She's Reading!

Foxtrot read this book!

Yes, it is true, Foxtrot is definitely reading.   We finished "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" a while ago, and she has been reading quite well.  She just read "Make Way for Ducklings" over the last few days, and only needed help with a few words.  She has also been known to read to Golf.

This week coming up looks pretty interesting.  We are going to be watching Zulu and Yankee for most of Wednesday, and probably all of Thursday.  As today is a holiday here as well - I don't see us getting much schoolwork done this week at all.   I sure hope the weather will be good so they can get a lot of outdoor time!

Reading Instruction

You may want to start by reading my thoughts on Reading Instruction.

Reading Instruction before Year 1 should be very gentle, and should not intrude on outdoor time and free play. It should only be done when the student is in a good mood and wants to play the reading games involved. Lessons should be very short, and stopped BEFORE the child wants to stop. And they are optional.

Year 0

Use lessons from "Teach your Baby to Read". If your child is at least 2 years old, you can also use lessons from "Teach your Child to Read in 10 minutes a day". I recommend using both by that point.

Year K/1

Combine Phonics Instruction with Sight Reading. Charlotte Mason had reading instruction by doing some phonics work one day, and the other day working on sight reading with words chosen from a specific story. The words should be interesting to the child, and with different lengths and shapes. After the words are known out of order - the child would read a page or stanza of the story.

I recommend using flashcards in the style of "Teach your Baby to Read", and phonics instruction from "Teach your Child to Read in 10 minutes a day". Create books for your child that are specific to them - probably featuring them. As an alternative for phonics instruction, this site has a free resource.

You can also start with the Dick and Jane Primers and Readers. The Primers have been reprinted in a treasury. The Readers are only available if you happen to find a used copy. If you can't find them, move to the Treadwell/Free readers.

In Year 1, starting around term 2 or 3, if your child is ready they can start to read 1 book from the readings. (I have suggested books in the Year 1 information.)

Good Readers for more practice

Bob's Books
Little Bear series
Frog and Toad series
Flicka, Ricka, Dicka series
Snipp, Snapp, Snurr series
Billy and Blaze series

Later Years

If your child is not reading fluently yet, don't panic. Don't let your student know that they are not doing as well as you would like - you don't want them to get discouraged. Continue work with the resources I've mentioned in the earlier years at your childs speed. Do "Buddy Reading" - where you read one page, paragraph, or even sentence, and then the student reads one. Use quality audio recordings of some of the readings, with the student following along in their book.

Resources

Treadwell/Free Primer

Treadwell/Free 1st Reader

A Free Phonics program

Power Flash Card - computer program

Not Free

"Teach your Child to Read in 10 minutes a Day" - Sidney Ledson

"Teach your Baby to Read" - Glenn Doman

More about Dick and Jane

Using the Dick and Jane books (along with some phonics) is working out well for both Delta and Echo. I found a great site that helps you determine what order to do the books in - the names of the books vary a little from decade to decade. I personally prefer the ones from the 40's and 50's - but any would likely work well.

For the starting reader, there are 5 to 6 books of interest.

The Early Primers go in order of

1. We look and See
2. We Work and Play
3. We Come and Go

Echo is currently working on the "We Come and Go" book.

There is a Junior Primer (from a later decade) called "Guess Who". One website mentioned that it is for slower readers - so I suspect that if the child is still having problems after the Early Primers, they would move to "Guess Who" instead of starting the Grade 1 Reader. However, it looks like it would also be a good Primer for a child that picks up reading quickly, but hasn't done the Early Primers.

There is a "Storybook Treasury of Dick and Jane and Friends" which has the Early Primers in it (but not in order!) - and uses "The New We Work and Play" (from the 60's.) It is the Yellow book. There is a Blue Storybook Treasury (not sure of the name) that has a couple of the Newer primers, and "Guess Who". Either of these books might be available in your library.

The Grade 1 Readers are called

1. Fun with Dick and Jane
2. Our New Friends

There are Readers for higher grades (only available used) - and I did find the books for Grade 2 and 3 at the same used store - but I feel by that point, using true literature is a better choice, even if you are buddy reading with your child.

It looks like there is a reprint of "Fun with Dick and Jane" - but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, so I'm not sure if it is like the original or not. (Oh, and be aware.... there is a "More Fun with Dick and Jane" book that is an adult book satire of the Dick and Jane series. Don't mistake it for a Dick and Jane book!) [SEE UPDATE BELOW]

It doesn't look like "Our New Friends" has been reprinted. I was fortunate to find a used copy from the 40's in pretty good condition. I am having Delta read it for practice. I think his reading ability is a little above it, as he rarely makes mistakes, but he does occasionally need to work out a word, so I think it will be great practice. And he is enjoying being able to read a book with a story without it being difficult.

