Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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 programs

Overall, 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.

In early March, before I found "Reading Reflex" by chance on an amazon.com search, my 6-1/2-year old daughter's reading skills were barely on grade level according to her school records. She often struggled through attempts to read fairly simple but unfamiliar words, frequently inserting sounds that were not there or switching the letter sequences. Because sounding out words took such effort, she often resorted to a guessing strategy that, not surprisingly, failed her frequently. She was starting to become discouraged, and at times I wondered if formal testing and tutoring was needed.

In late April, seven weeks after we started the "Phono-Graphix" lessons in "Reading Reflex," a standardized test showed that my first-grader could now decode unfamiliar words at the level of a third grader. I knew from my own observations that she was doing very well, but this confirmation was stunning. Her leap in abilities came about because "Reading Reflex" gave me the background knowledge, evaluation materials, and activities to create a concentrated, highly successful "catch-up" program for her. My goal was to help her to get solidly on grade level, but this was successful beyond anything I could imagine.

For six weeks, my daughter and I worked together at about twice the pace suggested in the book. We did about three to four 40-60-minute lessons a week (instead of two lessons). Each lesson included about 20-30 minutes of Phono-Graphix activities followed by 20-30 minutes in which she read poems or a story aloud, during which I corrected her as needed using the quick, instructive techniques from the book. It is not necessary or probably desirable to work with most children at this rate, but my daughter needed to catch up and was willing, motivated, and doing beautifully--plus I was able to make the time for extra lesson planning--so we proceeded. Now we do a lesson only occasionally but try to read together daily to keep her skills up.

Although my daughter is a bright child with strong story analysis skills who loves books--and has had many thousands read to her--cracking the written code did not come easily to her (before Phono-Graphix). Last fall, when I became concerned about her struggles, I learned that this problem is common. According to information I got from a leading research agency, most children "pick up" reading regardless of how they are taught, but some 20%, regardless of how intelligent they are, need systematic, explicit instruction in decoding to fully develop as readers.

I tried a number of other approaches before finding "Reading Reflex." I assumed that "explicit instruction" in decoding was phonics instruction, so I tried some software programs, electronic phonics toys, and a popular mail-order program, with varying results--none of them remarkable.

When I finally found "Reading Reflex" in early March, it was clear, from its emphasis on "phonemic awareness" and the logical nature of our written code, that this was what I had been looking for all along. After spending five months and a few hundred dollars on less effective materials, I found that the recommendations from 20+ years of research were wrapped up in a single book aimed at parents. I could hardly believe it.

The introductory chapters of "Reading Reflex" de-mystified the reading process for me. It took about a week for some of the concepts to sink in, as this approach, though entirely logical (even brilliant), is very different from the traditional phonics approach I had been taught many years ago and was using to help my daughter. I needed to re-wire my thinking quite a bit.

Unlike phonics, with Phono-Graphix there are no memorization drills, no confusing "rules" (with their many exceptions), and no work on sounds unless within the context of a word. The skills development activities are brief, varied, and often use manipulatives (sliding letters on a dry-erase board or desk), so it was a heck of a lot more interesting for my daughter than, say, phonics flash cards.

My daughter grasped the concepts readily and her skills developed rapidly. As she became adept at isolating and manipulating sounds in words--two areas of initial weakness that I could identify using the tests in the book--her reading improved in leaps, as did her confidence level. Soon, instead of just asking me to read to her, she began to ask, "Can I read YOU a book?" And when she did, she no longer needed to rely on guessing strategies. She was gaining the skills and knowledge to carefully tackle just about every word she encountered.

As my daughter grew as a reader, I developed as her teacher. "Reading Reflex" taught me how to conduct the lessons and correct mistakes. I gained many additional, invaluable tips from the book's online bulletin board (www.readamerica.net), on which the authors and other representatives of their program converse with teachers, parents, and tutors. Online I was lucky to find a local certified Phono-Graphix trainer who offered a workshop for parents, which added to my teaching and lesson planning skills.

