Our oldest daughter is 4 1/2 and we read to her a lot. She is doing some “reading” on her own. When we put her to bed, she knows not to come downstairs unless its an emergency, but if she can’t go to sleep, she is allowed to “read” her books, which she frequently does.
My question is how to prepare her to read on her own. We want her to be ready when they start teaching her in school, so that she is already appreciating it, rather than learning it. She certainly has the attention span for it. (We took her to a student production of the Nutcracker Suite when she was three, and she sat quietly, spellbound by the whole thing. I don’t think she blinked for 2 hours)
Anyway, after hijacking my own thread, how have you gone about teaching your little ones to read before they start school, without outsided tutors or the like?
I have a 4-year-old, too, and I’m also really tempted to start teaching her to read. I think the best way to go about it would be to find a good phonics book or two. I’m presuming she can identify all her letters, and maybe knows their basic sounds? Once she has some of the the basic combinations done, go for the “First Reader” type books (“Hop on Pop” and that sort of thing.) I’m sure your local librarian could point you in the right direction.
I can’t tell you how important one single action can be. If you want your kids to enjoy reading you must read in front of them. Show them that you read for pleasure and they’ll pick it up.
So read in front of them (or where they can note you’re reading), read to them, have them read to you.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice.
Heck, Baby Kate already knows several letters and she’s just 15 months old. God bless those blocks!
Reading Reflex by the McGuinnesses and their How to increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence. Ignore the sucky title, it is a very useful book. Diane McGuiness’s book about why children can’t read is worth a look too.
Other books people frequently recommend are How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I didn’t like it.
I really like Reading Reflex. I taught my severely dyslexic son to read with it and he’s now reading 3 grades level above his grade. And enjoying reading which is the important part.
I have never used any sort of formal system with my children. First they learned their letters (from “alphabet books”) and then they wanted to write them, and then they wanted to write their names, etc. Each of the 3 older ones (the youngest is only 3) went to kindergarten at the almost-but-not-quite reading stage where they could recognize and write their own names plus those of their friends and family members, their pets, and a few other words.
Then you have kids like my brother, who taught himself to read (without my mother realizing it) when he was four.
Unless there is some reason that you think they need extra help (eg. dyslexia) I don’t think you have to actually do anything more than read to them a lot and answer their questions.
Public schools kicked my twin brother and I out for our “wildness” so we went to private christian schools.
At the aforementioned school all learning was done independent of a formal classroom structure. (read: We didn’t have a teacher, we taught ourselves out of books we were given.) Hence, we ended up reading something like eight hours a day. While this did amazing things for my vocabulary and comprehension level, it also made me the worst speller on the face of the planet. Also as an end result I love to read, and I read all the time.
for example:
Two days ago I went to the local massive bookstore chain and bought my very own copy of The Lord of the Rings. This marks the sixth time I’ve read the trilogy in it’s entirity.
But I wouldn’t recomend teaching your child to read this way.
I would just like to strongly second Jonathon Chance’s point. If the only time kids see their parents reading a book is when the folks are reading bedtime stories to them–and that probably only for a few very quick years–I’m convinced it imprints into their brains that book-reading is something grown-ups don’t do, something to grow out of. Obviously, the inevitable result will be a world where all text is replaced by large pictograms, and language will devolve to people simply pointing at things and grunting. (You can see this already in fast food restaurants.)
Forgive the braggings of a proud papa, but my 4 year old can already read maybe 40 words. He knew his letters before he was three, but putting them together into a word took a long time (almost a year). One day, he just got it, that Cuh-Aah-Tuh was cat. And within 24 hours, he had put together a dozen other simple three letter words.
I made him a bunch of flash cards with three and four letter words on one side and a picture on the other. Went to Kinkos and they laminated them into individual cards. They’re cute; if anyone wants you can email me and I’ll send them to you. Although I’m sure you can find similar cards at a store.
Also, I’ve only seen one book that is close to readable at that stage, Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. It’s the only book I’ve seen that has lots of three and four letter words, where there is a story going on.
Oh, and while I’m bragging, he can add numbers up to 5+5 all by himself. Many he knows by heart, and some he adds on his fingers. Well, on his claws actually; you see he’s a part-time Tyrannasaurus. Oh, and R-E-X is his favorite word to read.
I teach 7th grade reading in a rather urban area. Our school system uses the Whole Language approach (they will learn to read/write/spell simply by being surrounded by books), which I think is what some of you are referring to. I have to go back and use phonics with these kids in the 7th grade. They love it though. The program I use is called The Spalding Reading Program. It has been around for more than 70 years and works for everyone – learning disabled, gifted, speakers of another language – doesn’t matter.
Home of the Braves, I’m going to disagree. It does matter.
The parent in the OP has a daughter who is obviously already interested in reading and, IMO, requires no special training other than being read to on a regular basis and learning what she clearly wants to learn.
