I’m so glad I homeschooled.
Phonics all the way. My son was reading at a college level by 7th grade.
Marie, phonics is the ONLY way - there is no other. Hundreds of years of phonics success emphatically proves it.
I don’t know why they don’t do phonics, and I don’t know why they don’t do more multi-sensory reading programs. Multi-sensory reading programs will help kids with dyslexia and they won’t hurt kids that easily learn how to read.
My daughter has a brain injury that caused speech problems. It affected her reading. The school kept on saying she was fine because she knew her Dolch words and she passed her spelling tests. I know she was good at memorizing.
I knew when she came to a word she didn’t know that she could not sound out the word. I also knew that being able to memorize words well would only get her so far.
In 4th grade, we put her in a private school that had a pull-out for and Orton-Gillingham reading program (Barton Reading). She became a great reader after that.