Last night when I picked up CootieGirl from daycare I asked our caregiver about CootieGirl’s speech change, and she said that she thinks it’s from the phonics class that is taught at the daycare. Apparently the teacher has them learn sounds by repeating the first syllable. For example, “C is for Cat. C C C C Cat. A is for Apple. A A A A Apple.” So in a sense, they are learning to STUTTER!!! Aaaauuugghhh….if CootieGirl continues to do this a lot I’m going to ask daycare NOT to put CootieGirl in phonics. I don’t want her to learn phonics anyway, I want her to learn to READ WORDS – big difference.
09 comments on “Update on Stuttering”
Comments are closed.
Oh, yes. I remember that stage. Elizabeth would go around the house for hours on end saying, “Bah bah bah bah…Big Bird!!!” It was strange, but it actually did help her learn the correct sounds of the letters. :eyepop:
:crazy:
Ooomf…
Phonics is actually better than trying to teach whole words.
Jen – I disagree. It’s nearly impossible for a toddler to understand that “A” is an A and they want to know why that’s an A. Would you like to explain to CootieGirl why that’s an “A”? Instead, if I show CootieGirl a card with the word “dog” on it, and repeat the word and have her repeat it, she can understand that “dog” is dog because she knows what a dog is. “D” is not dog. “DOG” is dog.
Good point.
The problem with the words approach is that when she first sees a word she hasn’t seen before, she has no way to parse it out and try to figure it for herself. Phonics lets her figure out how the word sounds, so that she can match the written word with the word she may have heard for herself. Words readers typically do much more poorly in school than phonics readers. Just saying….
I’m not sure of the C C C C Cat approach, however, as that does seem to train S S S S S S Stuttering.
Pop, the school of thought I’m subscribing to is teach her the words first, and once she understands READING and can read a simple book of words, THEN teach the letters to help her with phonetics later on when she’s in school and required to learn phonetically.
I didn’t mind learning phonics as a kid (way after I started reading!!), but we weren’t taught to stutter in the process! Gack!
I agree with your approach, Jaynee. Teaching her words first will help her later to use phonics as a means to the end, not the end itself. My experience is that those who learn to read phonetically don’t spell very well. Reading teaches her to read, while phonics teaches her to problem solve. There’s a big difference. And then there’s punctuation. My 15-yr old still tells me that punctuation is “just stupid.” I love reading her reports back to her without the emphasis that proper punctuation provides…she always says “that’s not what I meant!” :duh: