Question for the teachers out there...

How do you start teaching them to read? Mine recognize their letters and they know the phonics/sounds of all the letters. They keep talking about wanting to read. Is it unrealistic to think I could teach them to read some 3 letter words or something like that? How would I start? Thanks

 

Melissa, at that age, appropriate "reading" is to look at picture books and tell the story that the picture is telling. Understanding the content of the pictures is much more important than reading words. The other thing is to simply read to them. They will pick up words as they see them often. The first words should be sight words anyway. The Leap Frog videos are also an engaging way of letting them see how to form words.

 

There's a really good game on starfall.com -- this one (Word Hunt): http://www.starfall.com/n/holiday/spring/play.htm?f -- that my girls are totally into right now. Check it out. I also like to sound out words with them -- they can totally get initial consonants and then I'll try to get them to figure out the next letters by overemphasizing the sounds. They like it anyway.

We also have the Leap Frog Word Whammer on the refrigerator and they like making a couple words they know like cat, dog, dad, mom...

That said, I totally agree with Sharon above.

 

QUOTE(melissao @ Mar 31 2008, 07:46 PM) [snapback]697845[/snapback]
How do you start teaching them to read? Mine recognize their letters and they know the phonics/sounds of all the letters. They keep talking about wanting to read. Is it unrealistic to think I could teach them to read some 3 letter words or something like that? How would I start? Thanks


Melissa,

Ours do also know their letters and sounds. I'm glad you aked the question, as I was also wondering the same thing.

 

My 3-year-old is currently learning to read. It's crazy, I know, and we've definitely had reservations about it. I feel like he should just be pretending to read or looking at pictures. It's just him, though. He is great at memorizing letters, and because of this, he's memorized sight words. By no means can he sit down and read anything. He's not as good at phonics, but the words he knows he can read anywhere.

At his preschool, they believe kids learn to read by first learning some sight words. This is best for the words that don't fit into our phonics rules (the, of, to, etc.). He is constantly asking what words are, and he usually knows them after that.

I say go for it if your kids are interested. This is certainly too young to be forcing something like this on them or doing drills with them or anything. But, if they want to read and ask a lot of questions, just let them take the lead. That's what we've done, and we've been blown away with the results.

 

I just want to elaborate a bit on my earlier post.

Comprehension is difficult to teach, whereas "word calling"--"reading" words is relatively easy. If kids have comprehension down, the rest will come. At 3 both my boys knew their letters and sounds. At 4, we discovered Jon could read when we overheard him reading Curious George to himself in bed. Marcus is learning to read in K. I have worked in schools enough to know not to try and teach them to read. I did not do any kind of flash cards, or other techniques to teach them to read--and both are above average in reading right now.

There is a program called Reading Recovery. It came from New Zealand, and is designed to help "normal" kids who are struggling work on reading. They did research by studying many, many young readers. What they found is that the children who used picture clues were much better readers than those who only keyed into the written word. And the entire program is designed to teach kids how to use picture clues to help them find words that they don't know. If a child doesn't learn to "read" the pictures first, it is difficult to teach them once they are "hooked" into trying to read the words on the page.

I hope this makes sense.

 

QUOTE(sharongl @ Mar 31 2008, 10:04 PM) [snapback]697953[/snapback]
Melissa, at that age, appropriate "reading" is to look at picture books and tell the story that the picture is telling. Understanding the content of the pictures is much more important than reading words. The other thing is to simply read to them. They will pick up words as they see them often. The first words should be sight words anyway. The Leap Frog videos are also an engaging way of letting them see how to form words.


Ditto this. When I was teaching kindergarten, we started out the first few months of reading "good" literature. I would read books over and over and over so that for the most part, the kids "knew" the story. Then they would practice telling the story from what they remembered by looking at the picture and in their own words retelling it. That is the beginning of "reading." Comprehension is essential. We had a basket of books on the tables and after the kids finished reading one of the read aloud books, they would choose from an array of books on all levels and just make up a story off the pictures. After a couple of months of this, we would then put very basic label type books. These are books that generally only have one or two words on the page that directly correspond to the picture. For example, there was a book called Lunch (from a Scholastic series of label books). Each page had a picture of one food item and under it, the label. An apple. A banana. A sandwhich. A cookie. Lunch! Label books are a great way to start actually reading words because they make the connection that a word represents the picture; that they are related. Then you can move on to label books and pattern books. For example, a book called Blocks goes. A red block. A blue block. A black block. A green block. A yellow block. And at the end there is a picture of a rocket ship that the kids build with the blocks and it says A rocket ship. Does this make any sense? I will see if I can find the series of label books for you that are great beginning books. In the meantime, during your reading time with your kids, let your kid choose a book that they really love (probably one you have read a million times) and say, "why don't you read ME the story." Let them start to practice reading to you and using story book language.

