Of course 'phonics only' wouldn't work, but this 'guess your way to reading' type of instruction was used with two of my three kids and I can tell you it was a

Of course 'phonics only' wouldn't work, but this 'guess your way to reading' type of instruction was used with two of my three kids and I can tell you it was a joke. It wasn't until we actively intervened and started teaching phonics at home with our middle son and moving our daughter to a private school that taught phonics as a core function of their reading curriculum did they start to actually read. I haven't listened to the podcast so I can't speak to it's content but I'm interested to hear if what their talking about matches my experience.