Teaching Reading: I Happened Upon Some Tricks

Jonathan is in Year 2 for school and is reading a variety of readers for reading practice. His favorites to read are stories like Frog and Toad and Mouse Soup. He also reads a little out of one schoolbook each day, the line he will write for his copywork (as well as the rest of the sentence in which the line is contained), and any math instructions.

Right now in the rotation of main reading selections, he is in the Delightful Reader . He's reading the extra practice sentences which contain word-family words that come from the main words he learned during lesson time the previous two years when he mastered Rain, The Dogs and the Fox, etc. He finds the disjointedness of the practice sentences unsatisfactory since the contents of the sentences are often separate from one another instead of making story. To solve this problem, I began to give him a short background story before he read each sentence, explaining any words along the way that might be unfamiliar to him. So for a sentence like

"Use this to hook the squid." 

I ask him if he's ever seen a picture of a squid and to describe it for me. Then I might tell him that a father is out in a big boat teaching his teenage son how to catch deepwater fish (I have no idea if squid is a deep water animal or if you can catch it with a hook, but Jonathan will be sure to ask such questions and we can look up really interesting q's later if he wants to). Then I say, "As the father is teaching his son, he gives him these words of instruction....." 

And then Jonathan happily reads the sentence. This does not take as much time as you might think, since the background info can be as silly or involved as I want to make it, and it makes the time enjoyable for both of us. 

Phoebe is doing Kindergarten work this year. She's been an interesting child, she has. She can be fairly hyper, and if she happens to decide she doesn't want to do school that day, she's a tiny bit of struggle to work with. There are several ways we work with her attitude (which I won't get into here), but for reading, I happened upon a way to help her pay attention to the sounds in the word and put them together. She struggles with wanting to look at me to see what I will say or look around and just guess. 

Right now we're working through the section in Delightful Reading with short vowel words, long vowel words, and a few blends. She also sounds out her copywork words before copying them. What I discovered to be helpful was using a pointer (a pencil suffices or we might make a special pretty one so as to be fancy). I have her point to each sound while I say the sound. Then I take the pointer and point to each sound while she says the sound. Then she can take the pointer and slide it across the word to blend the sounds together. I think the action and using an extra device makes her have to look at the word and also gives her hands something to do while looking. 

As teachers and parents, you all realize how tough some problems can be to figure out. Your child is stuck, and you can't find a way to help them get past the issue. Sometimes you happen upon a solution seemingly out of the blue. At these times I thank God. He made our brains to figure out stuff like this, and I think He also cares enough to send us ideas if we need them. No worries. If He takes care of the birds of the air, our teaching issues can be unraveled with His help as well. 

Top 10 Ways to Cut Out the Tiles for Delightful Reading

I've started Phoebe on Delightful Reading this week. She was wanting to do more "grown-up" work and was very excited to start on her own box of Delightful Reading. (I used this program for Jonathan, but used my shabby first-draft stuff since we started before the kit was published.)

Since it was a new kit, all the tiles needed to be cut out. Now I know some do not enjoy the cutting out part, but one of my favorite parts of homeschooling is all the preparation and lesson planning, so it is right up my alley. Nevertheless, my mind couldn't help constructing a top ten list of ways to aid the tile-cutting process.

1. Pay your kids to do it.

2. Watch your favorite movie while cutting.

3. Use a cutting board to cut the long lines; then snip, snip along the short ones.

4. Eat chocolate. It makes anything fun!

5. Play upbeat music. Maybe even jig a little.

6. Reward yourself with cheesecake. Or chocolate.

7. Skype or conference call your BFF. Better yet, have a croppin' party with her!

8. Think up your own Top Ten List.

9. Start thinking of how your kids will grow up and leave you and how sad and empty the house will seem, and start bawling over those precious alphabet letters.

10. Definitely grab a bowl of ice cream and top it with chocolate.

Teaching Reading: Conclusion

Since I've spent so much time telling about Phoebe's reading progress, I thought I'd report on my older two also.

Elizabeth is heading into 5th grade.  We don't do reading instruction anymore, but I do have her read out loud to me from different school books or the Bible each day.  There are a number of hard words that she mispronounces because so much of her reading is done silently to herself.  So I'm able to help her with correct pronunciation.  (And many times I have to look up a word to figure it out myself!)  She's able to practice clear, distinct reading also when reading aloud.

Jonathan finished Delightful Reading last year; so this first grade year has been about lots of reading practice.  He read "The Primer" by Harriette Treadwell (free to read online).  He is working his way through the extra sentences in the "Delightful Reader" ( we didn't do all the extra sentences last year).  And he is reading "Frog and Toad Together."  I alternate readers at the end of each chapter.  He also reads his copywork each day; he's working through "Hymns in Prose" right now.  And my plan is to use the "Hymns in Prose" reader with him next year.  It has great uplifting content with challenging words.

