toddler reading

" wrote in
ups.com:


I got frustrated by the way she remembers how a word
"looks". I stopped teaching her to read. I just continued
reading books for her. She keeps asking me for "sounds
books" (her word for BOB books) and I feel bad for not
being able to teach her properly. She's obviously
intelligent. I just don't know how I can utilize her skill
properly. I appreciate any suggestions.

if she remembers how a word 'looks', even in a different
context (like on a sign or in a newspaper) & can tell you what
the word is, then she's reading.
not all kids learn through phonics. i was reading before i
even knew my alphabet. i knew that that combination of
squiggles meant that word, even though i couldn't tell you
letters or letter sounds, per se.
let her read through memorization if that's the way she
learns. i think the only "wrong" way to teach reading is to
make it boring.
if she seems to learn words by how they 'look', you could
label things around the house (my mom realized i was reading
at three when i asked how to say 'thermometer')
lee
--
Question with boldness even the existence of god; because if
there be
one, he must more approve the homage of reason than that of
blindfolded
fear. - Thomas Jefferson

In article . com,
says...

My DD (will be 4 in 2 months) loves books. Her memory is quite good. If
I read her a book twice, the third time she remembers the context,
words based on the picture on every page and "reads" to her sister. She
wants to learn how to read. She asked me point-blank to teach her to
read. I started to teach her letters, the sounds they make etc.

This is our problem: On day 1: I introduced her to the very first basic
level BOB book. I made her read the book. She loved it. The second day,
I asked her to re-read the book. For the most part, she just remembered
what's on each page based on the previous day's reading and repeated
it. She didn't actually read by looking at the word. She just read by
looking at the pictures. I tried to cover the pictures and she got
upset. This is just one example. I also wrote few common words on a
piece of paper and stuck it on the wall. I showed her what each of
those mean. The next day she read about 80% of them correctly just by
looking at how the word looks, not because of the letters in each word.
I hope I'm making sense. This was 6 months ago. Even now it's the same.


I got frustrated by the way she remembers how a word "looks". I stopped
teaching her to read. I just continued reading books for her. She keeps
asking me for "sounds books" (her word for BOB books) and I feel bad
for not being able to teach her properly. She's obviously intelligent.
I just don't know how I can utilize her skill properly. I appreciate
any suggestions.

It does sound like she's learning by the "whole word" concept, and that's fine.
I'd go with that and do what you're doing (reading, showing her common words).
She's probably just asking for more of that.

It's a matter of learning style. When she gets to school, she'll most probably
be presented with a combination of "whole word" and "phonics" anyway, with the
intent that some kids will pick up the material by one way; some by the other.

It may even be better that she makes progress now. My son was confused in the
first two grades largely by the dual presentation. He was very concrete-minded
at that time, and wanted to know what was "right". Understanding that he could
(and *how* to) mentally discard what wasn't working for him was farther beyond
him than just learning to read by a consistent method.

But to make progress now you need to understand that her learning style is very
apparent, is a well recognized learning style, and is not "wrong".

You might *try* a gentle presentation of some phonics as a supplement. But if
she's getting her learning excitement from associating the words with their
meanings, you really don't want to do anything to thwart that.

Cheers,
Banty (stong phonics learner)

Banty wrote:

If she's receptive to a (gentle, unrushed) presentation of reading in a
phonetics framework, there's no reason not to proceed.

Or, she may be more receptive to a "whole word" framework, associating the word
arrangements with objects.

Either way, it may actually give her a chance to learn before becoming
confusified by current public school practices.

I think that in general, kids who are pushing to
learn to read before kindergarten are kids whom you can
generally trust to find the path that works for them.
That's why I would suggest simply enabling what she
is trying to do herself, rather than imposing a particular
strategy. If she needs a strategy imposed in order to
learn to read, she'll get that soon enough (and without
mucking with the pleasure of parent and child reading
together). Right now, she's got a strategy and it seems
to be working for her, so I don't see a reason to try
to "break" her of her current approach and substitute
a different one instead. Let her run with it and see
where it gets her.
Also, I don't know that school approaches are
necessarily confusing. Neither of my kids, bright as
they are, were interested in learning to read before they
went to school. Both learned quickly and easily at
school and didn't find it confusing at all. They learned
to sound out some works and read others by sight and
didn't have any problem with the concept that different
strategies might be appropriate for different words
(not to mention different kids).
I'm sure that there are some kids and teachers
for whom the learning to read process is a struggle, for
various reasons. I just wouldn't borrow trouble. I
think the kid who is ready and willing to read before
school generally doesn't need much except for everyone
else to get out of her way (and perhaps support her
efforts). The kid who isn't ready and willing will
likely learn just fine when she gets to school age.
The parent who pushes (either by trying to get a kid
to read before he or she is ready and willing, or
by forcing a particular method on a kid who is
ready and willing) just asks for trouble, I think.
By the by, I was not saying that sight reading
was appropriate because she was young. Reading via
that method can be appropriate for different people at
different ages. I was saying that because she is young,
the risk of following her lead and allowing her to do
what feels natural and successful to her is very low.
If it works, great. If it doesn't, she has plenty of
time to learn another strategy. She has the luxury of
time, so why fuss over it?

