My oldest grandson, Andrew, went to kindergarten in Redondo Beach,California, where his teacher was using a program called Zoo-phonics® to introduce the students to the alphabet and reading. Andrew's family came to Tallahassee that year for Christmas, and Andrew's dad told a funny story about something that had taken place two weeks earlier (first week in December). Andrew had brought home from school one of the decodable books that are included with the program to read to his parents. These books are written to provide practice for children in using the letter-sound relationships they have learned in class to identify words in printed text. They are not always great literature, but they do help students learn how to use “phonics” skills to decode unfamiliar words in text. Well, Andrew was reading along quite nicely, since he was already learning to decode quite well, when he came to one of those words that “don't play fair.” Some programs call them “outlaw” words, or irregular words-words that don't follow standard letter-sound conventions. My son David correctly told Andrew that he would not be able to sound that word out, but would simply have to learn it, whereupon Andrew looked up at him very seriously, and said “That's because you don't know Zoo-phonics®!” We laugh at this story because we know that Andrew was being a little over-confident, but as his grandfather, I took great comfort in the fact that it was only December of his kindergarten year, and Andrew already understood, and had confidence in using the alphabetic principal to decode unknown word in print. Sure, he would need to learn to be flexible (particularly with vowel sounds), but here it was December of kindergarten, and he already knew there was a system to the way words worked in print--he didn't have to just guess or call his teacher when he came to a word he didn't know--he could think about it, apply his analytic skills, and usually identify the word on his own.