Jonathan is really catching on to the various phonics rules as he reads.  He simply picks up on them as I explain the way a certain sound works.  His personality doesn't like any exceptions or rules that don't make sense to him.  (Why does kn say n?  Why couldn't they just put an n?!)  I know he'll enjoy etymology when he gets older ~ I was thrilled to have an etymology course in high school because it explained so much about the history of words.

All the kids are progressing in reading.  Not all at the same rate.  And it sometimes feels slow to me.  But they learn a little each day and it all builds up to make a nice visible foundation when we look back on the year.

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 3

Now that we have some simple word-building under our belt, I plan to add several steps: writing words in her word notebook, sound/word activities, and, once she is very familiar with some words, sentence-making.

I've selected 20 words from the list in the previous post and written them on cards. After Phoebe makes a word with letters, I show her the card and she copies the word into her word notebook. The Delightful Reading kit includes a word notebook, but any blank notebook will do.

Activities can include reading a word card while jumping up or down stairs with each word. I have her go back a step if she gets the word wrong; we go through the small pile of words over again until she gets to the bottom of the stairs. You can read a word aloud and let your child find the word among a couple of other word cards. You can hide the familiar letters around the room and let your child find them to put them together to make words. Are there other activities your child enjoys during pre-reading lessons? I'd love to hear more ideas to keep my active girl on task. The movement really does help her concentrate.

Once she is very familiar with a few chosen words, I'll have her pick up the words I tell her and lay them in a row so that she may then read a sentence.

The sentences I chose are:

~ Pam is tan.

~ Tim spit in a pit.

~ Sam is a man.

~ Sit on a mat.

~ An ant sat in a pan.

~ Tim sips tea.

(A couple new words are added to help make cogent sentences.)

So a day's lesson might look like:

1. Review sounds from chalk board.

2. Review words from previous lesson using word notebook or word cards.

3. Make old (if practice is needed) or new words using alphabet letters.

4. Show the word card and let your child copy it into word notebook.

5. Do a word or sound activity.

6. Once words are well-known, make a sentence with word cards.

This will be great practice for continued word-building with Delightful Reading next year. And then we'll be heading into "real" reading lessons!

Next post will show lessons broken down even more.

See Part 1,  Part 2,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 2

I worked out ahead and made simple plans to help Phoebe word-build as we finish up the school year. I chose two vowels (using only their short sound), five consonants and one blend: a i n p t m s sp.

We go over these sounds at the beginning of every lesson. She says the sound or gives a word that starts with the sound.

For variety we alternate using our wooden alphabet letters and the ones provided in Delightful Reading. I keep them in their own little bag so I don't have to search for them every time we sit down for a lesson.

We take these 7 letters and put them together to make words ~ as many combinations as we can make. Phoebe needs lots of help with this part so far. It's helpful if she blends an ending first (like -at) and then adds a letter to the beginning ( s -at). Combinations include:

(it sit spit pit in sin tin pin spin Tim is tip sip sap map nap tap an man pan span tan am Sam Pam spam at pat sat mat spat ant apt imp)

Phoebe is able to to handle making 2-4 words a lesson. We work on the same words several lessons in a row until they are very familiar to her.

The next post will continue sharing word-building plans.


See Part 1, Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion

Teaching Reading to Our Third: Part 1

Phoebe is in the pre-reading stage of learning to read right now. (Simply Charlotte Mason has excellent articles on the different stages of reading that you can find here.) I've been using some ideas from Ruth Beechick's "A Home Start in Reading" along with CM suggestions from Delightful Reading to add activities as we learn sounds and word build. She just turned 6 and we consider this school year to be preschool. She's not overly interested in a lot of seat work (read "She will hardly sit still!"), so we keep lessons short.

We've spent this school year learning letter sounds with books and songs and wooden alphabet letters, puzzles, large wall cards...... anything I could find in our home that has the alphabet. She was very interested in her name and learned those 5 letters easily. We also drew the letters in the air and in a pan of sand (grits for us, actually) ala CM.

We then moved on to concentrating on a few consonants and vowels. Our list is a little longer than it should have been: M, P, Z, A, B, S, K, D L, I, J, N, T. ~Phoebe named things that began with the letter. ~I would point to 3 or 4 sounds and have her repeat them after me. ~Sometimes I would make a mistake on purpose to see she'd catch me. ~We used a children's dictionary for some sounds. She would look all through the pictures and say the words out loud. ~There are a few more ideas also in "Home Start in Reading". We didn't do more than one sound at a time.

It makes sense that you don't need to learn all the sounds or letter names at the beginning of this reading journey. You can teach a few and let your child begin to blend words, so she can feel the excitement of reading words on her own effort. Next time I'll share what we're working on for word-building during our last 12 weeks of school.

See Part 2,  Part 3,  Part 4, and Conclusion