Setting Our Sights on Vision
It's obvious that reading requires a lot of "seeing." But children seem to be seeing fine in all their daily activities and so little or no thought is given to the fact that reading imposes a range of visual demands that many children have not mastered. As a result, in contrast to "sounding out," which receives endless attention, visual skills are almost totally ignored in the teaching of reading.
You can see the price children pay for the teaching failure when you see them
i. using their fingers to track the words they are reading because they have not learned how to track with their eyes
ii. sounding out words they just sounded out one or two lines before because they cannot recall what they have just seen
iii. inaccurately spelling words they can read because they have not developed a complete image of the letters in the words
iv. getting high marks on their spelling tests, but then forgetting those words a couple of weeks later because they do not have the visual system in place that is required for long-term recognition
v. spelling the same word in different ways from one time to the next because there is no solid recognition of the component letters
vi. using capital and lower case letters in an indiscriminate manner because they fail to "see" the patterns that govern their use.
Parents are often troubled when they see these sorts of behaviors. Typically their concerns are downplayed with well-intended statements such as "there is no need to worry because the children will pick up the skills as they mature." This rationale to calm the parent serves a dual role. It helps to sustain the idea that the visual skills will somehow take care of themselves and develop on their own. When this does not happen, the foundation is in place to claim that there is something awry in the child. The failure in the teaching has been translated as a deficiency in the learner and one more casualty is added to the learning disability population.
If children are to succeed in reading, it is essential for us to provide them with careful instruction in the many visual demands that reading makes. Phonics Plus Five has been uniquely designed to offer this instruction, with fabulous results for both the children's reading and writing abilities.
