<p>When my older two were very young the old McGuffy Reader series from the 1800’s had been reprinted, perhaps in response to the lack of phonics in many schools at the time. It worked well - of course I was a bored young mom at home with just the kids as my “work”.
At the same time the Jim Trelease Read Aloud books were big. At son’s first grade school the principal read aloud every day during the lunch period. The kids were quiet and captivated. All parents were pushed to read aloud and keep a record of minutes read. The school pushed and got a good response to a “TV Turn-off Week” for the whole family.
Who would have thought that the 80’s would seem quaint by today?</p>
<p>I liked the Read aloud suggestions as well.
Since I had a relatively “deprived” childhood- I was thrilled to find so many books I was not familiar with for D.
She did teach her self how to read- although she had some help, I used to get books that came with cassette tapes and she would read along with them- I loved that Fisher Price tape recorder- they just don’t make them like that anymore- it lasted forever.
She was very interested in books- and I was taking care of a baby who was still figuring out if she liked us or not & it helped to have D be able to entertain herself.</p>
<p>My younger D was also interested in stories- she liked the same ones over and over again. Which is why I again hunted down books on tape.
We heard * Really Rosie* for at least a year every night, and after that it was * The Giver* & * The Hobbit* for almost as long
.
( At least she had good taste- I still like Really Rosie & she didn’t fuss too much when I hid the Berenstain Bears)</p>
<p>*I am discontented. I want something I do not have. There must be more to life than having everything! *</p>
<p>I don’t remember learning to read at all.</p>
<p>D1 learned mid-year Kindergarten and seemed to be a normal smart-girl type of reader… but an astonishing writer from the very beginning.</p>
<p>S1 learned very quickly at age 4 sitting at the kitchen table with me. We used basic phonics rules to start: When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and all he can say is his name. and When you have vowel-consonant-e at the end, the e makes the vowel say its name and then the e can’t say anything else. We used to play games while in the car with blends, br, ch, str, sl, etc.</p>
<p>D2 could not read until she was 7. We were shocked after S’s easy acquisition of skills. I finally believed the theory that Reading is Developmental which I had scoffed at in the past.</p>
<p>Back to smart teens and adults who don’t like to read: I’ve heard about studies that claim the reading experience is very different for some people and they’ll never really like it. Hard to imagine, huh? But I do know some adults that are very intelligent with advanced degrees who find no enjoyment in reading a book.</p>
<p>I don’t recall learning to read but I have always been an enthusiastic reader. As a kid growing up, I would rather read than play with other kids. My mom had to literally kick me out of the house during summers.</p>
<p>I have three boys – all in their 20’s now – and read to them all the time. I never skimped on buying books or music tapes/DVDs for them. Two of the three have chosen to work in music-related fields. I also insisted that they be involved in sports from an early age since I am sure all three had borderline ADD/hyperactivity (and I wanted them to be good and tired evenings!).</p>
<p>One of the biggest challenges as a mom of three boys was finding appropriate
books to hold their interest. Many books are geared towards girls. Many of the books I found for them were about boys misbehaving or grossing out girls.
Now they frequently ask me for reading suggestions. </p>
<p>S1 was always a huge reader even in high school when inundated with school work and activities. As a youngster, after lights out time, he would take a flashlight and read under his covers. S2 & S3 were way more social and more into video games. They rarely read books on their own when in high school or during the summers. S2 graduated college a few years ago and now always is with a book to read. S3 is in college and I was shocked – but thrilled – to see him with a book during breaks and summer vacation.</p>
<p>How can I resist responding to this thread!!
Oh, so much to say!
First off, my H used to take our children, one by one when they turned 4, into the back room and teach them to read. he had a German-produced book, A is for Apple, that had a picture of one object and the object name below. He would point and say each letter. He did this for the first 3, then pooped out.
The 2 in the middle were totally ignored. They were never read to. Hence, they learned to read in school, I’m mortified to say. Those 2 were both in summer school (twice each). One recovered eventually, and got first a 22 on ACT in reading and a month later a 28 in reading.
I taught the last 2, seeing what had happened to the 2 in the middle. One using flashcards–I had to cover the floor with gorgeous picture books as she said ‘reading is boring’ and it took a month for her to fall in love with reading. Last one, I taped up words with pictures on the wall, and we would ‘read our wall’ at age 4, then I would read to him. We had fun, relaxed, he loved reading. Still does, Redwall series is the most fantastic series for boys around age 9 or so. It’s about 4th grade reading level.
