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Category: Elementary

  • Making the Jump: From Learning to Read to Reading to Learn

    By Lauren Bailes, Aim Academy English Teacher

    Lauren BailesI don’t remember quite when it happened. At one point, I was reading phonics books about dogs, boys, hats, and bats. Making meaning from even these simple words was laborious. There was just so much for my mind to hang on to — the long and short vowels, what characters were doing and saying, when certain letters were silent or pronounced. I vividly remember sitting on my mom’s lap in the living room as she read A Cricket in Times Square aloud. I followed along as best as I could but the words were complex and beyond my ken. Even more overwhelmingly, these complex words wove themselves into an even more complex story. My mom’s voice was the only thing that kept the story alive because, independently, I couldn’t have put those moving pieces together in a way that made sense.

     

    Then, after a few more chapters of Cricket and a few more phonics books (anyone remember Mr. G-H?), those same moving pieces started operating on their own. Words I had previously struggled to assemble became recognizable on sight. Stories and information came to the fore as the work of reading became as natural as breathing or walking. Books became magic instead of work. Characters could now do so much more than jog or swing; they could ambulate, deceive, wonder, and vindicate.

     

    We all love that moment when readers take off. Seemingly overnight, they go from sounding out words syllable by syllable to taking in whole chapters and whole stories in one gulp. They emerge from the library arms full of chapter books or their favorite series. Or – get ready – they start making their own selections on your Amazon Prime account…

     

    This is a gratifying time for homeschool parents and for their blooming readers. But is there anything we can do to help this process along? There certainly is.

     

    Parents help young readers jump from learning to read to reading to learn by providing two opportunities: volume and choice. Lay a solid foundation by providing  your kids with vast and interesting choices of what to read – from narrative nonfiction to how-to books, from classic fairy tales to short stories bursting with vignettes of puzzling characters and everything in between. In this broad array of reading material is an important point for your readers to grasp: the knowledge adults share in common can be found in print. And reading is the key to access those mysteries. Secondly, kids need time to read every day: at least an hour of uninterrupted, unstructured leisure time when reading is what everyone in your family makes it a priority to do.

    Now that my homeschool days are a distant memory, it is the long and luxurious time I spent with my nose in a book, surrounded by my brothers and mom doing the same, I remember best.

    [Part 2 — How to Help Your Child Read for Inference–will be posted Monday.]

    Lauren is a homeschool graduate and an award-winning literacy teacher. She holds an M.A. in literacy from Columbia University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University. Lauren is offering the following classes for Aim Academy:

    Course  (grade) Teacher Optional Live Class Discussions* EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Writing(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 1-2 PM EST Register
     Middle School Tools: Reading Comprehension(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 11-12 PM EST  Register
    Pre-AP English (9th-12th) Lauren Bailes Fri 3-4 PM EST Register

     

  • Safe Landing: Reading for Inference after Making the Jump

    Part II by Lauren Bailes, Aim Academy English Teacher

    (Part I discussed the value of the development jump, when readers go from learning to read to reading to learn. Find it here.)

    It’s easy to watch children begin their trajectory as emerging readers, but shaping that trajectory is just as important.  Until about 3rd grade (8 to 10 years old), children generally focus on doing reading, like I did as I read about Sam and his bat. They sound out words, tap out syllables, make sense of strings of words, recognize organizational structures like lists and paragraphs, and hold multiple narrative episodes in their heads in order to enjoy all of the exploits of Horrible Harry or Laura Ingalls Wilder. But after this point, there’s a shift in the activity of the brain during reading – one that we want to watch for very closely. Kids move from doing reading to learning other things through reading. They can answer their own questions, generate their own research interests, and deepen their knowledge by accessing worlds of information in books. The reading itself has become instinctual.

    Such a shift in the student brings an additional set of responsibilities for parents. We need to model and assess a new set of skills. No longer is the focus on merely decoding sound combinations or word meanings – kids must move on to deducing and inferential reading. If children are proficient, voracious readers (two essential prerequisites for inferential reading), they need to be coached into a transformed way of thinking about books and stories.

    When we talk to our children about books, let’s move away from retelling questions and move toward critical thinking questions. Here are some of my favorites for fiction and nonfiction:

    Fiction:

    – What does this character want most? What’s getting in the way?

    – How would the character behave or speak differently if this other character were not in the book?

    – Where do you see characters feeling confusion or conflict about their own choices?

    – What is the turning point in the story? Are there lots of smaller turning points?

    – What lesson does each character learn at the turning point?

    Nonfiction:

    – How is this text organized or ordered? Why do you think the author made that choice?

    – What information do you already know that helps you understand this new information better?

    – Is there new vocabulary in this text? How does the author help you understand what it means and how to use it?

    – What is the most important information in this section you think the author wants you to know? How can you tell?

     

    There are endless variations and extensions for each of these questions. The important thing is to teach our emerging readers to raise and answer questions while reading so that deducing becomes as instinctive and exciting as decoding.