I have only two small criticisms of the book. One is that it does not provide an at-a-glance road map of the lessons which I, as a visual thinker, needed to avoid confusion. I easily remedied this by making an outline of the sequence of activities in the most complicated and important section (chapter 5). The other is that the few stories and illustrations are not appealing, although my daughter and I came to look upon them with humor. This was not a problem. I simply sought appropriate, engaging stories and poems from the library that reinforced the lessons (the book's web site had many suggestions).

I wish to extend my deep, heartfelt thanks to the developers of Phono-Graphix and authors of the "Reading Reflex," Carmen and Goeff McGuinness, and to the Phono-Graphix certified therapist who held the parent workshop, Kim Bacon. They empowered me to help my daughter in a fast and effective way, which has made all the difference

I am using this book to teach my children to read. We have had great success with my son so far, and I am just beginning with my daughter.

So why does it frustrate me?

The first part of the book, which explains the theory, makes a lot of sense to me. The pre-test is fine, and the first chapter was fun for my son to do. It was well-written and pretty easy to follow. I did NOT enjoy making copies of my pages, cutting up the small squares and trying to keep up with them. But I still was not frustrated.

It is in the section, Teaching the Advanced Code, that I think things really begin to break down. I think their theory still works. But the layout of this section, which is supposed to tell me how to teach the theory, is terrible. The authors have you flipping back and forth to find instructions on one page, word lists to use with those instructions on another page (much further away). And the sequence of the lessons is difficult to discern. (In a book that is telling you how to teach, it should be very clear what to do and when to do it.) This may be because of the typestyle and type size of the instructions. How can I explain this better?

For example, you are given instructions for a particular type of lesson-- generic lesson if you will. Following this are the word lists that you use for that lesson. But, you do not proceed in this order. You do the generic lesson with the first word list, then flip back to the second generic lesson, then perhaps to the word list following the first generic lesson, or perhaps a second set of lists following the generic lesson. Even this makes it sound more organized than it is, because it is not consistent from sound to sound. How do you know where to go next? In smaller, italized type outside the word list, are those instructions. So when you finish generic lesson one, using the proper word list, you look at the bottom of the word list to see where to go next. Do they include a page number to make it easier? No.

Others have talked about the stories and there is no argument there, either! They are not endearing, well-written, or even clear. Sometimes their ONLY value is the words that are used. And the drawings are no better.

In my copy of the book, two sounds are left off of the consonant chart: 'w' and 'th.' I noticed this as I tried to pin down everything we were going to be working on. I ordered the audio tape from ReadAmerica and compared the chart with the audio key.

Finally, I am annoyed that the authors did not include any type of recordkeeping help. With well over one hundred lessons (maybe it is closer to two hundred -- I'm not finished yet) to do with each child (and in the early stage especially, the repetition of lessons for mastery), to not include any recordkeeping help is a major flaw. In fact, I suspect that those who use this method -- especially the advanced code section -- do not try to follow what the books says. In other words, I don't think the authors tested the advanced code section of the book to see how well it worked, in terms of layout and clarity for the instructor. It almost appears that they ran out of time or steam halfway through the book. I have spent a fair amount of time creating my own recordkeeping chart that also lays out the sequence of lessons. This should have been done by the authors.

I am also intrigued by the spat between them and Dianne McGuinness. The authors go to great length to disassociate their method from her method, especially on their website. And it has been noted that the authors do "go on" a bit about how great this new system is. Ah well, marketing!

Given all that I have said, it is important to note that I still recommend this book to others. It is that strong in some ways. I can only hope that the authors will consider a revision for an even better product.

When my oldest child was 8, I was homeschooling and heard such rave reviews about Reading Reflex. I rushed out and bought the book. I was so sure this would be the cure all for his reading struggles. The authors of this book and their website make it out like all children who struggle with reading struggle because they haven't had proper instruction, or have been taught incorrectly. I spent a year and a half using their program, following it to the tee. I made sure my son didn't use letter names and we didn't teach any phonics rules, just Reading Reflex. I expected great progress. After a year and a half I still had a child that could not read, write, or spell. I soon sent my child back to school to the "experts". Flash forward to now and I am homeschooling again with a child who still struggles extremely with reading, writing, and spelling. After years of guilt, feeling like I failed my son because I must have been doing something wrong with their wonderful, perfect program, I have finally realized that learning disabled children have massive difficulties learning to read no matter which program they use.

