Phonics Information
(cont.)

For twenty years The Phonics Game has taught children and adults how to read with comprehension in just 18 hours. This complete learning system makes learning to read fun. It has been adopted by the California Sate School Board along with a growing number of other states. Junior Phonics is excellent at helping children from 3 to 6 master early reading skills.

Phonics History

Phonics: which stresses teaching children the sounds of words dates to the 1700s. Since then, it has been eclipsed from tie to time by the whole language approach.

1700s - mid 1800s: Children are taught to read through memorization of the alphabet. Primary text: the Bible.

1783: Noah Webster publishes The American Spelling Book, used for almost 100 years.

Mid 1800s - early 1900s: McGuffey Readers prevail. Very phonics oriented.

1910 - 1920: Ginn and Co's Beacon Readers, an efficient and intelligent sequence of systemic phonics.

Late 1930s: Scott Foresman introduces the Dick and Jane series. John Dewey and others promote whole word reading. Emphasis on "site reading" a limited list of words and word guessing .

1955: Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, attacks look-say instruction, urges a return to phonics. "We've thrown 3,500 years of civilization out the window," he writes.

1967: Jeanne S. Chall's Learning to read: The Great Debate endorses direct instruction in phonics.

1981: Twenty-six years after Why Johnny Can't Read, Rudolf Flesch publishes Why Johnny Still Can't Read.

1984: The federal commission on reading issues Becoming a Nation of Readers. "The issue is no longer, as it was several decades ago, whether children should be taught phonics," the commission said.

1995: California's "ABC" laws require instructional materials to include "systematic, explicit phonics, spelling and basic computational skills." North Carolina and Ohio follow suit.

1995 - 1997: "Word Identification" programs in most Maryland school systems include phonics.

A 1996 article in Scientific American reports that 10 years of brain imaging research shows that the brain reads sound by sound.

In 1996 a First Grade teacher in Murrieta, California introduced The Phonics Game into her classroom and in one month her students were reading The Book of Virtues by William Bennett. She video taped this success story and over 500 people came to "Phonics Night" to celebrate. Now all the classrooms in the school use The Phonics Game or Junior Phonics.

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