Reading Lessons...Rewarded

Almost two years ago, I started beginning reading lessons with Bo.  He had been eager to learn to read, asking every few days from the time he was about 4 and 1/2.  I held him off from reading until 5 and 1/2 by making an alphabet book and working on phonemic awareness activities with him.

We began our reading instruction in September of 2009.  It was a learning experience for me as well.  I am a former Kindergarten teacher in the public school system and I decided to teach Bo using Charlotte Mason's suggestions in Home Education rather than the way I was accustomed to teaching reading.

 Tommy is to learn to read today-

"I like little pussy,

Her coat is so warm-"

and he is to know those nine words so well that he will be able to read them wherever they may occur henceforth and forevermore.

We write in good.big print hand 'Pussy'.  Tommy watches with interest:  he knows the letters and probably says them as we write.

Interest at once;he knows the thing, pussy, and the written symbol is pleasant to his eyes because it is associated with and existing idea in his mind.
He is told to look at the word until he is sure he would know it again.
Then he makes 'pussy' again from his own loose letters.
Then the little bag containing our two bags is turned out and he finds the word...lastly,
the little sheet with the poem printed on it is shown to him and he finds 'pussy'
Coat, little, like, is, her, warm ,I, so are taught in the same way.
He knows words now, but he cannot yet read sentences.  Now for the delight of reading.
Tommy uses the loose words cards to make sentences and then the poem is revealed to him.
His next reading lesson consists of making word faimilies with the words from the poem.

-Home Education, pages 217-219

The biggest difference I noticed in the methods was the very large reading vocabulary the Charlotte Mason way provided early on.  The stories I chose to begin reading instruction with were rich and interesting, not like the decodable readers I was most familiar with.

Miss Mason sums up the difference best...

Today he is to be launched into the very middle of reading, without any 'steps' at all, because reading is neither an art or a science, and has, probably, no beginning.

We began with the Treadwell Primer from Mainlesson.  We mixed those stories up with some science readers I had on hand from my time as a teacher.  I also purchased McGuffey's First Reader for some structured practice.

He flew through McGuffey's and we moved to some more  easy readers that I had purchased at the thrift...Frog and Toad...Little Bear...etc.

 He recently finished reading Christian Liberty Nature Reader.  I tried to preview each reading and pre-teach any words I thought he would have trouble with.  I ended up reviewing any difficult words after the reading.

Our reward after almost two years of reading instruction...this common sight...

Beginning Reading Instruction Part 2

After our inital lesson at learning the words from the first page of, The Little Red Hen by sight, we worked on the word families associated with the words for a couple of days.

We learned the -ed, -eed, -en, -eat, and -ound word families. The initial lessons took a couple of days. We spent about three more days in review. We made our own books using the new words, we made lots of new sentences with the word cards and we did word work on the wipe board. (I would write the word and Bo would change the first letter to make the new word I read.)

We have since learned the words from the second and third pages of the story and he is getting much better at blending the word families.

At first he was guessing when he came to a word he did not know. I asked him to look for anything familiar in the word. He would find the part he new and add the new sounds. After instructing him a couple of time he doesn't seem to guess as much.

I am proud of his progress and he is so excited to be on the road to reading.

Holli

Beginning Reading Instruction

After spending four weeks on phonemic awareness type activities (rhyming, syllables, counting sounds in words, beginning/ending sounds) I began reading instruction with Bo last week.


Bo's background was fairly strong in letter and sound recognition. He had picked this information up effortlessly during reading and asking me what certain letters were. We did make an alphabet book earlier this year when he was really asking to do some school work. This was my effort at holding him off a little longer on any formal instruction.


So, after feeling he had pre-reading skills in place we jumped into reading as outlined in Home Education on pages 217-222. This was a new concept for me because of my background in education. I was used to teaching one or two sight words per week along with one word family.


Teaching the way CM recommends in Home Education gives the child a much larger reading vocabulary after the first week of instruction.


In a nutshell, I taught reading by sight the first day, using the first page of The Little Red Hen. The next day we worked with word families with some of the words we had learned.


Here is our first reading lesson in pictures:

Here I introduced the new word. He was studying the word so he could make a picture of the word in his mind.

The next step was for Bo to remember the word from the picture he had in his mind and use the letter tiles to spell the word. (the picture is of the word red, I forgot to take one with the)


After spelling the word with the letter tiles, Bo looked through the word cards and found the word.



The last step was to look through the page of words and locate the word in the story.

I was very pleased with Bo's progress. There are a few considerations I need to make for next time.

*The lesson was too long. We learned eleven words the first day. I considered stopping halfway through, but he was very eager to read the page when we were finished so I continued. He was so very proud at the end of the lesson. He was able to read the first page of the story.

*I might consider omitting either finding the word from the word cards or finding it in the story. It seems a bit repetitive.

*This story was new to Bo, he had not heard it before.

coming soon...

our word family lesson

Holli