Teaching a 5 yo to read

Pre-kindergarten taught my 5yo son the alphabet and a limited set
of phonic skills (he learned the 'i' sound in pig but not in pike,
for example). As he's already pretty decent with the alphabet, I
saw no harm in taking reading a step further.

I'm a strict engineer type. Is that "left brain"? I'm not the
strongest English student. I was hoping someone with a stronger
academic background in linguistics could offer some advice. The
thing I'm most interested in is teaching good habits and avoiding
bad habits that might stick with him through life.

I'd appreciate any book recommendations that offer a concise
*approachable* how-to on the subject.

Otherwise, the next couple of paragraphs address specific issues
I'm having with my son's reading.

Phonics -
I can't really see much merit in phonics. While it addresses some
oddball sounds like "ch" in choose, it confusingly adds the
possibility of "ch" in chimera. It seems to me most children
deal with the concrete memorization of words better than a
group of sometimes accurate but very abstract rules.

Is there a good method to explain the vowel differences between "steak"
and "speak?" Memorization appears to be the only possibility. So I was
just going to skip the phonics and shoot for exposure. Noun/verb
agreement is taught in the same intuitive method and later explained
to middle school students who already understand the rule from pure
experience.

I can't see avoiding some of phonics. The "ght" in fright needs
to be learned as a rule, as does the "ph" in phone. I was just
going to tackle this on a case by case basis as we ran across the
words. I was going to demonstrate the sounds with word lists:
"fright, light, might, height, bright, etc."

Any worries with this approach?

Syllables -
He's already reading simple words. But multisyllable words are throwing
him a bit. I was thinking of introducing him to the entire metered
speaking concepts (I learned that a syllables could be counted each
time my chin went down for example). I was thinking I could teach
him to recognize and read by syllable.

Is it too early to introduce this idea?

Thank you for reading.

In article , Jim wrote:


Pre-kindergarten taught my 5yo son the alphabet and a limited set
of phonic skills (he learned the 'i' sound in pig but not in pike,
for example). As he's already pretty decent with the alphabet, I
saw no harm in taking reading a step further.

I'm a strict engineer type. Is that "left brain"? I'm not the
strongest English student. I was hoping someone with a stronger
academic background in linguistics could offer some advice. The
thing I'm most interested in is teaching good habits and avoiding
bad habits that might stick with him through life.

I'd appreciate any book recommendations that offer a concise
*approachable* how-to on the subject.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann,
Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner offers a very structured and well-designed
approach to teaching a young child to read. You will probably want
to "fast forward" through some of the early lessons since your son
already knows many of the letter sounds. Don't skip them because
the program builds in a very structured way, but we did two a day
(breaking the "rules") at first. I have no financial interest in
this book; I am a parent who used it with success when one of my kids
asked me to teach him to read (age 4.5).

Phonics -
I can't really see much merit in phonics.

The book I recommended does start with phonics, but also develops sight
vocabulary -- I think it's quite a good balance. The child that I
taught with this book has no problems dealing with the irregularities
of English phonics now. Most kids nees some "phonics", IMO (though
one of mine uses it very little).


Syllables -
He's already reading simple words. But multisyllable words are throwing
him a bit.

I usually cover all of the word except the first syllable, then revealing
it a bit at a time. This seems to help most early readers, IME.

Good luck,
--Robyn

Hi --

The most important thing I've learned after teaching two kids to read is
that it's very important that the kids enjoy the reading experience. We
played a lot of games (ie hide and seek for letters or words on a page),
and did a lot of shared reading.

By shared reading, I mean that we started out with me reading a
sentence, and the child reading just one easy word. Later the child
would read several easy words, or find the sight words. As we
progressed, the child would read one sentence and I'd finish the page.
Eventually we were alternating paragraphs, and then, overnight it
seemed, my assistance was no longer needed.

I also worked hard to find fun to read books, which isn't always easy!
When the kids weren't really reading at all yet I could choose any book
and let them read their sight words. And when they could actually read,
we just swept through various easy series, such as the Magic Tree House
and Jigsaw Jones (2nd Grade Detective). In between, though, it was very
difficult to find books that the kids were *able* to read, but which
they didn't find deadly dull.

