Posts Tagged how to read
How to Guarantee Independent Reading
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 1: READING on November 4th, 2009
After several sacrificial years of systematic home school reading and phonics instruction, you expect a specific outcome: independent reading. Yes, every busy home school mom (especially those with lots of children) will honestly admit that she dreams of the fateful day when her child can read a book “on his own.” Independent reading is truly a major milestone that culminates after years of teaching the home school child how to read. But what do you do if you have a child who knows how to read independently but chooses to spend his free time engaged in other activities? Or perhaps you schedule independent reading time during the home school day but regularly hear the whiny plaintive cry, “there’s nothing to read.” How can you motivate your kids to read books without whining or complaining?
1. Give your child the power of choice.
One of the primary goals of an authentic classical Christian education is raising an independent thinker who has all the skills and tools for making wise decisions. Lay the foundation for this goal now by giving your early elementary age homeschooler the freedom to choose his own books. Get him his own library card, and make a commitment to go there once a week. Let him pick whatever books he wants (even if they seem silly to you — like Captain Underpants — he’ll eventually grow out of such humor), and let him check out as many books as your library allows. When budgeting your monthly expenses, always leave a little money for buying books, and never refuse to purchase a book that he wants at the book store or neighborhood garage sale. Building his own personal library is critical for establishing good independent reading habits. My kids frequently pick up a favorite book from their own library for a second, third, or even fourth reading.
2. Identify his thematic and literary preferences.
Involve him in taking an inventory of the books that he has read and truly enjoyed. Sit down with him, and brainstorm a list of books that he has read. Create a column for pros and cons; use these columns to list the things that he did and didn’t like about the books. For instance, maybe your daughter didn’t enjoy the animal battles in Brian Jacques’ youth classic, The Long Patrol, so put warfare in the negative column. But maybe she really enjoyed the conversations between the animals; if so, put personification in the positive column. Right away this chart has helped to clarify the fact that you should help your daughter find ‘happy ending’ animal books with minimal conflict. Perform this inventory for 10-15 books so that you and your child begin to see patterns. Create a rating system, and let your child assign so many stars to each book just like the journalist gives 1-5 stars in favorable and unfavorable book reviews.
Don’t assume that just because you loved a book at that age your child will love it, too. We are all individuals with preferences, and what you might find appealing to read may be extremely boring to your child. Pay close attention to his likes, and guide him toward books in the library or book store that reflect his past pleasurable reading experiences.
3. Reserve free reading time during the day.
We all live hectic lives, and unfortunately this is not only true for us as adults but also for our children. We schedule sports, fine arts, playtime, entertainment, home school co-op classes, and even worship into our busy ‘run here-run there’ days and nights. Often, the first thing to fall off the schedule is free time for independent reading. Please don’t make this mistake! You will reap the consequences down the road with a dependent, uninterested teenager who hates to read if you don’t make reading a daily, enjoyable ritual. You must allow time for practice. Mastery never emerges overnight, but reading skills gradually improve the more we use them. Practice, practice, practice!
David and I intentionally decided as parents to reward independent reading by giving our kids the option of reading at night in bed before the lights went out. If the child chose not to read then the lights went out immediately, but if the child opted to read independently, their bedtime was extended for 15-30 minutes depending on their age. This simple decision has been instrumental in creating a love for reading in our household. What child wants to turn the lights out? An additional benefit is the relaxed sleepiness that reading induces making nighty-night a pleasant expectation.
4. Model the behavior you want to see in your child.
I know that you know this, but your kids will pattern their behavior after the behavior that you model. In this case, that means that if you want to raise a child who enjoys reading, your kids need to see you and your spouse doing your own independent reading every day. You can certainly read the newspaper before they get out of bed, and of course, you are allowed to read your favorite novel in your own bed after the kids go to sleep, but make sure that during the day the kids see you reading. If all they see you do is watch television, then guess how they will choose to spend their free time as adults? Wind down at night with a good book; turn off the TV, and invite the whole family to grab a book and a comfortable position for reading on their own. One easy way to get your homeschooling husband and dad involved is to give him an illustrated classic for reading aloud to the entire family.
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Motivating your child to find pleasure in independent reading is a challenge that you can achieve. All you really have to do is let him make his own book choices, identify his reading preferences, make time for practice, and model the behavior you want to see. Pretty soon you’ll begin to see improved reading fluency, expanded vocabulary, and contextual knowledge which will contribute to his reading confidence and pleasure. I guarantee it!
Sound It Out, and Solve the Reading Puzzle!
