How Did YOU Learn to READ?
As a young child, just beginning first grade, I was FRUSTRATED! I could NOT READ! I wanted to read but I just could not figure out HOW. Even though the teacher stood up front with a large flip chart about Dick and Jane, I could NOT figure out what she was trying to teach us.
My parents were expected, of course, to help.
My Dad, the ever-patient man, kept telling me to “Sound it out”.
I didn’t have a clue what he meant. Even he was becoming frustrated and finally gave up.
It wasn’t until I was in fifth grade that I finally LOVED reading books just for fun. I had finally learned to read and could enjoy it!
What Had Been Wrong?
Apparently the early grades of my school years were using a ‘new’ way to teach reading — by recognizing the words and to memorize each word. We were NOT taught to sound out the letters for each word.
Thus, when my Dad told me to ‘sound it out’, it was like he was speaking a foreign language.
Do YOU remember what method was used to teach YOU?
Google states plainly what the problem was. I wish I could have READ this when I was young:
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) reviewed decades of research about reading and reading instruction to determine the most effective teaching methods.
The panel found that the BEST approach to teaching most children to read should include: PHONETIC AWARENESS — the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
PHONICS — involves matching the sounds of spoken English with individual letters or groups of letters. For example, the sound k can be spelled as c, k, ck or ch. Teaching children to blend the sounds of letters together helps them decode unfamiliar or unknown words by sounding them out.
Did YOUR teacher use the phonics method to teach YOU?
FLUENCY — would be the ability to speak or write a language easily and accurately.
How long was it before. YOU became fluid in the English language — to speak it and read it? Then write it?
VOCABULARY — increases as reading becomes more proficient. Of course, the parents talking with a child from birth also increases the words used in a particular language.
Is YOUR vocabulary continuing to increase even now?
COMPREHENSION — is the ability to understand what we are reading. Sometimes we may need to read and re-read a complicated sentence, but even as adults, we are continuing to learn and understand!
One of the best pieces of advice we can give ourselves or others is to READ, READ, READ. Children thrive as their loved ones read TO them.
For us as adults and readers, Medium is a GREAT place to practice reading — we may even find new words we need to sound out, look up to find its true meaning and use in a piece we may be writing.
The findings also stated that “Instruction should also be systematic (well-planned and consistent) and clear.” These findings on reading instruction are still relevant today.
In summary, the child should be taught to pair sounds with letters and blend them together to master the skill of decoding.
No wonder I could NOT learn to read easily and that I had no idea HOW to sound out a word. I was being taught to memorize a word and, to a young developing mind, memorizing is not easy nor sustainable.
Another method of (failed, in my opinion) reading instruction is to show the child a picture and ask them to figure out what the words say that describe it. I don’t know that even adults could figure that out correctly.
ABC Song
Yes, it is beneficial to sing the ABC song to young children but the parent can go farther than that to give a child a head start on reading.
Make a game of sounding out the letters, one at a time. Once that basic is learned, then it’s possible to combine letters into words, successfully teaching a child to read at a very young age.
It is not the goal, however, to just raise an early reader. We want to instill in each child a love for books and an enjoyment of language.
It is my belief that a child is ‘homeschooled’ from birth onward whether they attend school or not. My young daughter and I would, weekly, visit the library or bookmobile to choose books for the week which we could read over and over until the next week.
Yes, the ABC song was sung but, also added, were the sounds of the letters. Before we knew it, we could put the sounds together. C A T sounded out to be CAT!
Thus, as parents or grandparents, we can help decrease the frustration in our children as they learn to read and go out into the world successfully. Our children, across all major subjects at school, will have success because they can READ!
We, too, will have success as we read and learn that the world is full of information and ideas that we never thought about before.
Happy reading!
Dawn Ulmer is the author of ‘365 Devotionals for Anxious Women’.
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