Our reading process began at eages 3 and 4.5 (respectively). THe 3-year
old became a fluent reader at age 6, the 4.5 year old read fluently just
before his 7th birthday. Both now read avidly, and I've had to remove
books from their bedrooms to get them out of the house in the morning!

A wise friend told me, some years ago, that it doesn't matter when they
*start* reading. What matters is when they stop. Ie, they should enjoy
reading (whether it's the newspaper, the cereal box, nonfiction or
novels), be comfortable learning by reading, and continue learning to
read at deeper and deeper levels. Her (very successful) kids weren't
fluent readers until around 2nd grade.

That said ... some kids find phonics easy, some do better with whole
word recognition, and most need a mix of both reading strategies. Also
consider "word chunks", ie "ight" is a chunk that says "ite". Then you
find words that use that chunk. It's kind of like phonics, but a bit
more sophisticated.

I hope this ramble through reading helps,
--Beth Kevles

http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html -- a page for the milk-allergic
Disclaimer: Nothing in this message should be construed as medical
advice. Please consult with your own medical practicioner.

NOTE: No email is read at my MIT address. Use the AOL one if you would
like me to reply.

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:20:52 +0000 (UTC), Jim
wrote:
Phonics -
I can't really see much merit in phonics. While it addresses some
oddball sounds like "ch" in choose, it confusingly adds the
possibility of "ch" in chimera. It seems to me most children
deal with the concrete memorization of words better than a
group of sometimes accurate but very abstract rules.

I learned to read using phonics, and have used it to teach my children
to read.
The way I remember it growing up, at the end of each phonics lesson
was a list of exceptions to the rule we were just taught. (so your
"chimera" would be an exception to the "ch" rule, and "steak" an
exception to the "ea" rule) This was very successful to me, and to my
own children. They are above grade level in their reading, as was I.
Phonics doesn't just address the oddball sounds, it covers all
combinations of consonants and vowels.
It is also very fun to teach phonics )
Marie

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:20:52 +0000 (UTC), Jim
wrote:

Pre-kindergarten taught my 5yo son the alphabet and a limited set
of phonic skills (he learned the 'i' sound in pig but not in pike,
for example). As he's already pretty decent with the alphabet, I
saw no harm in taking reading a step further.

I'm a strict engineer type. Is that "left brain"? I'm not the
strongest English student. I was hoping someone with a stronger
academic background in linguistics could offer some advice. The
thing I'm most interested in is teaching good habits and avoiding
bad habits that might stick with him through life.

I'm not sure what bad habits you want to avoid here.
The way to being a good reader after you learn the
basics is to read a lot and to read *anything* not just
good literature though exposure to good literature is
also helpful.

Skipping phonics is not the way to go.

Researchers estimate that fully 95 percent of all children can be
taught to read if the following teaching strategies are employed:

* Systematic and explicit instruction in phonics, decoding,
comprehension and literature appreciation.
* Daily exposure to a variety of texts, both fiction and
nonfiction, as well as incentives for children to read independently
and with others.
* Vocabulary instruction that emphasizes the relationships among
words and among word structure, origin and meaning.
* Instruction in comprehension that includes predicting outcomes,
summarizing, clarifying, questioning and visualizing.
* Frequent opportunities to write.

Note he

The best way to help children who are ready is to promote
writing. If they can't write themselves yet, have them tell you
a story and write it down for them so they can *read* it back
to you. When you write for them, sit so that they are standing
or sitting looking over your shoulder as you write so that your
child sees you writing correctly as he would write.

When you read a story to him, point to the words left to
right. Talk about the words and what he sees. What letter
does the word start with? What letter does it end with?
What letters are in the middle? Don't do this on every
page though and maybe only with alphabet books or
books without too much in the way of a story. For good
story books, emphasize comprehension. Ask him to predict
what might happen next. Ask him to tell the story in his own
words, perhaps. Only do what is fun for both of you though.
Read predictable stories with repeated text he can repeat
on each page. Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you See
by Bill Martin Jr. is one example of predictable text.
Also read the traditional Nursery Rhymes and poems
that rhyme. And sing songs that rhyme. I use several that
kids can add silly rhymes to. Down by the Bay is one
(did you ever see a llama wearing pjamas, did you ever
see a mouse kissing a house, etc. and they make up
there own rhymes). For letter sounds, K-k-katie can be
used with different kids names. More rhyming Willaby
wallaby woo, an elephant sat on you... Willaby, wallaby
we, an elephant sat on me. Use names and change the
first letter of willaby, wallaby to the first letter of the names.
Lots of other songs help too.

