BIG ways:

1) Letter sounds and blends contained on the pages of each phonics reader are learned by the child BEFORE he reads the story. For just $9.97, parents are purchasing a COMPLETE Printable Systematic Phonics Curriculum that includes sequenced phonics readers that follow after every five daily phonics lessons (100 systematic phonics lessons – 20 sequenced colored phonics readers). 

2) Candy Story Readers are used after the child has already learned every sound in every word of each reader.  So children are reading stories that they are capable of reading with ease plus a measure of fluency.  Candy readers convince children they are smart, that they are, indeed, learning to read. 

3) Rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration, a key element of many Candy Phonics Readers, makes learning to read more fun!

4) Small stories build into longer stories as children move on to read sentences containing connective words and complex connective words (subordinate clauses, infinitive phrases, and participial phrases.)   Therefore, Candy Phonics Readers, unlike other phonics programs, progress from six pages up to twenty-nine pages depending upon where a child is in his daily phonics lessons. 

5) Sentences containing varied connective-word sentence openers introduce children to higher level reading abilities (fourth grade reading level and well beyond).  Studies clearly demonstrate that when children DO receive these types of complex sentence structures, they are better able  to express complex ideas, to paint word pictures, and to convey complex relationships.

Click here to read more about Candy Phonics Readers and to skim through Candy Story Reader samples!

Sincerely,  

Carol Kay, President

Candy 4WAY Phonics 

 

What is Reading Fluency?   Many parents have been told that their child needs to read with more fluency.  However, most parents aren’t quite sure what fluency is. 

FLUENCY is the ability to read words quickly and accurately.  Fluency builds a bridge between reading the words on the page and understanding the meaning of the words on the page. When a child has learned to read fluently, he has learned to read quickly, accurately, and with expression.   

There are essentially five fluency obstacles.  At Candy 4WAY Phonics, we’ve built solid roads right through those obstacles by building reading fluency directly into the program.  

The first fluency obstacle children need to overcome is their fear of sounding out an unknown word they do not know, the whole word, all the way from the left of the word through to the end of the word.  Children often grab the beginning of a word and then “guess” at the rest of the word.  At Candy 4WAY Phonics, we soooooo discourage the “guessing” of words.  The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program builds children into words, step-by-step, from a single letter, into blends, and on into multisyllable words.

The second fluency obstacle is the fear children have when approaching unknown words in sentences that contain unfamiliar information.  The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program gives children one phonogram per lesson with plenty of practice blending that phonogram into words.  This is because you want your children to be able to sound out all the words they encounter, even when those words are found in sentences where your child does not understand the sentence context. Children read stand-alone words throughout our phonics lessons in lists that can be read from left to right, top to bottom, or bottom to top.  

The third fluency obstacle children need to overcome is learning to read words fluently within various types of sentences.  The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program gives sentences as early as possible within its daily lessons.  Those sentences contain only words made up of parts that the child has either already mastered in previous lessons or practiced in the present lesson.  Just as important, the sentences that children will encounter in their Candy 4WAY Phonics Daily Lessons include both simple and complex sentences, sentences containing connective and complex connective words, as well as dialogue and normal poetic selections so that children learn to build reading fluency while reading all forms of written expression. 

The fourth fluency obstacle children have, especially children who have struggled in reading before, is their dread of reading.  This is why the Candy 4WAY Phonics includes R’sA Phonics (Rhyme, Rhythm, and Alliteration).  R’sA Phonics gives children a reading atmosphere that is fun.  Just as a “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” children also learn best when they are offered fun words and phrases.  Words and phrases become fun when they are placed inside sentences with Rhyme, Rhythm, and Alliteration.   

But wait!  There’s one more way the Candy 4WAY Phonics Program enables children to build reading fluency. The fifth fluency obstacle children need to overcome is taking words they can read in isolation and in sentences and reading them in actual stories.  The Candy 4WAY Phonics Program gives children (starting with the second level of the program) a Story Reader following after every five lessons. This is because we have heard again and again how much of a difference it makes to place sentences into stories within the timeframe of daily lessons. This is crucial because children need to know that the effort they have put forth in their daily phonics lessons is enabling them to read. 