Different children learn in different ways. A child who learns best through his tactile senses might learn his letters best by drawing them in sand or by playing guessing games with 3 dimensional letter shapes. One child might learn more easily with audio cues, while another might make best use of visuals. There is no one method which will work for every student. The best teachers understand this, and offer a variety of sources for their students.
The reason it matters is that, even if one method can be proven to “work” for almost everyone, there is benefit in finding the method that works best for each particular child. If we insist on a method/system that turns reading (for some) into a chore, haven’t we taken something precious away from those children?
English is hardly a phonetic language. Half the words our beginning readers must learn in order to understand even the most simple story are “sight words”, i.e. words that must be memorized because they fail to follow the rules of phonetics. Yes, one can learn to read through phonetics. But I don’t think it is necessarily the best way to instill a love of reading.
The “best” way, IMO, is the way that allows each child to learn in the way that best suits his mind.
I’d have to strongly agree with Jonathan Chance. The thing that is stressed most to parents by America Reads is to show yourself reading in order to give them something to imitate. Little boys and girls want to be just like their parents, so parents who read will have children who want to read too.
As for teaching them to read, look for signs that they’re ready to learn how. The best sign I can think of is that they are able to identify sign words-be it store signs, street signs, or the names of grocery products. Once they can tell that the red sign with the letters s-t-o-p says something(or what my parents discovered, I could read the words “Dunkin Donuts” when they wrote it down, not just from the colors of the sign) they’re probably ready for more formal training.
While phonics works for many children, please note that it doesn’t work for all, myself included because they simply can’t sound the words out(“pre” and “per” do not sound different to me, for example). I’m not sure the statics for the number of kids who have trouble hearing/comprehending the different sounds letters and letter groupings are supposed to make, but if teaching phonics doesn’t work, kids can learn to sight-read(learning c-a-t is cat from the look of the word, as opposed to sounding it out) if you’re willing to help them work at it…I was reading well before kindergarten, so there’s no reason other kids can’t too if their parents are willing to spend the time to teach them.
Teacher supply stores will carry flashcards and other pre-reading supplies. They may also have emergent reader books, which have repetitive sentences, not a lot of words, and very simple words.
If you can’t find many emergent readers (and they are surprisingly difficult to find and often overpriced) you can make your own books with pictures cut from magazines (or hand-drawn or whatever) pasted onto construction paper with simple sentences underneath. I’m doing that now for a girl I’m tutoring.
Oh, and one book I recommend is The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss. You could start out with her “helping” you with a few words that are repeated a lot, and progress until she can read it herself. This goes for other books as well, but I like this book because it’s so repetitive and has almost all short words.
Thanks everybody for the good advice. It sounds like just about any method that shows them reading can be fun will be good for a start.
My impression of the phonics issue was that people who learned to read that way tend to be atrocious spellers. My older brother is one example. Has the method been changed? Was that even true in the early days?
And the Foot Book RULEZ. (God, did I just type “Rulez?”)
Ah the good old WL/phonics debate! I’ve got a kid who was failed badly by the WL approach. It can work but it doesn’t work for every kid. I took the good aspects of WL - a print rich environment, lots of books available and we used the Reading Reflex phonics program. The result was a child who reads. And who never lost his love of books and reading. If he were still trapped in the methodology of WL then he would not be reading. WL is not the answer for every kid.
And phonics is not the death knell to the love of reading for a kid who doesn’t click with WL. It doesn’t have to be drill and kill. My younger kid has been reading sight words since 2 and we will start doing some phonics with him when I get the time and energy. Any day now ;).
Abe, phonics programs are more likely to turn out good spellers than bad spellers. I wouldn’t blame the phonics for bad spelling. I think the vagaries of process writing which often goes with whole language is more likely to turn out bad spellers. But you can’t condemn a method on the outcomes of one learner. My older kid is an appalling speller for an 8 yo but that’s been identified as a phonological processing issue, not a teaching issue. Without some phonics, he’d be even worse.
In the end you need to do what works for your kid. If WL fits their learning style, that’s great! But phonics are a very useful tool for the rest of them.
That’s basically what Spalding is. Please, before you knock the program, go check out the site: http://www.spalding.org.
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I agree wholeheartedly. Can you believe that the teachers here in my district are told not to deduct for spelling in essays? If you can figure out what the kid was trying to say, it’s OK. That’s ridiculous, IMHO.
Huh? What? Show where I disparaged Spalding? Please? I think it’s a perfectly good way to teach reading. Didn’t use it myself but I certainly don’t have a negative opinion of it
I’m a Reading Reflex devotee but whatever floats your boat when it comes to teaching reading as long as your kid gets reading. I personally found How to Teach Your Child in 100 Easy Lessons to be unusable for me but that’s as negative as I get about how anyone else teaches their kid. I know quite a few kids who clicked with that.
IMO it is a damned fine idea to look at systems before buying. Not every method is suited to every child - if I believed that I’d still be beating the dead horse that was Whole Language and my child combined. As long as parents and teachers keep an open mind and are willing to do what works instead of what is the latest fashion in reading instruction when it doesn’t work for a particular child, it’s all good IMO.