Reading Reflex makes their book out to be a cure all. Their reading program, actually does a wonderful job teaching spelling. For example, they teach all the ways to make the "A" sound (like in cake). What they don't do, because they are insistent on not using letters, is teach all the sounds that the letter "A" makes. Because Reading Reflex insists teaching phonics doesn't work, they don't teach any of the rules of phonics that help with dividing syllables and when to use which sound. I have finally resorted to making my own program for my son using flashcards (another thing Reading Reflex insists doesn't work) and supplementary materials that I have purchased from Educators Publishing Services. We have seen some great progress, but I also know now that these types of learning disabilities take YEARS to overcome and lots and lots of love and patience. You aren't going to find that in a book.

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.

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.

I used this method on both our kids, at the time they were 2nd grade / 1st grade. I agree much with what reviewer from Houston has said so I won't repeat those observations here. In general I think the theory is solid, beats what is currently accepted as "phonics", however the lesson plans need alot of work. At least at the time, I was able to contact the authors through their message board but I felt they were quite defensive. I don't think they were ready to hear that their lesson plans weren't as foolproof as advertised because I was making mistakes. It turns out the amazing results advertised in the book are clincal results and not necessarily repeatable by laypersons. Also, they were not receptive to the possiblity that there are some kids who are just not going to get it (my son was like that, my daughter seemed to do OK with it). My son was getting very confused and mixed up by the number of sound pictures he had to remember. This was probably due to not spending enough time on each sound picture before going to the next. However, the book leads you to believe it has everything you need-- something I found wasn't true because it seems you need more material to practice each sound picture. Something you should be prepared for is that the author as well as the people the author has trained in this method are quite fanatical about it (due to the overwhelming success they have experienced) and they don't seem to be receptive to the idea that some kids aren't going to get it. There seems to be a belief that this is the silver bullet that's going to make every kid read. As an engineer, I am well familiar with the idea that nothing produces 100% successful results. Unfortunately, the authors' resistance to this idea that their "baby" isn't perfect means that it's going to take alot of time before we see improvements, if ever. Still, I have to recommend this method because I believe in the theory and also believe most people will achieve satisfactory results.

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.

As an early reader myself, I just assumed my daugher would be just as quick to catch on to reading. When she was 3 we began our phonics instructions with the alphabet. When she was 4, we continued, but we couldn't seem to get past letter recognition. At 5, we tried reading simple books, but it was hit and miss at best. 6, some progress, but we couldn't get past basic consonant-vowel-consonant words. By 7 I was extemely concerned, to say the least.

Someone told me about Reading Reflex and I bought a copy. It seemed that anything this simple and inexpensive couldn't work. And yet, within days of beginning work on seemingly simple games, we saw improvement. Within a month, she was reading away and on grade level. I can't explain what is different about it than other reading approaches, but I know it works.

For anyone that wants a child to learn to read buy this book. For anyone looking at phonics programs buy this book. Phonics layers complexity upon complexity. Phonics goes from the letter to the sound, contrary to the logic of the English written code. Phonics teaches letter names and that these letters work together under a system of rules. (They don't - letters are simply signs for the sounds in our language.) Phonics teaches some auditory processing in isolation from the what that is meant for: reading. Phonics turns a complexity of 140 into a complexity of 1500 by teaching consonant blends, etc. Phonics works sometimes. For 30 to 40 percent of the English speaking world is does not. If you are a parent or a mentor buy this book. If you want to teach your emergent reader quickly and easily buy this book. Buy this book if the struggling reader in your life is not getting by with phonics. If a child is struggling he is at risk of becoming a functionally illiterate adult. For other reviewers who consider that this is just the same old repackaged phonics, shame on you!