With the Candy 4WAY Phonics sequenced, leveled Story Readers, children are regularly rewarded after every five lessons with a Candy Story Reader containing real story content — a reader in which children will never have to guess at words because each reader contains only letters and blends they have already mastered. So each reader “proves” to a child that they are learning to read, that they are gaining meaningful daily skills, that they are smart!

Parents, we can assure you that when children learn phonics the correct way, reading fluency is a necessary skill built right alongside the ability to sound out every word on every page. At Candy 4WAY Phonics we believe that’s important enough to offer parents everything they need in a phonics program at an affordable price.  

Check it out.  For just $9.97  you can purchase an INSTANT DOWNLOAD of the following Candy 4WAY Phonics items:

1)   An 82-page eBook entitled: How to Teach Candy’s Systematic 4WAY Phonics

2)  100 Daily 4WAY Phonics Lessons loaded with rhyme, rhythm, and alliteration for fun learning

3)  Candy Story Readers sequenced into the program (after every 5 Daily Phonics Lessons, your child can read a Candy Reader)

4)  Colored Alphabet Rhyming Phonics Charts with Multisensory Vowel Helps

5)  Colored Rhyming Alphabet Flashcards

6)  Colored Lifetime Rhyming Phonics Charts to give your child a lifetime of phonogram retention.

7)  Interwoven, daily Phonics Drill

  FREE e-mail coaching 

It’s simple!           It’s affordable!            It works! 

Sincerely,   

Carol Kay, President 

www.candy4wayphonics.com 

  

 

 

There are FIVE BIG IDEAS involved in learning to read.

These FIVE BIG IDEAS are:
 
Phonemic Awareness
Alphabetic Principle
Accuracy/Fluency 
Vocabulary
Comprehension.

This Article on Phonics will discuss the third of THE BIG FIVE – Accuracy and Fluency. 

ACCURACY AND FLUENCY IN READING are vital skills for our children to possess. 

The folks at Candy 4WAY Phonics recognize that a reading program must include every essential step to achieve those crucial abilities. 

In order for our children to survive in this fast-paced, high-tech society, they must be able to look at a page of text and easily read all the words printed, completely understand all the material presented, accurately draw conclusions from all the facts given, and comprehensively make inferences from all the details specified. 

An accurate and fluent reader should have the ability to read selected text accurately, smoothly, effortlessly, and with appropriate expression and meaning.

The goal of attaining accuracy and fluency in reading is:  to learn to read through the words on a page easily and smoothly in order to increase the likelihood of understanding the meaning of the words.  

The National Reading Panel (Berninger et al., 2006) found that the following sequence of steps are necessary to lead students into fluency and onto comprehension:

Step 1) Phonemic Awareness 
Step 2) Phonics 
Step 3) Fluency 
Step 4) Vocabulary 
Step 5) Comprehension

However, there is a difference between assessing a student’s accuracy and fluency in reading and improving a student’s accuracy and fluency in reading.  Many teachers, for example, believe that practicing repetitive reading passages does both. 

For example, many teachers believe that having a child practice repetitive reading on the same selected text over and over and over again will help a child to read more fluently.  In turn, after the child has practiced a particular reading passage, teachers record the student’s rate of speed and use that rate assessment to determine the child’s reading fluency. 

In reality, though, having a child repeat the same text over and over again in order to gain speed:
a) does not assess that student’s overall reading accuracy
b) does not assess that student’s overall reading fluency
c) does not improve that student’s overall reading accuracy
d) does not improve that student’s overall reading fluency

 

What’s do I mean when I say “overall” accuracy and fluency in reading? 

Let’s take a child, for instance, who has been taught to read using the look-and-say reading approach.  If his teacher gives him the words:  baseball, hockey, run, game, and win, and asks him to read those words over and over and over again,  he will, indeed, be able to read those words faster and faster with less and less effort and more and more smoothly.

However, tomorrow when that child encounters the words: sports, athletics, sprint, competition, and  succeed, unless he has learned to sound out words from left to right, he won’t have a clue what those words are, and he will not be able to read them smoothly and effortlessly.