Best wishes,
Ericka

HCN wrote:
All you do at the toddler stage is to read to your child. Nothing else.

There's nothing wrong with teaching a toddler to read AS LONG AS he or
she wants to, and you aren't pushing them before they are ready. In
other words, follow *their* lead.

At age 4, we started playing word games with my daughter, to support
the sound/letter that they were studying at pre-school. So if it was
"A" week, we'd list as many A words as we could. It was like a game -
we'd be sitting at the dinner table, thinking up as many words as
possible. It wasn't long before my daughter caught on, and was coming
up with her own A-words. It was fun, and you should have seen her
sparkly eyes when she came up with one on her own.

She also has one of those Leapfrog toys - it's a set of refridgerator
magnets - one for each letter of the alphabet, and a base unit (also
magnetic) with a speaker on it. You put the A magnet into it, and push
a button, and it says the name of the letter, and what sounds it makes.

Cathy Weeks

Cathy Weeks wrote:

She also has one of those Leapfrog toys - it's a set of refridgerator
magnets - one for each letter of the alphabet, and a base unit (also
magnetic) with a speaker on it. You put the A magnet into it, and push
a button, and it says the name of the letter, and what sounds it makes.

I dislike them (not necessarily on principle--just
find them annoying), but my daughter has this toy and
enjoys it too--which I found shocking, since my boys
hated those sorts of toys. I don't know if it's actually
helpful to her or not, but she likes it and plays with it
a lot.

Best wishes,
Ericka

wrote:
This isn't a problem, it's a natural stage of reading. Let her figure
out the words in whatever way makes sense to her. If you refuse to
teach her until she can do it "right" you'll take away her pleasure in
reading.

Bizby

OP here. Thanks for your reply.
I'm only concerned that I'm not teaching her right. She knows sounds
yet she doesn't use them.

Sounds very much like my daughter. She has (and has always had) an
excellent memory. While she wasn't an extremely early reader (she
started really reading the summer before kindergarten, so she was 5
1/2) she had built up a good sized stock of sight words long before
that. (I remember her looking over my shoulder one day ... she was
probably 3-ish, and pointing to a word and saying "That says 'People'"
-- and she was correct. Phonics was, however, always a mystery to her.
We'd be reading together and I'd point to an easy word (one that she
already knew similar words to) and ask her to try and sound it out. So
the conversation might go:

"What's this word?"
[Random guess]
"What does c-a-t spell?" (She knew 'cat' by sight.)
"Cat."
"Spell this word?"
"B-A-T."
"And what sound does "b" make?"
"Buh"
"So, cat with a buh sound at the beginning is?"
"Baby?"

And so on ... she struggled with phonics through much of grade school,
but ALWAYS read several years above grade level. (She's now in 9th
grade, grasps phonics, and reads several years above grade level, ..
and is an appalling bad speller.)

Naomi

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , HCN says...


wrote in message
roups.com...
I'm not sure I understand the problem? It sounds
like you are insisting that she learn via phonics, and she's
picking things up by sight. Why can't she? Eventually she'll
learn to sound out words when it's useful to her. Why can't
she learn things the way she wants now? It's not like you're
somehow damaging her because you're allowing her to learn some
sight words at four years old. Some kids are very successful
with this reading strategy for quite some time. Follow her
lead and answer her questions. She'll be fine.

Best wishes,
Ericka

OP here. Thanks for your reply.
I know there are lot of resources and info on how to teach using
phonics method. But how do you really teach by sight/recognition
method? Just by repetition and rhyming?
I appreciate any suggestions, links and books.


All you do at the toddler stage is to read to your child. Nothing else.

It could be the Bob books (which my kids hated), or the Dr. Seuss books,
the
Berenstain Bears books, or any book at all. It also helps if it is a book
they are interested in. My severely learning disabled child loved "Thomas
the Tank Engine", so we had lots of those.

Try planning lots of trips to the library.



Gosh - there's a lot of preformed opinion here.

Only read, she's too young.

I'm sorry... What did I say that was wrong?


That she's young means that sight/recognition would be appropriate (even
though
there's no hard feelings regarding "phonics nazi's")

Why would either of these be true?

Where did I say my severely learning disabled child was a "she"?

