Finding information

Why do you read? Reading has many purposes. We often have opportunities to model for our children reading for pleasure and for information. It is wonderful to see our children start to pick up books for fun. It is all the more exciting when they pick up books to find information.

There are innumerable ways we rely on reading for information. Looking up a new bug or finding a favorite recipe are examples. In our testing this week, there was a section about using resources like an atlas, dictionary, or index to search for desired information. Thankfully our family enjoys hunting for information, so this was a fairly easy section. As a side note, there was sure a lot of reading in the test, even in the math section.

My five-year-old confirmed again today that we start practicing information gathering skills from an early age at our house. She was doing an activity in her princess magazine. It was a list of four true and false questions. She brought it to me completed, proudly telling me she got all the answers right! I was in awe! The sentences were complicated and, while she has been surprising me with her rapidly growing reading proficiency, I couldn't believe she had actually read them! Then she confessed, "I didn't read them. I just circled random answers and then checked in the back. And I got them all right!" Way to use your resources, girl!

Pattern and prediction

For those very beginning readers, books with patterns are great! I was reading the Mercer Mayer classic, "Just Go To Bed" with my five-year-old this afternoon. I really pushed her reading skills today. Two things that we relied on heavily during our reading was pattern and prediction. On each new page we first studied the illustrations. Looking to see what was happening in the pictures gave us a great head start to figuring out the words. Another big help was the repetition in the book. We would look back to find where we had read a word before to help us. (She has been known to do this on her own. We've been playing Draw Something, a smartphone app which is like Pictionary, and she went to find her Click magazine to find how to spell "nose" because she remembered she could find it there! How resourceful!) Between these two strategies and  her base knowledge of phonics, she did great and was very proud.

Another fun strategy that I used when she started to get frustrated was using humor and word play. At one point the character dressed as a "bunny." When sounding out "bunny," I suggested funny things. I don't hesitate to use bathroom humor, so "butt" is not off limits :) That lightened the mood and gave her a spurt of energy to try reading a little longer. When we focus on prediction and making sense of what we are reading, we reinforce reading for understanding. Isn't that the ultimate goal?

(Note: I actually have a post from YESTERDAY, too! :) Go me!)

Measuring progress

Testing season is coming! I have a confession to make. I love testing! I love taking tests, giving tests, and getting results. The concrete measurements fulfill something in me. To get a rank and measure of progress can not only be reassuring, but it can be useful! And if a test involves filling in those bubbles, that's an extra special kind of fun.

As a parent and teacher, I've been known to give a sight word vocabulary test using the SORT (which they trained us to use in college) every six months when my child's reading was really exploding. Using that test I would get a grade level year and month for my child's vocabulary (ex. 3.1 equals third grade, first month). I like to be able to look at a book, find out the level, and be able to get a good idea if it will be easy or hard for my child to read. Independent books should be at or slightly below level, instructional books should be slightly above level so as not to be overly frustrating but provide a challenge, and read-aloud books should generally be above level. To find out the reading level of a book, the Accelerated Reader program has leveled many books, but there are other measurement systems out there and many easy readers at your library will have the reading level printed on the back of the book.

Now that my son is a proficient reader, he often amazes me at what he can read. Sometimes I begin reading a book aloud and he can't wait for me to continue so he reads on his own. I will call up a book quiz on Book Adventure.com to find out that he can pass the comprehension test with no problem. There are other sources of book quizzes. The Magic Tree House website has comprehension quizzes available for the books in that series. Please comment if you know of others. Like I said, I love tests! They help me to be able to know for sure if my child understood what he read when he is reading on his own.

My five-year-old also surprises me with the words that she can read as I help her decode an Easter card or preschool morning message. This week at school she had to answer, "Do you want the snow to be gone?" "Yes, no, or maybe." That test question was an easy one. The answer was an emphatic "yes!"

Make reading relevant

Conversations in our house often circle back to literature. It takes no extra time to bring books into our daily life. Connecting books to real life is a very powerful learning tool, and it is also just plain fun! Here are a few examples:

We often have "mice and beans" for dinner. Whenever I serve rice and beans, our beloved friend Skippyjon Jones comes up in conversation. He also gets brought up frequently in our house because we have a chihuahua who thinks he's a siamese cat. If you don't know Skippyjon, brush up on your Spanish accentito, head to your neighborhood biblioteca, and get ready for some imaginative adventure.

