Certainly we all want our children to read for enjoyment. But if children who are taught to read with mini-literature great books do not learn how to decode words, they will never be able to read newspapers or college entrance questions. Without the decoding skills of phonics, a child must rely on the remainder of the sentence for context clues or picture clues in figuring out an unfamiliar word. The unfamiliar word will not be sounded out by the reader because the child does not have these skills. By teaching phonics, you give to the reader the formula for sounding out unfamiliar written words that are in their spoken vocabulary, but not in their sight vocabulary.
Some children are natural born readers and learn how to decode words by themselves.
Unfortunately, not many children are natural born readers. If a teacher uses spelling words from a science unit, i.e., crustacean, currents, pollution, camouflage, oceanographer, then the student must memorize each word versus learning a formula for phonetic values. By learning a few phonic rules, students become improved readers and spellers. Before a student can begin to read, they need to know the sounds letters make and be able to move their eyes from the left to the right on a line. On separate index cards, write each letter of the alphabet, both upper and lowercase letters.