Here are the instructions that the school sends home with the books the school expects me to read with my son. Note the lack of any encouragement at all for us parents to help our kids sound out words.
Encourage your child to ....
Before Reading:
- look at and talk about the pictures
- look at and talk about the title and cover of the book
During Reading:
- point to words while reading
- encourage correction of errors (i.e. look at first letter clues, ask "Does that make sense?")
- praise independent correction of errors
After Reading:
- count letters in a word, count words on a page
- point to words that begin with a certain letter
- tell words that are the same on every page
-using a similar pattern, tell a new page that could do with this book
Remember to ...
- Keep it short (3-5 minutes)
- Have fun! Make reading an enjoyable, quality time with your child!
This is classic whole-language hogwash. They don't mention the one thing that you should be doing with your child (sounding the word out letter for letter), and they introduce bad ideas.
ReplyDeleteLook at the pictures first? Terrible. It only encourages the child to assume she knows the story already and then fake her way through the book.
What's with "count the letters in the word"? Is this their idea of "integrating the curriculum"? It's a terrible idea because it will only confuse the child. We don't read by counting the letters in a word, or the words on a page. It's irrelevant.
Absolutely crazy-making.
I discussed similar advice from my daughter's school in these posts:
Comprehension Strategies
Word Attack Strategies
Sorry about the delay in posting your comment. Somehow I missed this one. I really do appreciate your input.
DeleteI absolutely agree to with your comment.
The "after reading" ones had the most impact on me. How is counting letters in a word, or words on a page, meant to be beneficial? What matters more is what those words are and how the author has put them together. The other tip that annoyed me most was "using a similar pattern, tell a new page that could do with this book." They could very well mean "writing style" but considering that it's Kindergarten, I'm assuming that they literally do mean "pattern." If a book has text that follows a really predictable pattern and kids develop a "reading is boring" attitude, we should not be surprised. Predictable patterns are good for learning to read in foreign languages, but native speakers should be able to read something at a higher level.
ReplyDeleteThanks Hienuri. The predictability removes, IMHO, a child's focus from looking at the words and the parts that make them up and encourages guessing. Btw, I really don't bother with those instructions. They really, truly are ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteRemember to keep it short (3 - 5 minutes!)
ReplyDeleteReally? If you did their suggested activities, out of 5 minutes, how much time would be left for the kid to actually read the book? 30 seconds? What?
FedUpMom, that's a good point on the time. I don't think they really want the kids to truly read the book at all. I think many of those activities go towards the "illusion" of reading the book.
ReplyDeleteThese are all PRE-READING skills to introduce children to reading. Yes, it is an illusion of reading. Getting kids to see that when we speak, we are speaking words. The squiggles we see on a page are letters. The letters make up words. The squiggles on a page (letters) make up the words that we speak. Etc.
ReplyDeleteI think that students count letters in a word to understand the difference between a letter and a word- a skill students need for writing: understanding when to put spaces in between words. It is also good for students to understand the concepts of print: we read from left to right, when we get to the end of a line, we go down one line and all the way to the left (return sweep). Again, these are pre-reading skills.
A good teacher should build on these skills and introduce phonics as well. When you get to a tricky word, you can sound it out, peek at the picture, skip over it and come back to figure out what makes sense. But also cross check- you have to sound it out and make sure it makes sense. Use phonics and comprehension skills simultaneously. The more phonics rules a student knows, the more easily a student can sound those tricky words out. It's their toolbox of strategies. The more familiar a student is with a wide vocabulary, the more those words will make sense.
For phonics instruction / word study, I teach my kindergartners (in a HIGH POVERTY SCHOOL) the alphabet with short vowels first, then the H brothers (th, sh, ch, wh), then a review of CVC words (cat, set, dog, etc), then common word families (if you know cat, then you know the words fat, mat, that, etc.), then blends (gr, fr, cl, pl, tr, etc.) and students can sound out words like trap, plan, etc. (Oh, I also teach sight words- in, the, and, is, sister, brother, green, blue, eight, because, etc.) Students can figure out the word grand because they know "gr" and "and".) It's the last few weeks of kindergarten now and we are doing long vowels and super silent e!
I guess here's my point: one does not have to be strictly a whole language or phonics teacher. My students have a whole toolbox full of strategies to sound words out as they read. However, I also have students that can read, read, read and struggle understanding anything they read! Reading isn't just sounding words out.
A balanced literacy approach- I read a book aloud (any book- fiction, non-fiction); shared reading (we read predictive text that they memorize but can point and "read" and learn sight words), guided reading (students read books at their own level).
When I read reviews of the whole language approach, such as this one- "So if the word is "skip" and the picture shows a jump rope, the child might decode the word as "jump." To a Whole Language teacher, that would be acceptable." http://showandtellforparents.com/wfdata/frame158-1014/pressrel81.asp
Ah! Disagree. Obviously the student is just looking at the picture and not sounding the word out. A reading record would show the types of errors a student is making and what skills the teacher needs to work on with that student during guided reading. (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.readinga-z.com/newfiles/levels/runrecord/runrec.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.readinga-z.com/guided/runrecord.html&h=728&w=564&sz=34&tbnid=np5BENZ3Tv1GBM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=70&zoom=1&docid=8rtqWTju18B2zM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dnK4T-q-L4mY8gSWmPXPCg&sqi=2&ved=0CGkQ9QEwAQ&dur=634)
Check out these resources-
http://www.amazon.com/Words-Their-Way-Vocabulary-Instruction/dp/013223968X
http://www.amazon.com/Continuum-Literacy-Learning-Grades-Edition/dp/032502880X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337488111&sr=1-1