For phonics, you can get lots of dvds or computer games
if he likes those. My 2 and 1/2 year old granddaughter knows
all the sounds of the letters and can put some simple words
together just from watching Leap Frog videos and dvds.
Reader Rabbit has some good programs with games that
teach phonics and reading too.

Good luck. DO NOT push past where your son is having fun
though.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Robyn Kozierok wrote:
In article , Jim wrote:


Pre-kindergarten taught my 5yo son the alphabet and a limited set
of phonic skills (he learned the 'i' sound in pig but not in pike,
for example). As he's already pretty decent with the alphabet, I
saw no harm in taking reading a step further.

I'm a strict engineer type. Is that "left brain"? I'm not the
strongest English student. I was hoping someone with a stronger
academic background in linguistics could offer some advice. The
thing I'm most interested in is teaching good habits and avoiding
bad habits that might stick with him through life.

I'd appreciate any book recommendations that offer a concise
*approachable* how-to on the subject.


Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann,
Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner offers a very structured and well-designed
approach to teaching a young child to read. You will probably want
to "fast forward" through some of the early lessons since your son
already knows many of the letter sounds. Don't skip them because
the program builds in a very structured way, but we did two a day
(breaking the "rules") at first. I have no financial interest in
this book; I am a parent who used it with success when one of my kids
asked me to teach him to read (age 4.5).

I second this recommendation - this is a great book. From what you
describe, I would give this book and method a try, sounds like a good match.

cara

care ) writes:
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann,
Phyllis Haddox, Elaine Bruner offers a very structured and well-designed
approach to teaching a young child to read. You will probably want
to "fast forward" through some of the early lessons since your son
already knows many of the letter sounds. Don't skip them because
the program builds in a very structured way, but we did two a day
(breaking the "rules") at first. I have no financial interest in
this book; I am a parent who used it with success when one of my kids
asked me to teach him to read (age 4.5).

I second this recommendation - this is a great book. From what you
describe, I would give this book and method a try, sounds like a good match.

cara

I third it. It's an excellent book. You might decide for
whatever reason not to use that particular program with your
child, but reading the book carefully and thoughtfully
yourself can show you important principles about how
people learn to read. The book takes children in
a very methodical, step-by-step process through the
stages of learning to read. If you skip a step, many
children will figure it out for themselves and be just
fine, but some will develop bad habits and run into
difficulties. Note the statistic stated in the introduction.
It says something like that they used the method on a
thousand children and not one had problems with dyslexia.
I believe that.

Another good book, somewhat less unconventional, is
"Teach Your Child to Read in 60 Days".

Don't underestimate the importance of phonics!
I'm convinced it's important to focus on phonics
when teaching a child to read. If you use some
other method, the child may still pick up phonics
on their own and be fine, but they might not.
If you use a combined approach, phonics plus
word memorization, the child may pick up enough
phonics and be fine, but you run the risk that
the child will depend more on the word memorization
and not focus on phonics enough, and will
run into problems.

Based on the experience of a small number of people
I've heard of personally (not a statistically valid
sample), it seems that those who were taught to
read using phonics enjoy reading as adults, while
those who were taught word memorization are able
to read perfectly well but don't enjoy it and
don't tend to read as adults. This makes sense to
me. If you've learned using phonics, reading is
easy and fun, like listening to music. The words
seem to jump out of the page at you. But if
you've learned using word memorization, reading is
more work -- more like struggling to remember each
note of a song you know just well enough to be
able to sing.

People who read Chinese characters have to memorize
each character. There's some help in the pictorial
nature of the characters: a line might represent
the roof of a house and there's some explanation of
why that concept is remotely connected to the
meaning of the word. But mostly it's memorization.
It's difficult. Reading remains a mental effort
even after years of being good at it, and one
always occasionally runs across unfamiliar or less
familiar words and has difficulty with them.

It's possible for some children to learn to read
an alphabetic language such as English in the
same way: not taking advantage of the fact
that it uses an alphabet, but just memorizing
each word. When that happens, reading as an
adult remains hard work, just as it does for
Chinese, and one continues to have difficulty
with unfamiliar or less familiar words.