Next comment, I will throw out that I learned from meeting 2 different women that you can teach a 18 month old to read. You hold up the card that says ‘ball’, say ball several times as baby looks at card, cheer when he says ball, and do it a few times for fun, and then 2-3 days later introduce mama, and cheer when he repeats as looks at card. She said by age 2 he could read 60 words, and amazed all her friends. Other woman said she taught her 18 month old to read, same way. Both women were teachers, one I knew personally well, my D’s English gifted teacher.
Next comment, the tv broke when my oldest was 5. I didn’t want it replaced, and my H was agreeable. It’s been 22 years, but I was able to get my children to all become readers (the 2 in the middle were so-so about it, the rest read like they breathed). I found that the 2 in the middle just had lower reading scores as compared to the others, even though they did read some at home, but it seems to me that if you read a lot really young that you get maximum benefit from it, that if you read more as a 5th grader, you don’t quite attain those high reading scores you may have had you started younger. Just my family experience.<br>
My kids read in the bathtub, on car trips, etc. They had no gameboys or tvs in cars to tempt them. I deliberately made it boring at home so they would read.<br>
Yes, I do think some kids are naturally oriented to reading, and others not, but you CAN change destiny. What I call ‘builder boys’, the ones who play with blocks and legos and building sets tend to be mathematical. Math types typically are not attracted to reading. I had one, but he had a determined mother. He wanted ‘new and true facts’ books, and I wanted him to read fiction. I gave him various books, but he really took to Encyclopedia Brown series. He read them all. They have the solutions on the back, after you guess ‘who done it’ in each 7-page mystery (there are 20 or so mysteries in each book). Then he moved to Alfred Hitchcock’s 3 Investigators series (he found Hardy Boys too scary–he was in second grade). Then he got interested in The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill (a wonderful book about the hand pushcarts and the 18 wheelers in NYC). Pure politics. By now he was getting into fiction big time. He read 20,000 Leagues under the Sea about this time. Hey, I found him reading his sister’s Babysitter Club books. I had a changed boy on my hands. I found that you MUST start young, like 1st grade, with math types if you are going to turn them on to fiction young. Otherwise, they will be perhaps like my sister, and turn to reading classics when they turn 40.
One more comment, I wonder if spaciness is just built in, i.e. not noticing things, details like when a club meeting is being held or missing other cues that others notice, you know, clerical details, because of too much reading. I was in 25 schools before graduating from high school, and I turned to reading young and read for years and years, hours and hours. I read Gone with the Wind in 3 days, that sort of thing. Sitting there with my stack of toast (15 pieces at a time) at the kitchen table, or sitting on a phone book perched on the radiator in cold months–aw, that was the life!! But I was so out of it, my mother used to chide me to “relate to my surroundings”. Now one of my kids, my most intent reader, is the same way. Maybe it is just us? Or has anyone else noticed this side-effect?
I have written enough for one post. If I think of another aspect, I will return and post again. This has been quite enjoyable!</p>
<p>I just finished student teaching and my cooperating teacher was an absolute dragon about phonics. We flashed those phoneme cards the entire time, practically from day one, in the kindergarten class. In reading groups, the teacher was relentless about using phonics to break down the word. She did say she was the most phonics-based of any of the other six K teachers at the school.<br>
I also watched several years back in a first grade classroom, and that teacher also flashed the phoneme cards starting on the first day. They sounded out as they wrote simple stories on the board.
Both teachers used the Spaulding letter cards, intended I think for spelling, but these teachers used them for teaching phonics.
