Read It Again

My last post was about the limitations of sounding out words in the English language. A great example occurred tonight in the class I teach. A dad was trying to help his daughter sound out and spell the word "sign." She was doing a great job! Then they got to the silent G. Dad said something to the effect of, "Then there's a G. It doesn't really make sense." Totally!

Another strategy for dealing with unknown words that works well is the "read it again" strategy. We can all agree that fluency is very important to reading for understanding. If a child is struggling to sound out the words, they are probably not reading fluently. This takes away valuable context cues that might be helpful in figuring out any unfamiliar words. Backing up and starting a sentence over to read it more fluently can help the reader make more sense of the sentence and possibly predict the word.

Case in point: My sweet daughter made a birthday card the other day. Big brother helped her spell out "Happy Birthday" while I was writing a message in a Hallmark card. When she was finished, she wanted to know what MY card said. My budding reader read the words "happy birthday" without hesitation. She had just written (memorized) these words! Then came the inside of the card. Sounding out IN and THE were much more difficult. These words aren't in her sight word vocabulary yet. Or maybe they are now after we reread that sentence about ten times to see if she could figure out the next word. She wasn't in the mood to try very hard, but she does have the word LOVE solidly in her sight word vocabulary along with the names of all the people in her family. (I've noticed that her literacy skills have developed more readily when they involve people and relationships. What are your child's interests?)

"Does that make sense?" is a great question to ask when prompting your child to read a sentence again. We have enjoyed a lot of giggles over misreadings (my own and my child's). There is nothing funnier to a kid ages 4-8 than word play. During my first year teaching kindergarten, my proudest moment was the first time I made my class laugh. It was the most ridiculous thing! We were making up a song to remember the word BROWN. It had a similar tune to Polly Wolly Doodle. "B-R-O-W-N Oh, brown is the color of a bear. B-R-O-W-N Oh, brown is the color of.... it's hair!" Now tell me that's not hilarious ;)