That's a bit of an exaggeration: I think
everyone uses at least a bit of phonics.
But I'm convinced that it happens and is
a real problem. The more you focus on
phonics and not word memorization, the
more you avoid the danger of the child
depending too much on memorization and
not getting good at phonics.

Every time the child memorizes a word, the
child loses the opportunity to learn phonics
by using that word as practice. That can be
OK because there are lots of words and the
child may get enough practice using other
words. On the other hand, some children do
not get enough practice. They read by
memorizing each word, and when they come to
a new word they use phonics slowly and
laboriously, just once, to "decode" the
word, then they memorize it so they never
have to go through that work again, and
read that word from memory from then on.
That's a bit of an exaggeration but it happens.
They don't read using phonics: they read
using memorization and only use phonics
occasionally to slowly "decode" words, so
they never get enough practice in phonics
to have the pleasure of actually reading, at
a reasonable speed, using phonics.

Someone who is able to read using phonics
can easily and smoothly read a word they've
never seen in print before. Someone who
relies on word memorization and never developed
the skill to read using phonics can't do that.

See my web page for some suggestions on how
to use phonics, and a phonics game:
http://www.ncf.ca/~an588/par_home.html

Here's an explanation of why a focus on phonics
is important.

First of all, by learning to use about 100 phonics
rules, a person can become able to pretty well read
all the words in the English language. OK, there
are many exception words -- that's why I said
"pretty well read", not "actually read". "Steak"
might be read as "steek". But that's not far off,
and once one reads the sound "steek", one can probably
guess the word easily from context and from the
fact that there's no such word as "steek" -- just
as one automatically does when listening to someone
who has an accent or who is mumbling and one misses
a few of the sounds, etc. If one sees "of" and
reads it as "off", using phonics rules, it will
almost always be easy to tell from the context of the
sentence what word it actually is.

Once you're good at about 100 phonics rules, there's
still some more memorization to do, but it's a
minimal amount compared to the huge work of
memorizing every word in the language without
the help of phonics.

When a child is first beginning to learn to read,
at first word memorization seems just as good
as phonics, maybe better. Comparing two children,
the one using word memorization may actually
be able to read faster and more easily than the
one using phonics, up to about the time the
child has learned about 100 words. Meanwhile
the other child has learned about 100 phonics rules.
From then on, it's downhill all the way for
the phonics child: just learning a few
easy-to-learn exceptions and getting better and
better at using the phonics rules quickly and
automatically. But the child using word
memorization has to keep working and working
and working, even as an adult coming across
long technical terms.

In real life I suppose everybody uses a combination
of both phonics and word memorization, but some
depend more on the phonics and some more on the
memorization, and I believe it makes a big difference.

Here's an explanation of why phonics is more
efficient as a method of reading.

Nerve pathways in the brain are like tracks in
the snow. The more a pathway is used, the more
the snow is trampled flat (or the axons grow)
and the more the pathway becomes easy to use.

Suppose you have a group of houses close together --
those represent the letters on a page -- and across
a wide park covered in deep snow you have another
group of houses close together, representing the
sounds and meanings of words. People will follow
each other's tracks and paths in the snow will
develop. One way to do it is for each person
to walk straight to their destination. That way
they only benefit from the tracks left by people
proceeding from the house they left to the
same destination house or back. If that pair of houses
isn't used often, they'll be struggling through the
snow a lot.

A more efficient way is for all the tracks from one
group of housese to join together at a node not
far from the houses, so that everyone follows a
diagonal path to the node. A single well-trampled
path then goes to a node near the other group of
houses and spreads out to the individual houses.

Now consider a person going from source house S3
to destination house D7. Suppose no-one has ever
gone from S3 to D7 before. If the straight-line
system is used, the person will follow a new path
and will struggle through deep snow. But if the
node system is used, the person will not have to
cover any new ground. At first, they follow an
already-trampled path from S3 to the first node;
this path was perhaps already trampled by people
going from S3 to D2, S3 to D9 etc. Then they
follow a very well-trampled path from the first
node to the second node, and then another already-trampled
path from the second node to D7.