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 1: READING on July 21st, 2009
Why are we so concerned as homeschool parents about teaching our children how to read? Because individual words have meaning, we string selected words together to represent ideas. Classical education is primarily about teaching the fundamental skills of the trivium (reading, thinking, and speaking) so that your teen can grapple with timeless ideas. Therefore reading fluency in the early years is essential if we eventually want to expose our home school high school youth to the ideas of the Western canon of classics.
But teaching our homeschool child how to read comes long before a teenager working on high school credit ever picks up a classic history like Herodotus. One of the very first steps in teaching reading is decoding the sounds of letters. Many educators call this process deciphering phonetics, but I never told my kids they were learning phonics. Rather, I knew how much Meredith and Connor loved solving puzzles, so I told them that learning how to read was like solving a puzzle.
First, you look at each puzzle piece. (the letter or combination of letters). Secondly, you process each image (recall the sound that goes with the letters) . Finally, you fit the pieces together to form larger significance (properly pronounce the word and determine the meaning). As a literate adult, you already have all of the core knowledge that your homeschool child needs to accurately complete the reading puzzle. Let me refresh your memory.
Every Puzzle Has a Solution
Unlike Spanish which practically has a 1:1 ratio of sounds to letters of the alphabet, the contemporary English language is comprised of over 40 different sounds or phonemes (Greek for “sounds uttered). If there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, why do we have 40+ sounds? Well, English as we know it today is the amalgamation of at least five ancient languages: Latin, Greek, Old English, Old Norse, and Norman French. Accordingly, modern English has spelling patterns from five languages which naturally overlap. That’s why a common root like “ough” can have so many different sounds. Pronounce the following words with the “ough” combination:
enough
though
through
cough
bough
bought
hiccough
tough
How many different sounds did you hear? [1-enough/tough; 2-though/bough; 3-through; 4-cough/bought; 5-hiccough = 5 sounds. I don't know about your family, but we always pronounced hiccough as 'hick-up.' Hmm...]
Another reason for the excess sounds are fused sounds where two or more letters blend to form one sound. Finally, some letters have more than one pronunciation. The best example of this concept is the English vowel! All five vowels have at least two sounds (short and long) plus some vowels pair up with other vowels to form separate sounds.
Vowels are not the only letters in the English alphabet with several sounds; many consonants do not have a singular unique sound. Take the letter ‘c’ for instance which can have a soft sound like the letter ‘s’ or a hard sound like the letter ‘k.’ Then there are the consonant digraphs (2 letters) which form one sound when put together: ch, ng, ph, sh, th, wh, wr, and kn. Finally, there is the consonant ‘y’ which does double duty as both a vowel and a consonant. Whew!
But don’t get discouraged about teaching English phonics. Although English appears to be complex, there is an order and reason to the arrangement of letters and the pronunciation. For example, here’s a rule that I’ll bet you know but forgot - the open and closed syllable:
When a syllable is closed (ie., a consonant surrounds the vowel like the word ‘cat’), the vowel pronunciation is short. Consider these one-syllable words:
A – bat
E – wet
I – sit
O – cot
U – run
When a syllable is open (ie., one consonant followed by a vowel like the syllable ‘edu’ in ‘education’), the vowel pronunciation is long. Consider these multi-syllable examples:
A – radiator (ray)
E -determine (dee)
I -trifold (tri)
O -bodacious (boh)
U – super (soo)
Of course, there are exceptions to the rules like the closed syllable followed by an ‘e’ has a long vowel (skate, trite); however, by and large, you can teach your child how to decode the language in a systematic manner. I would start with the basic sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet (long vowels). Be encouraged…26 sounds down, and you’re over halfway there!
Next, I would teach the short vowels. After that, I would teach each of the frequently-appearing consonant digraphs (ch, th, sh, etc.). Finally, I would tackle the more difficult vowel combinations (digraphs like the ‘ai’ in sail and dipthongs like the ‘ow’ in cow).
Once the homeschool child has a good working inventory of the 40+ sounds of the English language, he can decode almost every word that he encounters in the written text by first slowly pronouncing the individual sounds then synthesizing the sounds to form one word. This is how I learned how to read, and this is how I taught my own children how to read. My mom used to always tell me to “sound it out.” Whenever an unfamiliar word is spotted, approach the word from the left one sound at a time like this: ‘sh-r-ou-d-ed’ or ‘re-ci-pro-ca-te.’ Eventually, the unfamiliar word will become familiar, and your homeschool child will grow in reading fluency and confidence. So teach your young child to “sound it out” and solve the reading puzzle.
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Are you feeling a little rusty in your core knowledge of English phonics? The appendix of Trivium Mastery contains six tables that might help refresh your memory and provide a starting place for teaching your young child how to read by deciphering the sounds of the English language.