For a review of my understanding of Charlotte Mason's methods of teaching reading... She does advocate a little bit of work with phonics, mainly looking at word families.... but she mostly recommended a method of learning whole words. She recommended taking a nursery rhyme or poem, slowly teaching the words (by making copies of each word individually and having a child pick them out from other words) and working on all the words of a stanza of the poem out of order until they knew them - then reading the poem. As the very first Dick and Jane primer has a total of 17 words - it seems to me to be a good choice, although it was recommended by CM to include interesting words that are large and different. The repetition of the words in Dick and Jane serve to really get the child to know those words - and the child has a joy of reading a whole book right off!

Basically, I've found that a mixture of phonics and whole words seems to work well. The child has a way to figure out words that they don't know, and know how the system works through phonics - but phonics alone seems for many children to make reading hard work trying to figure out each word. Using whole words repeatedly lets them experience the joy of reading more easily and quickly. Together seems to work well. And although Dick and Jane is now looked down on for teaching reading - I think they can work well with that combined approach.

UPDATE

With some research, I have been able to find the Stories in the 40's Fun with Dick and Jane.

(Site with information)

They are....

• Family Fun (section)
• See it Go
• Guess
• Something for Sally
• Do What I Do
• Father Helps the Family
• Sally Makes Something
• Sally Wants to Play
• Jane Helps
• A Funny Ride
• Fun at the Farm (section)
• At the Farm
• The Pony
• Dick and the Hen
• A Family in the Barn
• A Big Big Dog
• Puff Wants to Play
• Funny Cookies
• Two Pets
• Pets and Toys (section)
• Fun for Little Quack
• Little Rabbit
• The Big Blue Ball
• In and Out
• The New Toy
• The Toy Farm
• Jane Wants a Doll
• Who can Talk?
• Fun with Our Friends (section)
• Sally Finds Friends
• Who Can Find It?
• The Funny House
• A Ride with Mother
• What Sally Saw
• Fun at School
• Pets at School

The Recent Reprint has 6 stories

• Look Up
• Who Is It?
• Something Pretty
• Where is Sally?
• Jane Helps Mother
• A Funny Ride

I assume that "A Funny Ride" is the same, and that "Jane Helps Mother" is "Jane Helps". Perhaps the others are the same with a different name.

In any case - there is obviously a LOT of stories missing - so I will have to hope I luck out and find the old one at a descent price.

Look, look. See, see. See Echo Read!

Ok, here it is. I can't remember the process that was taken when I learned to read because I read when I was barely 3.

I do know the story though.

Because my oldest brother knew how to read before going to school - and had a teacher who couldn't handle that - he absolutely ended up hating school in grade 1. So my parents worked hard to not let their other children learn to read before school.

However, one day when I was young, my older sister got out a "Dick and Jane" reader and played school with me. I'm not sure how long she played with me that day, but before she was done, I was reading. My parents shrugged their shoulders, and got out the rest of the "Dick and Jane" readers.

Jump forward a couple of decades, and I have been working on teaching Delta and Echo to read. But by now, the "Dick and Jane" readers are looked down on, as being a part of the illiteracy problem. So, I started the phonics program. It worked ok for a while, but none of the kids enjoyed it after getting to a certain point. And reading just was such hard work.

So, I talked to my Dad (who was a teacher), and he said that a mixture of reading instruction types works best overall. This was also about the time I discovered Charlotte Mason. I then made up some Doman type flashcards from "Teach your baby to read" and made a few homemade books. That worked well with them as a bridge. I started Delta on the Treadwell/Free Primer, and he did well. Reading is still work, but he is reading fairly well. I hope fluency will come soon.

But Echo.... she was to the point that she needed something other than just the phonics - but the Treadwell/Free Primer was too difficult. Then I had the flash go off in my head. If I learned how to read so easily with "Dick and Jane", then maybe my kids could too. I did a bit of looking, and found that my library had a couple of treasury books, and I requested them.

Well, what a joy! I sat with Echo, and she has read a couple of the "readers" in the one treasury with hardly any help at all. The phonics she has done allows her to figure out the word - and the repetitaveness gets the word in her head so that she doesn't have to figure it out each time - so it moves quicker. She is thrilled because she is reading a story, and a book, not just sentances. Delta has read both treasurys by now, and is enjoying reading without the effort. They have both spent a lot of time with them on their own.

So - I will be adjusting the learning reading suggestions on the blog. It is just exciting seeing them love the books. (And scarily enough, I remember the stories and pictures.)

