Learning to read.

[rivka]

I feel like Alex has been on the cusp of reading for so long. She's known all the letters and letter sounds for a long time. She's had a handful of sight words, mostly names, since she was two. There have been a number of times that Michael and I have wondered if she can read, because she's displayed unexpected knowledge of text.

I've more or less come to the conclusion that she can't. She has a good memory, as preliterate children often do; she memorizes books and can recite them back after surprisingly few readings. And she has a very good ability to guess a word based on the context and the initial letter. Those two things, combined, often seem like reading. But she doesn't seem to get phonics at all. When asked to sound out a simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word, she has a lot of trouble doing it - or even "saying the word fast" after we've helped her isolate the individual letter sounds.

I've often heard people say that reading is developmental; that it's not just a matter of collecting the right set of skills, but an actual process of cognitive maturation. And that does seem consistent with what we're seeing. Alex has the skills, but it's like the switch in her brain hasn't yet flipped to allow her to pull them together.

There's no hurry, obviously. Teaching reading seems hard, and I don't really want to do it - I've been hoping she'd learn on her own, the way Michael and I did. I let her play on Starfall sometimes when she asks for a computer game, and sometimes when she asks me what something says I'll encourage her to try sounding it out, but I don't feel any strong compulsion to propel her along the path to reading.

Except that lately she's been asking for reading lessons.

I've been writing CVC words on her Magnadoodle and asking her to sound them out. And she's been hitting a wall - not wanting to try, or guessing based on the first letter and getting sulky when encouraged to try again. I'll offer that the reading lesson can be over, and she doesn't want it to be. But the method hasn't been working.

Then yesterday she decided that she wanted to have some turns giving me a reading lesson. She was actually able to construct a few CVC words on her own for me to read, and it seemed much lower-stress for her than trying to decode my words. So I decided I was going about it all wrong.

Today when she wanted a reading lesson, I took the Magnadoodle and drew three pictures: a sun, a car, and a cup. "Pick one of these words, and let's see if you can write it." I gave her the option of having me write the letters or doing it herself, and she decided to do it herself.

In just a couple of minutes, the Magnadoodle read SON CAR CUP. No hesitation, no reluctance to try, no difficulty isolating the letter sounds. She went on to successfully write MAN and PIN in response to additional pictures before getting tired.

Looks like I've had the whole phonics thing backwards. I should've offered her writing lessons.

Comments

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

That's interesting about the writing lessons--I should try that. E. has sporadic interest in learning to read. We'll be in a bookstore and he'll volunteer, "Is that book about running?" because he sees the word "run." But he doesn't like structured attempts to teach him at all. If he could choose, he would certainly pick the unschooling approach to learning. And he would definitely like trying to teach me to read. One of my friends suggested that he would be a school proctor.