Sometimes it's fun to bring food into your literature. Not long ago we got some delicious animal crackers and dunked them in melted chocolate (mud) to go along with the story of Mrs. Wishy Washy - a fabulous, fun story for early readers. My daughter loved it as a baby because it is action packed. If you remember in an earlier post, she's a mover. Bringing that book back and adding some snacks gives it a whole new life.

Some books have recipes built into them, so it takes no extra creativity on your part. Just read the book and make the recipe!  One that comes to mind is Thunder Cake by Patricia Polocco. We loved making Thunder Cake in kindergarten! Or you could get multiculture with Bee-bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park. A story full of rhythm, rhyme and Korean cuisine as the family prepares a meal together. Recipes are always great for practicing reading (and writing - you have to make your shopping list). Tying in great literature can add that much more.

Fun! That's the name of the game. Be creative with your child's favorite book. Look for openings to reference a book you have read together. Take the time to make that recipe in the back of the book. Make reading relevant.

Comprehension strategies

I hear so many great things about Pinterest, but haven't joined. I just got on to look at what's out there today and found this cute video to demonstrate comprehension strategies of monitor, clarify and reread. I decided to share it here. As parents, we have the luxury of being able to work one-on-one with our children, enjoying a good book together. This gives us the opportunity to be detectives. What areas does your child need to improve? Do they need more sight words in their vocabulary? Are there certain sound combinations that are giving them trouble? Are they struggling with fluency? Without fluency it is difficult to hold concepts in memory and achieve comprehension or understanding. Reading programs can be helpful, especially in classrooms when you have many children to teach and can't sit down individually as much as you would like. But they cannot replace one-on-one time reading and enjoying books. This is also why classroom teachers utilize guided reading or small group reading so they can focus on each child, hear them read at their own reading level, and intervene exactly where they need help most in the moment. Maybe these comprehension strategies are what your child needs most. If not, there's always Pinterest :)

Updated to add: I should have used these strategies myself today. If it sounds too good to be true (monitor), it probably is. I should have clarified and carefully reread that recipe a little sooner to realize that my meat needed to cook for 50 minutes PER POUND, not just 50 minutes. Looks like it's tuna for dinner tonight. On the the plus side, dinner is figured out for tomorrow night, which never happens because I am obviously not much of a planner.

Testing... testing

We recently completed the Peabody test, our standardized test requirement for homeschool. Something that really struck me this time in light of this blog was that Spelling was entirely separate from Reading on this test. Thinking back, this also is true of other tests we have used. Spelling is such a fascinating sport. I call it a sport because I really enjoy the Scripps National Spelling Bee and got a real kick out of the documentary Spellbound. It is interesting to me how these master spellers study the history and origin of words in the English language and how this history is reflected in phoneme patterns. These teenagers have spent countless hours of intense study on words. Then a few days ago a fellow homeschooling mom posted a link to this video on Facebook. It went along with my train of thought perfectly!

But back to the Peabody, the two Reading sections on the test are Vocabulary and Comprehension. Understanding of phonics is definitely important for the vocabulary section. If reading were a three-legged table, phonics and phonemic awareness are two very important legs of the table. But they cannot hold up the table alone. I watched my son take the Peabody for the second year in a row. For the second year in a row, he blew me away on the vocabulary section. And it isn't his score that blows me away. It is his process that fascinates me. It goes something like this: look at the word, sound out the syllables, think if they are close to any words in his vocabulary. Often the words on the test are difficult to sound out. The only way a child would know the word is if it is already a word they have heard. This is the same in reading.

I attended a wonderful conference where I had a great discussion with a reading tutor who has been teaching reading for about 1,000 years (I don't know her true age, but I'm fairly certain that she would agree with me based on our short discussion ;)) She applies a similar philosophy to the one used by foreign language learning programs and that is "hear it, speak it, write it, read it." Children need to hear a word before they can say a word and they need to be able to say the word before they can read it. I would put the writing part last, especially with young children in their native language.