I will admit that Mike finds the repetative stories annoying, and rolled his eyes when he saw the books from the library.... but I find them nostalgicly interesting.

Thoughts on Reading Instruction

I have found it very difficult to explain Reading Instruction and adding it to schedules - for the simple reason that learning to read happens very differently for each child. A few children seem to almost magically learn to read on their own, or "take off" on reading after only a couple of lessons. Other children are given lessons for years, and still don't seem to get it - or find it is so much work. And both are normal.

I was one of those children that took off on reading. My older sister played school with me one day, and I was off and reading. This occurred at such an early age, that I have never had any memories of not being able to read. This made it very difficult for me to figure out how to teach my own children.

I originally figured that pure phonics was best - and read a couple of books on that. I started my oldest 2 children, Delta and Echo (then 4 and 2) on "How to Teach your child to read in 10 minutes a day" by Sidney Ledson. It uses very short lessons, and games to teach. My children did very well to start, and would ask to play the games - but I did find that they started to not like the main game very much. I modified it to just reading little cards. I went a lot slower with the Echo, and we have had a lot of breaks in the reading. Delta got to the point that he could read with a lot of effort, but didn't want to put in the effort. So I paused on the instruction to consider. At their ages, I didn't want to do anything they didn't enjoy.

I got very cheaply a book called "Teach your Baby to Read" - which used Flashcards. This method sounded interesting, as it used extremely short lessons several times a day. (reading 5 words and that was it.) Of course it is using sight reading - but this seemed like a good way to break into fluency. I talked to a couple of relatives who were teachers about reading instruction, and gathered that a combination of phonics and sight reading seems to work better. So I started using computer generated flash cards - picking words that Delta and Echo would be most interested in. I also started some with Foxtrot, using the suggested order for babies. All 3 children loved the computer flash cards - with the older 2 loving the computer generated voice. (For Foxtrot, I said the words.... I don't want a computer accent.) I also created a couple of very personal books for Delta and Echo with the words they learned. They loved this.

Not long after, Delta started reading some words spontaneously. For instance, I would look on our TV's program guide, and Delta would say "There is Caillou" (which we do NOT watch - and darned if I know how he figured out that that was the name of that show with the weird spelling...)

Then I discovered CM and AO - and read on CM's reading instruction suggestions. And they make sense. I found the Treadwell and Free readers, and printed the Primer off. They are good literature stories, with a lot of repetition. Although we haven't read them regularly, Delta has read the first 3 stories, with just some assistance on "harder" words like "thresh".

In all, I think the combination of all 3 things I have done has worked out fairly well, although the process took longer than I originally thought it would.

Delta is on the brink of fluency, and should do well with continuing the Treadwell Readers.

Echo is at the point on "10 minutes a day" that she is learning by reading sentences, but has to really work at each word. Delta was at this point for quite a while. I haven't done as much work on the reading instruction with her after having found out about CM - but expect to have her asking to do more once the "school" year starts with Delta

Foxtrot is of course just learning to talk. She seems to recognize that print is something interesting - and anytime she has a board book, she spends a long time looking at the pictures (and maybe reading it?) and never tries to eat them, or tear them.

As for the age of reading instruction. Apparently CM didn't give an exact age for reading instruction, although the couple of examples she gave, the children were age 5, and 6. It does seem a very controversial matter in CM circles (and other circles too.) My opinion, as long as the lessons are short, the students enjoy them, and important play and outside time is not missed out on, I see early reading as beneficial. Many others disagree. I leave it for you to decide for yourself.

High Tech Learn-to-Read Tool

So, what if I told you that there was a high-tech device that could help teach your child to read - and that you probably already have it in the house?

This tool is - the dreaded TV.

Ok, I do limit the amount of TV watching that my children do. There are definate rules that they follow, and I do restrict the amount of watching. I also am very choosy about the shows that they watch.

That said, they do occasionally get to watch TV. I add just that little bit to the educational value of the TV by turning on the Closed Captioning. Almost all modern TV's, VCR's, DVD players, etc have a means to turn on the Closed Captioning - the words that appear on the bottom of the screen to tell deaf people what is being said. This makes the TV similar to listening to a book they are "reading" on a CD or MP3 player.

To increase the learning, once your children are starting to read a bit, let them watch a show with the volume off but the Closed Captioning turned on.

I had read a book that mentioned how almost all the children in one city in Europe were almost all fluent readers when they started school, because all their TV was in another language, with subtitles in their language. To watch TV, they either had to get very good at reading, or become very good at the other language.

I wouldn't say that this should ever be your only reading instruction - but that if your children are going to get to watch a TV show anyway, they may as well benefit that extra little bit.