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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here it is short and sweet:

Phonics should be only a very small part of the learning to read process.  Incorporation of the study of phonics should be extinguished as the child moves from the reading stage to the transitional reading stage.  Phonics should not be taught forever because parts of the process actually slow down fluency.  Because fluency leads to better comprehension, it is best to remove barriers to fluency.

Note that there are a few ardent supporters of phonics in DCUM land and they are people who don't understand the learning to read process.  I think they want phonics taught up through fifth or sixth grade, which is absolutely ridiculous.[/quote]

None of this is accurate.

No one has been suggesting to "teach phonics forever".

We teach decoding skills as part of the foundation of reading.   We teach decoding larger units  even up to  3rd and 4th grade when students need to be able to decode unfamiliar multi-syllable words words of Latin origin. (-tion, -ture, etc).  We teach the meaning of prefixes and suffixes in 5th and 6th grade to help read and understand words or Greek and Latin origin.   But no one is teaching kids to sound out multisyllabic words letter by letter at that stage.

We teach students to use knowledge of phonics in the early grades to make decoding unfamiliar words automatic.  Once this automaticity happens, kids can read much more fluently and do not need to stop and guess an unfamiliar word by looking at the first letter and thinking what makes sense.  They look at AlL the letters and use their knowledge of letter sound correspondences to decode the word.  They only need to use context when there are several sounds associated with those letter combinations.[/quote]

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