So phonics is alive and well judging by my experience. And I will be flashcarding them myself when I get into the classroom.</p>
<p>Just scrolled up and saw another issue I want to respond to. My H’s family were not readers. I am certain that my H’s brother had trouble writing his term papers in college, specifically he could not transition between paragraphs (I was incredulous–how easy it appears to me!) because he didn’t have those daily excellent writing examples from books that he would have had if he had grown up reading. However, my son is a great reader and yet his writing is to the point and not very expansive. Could be because he is terse by nature and not long-winded, like his mother! Still, this compact way of communicating has repercussions on his writing assignments.</p>
<p>My first grade teacher never used flashcards. And I don’t use flashcards with my children. But they do know phonics (sound-symbol correspondences and “word attack” skills) cold.</p>
<p>When I was volunteering in our schools, they were using a multiple-strategy approach to reading. The idea, as I understand it, is that there are many ways to approach reading, and not all will be right for everyone, but one or more will be right for each individual.</p>
<p>So, phonics were taught extensively. Word recognition was taught. Context was taught. Recognizing “chunks” was taught. Others I can’t remember. The kids knew that they had several “strategies” in their arsenal when they encountered strange words. We would coach them through them. It was a great approach.</p>
<p>When I taught learning disabled kids, the school relied almost completely on phonics, to the detriment of many kids. Unfortunately, many of these kids were diagnosed with learning disabilities. The reading program was called Open Court and I knew the kids were really Open Court disabled. Kids that had any issues with auditory processing were frustrated and left behind. Quite often, the problems were maturational and they hit the little boys particularly hard. There is no right way or one way to teach reading. A integrative approach is needed and phonics should be one component, not the only component.</p>
<p>I don’t remember how I learned to read. During one of the first formal lessons, we were seated in a circle around the teacher and were supposed to be sounding out a word or two. I got in big trouble because I realized I could read the whole page and I just kept going, ignoring the teacher who was insisting–loudly and crabbily–that I stop. </p>
<p>We didn’t have children’s books lying around the house due to…uh, financial constraints, but once I figured out I could read, I asked my dad where we could get some books. He walked me and my siblings a couple of miles to the public library every single week after that. I have a permanent love of public libraries as a result.</p>
<p>My children have been great lovers of books and reading since a very young age. They continue to read for pleasure even with difficult academic schedules. I gave my son a Russian version of Harry Potter for Christmas, and I was worried he would think it was silly, but I was very pleased to see that he took it with him when he returned to college. (He is studying Russian for fun.) I gave my daughter, a 10th grader, the Spanish version.</p>
<p>I am a volunteer at our public library, sorting and boxing donated children’s books for fund-raising sales. I spend half the time sighing, as I come across favorites from my children’s younger years, when they would sit on my lap or curled up next to me as we read the books together. Yesterday I came across one of my son’s favorites, an obscure book from long ago that our library in another part of the country had in its collection, but that I never could find in book stores. Tomorrow I plan to dig back through the boxes and retrieve it so I can buy it for my son, who will think I am ridiculous and sentimental.</p>
<p>Since this thread was supposed to be about teaching reading, I will pass on an example of how NOT to teach reading. When my son was in 4th grade, some specialist decided to try out a new program that involved making the kids stop reading on every single page of their book and fill out a little sticky note with comments about plot development and predictions, blah blah. That program was torture for a kid who liked to read and almost turned him into a non-reader.</p>
<p>Love your post IrvingStone–however, I produced a child that not only loves to read, but also loved the building blocks, lego sets, etc. Your post about the different books brought back many fond memories of days gone by with only son. We now joke that since son has settled on engineering as his major, he will perhaps be one of the more literate engineers upon entering the workforce after graduation! (No offense to current engineers!) My suspicion for this major is that reading and writing have always come so naturally for him that engineering posed just more of a challenge-thus making his life more interesting? (And, by the way, this is a kid who took 5 years of Latin thru Jr hi and Hi School). Read, read, read is my mantra to everyone and esp those about to be and new parents!!!</p>
<p>PS–your thoughts about losing oneself in reading (missing the minor details around you) raises an interesting point. I have seen some of that in son thru the years, esp when it has been a great book that he loves!</p>
<p>My earliest memory of attempting to read was with my dad. My Scottish grandmother had sent the “'Ant and Bee” books from Britain so I could learn to read. The books were lovely, far more fun than Dick and Jane, and had pretty illustrations. But my dad had no patience, and his attempt to teach me to read was rather intimidating. I didn’t learn to read them much, though I wanted to. My mom, a teacher, encouraged phonics in all attempts, and though irritating, “sound it out”, her approach has stuck with me. Due to corporate moves, I was suddenly able to enter 1st grade at age 5, though had never gone to kindergarden. We continued to move each year, as I entered 2nd and 3rd grades as well. School was confusing, as I was always trying to catch up with math, writing and science skills I’d never been taught. But the reading took hold, and I was always put in high classes because I could read so well. Our house was filled with books, and my parents had, and still have an amazing amount of self study discipline. </p>