 

Thanks ladies! This is really helpful We read a lot and go to the library every week for storytime and to pick out new books. I LOVE to read and really want them to be interested in reading.

 

Hi Melissa,
My experience with teaching reading comes from a number of years of teaching elementary grades (K-2) and 4th grade. I think some children are ready earlier than others and if they are showing signs of reading readiness as yours seem to...then I would definitely recommend reading readiness activities. My girls showed an early interest in letter and sounds and one is reading simple words, spelling, and even started writing them. She surprised me one day with a paper with the words Jasmine, Tivana, mom, love and toy written on it. In my opinion their minds are like sponges now and everything is fun, so its a great window of opportunity to start the reading process.

I am sure you are doing some of these things already since they recognize their letters and sounds but here are a few activities we do.

1. Reading and going to the library are excellent starts as you are already doing. Modelling is an important part of learning.

2. As mentioned earlier in a couple posts, picture clues are a large part of reading comprehension. When we get a new book or one they haven't seen for a few days we "read the pictures." I let the girls tell me what's happening in the picture and make predictions about what will happen. Even if they know the story they enjoy retelling it.

3. Make their own books.
a. Print a few pictures out and glue them onto a sheet of paper with a simple label. Our first one was pictures of our family with a one word label of who they were underneath. They LOVE pictures of themselves. Holidays and trips to the zoo or aquarium make great books.
b. If they have started drawing pictures that are somewhat distinguishable we keep them and label the parts...like sun, grass, tree and put them in presentations sleeves in a binder. They each have their own binder.
c. Old magazines or toy catalogs; I let them pick 3-5 pictures and we practice gluing with a glue stick the pictures onto paper and label them.

4. As mentioned the Word Whammer is great and they came out with a set of lowercase letters. The letters are great because the magnets are fully enclosed which I feel make them safer and we have a standing easel with a magnetic dry erase board they use to stick letters on as well.

5. Alex bath letters has 2 sets of alphabet letters and numbers 0-9 which make it easier to make words on the wall! Baby Center carries it.

6. Jello has a set of alphabet cutters and the girls love to make jiggler letters.

Oh and don't throw out those old chewed on "baby" picture books yet....the ones with a simple picture and word underneath are great first picture dictionaries.

Anyway just throwing out a couple ideas...it's all play to them right now and mommy enjoys watching them get excited about "reading".

 

Sarah has expressed the same desire to read. To the point where she almost cries because she can't read and she wants to. I'm not a teacher, but I think that when a child is expressing a willingness and a desire to learn a new skill, we should try and harness that and go. She already knew her letter's and sounds. She has knows quite a few words by site.

What I've started doing that has helped her is our Michael's (the craft store) has a section of educational workbooks. I got her one that is for starting reading. It does things like asks the kids pick which picture should come next, or make up a story for the picture. The were some pages of repetitive sentences with the only word that changed filled in with a picture. The pages that seemed to have helped her the most just had dotted lines connecting things across and then another page was dotted lines going down. She had to use her finger to trace the lines from left to right (the direction we read) and up to down (like reading down a page). I noticed a huge jump in her understanding how words and reading worked from that activity.

Our storytime is also working on the Brown Bear, Brown Bear book for 3-4 months. They start every storytime with that book and the kids each have their own copy to follow along with. It's made a difference too.

I also have started a workbook with Timothy. We call it "Mommy School" and it gives the kids solid one-on-one mommy time every day for a few minutes while we do their pages. I made a point to give the kids different books based on what they wanted to learn. Timothy wanted to work on writing letters so he got a letter tracing book. Sarah wanted to read so she got the pre-reading book. I have noticed that Timothy will appear to not be paying any attention to what Sarah and I are doing, but a few hours later he'll tell me exactly we were doing.