Good reading skills definitely help with writing and spelling. I'm sure we've all spelled a word on paper and looked at it to see if it "looks right." Even spelling bee champs do this mentally. Reading comprehension also involves creating a mental picture of what you are reading, especially in the Peabody test. Just as picture books help youngsters with comprehension, creating mental pictures helps increase comprehension. It was interesting to watch my son analyze the pictures in the Peabody test to see which one matched the section he had just read. I could tell which vocabulary words got him hung up by which of the four pictures he chose. I could also tell when he struggled to hold his mental picture in his head and when looking at the pictures.

Testing is a fascinating process. It doesn't tell all, but it tells an awful lot. And not necessarily about the subjects it is testing. It may tell more about a child's attention to detail and attention span than about their spelling skills. It may ask about things they haven't covered well or things that are especially easy for them. As a parent, I get more value out of the process than the final result. Which is the same reason I enjoy reading. The process IS the final result: enjoying a book and learning what it has to teach you. If it helps improve test scores, that's just a bonus.

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 ;)

That Darn English Language

Have you been singing the ABC song since your baby could sing? Have you been looking for letters, pointing them out and naming them? How about practicing the sounds they make? Wonderful! This is beginning phonics! Maybe you've even been sounding out simple words: ME, CAT, DOG, MOM, DAD. Great! You can then look for those simple words in books and have your child read them. You can even find many books that are written almost solely with simple words that your child can sound out. (Often these books are terribly boring and make no sense, so beware!) These are very important reading skills. Your child may then begin learning combination sounds like TH, CH, SH, OO, and the silent E. Amazing! There is so much to learn!

Then come even more complicated rules and all the exceptions to those rules. Gee whiz! Could we have a more complicated language? English is one of the more difficult languages to learn because of its complexity and the sheer number of words that have variations in meaning, are spelled the same but pronounced differently, or sound the same but are spelled differently. I know you know all of these things because you are reading this right now. And you don't need to think about any of those rules, do you? That is because you are a fluent reader. You have been speaking and reading English long enough that you no longer need the rules. Your brain focuses mainly on the beginning and ending sounds and context clues when reading.

But back to our young readers... how do we help them with the craziness of the English language? I cannot recommend the "sound it out" approach. Yes, it can work. It is obviously helpful to know the general rules and sounds that letters make. But this strategy for figuring out unfamiliar words quickly becomes very frustrating for the child and for the parent or teacher! It is usually more effective to memorize some of the most common sight words (remember those books they memorized from infancy). Then when the child comes to a word they don't know, have the child guess, based on the beginning and/or ending sound of the word and, most importantly, the context of what they are reading. This means they have to be thinking about what they are reading and gaining meaning from the words, not simply decoding sounds. And gaining meaning is the entire goal of reading!

This is also why I advocate turn taking while reading. Remember round robin reading as a child when you went around the classroom taking turns reading a sentence or paragraph? Maybe you were the slow reader and hated reading aloud or maybe you were the fluent reader and wanted to read the entire thing so you didn't have to wait for the slower readers. Whichever child you identify with, the idea behind this approach is that the more fluent readers will model for the others. They will keep the flow of the text moving and hopefully everyone is listening and gaining meaning. The slower readers still get practice reading aloud without the frustration of having to read the entire text. Parents can take turns reading with their child to gain the same effect in a more safe, comforting environment.

There are huge benefits to continuing to read more challenging material aloud to your child for many years to come. In college, I loved when our Children's Literature teacher would sit us all on the floor and read wonderful picture books to us. I remember the tears in my eyes as I listened to her read books like "The Dead Bird" and "Pink and Say." Aside from sheer enjoyment, listening expands a child's vocabulary as they hear unfamiliar words. When they encounter these words in their own reading, they will be prepared for them. Audio books can be a nice tool if you do not feel comfortable or confident reading aloud. You can also take advantage of story time at your local library or bookstore.

Heading to your library or bookstore can double as an outing that will bring up topics for conversation. Talking with your child is just as important to reading success as reading aloud. The reason reading to children is so powerful is that books tend to use new words that we don't encounter in everyday situations. So in that vein, you can help your child's reading success by bringing different vocabulary words into conversation or imaginary play. Explore the world, get into new situations, visit unique places: museums, fairs, fire stations, the post office... exposing your child to new terminology and giving them hands-on context for these unfamiliar words. Have them tell someone about their experiences to reinforce their learning. Later, when they are reading to themselves, they will know those words based on their beginning and ending sounds and the context in which they appear.