I borrowed a book called "Teach your child to read in 60 days". It's a very old book so I'm not sure whether the method that the author used is out of date or even correct, but it got me started on the idea of teaching Sean to read. Then I borrowed another book called "Reading and writing with Letterland", which promptly confused me because the 2 books contradict each other on how to begin. The first book says that we should start with capital letters, the later book says we should start with small letters.
The second book also says that we shouldn't start with the alphabet because it is useless when teaching a child how to read. I think it's true. I tried teaching Sean something simple, the word 'cab' because it's made up of the letter 'a', 'b', and 'c' with wooden alphabet blocks. Sean is so ingrained in his alphabet that he kept moving the blocks back to 'abc' sequence. He kept insisting that it should be 'abc' and not 'cab'...Uh Oh..... Maybe we shouldn't have taught him his alphabet so thoroughly. =P
And then you're suppose to sound each word phonetically and it's not that easy because if you don't sound it correctly, then it doesn't work. I need to learn how to say each letter phonetically correct first before I can teach Sean anything. But another website says that we don't really need to emphasise too much on phonetic because half the english words do not follow phonetic rules anyway.
So after trying a few methods the last few days and not getting Sean's interest in reading, I decided that I'm just going to have to read up more about this before actually embarking on the project 'Teach Sean to Read', just in case I'm teaching him incorrectly. I haven't finished reading both books yet. I've only glanced through them quickly. This is going to take some time.
However, I got impatient. =P
As I was reading to him one of his favourite book " The Little Red Car". I decided to teach him to read just one word "car" which was repeated on every page of the book. I got him to spell it and say the word, and then to find the word on every page of the book. It works! He knows how to read "car" now.
Then I got him to read the word "man", "woman", "boy" and "girl" from another story book. I think he got them too, but I'm not so sure since it wasn't repetitive like "car" and there were pictures on each page. And that was it, he was too sleepy to do more. This technique is called "Sight word reading" which is useful but may not help in teaching to read unknown words. Phonetics is still a better technique to go, but to do that I've got to learn it properly first. =P
Oh yeah, my father-in-law gave Sean 2 "Peter and Jane" books to get me to teach Sean to read a while back. Supposedly that was how they taught Sam to read. The books are so boring that I just cannot muster the interest to read it more than a few times to Sean. It's such a turn-off that each time I read it, I lost my interest in reading! I've hidden the books so I will not have to read it, ha ha ha....=P
So I'm still learning now and any advice would be welcome. =D
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3 comments:
Peter and Jane books are good book to start. I know it is boring but the use repetition for the child to remember the words.
After they remember it, they will slowly learn how words are being pronounced.
hmm, wat are peter and jane books btw ? but as for your concern with regard to upper or lower case, i had that prob myself... i keep asking myself and frens that question. no one could give me a good answer. not even the pre school teachers. so i guess its your preference. I teach her the upper case cos i feel that its easier to "read" and there are lots of upper case letterinngs in our daily live. as for phonics, i am not too good myself, but it works. and dun worry abt reading at such a young age, get him to love books first. cos reading now is merely his ability to "recognise" words by memory. then again, on saying that, its impressive how fast Sean is learning :) I think you are doing a great job with him :) I have been wanting to teach Megan the alphabet but we cannot get beyond her fascination with G-A-P. so anything lettering to her is G-A-P. she sees "A"-she will say G-A-P instead of A-B-C. LOL
mybabybay: I'll get Sean to read the books on his own when he's ready. But at the moment I just can't face it. ha ha ha
carol: Peter and Jane is by Ladybird. It's a reading series for children learning to read. I think they're expensive at Rm9.90 a book. There are better books out there for the same price. But since it was given, I had no choice.
OK abt the upper lower case. I've read a bit more abt it. Basically you need to teach both. Teach uppercase first for familiarity and then lower case. When teaching how to read, teach both upper and lower because they'll need both to read a book.
if you teach lower case only, they get confused of 'b','d','p','q'
As I said the book says that teaching the alphabet is not important to teach how to read because the sound of the alphabet is different from how it sounds phonetically. But if you want to teach Megan the Alphabet use songs. We download many versions of Alphabet songs from UTube. Sean even know how to do signs of the alphabet. I'll post some of the songs when I know how he he he.
We also have Alphabet posters on the wall and read many alphabet books.
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