Well, I gave up trying to force learning in my toddler when he could not
even do something as simple as "talk".

For the other two children I took a far more relaxed approach and just read
to them. What is also useful (idea from oldest child's speech therapist)
was to get wordless books and to have the child describe what they see on
the page. It helps if what is happening on the page was outlandish (like
frogs flying on lily pads).


I was in kindergarten, one that taught reading, a year early, when I was
four.
The reason why was that by time I was three I was asking my mother about
what
the *letters* sounded like and was pulling down encyclopedias and figuring
out
the roman numerals on the index pages. Written language in the western
world is
based on the representation of phonemes, and I knew that full well by
looking at
it. C'mon - LOOK at it.

IMO, the recent strong push for phonetics is a reaction to the earlier
hype (and
its unfortunately wide dispersal in the curriculum of primary grades) of
the
"whole word" concept. Call it reactionary, maybe, but not "nazi". Now,
at
least it's been replaced, but unfortunately rather confusingly replaced by
a
mixed curriculum purporting to teach by learning style, but perplexing
many by
presenting both to all kids.

If she's receptive to a (gentle, unrushed) presentation of reading in a
phonetics framework, there's no reason not to proceed.

Or, she may be more receptive to a "whole word" framework, associating the
word
arrangements with objects.

Either way, it may actually give her a chance to learn before becoming
confusified by current public school practices.


Ooooh... is this post meant for the OP and not me? Could you be more
careful with the replies please?


Banty

wrote in message
ups.com...

This isn't a problem, it's a natural stage of reading. Let her figure
out the words in whatever way makes sense to her. If you refuse to
teach her until she can do it "right" you'll take away her pleasure in
reading.

Bizby

OP here. Thanks for your reply.
I'm only concerned that I'm not teaching her right. She knows sounds
yet she doesn't use them.


Completely normal. In fact, fluent readers use more than just phonics to
read. We use background knowledge, context, picture cues, etc all to
construct meaning. Reading is the *construction of meaning* not just putting
sounds together.

Also, she's not even four yet. She'll get it. She's halfway there.

JennP.

Cathy Weeks wrote:
She also has one of those Leapfrog toys - it's a set of refridgerator
magnets - one for each letter of the alphabet, and a base unit (also
magnetic) with a speaker on it. You put the A magnet into it, and push
a button, and it says the name of the letter, and what sounds it makes.


We have that as well. My only caveat is to make sure the letters say the
correct letter and the correct sound. We got one batch where the letter
name was correct but the sound was NOT (e.g., Letter B makes the sound
"K"). Having one child with reading/spelling issues, I certainly didn't
want to train the younger child to have them!

Jeanne

And so on ... she struggled with phonics through much of grade school,
but ALWAYS read several years above grade level. (She's now in 9th
grade, grasps phonics, and reads several years above grade level, ..
and is an appalling bad speller.)

have you had her evaluated for dyslexia? it would be an atypical
presentation of it, but it sounds very like me, I don't have such a detailed
overview of my own learning to read pattern, but I know I always read well,
yet was bad at spelling, it never really presented any difficulties at
school, or at least none that weren't easily overcome and though my parents
wondered about it, never had me evaluated, but in early adult life it was a
big problem, I was moving on academically and taking notes in a different
way, one that all of a sudden was hard for me, doing stuff like writing a
cheque whilst not challenging in itself, was then disheartening to have a
high percentage returned to me for correcting an obvious error, that despite
checking I had not noticed. A couple of my university teachers asked me if
I'd been evaluated, said that they really thought I must be, but though it
would have been easy at that stage to get it done, I never did, but with
some of the stuff I've seen online, I'd say I'm 99% certain I have something
in that spectrum of disorders, my parents have said they didn't have me
tested, because they didn't think a label was helpful (and I can see at
times there are children for whom that is the case), but I suspect, the
right help from the right person could have taught me some skills that would
have helped that I ended up learning on the fly, but I might not have been
able to do that had I not been so bright. At 15, I was just a kid who had
trouble spelling and often got the report "must check her work", when I did,
I just didn't see the mistakes and 18/19 the underlying cause of that was
making it very very difficult to study, I didn't need classic concessions
such as extra time in exams, I needed stuff like help in taking notes and
because I couldn't take notes and follow a lecture, I'd end up with a poor
set of notes that couldn't take the place of having actually followed the
lecture, but if I'd just sat and followed the lecture I'd not have had the
notes to refer too, stuck between a rock and a hard place, I was too proud
to take the easy offer of evaluation at that stage, so even if you feel it's
no help now, do watch her in the next few years, the troubles I had could
have so easily been helped, if you have the label, at least in the UK, there
is funding available to get some help.

Cheers

Anne