Today’s blog is still about literacy, or in other words, teaching the skills of how to read! Perhaps you’re wondering about how to teach reading to your kindergarten or grade 1 child or an older one who still struggles. Maybe you want to know about how to know when to teach the skills of “how to read” with one of your littles. Knowing what is typically “out there” in the reading curriculum, I’d like to provide a few less-typical thoughts on this subject – ones that I learned from my mom who specialized in early literacy in her experience in both primary and multi-grade education and in homeschooling.
“When is my child ready to learn how to read?”
The simple answer: children are ready to learn how to read when they show interest in reading! 🙂
“Great,” you might say, “but when is that? How do I figure that out? Is there a certain age, an attention span time limit I have to watch for, an ability to use a pencil first or what?”
No, this really isn’t rocket science. It doesn’t take a psychology degree and it is really about using common sense – one that you already have as a parent. Simply observe your child(ren) in natural play and interaction with your family and see when they are regularly (relatively frequently) showing interest in reading. Here’s a list of the stuff of what I mean:
- calling out “Stop” when you’re driving them and they see a red sign that says “STOP”
- wanting to know what other signs mean as you’re driving or shopping
- reading cereal boxes at breakfast-time, wanting to know what the words say
- reading names on jackets, envelopes, cards and notes
- picking up a storybook that is familiar to them and going through the pages in generally normal order and reading the pictures to retell the story out loud to themselves or to a younger sibling. (This is very cute to notice and if you don’t forget, why not snap a photo or short video of it for memories?!)
- perhaps even trying to follow along with a finger as you sing together from a book or read a map
Because our Let Me Read literacy methods are focused on teaching reading by reading and reading things of interest to children, there is no need to know how to use a pencil yet and no need to worry about a lengthy attention span because the lessons are appealing and fun to young ones! (My mom used to say [a lot], “Put the cookies on the lower shelf where the kids can reach them!” 🙂 )
On the other hand, if you want to use a program that drags a child to sit at a desk for long periods of drill work and/or want to teach reading mainly by writing, well then you will want to wait until the child reaches those abilities in addition to the above. But my mom and I simply don’t feel it is necessary or beneficial to hold a child back until those steps are attained or other steps indicated under the next heading(s) below.
Remember, if your child learns how to read, you have opened up so much opportunity for them explore more and ALSO given yourself more time to spend with other family members such as babies/toddlers or older children who need you too! Teaching a child to read when he or she is naturally eager helps to balance your life and add sparkle to your child’s! Let them read!!! ♥
More Help for You
The below comes from the “Peppermint Stick’s Teacher Training” section in our Let Me Read curriculum, from the bottom of page 15 to 16. To read more about other aspects of the “why” behind our literacy methods, you can purchase the entire “Peppermint Stick’s Teacher Training section (a pdf download) in our shop, as an option listed on this product page (click here).
A key thought about “mastery”
It does not matter if every single word is learned before a child moves ahead in reading. What matters is that the child reads new (and old) words accurately with improving clarity and understanding. As long as your child is progressing in learning more words, keep moving along and sprinkling out a bouquet/feast/banquet of words, stories, and skills!
SEQUENTIAL MASTERY LEARNING
Some typical reading programs available on the market take the approach that alphabet sounds must be learned and mastered first, followed by word list drills (often timed). When the child has shown that they have mastered these steps, they can move on to reading simple sentences and sounding out or guessing at words they had not learned in their drilled lists. The word lists begin with only one syllable; then when these are mastered, words with more syllables are given. The initial reading practice might involve reading sounds in combination of non-words such as “sa”, “ba”, etc. The initial reading of whole words may be only in lists of words that are not arranged in an interesting story and may not mean anything to the child other than reading a string of words together that may follow the same “phonics rule”.
HOWEVER, with our Let Me Read series, we allow something different – non-sequential, non-mastery learning, and it does work well!
Let me explain…
Wait a minute! Do you mean that it doesn’t really matter what phonetic order the letters are taught and that a child doesn’t need to be held back at a letter until she “gets” that sound before moving on?
YES! A computer needs a sequence to run properly but you have a CHILD that is learning and, contrary to a machine, each one is alive and unique so that means you might have someone who will learn non-sequentially, so-to-speak, and that is just fine!
Oh, I used to think “master the alphabet first, then learn to read” but my mom’s methods were so much more effective with so little effort so I decided to pay attention! 🙂
Don’t miss the last paragraph in this example – it really underlines my mom’s philosophy of teaching which is really why our literacy curriculum series is called “Let Me Read”!
Our oldest daughter knew the first half of the alphabet letters and sounds and began reading the words “Look” and “Oh” in simple sentences. She had not yet completed learning and did not know most of the rest of the alphabet letters and sounds. She continued learning the rest of the individual letters/sounds each week at the same time as learning to read new words and sentences in her reader. (Actually, she was able to read short novels well about a half year before she understood the concept of sounding out words phonetically left to right.) Even though she had been taught phonics, all that she had picked up on that subject were individual sounds of letters until it suddenly occurred to her one day that the words were spelled in the order of their sounds! (Actually, she thought it was quite ironic and funny that “it works” like that!) 🙂 This understanding finally took place when she was reading individual words in her phonics book that had an arrow drawn underneath the word left to right. She had learned how to read by memorizing what the words looked like for the most part.
The challenge then became being able to distinguish a word from a similar-looking word. For this, she likely relied on looking at the spelling rather than the phonetic sounds although she does now understand that she can also sound out the word by stretching it out.
Had I required her to master her phonics (or anything else) before reading stories, it would have greatly frustrated her.
In fact, with her and her younger sister, I tried to teach them phonics sequentially before moving on to words and then sentences.
However, because I was busy with construction, another baby, and my children were enjoying Grandma’s methods so much (even though they were still doing sequential phonics lessons in a workbook), I simply let my girls read without holding them back.
For them, phonics only seems to help them understand why a word may be spelled a certain way or to categorize words (such as compound words or rhyming words) or useful to decipher more complicated words. Other children may find that it is easier sounding out letters to blend together to make a word rather than memorizing its shape or pattern.
Children are alive and unique! For this reason, children should be introduced to various ways of learning words (not just sequential phonics) so that they can have the freedom to use what they can understand best while still learning various ways to remember words. Perhaps not everything is as useful to them in the earlier stages but these skills may be helpful later on in their studies. So, in the early years, we continue to teach lessons with visual (sight), kinesthetic (touch), and phonetic (sound) components, rather than sticking with only the way(s) they appear to learn best at a particular time. ♥
P.S. You can see a summary of our reading philosophy here at Our Twist for Reading and Writing. On that page is a free download comparing different methods of teaching reading too.
P.S. The details are in the Peppermint Stick’s Teacher Training section of our Let Me Read curriculum and also separately on its own at this link here.