Book Review: Reading Reflex by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuinness

The only frustration I had with books like Overcoming Dyslexia (reviewed last week) was the recommendation to take your child to a specialized reading center, or to persuade your school to adopt a new reading curriculum. Those are nice ideal solutions, but they aren’t very realistic for someone with a limited budget and a minor reading problem.

I was relieved to find Reading Reflex by Carmen McGuinness. McGuinness gives you a way to teach your child to read, and it only costs you $16 for the book, and several hours of your time.

Reading Reflex explains the Phono-Graphix method, which is an Orton-Gillingham based reading technique. Orton-Gillingham multi-sensory teaching techniques are the best way to teach a child with a reading disability.

Multi-sensory teaching techniques also work for children who have not yet learned to read, such as kindergarteners. McGuinness explained where you would change the lesson based on whether you’re working with a beginning reader or a struggling older reader, but most of the lessons don’t change.

Phono-Graphix strips out the rules and mnemonic devices of traditional phonics. I’ll give you a specific example instead of trying to summarize the whole thing.

A phonics rule commonly taught is, “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” This means that “ai” is pronounced like in “rain.” This rule is an if-then statement. If you see two vowels together, then the sound they make is the name of the first vowel. If-then statements are a type of propositional logic, and children struggle with propositional logic until they are at least 8 or 9 years old. In addition to learning to read, this phonics rule also requires you to teach the child a type of logic that is still beyond the grasp of most kindergarten-age children. It’s a developmental thing. Logical rules that make sense to adults don’t make sense to kids. (You’ve probably noticed that.)

Besides which, the rule is wrong more than half the time. “Ai” isn’t always the “a-e” sound. It’s also the “e” sound, like in “said.” If a rule only works half the time, it isn’t really a rule, it’s a possibility.

Phono-Graphix dumps the rule. Instead, you teach your child that “ai” is either “ay” like in “rain” or “e” like in “said.” Then you have them sort a word list, and separate out the words based on their sounds. So you give the child a list: rain, said, bait, sail, again, mountain. The child sorts the “ay” sounds: rain, bait and sail. Then she makes a separate list of “e” sounds: said, again and mountain.

Instead of learning a rule and all the exceptions for “ai”, the child learns that there are two possible sounds for “ai.” The word “said” is no longer an exception to a rule, and does not have to be memorized as a sight word. It’s predictable now.

That rule “when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking” doesn’t work for other vowel combinations either. Look at these: Seat-steak-bread. Toe-shoe. Cried-chief-friend.

There are several other ways this book strips out the extra baggage that surrounds reading. Phonics was a good idea that got bogged down with too many rules. Whole language and sight words increase reading difficulties for everyone except children who already read easily. Phono-Graphix reduces reading back to the sounds.

The only thing I found silly in Phono-Graphix was the suggestion to not call letters “letters” but to call them “sound pictures” instead. Saying “sound pictures” is consistent with their theory, but kids know what letters are, so you may as well use the word.

If you go with this method, be sure to read the introductory chapters that explain the theory behind what you’re teaching. Do not start the lessons unless you know the theory.

There is also a chapter on how to help a child read multi-syllable words. About fourth grade, the amount of long words a child is expected to read increases dramatically. It’s common to detect a reading problem during the “fourth grade slump.” Phono-Graphix targets that problem too.

McGuinness maps out the order of the lessons and how to explain the concepts. I supplemented the lessons with some games to work on skills such as looking at the word before trying to read the word (a problem my student had from sight word techniques).