Punctuate Your Reading with Meaning
Posted by Diane in How to Teach Homeschool Skill 1: READING on July 16th, 2009
The other day I was in the children’s section of the local library pulling example books for a homeschooling workshop that I was giving at our state convention on the benefits of reading aloud. As I advanced further and further into the shelving, I began to hear a sweet little voice confidantly reading aloud. Every now and then she heroically pushed her way through an unfamiliar word, but by and large, she successfully managed the written word. I peeked around the corner and discovered not one little child reading to her mom, but several little kids gathered on the floor with picture books carelessly scattered. The simultaneous voices of children (one reading to her mom, another reading to a friend, and a mom reading to her son) cheered my heart and brought a knowing smile to my face. My spirit swelled, “ah, thank you, Lord, for books and the simple pleasures of reading aloud!”
Where did this precious little girl learn to read with such feeling and emotion? Surely her parents or siblings have consistently demonstrated the skill of inflection because she couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, yet she tackled that picture book with as much sensitivity as a little child can muster. To inflect an object is to bend or curve it. Words can be inflected as well. All you have to do is change the pitch or tone of your voice. But this is not as simple as it sounds.
In fact, reading with feeling is a difficult task that takes lots of practice. At first, all a beginning reader can do is decode the pronunciation. Next comes comprehension. Eventually the child learns how to glance ahead so that he can decide what kind of emotion to put into his voice. Here are three ideas for teaching your homeschool kids how to express themselves when reading aloud.
What Does the Punctuation Mark Mean?
Don’t wait until your homeschooler is officially studying English grammar to teach the meaning of punctuation marks. As you read aloud with your child, use your finger to show them that each sentence ends with a special mark that is not a letter like the ABCs, and sometimes these funny marks show up at the beginning or middle of sentences when someone talks or when a series of things are being listed. Tell him that each punctuation mark has a special purpose that requires a certain vocal response. Demonstrate these common punctuation marks when you are reading aloud to your homeschool children:
Period – come to a complete stop (take a breath after the period to force yourself to stop)
The puppy played with the sock. [stop and breathe]
Comma – pause when reading
Noel, [1 second pause] please put your dirty clothes in the laundry room.
Question Mark – bring your voice pitch up at the end
Can I please have a chocolate chip cookie? [cookie should be higher than can]
Exclamation Point – verbally punch the thought with excitement or alarm
Tommy left his bicycle in the street! [add some tension to your voice]
Quotation Mark – talk as if you were the character
Granny said, “my old feet are aching after all that walking at the garage sale.” [trembling voice]
Parenthesis – lower your volume like you’re telling a secret or go back to your own voice as narrator
The crowd cheered with excitement (Dad wouldn’t mind if I took a quick peek). [whisper]
Practice punctuation responses every time you read aloud. In fact, this is a great exercise to do every time you ask your child to read until he gets the hang of it.
How Does the Punctuation Mark Sound?
Now that your homeschooler knows what the most common punctuation marks mean, practice making these sounds out loud without words! Yes, you read that correctly…without words! Substitute your favorite sounds for the words, and read the “sentence” out loud using the proper inflection for the mark like this:
Da da da da da. [stop and take a breath] Da da da da da? [bring your voice up at the end of the sentence] Da da daddaa. [stop and take a breath]. Da da dadada! [increase your volume and act surprised] Da da da, [pause for 1 second] da da da da da. [stop and take a breath] Da da da, “da da dadaaada.” [talk with the character's voice then stop and take a breath] Da da da da (da da da). [lower your voice like you're telling a secret then stop and take a breath]
You can type out a conversation with your favorite nonsense sounds to practice this skill, and eventually, your reading child will be able to look at a written text and substitute “blah blah blah” for the words and see only the punctuation marks.
How Would Your Emotion Change the Meaning?
Even little kids understand the idea of emotion. Children experience feelings just like grown-ups, so give them a list of emotions and have them read simple sentences as if they were feeling a certain emotion. For example, take the following sentence and read it five times using a different emotion each time:
The dog ate my last brownie.
Read it as if you are: shocked, distressed, amused, afraid, and outraged. Now choose a basic sentence and give your child some options as to what feelings she wants to express, then have her read the sentence out loud. You can do this with singular words, too, like “hey, well, and no.”
Learning how to read with appropriate expression can really add depth and meaning to the written text. Start teaching punctuation and inflection today, and your young reader will eventually delight and entertain his or her audience by creating lasting images and bringing home school books to life.
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Have you signed up for my free homeschooling parent workshop called “Classical Home Education 101” yet? Several home school moms have been working their way through the tutorial, and the feedback that I am receiving is very good. Many of them have completed the questionnaire, the roadmaps to mastery, and some are already working on their customized strategic semester plan for this fall! All you have to do is subscribe to in the right sidebar, or send me an email if you are already a subscriber, and I’ll send you the password.