    Lauren is a homeschool graduate and an award-winning literacy teacher. She holds an M.A. in literacy from Columbia University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University. Lauren is offering the following classes for Aim Academy:

    Course  (grade) Teacher Optional Live Class Discussions* EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Writing(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 1-2 PM EST Register
    Middle School Tools: Reading Comprehension(6th-8th) Lauren Bailes 1st sem. Fri 11-12 PM EST Register
    Pre-AP English (9th-12th) Lauren Bailes Fri 3-4 PM EST Register

  • How Do You Get Kids Interested in Writing?

    It’s Dr. Deb Friday, and this week’s discussion question is about writing. Some children naturally love to put their thoughts down on paper and they start composing stories early. But many find the creative process daunting and the expectation that they must write things down frustrating. What do you do in the latter case? And is this practice even important?

    First, it is important. The process of composing our thoughts and crafting them into written language is a powerful brain-building technique. Many kids find writing difficult because there are so many choices to make: What is a good idea to write about? What words should I use? What order should I put my thoughts in? We can help them embrace this process by assuring them that making all these decisions is great exercise for our brains. The more they practice generating and ordering their ideas, the faster they will become at this decision-making process. More importantly, the practice of writing regularly is the key habit that produces good writers. And the future belongs to the eloquent. No matter what path they head down up ahead, they are going to have to use written language to open doors of opportunity and to complete their daily tasks on the job and at home. Look at how often you or your spouse must write today! E-mails, Facebook posts, texts, letters of protest or appeal, proposals, job queries, journal entries. We communicate far more often with written language these days than face to face.

    Here are 10 tips for getting kids interested in writing:

    1. Set aside a regular time to write. Stick to it. Slowly, even the most reluctant will start producing ideas to put to paper.

    2. Let them choose what to write about.

    3. If they are stumped, give them two or three suggestions, but let them choose.

    4. Find new experiences to prime the pump. “Hey kids, why not jot down what you noticed about some of the animals you watched during our field trip to the dairy farm this week.”

    5. Don’t emphasize spelling and grammatical correctness. Save that for only a few drafts you polish to perfection. Make their ideas what you talk about most.

    6. Give them an audience for their writing. It can be sharing in a regular writers’ group or around the family dinner table once a week.

    7. You write too and share your compositions as well.

    8. Give them cool writing gear or an online portfolio: a special pen, a unique journal, a personal blog or Facebook page they can share with family and friends.

    9. Encourage them to illustrate their stories and reports.

    10. Find opportunities for them to connect with favorite authors — most have websites where they interact with readers. Watch for author visits in your area to libraries, schools or book stores.

    What ideas can you add to the list?

  • Help! My Child’s A Late Reader

    The magic of reading is part brain development and part environment. You can’t do much about the first — that’s a timeline God controls — but you certainly can about the latter.

    Kids will learn to read if they invest time in reading. The more they read, the better they will read. Your role is to help them want to do that. Our mistake is in thinking the reading program we choose is the secret ingredient. Not so. Curiosity is. Kids have to want to know what is hidden in those pages to persist in decoding the secret system.

    Here are four things you can do to stir up desire:

    1.Keep the context of reading pleasurable. We learn more when we are happy and relaxed.  As soon as we experience stress, our cognitive powers decrease.  We lose our ability to take in the full context, and instead, just focus on the threat. Further, emotions triggered in a stressful situation create a powerful memory that will be triggered again when the same context arises. If your child repeatedly finds reading stressful and demoralizing, those negative emotions will come rushing back at the beginning of the reading time and further complicate the process. Summertime, when school is officially out or at a more relaxed pace, is a good time to create a different reading memory for your late reader. Create a reading nook or an outdoor hiding place where books are a part of the setting. Share reading with your child, cozy up together and make reading an expression of your love and affection.

    2.Talk about books you love. Readers are raised by readers. My own childhood memories are soaked with not just my mother reading a book, but my grandmother as well. At 80, my mom is still a voracious reader who always has a book to recommend to me and her four granddaughters.  Reading is a central part of our family life, from generation to generation.  Start talking up your own reading habit. Make trips to the library or bookstore part of your family night. When traveling, track down the best used bookstore in town and give everyone a couple of dollars to splurge on books.  Share your finds with each other. If your kids see reading as an adult activity, they will be motivated to want to mimic that.

    3.Listen to a recorded book together. Nothing like a professional narrator to bring the characters inside a classic novel to life. It is a mistake to think listening to a book on tape will undermine your child’s desire to learn to read. No, it will exponentially boost that curiosity and desire to know what’s inside other books. You are creating an appetite for books when you pull the world of words into your child’s daily life any which way you can.

    4.Become a wordsmith. There are a number of skills that expert readers possess. A rich vocabulary is one of them. But don’t turn this into another dreaded subject. Rather, cultivate familiarity with words — big and small  –through wordplay, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, and dictionary games. Keep big dictionaries and thesauri within reach. Talk about words. Notice when the same word appears in different contexts. Use online resources, such as Word-Origins.com, to track down the fascinating history of words.

    Your turn.  What’s working at your house?