Reading Reflex: The Foolproof Phono-Graphix Method for Teaching Your Child to Read

by Carmen McGuinness and Geoffrey McGuinness

Book Overview

Reading is the single most important skill for any child to develop. And the key to learning how to read effectively is recognizing the sounds that letters and words represent. With the help of the revolutionary system known as Phono-Graphix(TM), you and your child can discover the sound-picture code that is the foundation of the written English language.Help your child unlock the sound-picture code. An effective and easy-to-understand approach, Phono-Graphix...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684853671
• ISBN13: 9780684853673
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Cut to pieces

While I have no issue with used cut to pieces isnt usable at all. Completely disappointed.

Reading made easy

At first glance, this book reminded me of - "A Home Start in Reading" by Ruth Beechick (a wonderful little pamphlet for homeschoolers/parents). I would still recommend the pamphlet, but Reading Reflex has much more information that might be needed to teach a beginning reader. Although Phonografix has a reputation for being very effective in remediating reading, it is very easy, effective, and fun to use for beginning reading as well. The skill of reading is broken down into more basic components -- blending, segmenting, auditory processing, and code knowledge. There is a test at the beginning to help pinpoint problem areas so that no time is spent on areas the student understands. A beginning reader would just begin without the test and cover all the lessons.There are some other aspects of reading that the book covers that I have not seen so thoroughly and effectively explained in any of the other reading methods I've encountered. The English language is based on a phonetic code, but some letters/letter combinations can represent multiple sounds and some sounds can be represented in multiple ways. The authors include information about how to effectively explain these ideas and lesson plans for how these ideas work in practice. For example, the word 'out' might be pronounced 'oat' or 'owt'. The only way to know which is to have the word read to you or to figure it out from the context of a sentence. Part of reading is simply remembering which pronunciation to use on particular words. There are often patterns to these pronunciations and noticing these patterns is included in the lessons.If all this information isn't enough, the authors include "error corrections" in each lesson. The authors emphasize that mistakes are where real learning happens. One minor point I disagree with is the emphasis on writing. Some children really dislike writing or simply don't have the skill to write to the extent suggested by the authors. Fortunately, writing isn't necessary to learning to read through this method. It was easy to adapt the activities so that writing wasn't necessary. Another area I disagreed with was the assumption that a tutor/teacher should control the learning. The activities can be easily adapted into fun games that children can choose to play and learn from. It is the information about reading that is useful and makes this book great, not the format. Another tip -- instead of cutting out all those puzzles, just make up a set of letters (multiples of the ones that are used twice or more in words). Additionally, the authors have a website with more great information.Overall, this book is a great resource for any person interested in helping others - children and adults - learn to read.

Amazing, no-nonsense approach that works.

I am a special education teacher that had struggled to find a method to teach children how to decode; especially those children who were left behind by the "whole language" or "literature based" approach to reading. When it came right down to it, my students had never been taught how to decode the letter-sound code, which is what the English language is based upon. I came upon Reading Reflex after reading the book "Why Our Children Can't Read, and What We Can Do About it" by Dianne McGuiness, who is Geoffrey McGuiness' mother. That book convinced me that I needed to find away to teach children how to read, based upon (1) how children learn, and (2) teach them English the way English needs to be taught. Reading Reflex, along with a magnetic letter board which has the 37 common word families was a blessing. In one example, I had a 5th grade student that no one ever bothered to teach to read because he was a behavior problem. At the end of a week of drills using Reading Reflex, he was reading the simple stories in the book, which was a powerful motivator to persevere with me, and now he is reading Dr. Suess books. Research has shown that explicit, one on one phonics instruction; letter-to-sound correspondence instructions, works. If you are a teacher, or a parent of a student that has yet to "get it," try Reading Reflex. You will not be disappointed.

A few bugs, but...the best!

I have several small problems with the program myself, however it's the best thing I've seen so far and I'll keep using it. I recommend it highly as an inexpensive, effective, and quick program. I found found it extremely successful with my own children and my tutoring clients. The results I've seen are much like what Carmen and Geoff report. I like their spelling program too, BTW.I must agree with Tony that have never met more unimaginative and uninteresting stories in my life. Not all, just a few. However...the stories in the Parent Support books are actually interesting, mildly imaginative and very much what the children relate to. Maybe in further editions of Reading Reflex, they'll change their stories. We can hope. At the same time, practice in the sounds is what is important and it is assumed that you are reading other "real" books too. There are a few other things about the program I don't appreciate. I don't like the way they break up the words like all, tall and wall (since they've already stated that a plain a can say 'a' as in father and two l's can say that sound. (hmm... hard to explain in type) and the 'th' thing (it makes two separate sounds) bothered me too. I just taught them as 2 separate sounds with the same sound picture. Similar things have already been taught, so it isn't a big jump.I do especially like the way they print the very beginner stories with the sounds that are more than one letter bolded and squashed together (coded text). It sure helps beginners read more quickly and gives them practice in reading more than one letter at a time, and encouragement to continue. I didn't find the chapter on multi-syllable as clear as maybe it could be. It took me a while to understand it enough to explain it to the kids, but I agree that it is something totally skipped in other programsOverall, I think Reading Reflex is an excellent program and I just make the changes I want when I'm doing it. I don't think there's a perfect program out there, but this one has an excellent approach, fantastic diagnostics and a few less 'bugs' than any I've seen. I hope Carmen and Geoff would be open to hearing some constructive critisism from those who truly appreciate their work and I hope in a few years they would put out a new-improved book (Ultra-Reading Reflex!) with a few of these issues addressed.

EXCELLENT - A Must Read For Parents and Professionals

Reading Reflex is truly a revolution in reading instruction. As an ed psych of sixteen years I have never worked with such a clear and concise and logical approach to instruction. The authors really have nailed it! Maybe the swing between phonics and whole language will finally end with this expose of both methods. As a supervisor of teachers using this method and a helper of parents using it I have some advice for readers. Read every word. Nothing is waisted. This book has a pearl of instructional wisdom in every sentence. Also visit their website at readamerica.net, and subscribe to their free magazine for even more help.