Reading a selected text over and over again will enable a child to learn phrasing, to follow punctuation marks in order to know when to pause and when to stop, and to gain a great knowledge of what a complete sentence “sounds like.” However, there is so much more needed in order for a child to attain accuracy and fluency in his reading.  There are at least four more skills necessary in order to attain strong accuracy and fluency in reading. 

First, a child must have the skills to approach words he has never seen before and to read those new words correctly. 

Second, the child must be given the opportunity to read a wide variety of printed forms on a regular basis. 

Third, the child must be exposed to greater and greater numbers of complex words and phrases.  

Fourth, the child must be given opportunities to read aloud selections in order to defend a thought or opinion he may have about that selection during a discussion. 

Most reading assessments for accuracy and fluency are performed on a weekly basis using material at the child’s grade level.  However, if we were to be more than generous in assessing a child’s ability to read accurately and fluently, we could take both a third grade look/n/say reading student and a third grade phonics-first reading student and assess their reading accuracy and fluency using reading material they each studied two previous school years ago (in the first grade).

If we did that, though,  we would soon see that there is a stark difference in the number of complex connective words and phrases contained in the sentences that each of these two types of students read during their first grade school year.

Let’s take a look at this sharp disparity between the words found in a first grade look/n/say story reader and the words found in a first grade phonics-first story reader by viewing text selections taken from both. Upon close examination, it becomes obvious that the measure of accuracy and fluency for a look/n/say reader is far behind the measure of accuracy and fluency for a phonics-first reader.

 

FIRST, here is the type of first-grade text that a well-trained look/n/say reader at the end of his third grade year should easily be able to read with accuracy, smoothness, and little effort.  The following paragraphs were taken from a first grade look/n/say story reader:

“Morris the Moose wanted candy.  He went to the wrong store. The man in the store said, “We don’t sell candy. Can’t you read?”

Then he showed Morris the candy store.  The man in the candy store said, “What would you like?”

Morris looked at the candy.  He liked the gumdrops.  He said, “Give me some of those.”

The man said, “They are one for a penny.  How much money do you have?”

Morris looked.  He had six pennies.  “I have four pennies,” he said.

The man laughed. “You have six!  Can’t you count?  Don’t you go to school?”

Morris asked, “What is school?”

 

SECOND, here is the type of first-grade text that a well-trained phonics-first reader at the end of his third grade year should easily be able to read with accuracy, smoothness, and little effort.  The following paragraphs were taken from a first grade phonics-first story reader:

“Little Sammy Saver trusted in the wise saying of:  A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned.

At the first of each week, Sammy Saver collected one hundred pennies. He collected those pennies as payment for jobs he did. Sammy thought that most of the pennies he got each week should be earned pennies.

Sammy earned his pennies by searching for jobs to do all year long. In the summertime, Sammy rose early in the morning, went outdoors, and grew his own vegetable garden. When his vegetables were large and ripe enough to eat, Sammy sold them at a vegetable stand that he set up on his front lawn. 

Anxious to do more jobs, Sammy often walked his neighbor’s pet poodle. For the elderly, he mowed their lawns, raked their leaves, did their shopping, and cleaned out their garages. He joined with one other ambitious boy to wash cars.”

 

As we return to the goal of attaining accuracy and fluency in reading, which is:  to learn to read through the words on a page easily and smoothly in order to increase the likelihood of understanding the meaning of the words, it’s important to realize that when a student reaches fourth grade and beyond, he has a grave need to be able to: a) read every word on every page, b) understand the basic facts presented in each paragraph, and c) draw inferences from the conclusions he reaches.   

When children are able to sound out words, as are children trained to read using a systematic phonics reading method, their measure of accuracy and fluency will carry them through elementary school textbooks, junior high school textbooks, high school textbooks, and college level textbooks. 

This is why the people at Candy 4WAY Phonics  offer a COMPLETE Systematic 4Way Phonics Program at the affordable price of just $9.97.  We want children to be able to read every page on every page, accurately comprehend meaning from every sentence, and decisively draw conclusions from every paragraph.

After all, isn’t that why accuracy and fluency in reading are such vital skills for our children to possess? 

Sincerely, Carol Kay, President

Candy 4WAY Phonics