Marissa

 

Marissa, you are doing the correct thing! All of those are pre-reading skills. The point that I was trying to make, is that there is much more to reading then putting sounds together to make words. Many people think that teaching kids to "word call" is reading, when it really isn't. What you are doing is the appropriate way to teach reading skills!

 

We have about 10 books that have no words. Most are traditional Mexican folk tails told with just illustrations. But I also have a couple that are imported from the US--one of those is called "The Snowman" and it like a comic book, with frames that tell the story. I use them with my students (College students learning English as a foriegn language). And my girls love them too. Daddy reads them in Spanish, mommy in English. After they turn 4 this summer I plan on buying them the Ball-Stick-Bird reading program I have this crazy idea that is totally unfounded, that I should teach them to read in English first before they learn to read in Spanish at school because the English sound system is more complicated.

 

Melissa, you have received some really good advice. Teaching reading is soooo much more than just putting sounds together to make words. As a kinder teacher, I manage somehow to teach 25+ kids to read each year, and there is not one magic bullet. It is a combination of many skills and strategies.

With my own kids, we do several things:

1) Read multiple times a day. Sometimes I read, and sometimes they "read" by telling the story that goes with the pictures.
2) Go to the library. Let them choose books that interest them. I usually front-load them with, "What kind of books do you want to get today?" So one day we may come home with 5 books on raccoons, and the other day we may come home with 5 princess books.
3) Interact with the text. There are two main types of comprehension -- literal and inferential. We talk about literal things ("Where did he go?" What did he find?"). But we focus a lot on the inferential ("Why did he do that?" "How come that happened?"); this requires them to "read between the lines" so to speak.
4) Focus on vocab. When there is a new word, share what it means. Find examples of it in other stories. (For example, Hannah asked what a "kingdom" was last night and even today she is walking up showing me pics of a kingdom.)
5) Predict -- as you are reading stories (even ones you have read a million times), ask what is going to happen next. If you can, see if they can tell you WHY they think that will happen next.

So those are the basic things we are doing and the comprehension pieces we are focusing on. Then there is the phonics portion of it. Most kids that learn to read phonetically have what is called "Phonemic Awareness." They can hear the isolated sounds in words, can identify beginning and ending sounds in words, can break the sounds apart (cat = /c/+/a/+/t/), and can put the sounds together (/c/+/a/+/t/= cat). Rhyming fits in there as well. So here a few things we do to help develop phonemic awareness:

1) Read lots of rhyming stories. Let the kids fill in the blanks (I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I ____.).
2) Play with the ABC letters in the tub.
3) We play a game in the car, /b//b/ ball and they have to tell me the letter at the beginning. B!!! and they LOVE that.

We are not doing a whole lot else with the phonemic awareness. I do not want to push it because we have lots of time still. And a lot of that is just developmental; they will be ready when they are ready.

I hope that helped a tad.

 

Both my boys knew letters by sight and sound at around 2. Now at 2 years 9 months, Ethan is reading some words without seeing a picture (horse, sheep, flamingo, moon, etc), can spell words out of the blue (not seeing them, but just asking how you spell cat, dog, pig, koala, his name and his brother's name, and a few others) and uses his letters to make words. He just loves to do it. He also does 48 piece puzzles by himself so I think his is more memory. Jackson is the one that picks up a book and "reads" it to me -- gets the gist of the story the pictures are telling but isn't reading the words.

I credit lots of reading, Leap Frog fridge phonics and the Leap Frog videos. My boys LOVE those videos.

Mendy

 

I thought of one more thing that has really given Timothy a push forward with reading. I found a series of books that involve a "Timothy" character. He knows how to read his name and he was absolutely shocked when he recognized his name in a book. I figured out that he really does have site recognition of several words but never thought he would see anything in a book he would know. Now that he has figured out he will know some of the words in a book, he has been more actively seeking to figure out reading. After I posted earlier today, he got "The Foot Book" from Dr. Seuss and was wanting help knowing what all the words were in the book and "read" it too me. Sarah has always looked at books and picked out what she knew. Timothy needed to see something he knew.

Marissa

 

I taught junior and senior kindergarten (ages 3-5) and we had several early readers. Some kids just have an early aptitude for reading. I say go for it if you children are interested. So long as you're not pushing and they're learning at their own pace and finding joy in the experience, early reading is a great thing.