Helpful Teaching Aids
FUN PHONICS, Children, Today’s Joy!
- Solves the puzzle of reading by focusing on the sounds of the alphabet.
- Uses simple words to form easy sentences that tell fun stories.
- Systematically introduces main phonetic patterns.
- Presents vocabulary lists for preview and review.
- Contains sentence completion activities for comprehension.
- Includes the geography of all 50 United States of America.
- Features only positive themes.
FUN PHONICS! begins with the premise that the student has been taught the sounds that make up the 26 letters of the alphabet (not the names).
Many other alphabet sounds, phonemes, (mystery/sight words, digraphs, etc.) are progressively introduced throughout the set.
FUN PHONICS! teaches reading:
- 1st, by introducing the short vowels (vowels which retain their “true” alphabet sounds)
- 2nd, by incorporating blends (when two consonants come together and are pronounced together, yet each retains its own sound, gr, nd)
- 3rd, by introducing digraphs (the different sound produced when two successive letters form a new sound, sh, ch)
- 4th, by featuring long vowels (the names of the vowels versus their sounds)
- 5th, by introducing some of the more common diverse vowels (au, ar, ir, ou, oi, or, ur, etc.) and
- 6th, by a comprehensive review of the above in the set’s last three books.
Before writing FUN PHONICS! a large variety of phonic methods were researched including the California Phonetic Reading Program, the Monterey Reading Program, the Professor Phonics Program, and the Speechphone Study Guide (American Speech Sounds and Rhythm). Webster’s Third International Dictionary was also consistently used to eliminate many words that had a different regional pronunciation (dog = dawg). Again, FUN PHONICS! begins with the premise that the student has been taught the 26 sounds (not the names) of the alphabet. Other sounds are progressively introduced in the set.
Published in 1988 and revised in 2011 FUN PHONICS! is in use in all 50 United States of America, and also in Canada, South America, Asia, and Europe. The set was on the New Mexico Department of Education’s Textbook adoption list from 1988 to 1994 and was again adopted for the 1997 Reading Skills textbook list. In 1998, FUN PHONICS! was adopted by the State of Georgia’s Department of Education for its Reading First Program.
The most impressive data supporting the FUN PHONICS! program is the overwhelmingly positive response by teachers, parents and students who have used the books for the first time or for many years. A few of these responses are shared here [+].