This is not an exact analogy, but I hope
you get the idea. Maybe you can help me figure
out how to configure the houses so the trampled-snow
analogy is more geometrically similar to the
pathways-in-the-brain analogy.

We already know how to talk and listen, so
we already know how to translate a sequence
of sounds into meaningful words. That step
is an already-trampled path. For the phonics
reader, if a word is in their listening vocabulary,
it's pretty well automatically already in their
reading vocabulary even if they've never seen
it in print. This applies especially, IMO, to
the sorts of long technical words with Greek and
Latin roots one is likely to encounter as
new words as an adult -- they tend to be readable
by phonics rules IMO.

The straight line from one house to another represents
the work of memorizing that a certain sequence of
letters represents a certain word. For words used
often, there may be a well-trampled path straight from
one house to the other. But many words are used less
often, and some are seen very rarely. To maintain the
memory of those words is hard work -- one is straining
to remember while one is reading. Many, many pathways
need to be trampled and maintained in the word
memorization method.

But with the phonics method, you only need about
100 well-trampled pathways, plus the skills in how
to join sounds together smoothly. Each phonics rule
is used many times in reading a book, so you never
worry about forgetting them once you've passed a
certain level of reading skill. You're using each
rule frequently. You're also using the same
pathways in the brain that you use when listening
to someone and getting meaning out of a sequence of
sounds. It's far more efficient.

The way the pathways in the snow are chosen by
the first few walkers has far-reaching effects on
the long-term patterns and efficiency. Similarly
with the brain -- the way you begin to learn a
new topic has far-reaching effects.

By phonics rules I mean things like this:

When you see "a", you say "aa" (the sound in "cat").
When you see "a" closely followed by another vowel you say ay.
When you see "s" you say "sss".
When you see "sh" you say "sh"., etc.

The child should not learn to recite the above sentences,
but should learn to say the sounds immediately on seeing
the letter or group of letters. At first the child may
pause a second or two before making the sound, but
with practice they will be able to do it quickly.

I think it's better to have the child practice
reading a lot of simple 3-letter words such as:
cat pet hop fan pin, etc. (not ask, the, try etc.)
until the child can do this reasonably easily and
fairly quickly and well for all such words, before moving on to
more complex words.

"Hop on Pop" and "Go Dog Go" are great books for
beginning readers, easier than all the other
beginning reader books I've seen.
--
Cathy
A *much* better world is possible.

On 23 Apr 2005 13:10:00 GMT, (Catherine
Woodgold) wrote:

Based on the experience of a small number of people
I've heard of personally (not a statistically valid
sample), it seems that those who were taught to
read using phonics enjoy reading as adults, while
those who were taught word memorization are able
to read perfectly well but don't enjoy it and
don't tend to read as adults.

This depends on the child. Phonics is usually a good thing,
but it doesn't work for every child. Anecdotal, but my ds
hates to read and he was taught using phonics. He still
reads very slowly as an adult and reads only for work related
things, not for pleasure.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 23 Apr 2005 13:10:00 GMT, (Catherine
Woodgold) wrote:
"Hop on Pop" and "Go Dog Go" are great books for
beginning readers, easier than all the other
beginning reader books I've seen.

Dr. Seuss books were the first things my daughters read by themselves.
I have to say I agree with what you've said here. I can zip off any
medical term or ingredient, no matter how long it is, because of
phonics.
Marie

toto wrote:

On 23 Apr 2005 13:10:00 GMT, (Catherine
Woodgold) wrote:

Based on the experience of a small number of people
I've heard of personally (not a statistically valid
sample), it seems that those who were taught to
read using phonics enjoy reading as adults, while
those who were taught word memorization are able
to read perfectly well but don't enjoy it and
don't tend to read as adults.

This depends on the child. Phonics is usually a good thing,
but it doesn't work for every child. Anecdotal, but my ds
hates to read and he was taught using phonics. He still
reads very slowly as an adult and reads only for work related
things, not for pleasure.

Ditto - I was not taught phonics and when I taught my sister and since
I was only in 1st grade at the time, I didn't teach her phonics
either, and we are both voracious readers.

Whether adults enjoy reading is related more to the kind of people
they are and their lifestyle than to how they were taught. It is like
that commercial where the lady says "Did they call you on your cell
phone, or on the landline phone?"

grandma Rosalie