"The simplicity of the program stands out and is simply outstanding."

I want to shout from the rooftops, "Check out Reading Reflex!" If you child struggles with reading or if you just want to give them a solid start, this is the approach to consider.

Many of us teach our children phonics, which in its simplest terms is the practice of sounding out letters to make sounds. The Phono-Graphix philosophy, upon which Reading Reflex is based, is that print is a visual representation of sounds in words by means of sound pictures. Each sound in a word is represented by a symbol, or sound picture. These sound pictures are of language bits that the child already has! When we teach reading using these sound pictures, we are merely giving a face to the sounds the child has already heard and spoken. This is the opposite of traditional rule-based phonics, which the authors of this program believe sets the child up for failure. For example, take the rule, "When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking." This only holds up 40 percent of the time and will cause tremendous confusion when the child begins to learn words like eight, bread and house.

The simplicity of the program stands out and is outstanding. Instead of memorizing rules that may or may not apply in each case, and learning pictures, sounds, and letter names, the student using Reading Reflex initially learns 43 groups of sounds, or phonemes. The letters are introduced in sets of c-v-c (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and careful attention is paid to the pronunciation of letter sounds. This sets the child up to learn the letter sound once, and be able to put them together into words. Because the sounds existed in the child's world before the letters, this approach allows him to use what he knows to learn the symbols that represent the sounds. Thus, the child is taught that letters do not MAKE sounds, but rather REPRESENT sounds.

Citing a mountain of research, the authors point to a 33 percent reading failure rate where traditional phonics is used. Whole language programs have a 42 percent reading failure rate. The creators of Reading Reflex claim a 100 percent success rate in teaching reading to people from age four to adult!

The book presents developmentally sound lessons based on years of research in phonological processing and linguistics. Written by Geoffrey and Carmen McGuinness at the Read America Clinic, the approach was researched by the University of South Florida and published in the Orton Annals of Dyslexia in 1996. The McGuinnesses claim they can teach any child to read with this approach, whether dyslexic, a slow learner, or otherwise learning disabled.

The core of this approach is the book, Reading Reflex (Simon & Schuster, 1998). The beginning of the book is devoted to explaining how we learn to read. The research and philosophy presented are sound but understandable. The parent is next instructed in how to give a diagnostic test to determine reading level. The remainder of the book gives detailed instructions and illustrations to help you teach effective reading strategies. There are exercises, hand-on materials, and games all included in the body of this inexpensive text ($16 in the United States).

If you do not wish to cut up your book, you may purchase a Reading Reflex Support Pack. This contains all the manipulatives, worksheets, pre and posttests, and coded stories to be used with the lessons in the text.

The Extended Student Manual is available for use by the student who has completed the basic Reading Reflex system. Using books of the students own choosing, the child is further instructed in phoneme manipulation.

After completing Reading Reflex, you may wish to use the follow-up book, How to Increase Your Child's Verbal Intelligence (Yale University Press 2000) by the McGuinnesses. This book presents some research and theory, and dives right into exercises to stimulate verbal intelligence. The authors deal with comprehension, attention, memory, logical reasoning, and creativity. A Language Wise Support Manual is available with worksheets for use along with the text. The exercises deal with topics such as making sequenced or graded determinations, building strategies for finding out what words mean from context, organizing information into sets, establishing connections between words, and practicing inference skills. All of these techniques are presented as easy-to-do games that can easily be incorporated into a home school or after school program.

When you think about developing your child's verbal intelligence, it makes sense that learning language has to do with hearing language. Children from various socio-economic backgrounds are exposed to disparate amounts of verbal language. If a child is not intimate with language, it will be much more difficult to learn to read and comprehend. However, the child who has not had a rich exposure is not destined for failure. By using this method, parents can re-train and teach their children to read and comprehend.

A related product available is called Noteworthy News, which presents 50 news stories and accompanying activities for teaching comprehension and critical analysis. The text leads you through activities to use current events and news stories as educational tools in the area of world news, science and technology, sports and recreation, and entertainment.

Parent Teacher Magazine is a diverse publication for educators and parents. The issues I read had a broad range of topics, which are of interest to traditional educators as well as home schoolers.

If you are home schooling and are hitting a brick wall with teaching phonics, you owe it to yourself and your child to check out this amazing approach. I want to know why home schoolers have not been exposed to this - it could be such a blessing to those with struggling learners!