<p>Around 5th grade, due to massive school problems with my siblings, my frustrated mother was studying educational psychology. It was the days of John Holt and A.S. Neill. I remember picking up those books, and realizing that I could read and understand everything, if I took my time. So I schooled myself on the educational theories of the time, and started reading other non fiction as well. It was a rather solitary obsession, and still is, as I will read anything, and still tend to prefer non fiction. </p>
<p>I don’t always hold reading in such high esteem however, as I think printed matter can be an addictive substance for some of us, and best if approached with a sense of self control. In my family it may be genetic. In biography of a great uncle in the 1800s, the writer describes her mother being ‘overfond of books, and the house none too clean.’</p>
<p>Reading to my kids was one of the greatest joys of life. We still have boxes of some of our favorites. I was so sad when the days of picture books ended, and they just wanted to read for themselves. I do think there is a crucial time, 3rd to 4th grade, perhaps earlier for some, where reading needs to be ingrained as effortless pleasure. My son, against my protests, was given a Game Boy at this age, became addicted, and it was quite a bit later that he developed a love for pleasure reading. I was quite concerned for a time. I read to all of them extensively, and when my twins were very young babies and toddlers, happily sat through my reading books far over their level to the older brother. I remember them studying books intently at a very young age, and taught themselves to read in the summer after kindergarden. Though I suppose that is late, these days. </p>
<p>Lovely memories, how indulgent. Thanks.</p>
<p>I also have an engineering major son (actually computer science and math major headquartered in the engineering school), huge lego and building block fan, robot builder, the whole shebang, who was an avid reader from the git-go. He read loads of non-fiction, but also a lot of fiction, although most of it was science fiction and fantasy when young. He studied three foreign languages in high school, two of them dead and one a relatively obscure modern one, won a national writing award, and pulled down top scores on the reading and writing sections of standardized exams.</p>
<p>I don’t think he is all that rare among engineers. I know many engineering types are one-dimensional, but I think that stereotype is exaggerated. Many of the lego/block/robot focused friends of my son were also avid readers.</p>
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<p>That is very funny. And very often true. I think you are correct about the need for self-control. My 10th grader loves to read, would do nothing but read many evenings if not reminded that non-reading homework must be done, piano practiced, etc.</p>
<p>thanks for that post midmo–it’s funny, because all we heard about with regard to admissions (esp if considering engineering!) is how imp the math scores were. Likewise, son’s reading scores were higher than math scores. Don’t mean to hijack the thread!!</p>
<p>I also know an awful lot of engineer/scientist/computer types - including my son - who are huge readers, often, but not always including a lot of sci fi and fantasy. </p>
<p>My mother went and got her elem. ed. degree when I was in middle school - that’s when I read all her educational psychology books - John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, books about play therapy, I gobbled them all up!</p>
<p>Just wanted to mention my brother,whose undergrad degree was in chemical engineering, then got his masters in computer programming, also loves to read and always did. for anyone reading this thread who is seeking titles, my brother said that The Day of the Triffids was the best book he ever read as a teen. It’s a bit sci-fi, but really gripping, about carnivorous plants that can walk getting loose on Earth.</p>
<p>Mathmom, nice to know I wasn’t alone reading educational psychology. My mom was studying play therapy as well.</p>
<p>Mathson also had higher CR scores than math which has a wicked curve. You make one careless mistake on SAT1 math and bam! you’ve lost 30 points!</p>
<p>“Then he got interested in The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill (a wonderful book about the hand pushcarts and the 18 wheelers in NYC).”</p>
<p>I LOVE this book! If you’ve never read it, please do yourself an enormous favor and get it from the library, or Amazon, or whatever. It’s a kid-friendly but adult-enjoyable satire that gives insight into how history gets written, how wars might start, how politics “works”. Both my kids adored this and Merrill’s “The Toothpaste Millionaire” (how to be an entrepreneur). </p>
<p>Learning to read: my mom was a teacher who used a blend of phonics and whole language to teach reading. No surprise, she taught all of her children to read around age 4, and did the same with her grandchildren. Although I can’t remember the process when it was applied to me directly, I did see it in action with my youngest sibling, and with my own children. It’s always seemed magical to me, one of those transitional moments somewhat like learning to ride a bike or to swim, where once you’ve learned how, you can’t remember what it was like not being able to do X. </p>
<p>Although my siblings and I are all voracious readers, two of us were exceptionally fast readers. I’ve always figured there was some genetic mutation that both of the fast readers picked up.</p>