Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 2

Suffice to say, all efforts in teaching Sean to read stopped just before we went to Jakarta. Since we came back, I haven't had the energy to do anything about it. So I'm just back-blogging about what I did before the trip.

Each book I read spurred me on to do different things. After all, these are just experimenting with different ways.

From the "Teaching you child to read in 60 days" I followed a game they did which uses cars and stuck on words. It went well for a few days, after that we were fighting over the fact that he didn't say it correctly and yet he still wanted to eat the Twisties. So I said, forget it for a while. He was more interested in the Twisties (the rewards) than in the game itself.

Then he was into "Brown bear brown bear what do you see" book.
Soo, I made a simple game which I stick on the wall from the book. It says:

Sean, Sean
Sean, Sean
What do you see?

I see a _____ ______
looking at me.

The blank spaces are replaced with the different colors and the animals from the book. He can recite it but I'm not sure if he's reading or reciting from memory. We played this for a few days and then I stopped it so he doesn't get bored with it.

Then I read another book that suggest a simpler idea on teaching a young toddler. The book 'Teach your baby to read" suggests using very big red colored fonts (6 inches high) to begin with when teaching the first few words. So I printed huge "Sean Wee", "mummy", "daddy", "loves" and pasted them on the wall. "mummy daddy loves Sean Wee" and just casually tell him what each word sounds like. I've left it on the wall and he can read it on his own now. Currently it says "Jesus loves Sean mummy daddy"

Following the book's suggestion, I've also put up words on body parts such as head, eyes, ears, etc, but haven't been telling him as often. Maybe it's because these words aren't interesting on their own. I think I should sing more "Heads shoulders knees and toes" to get us going on body parts. He already knows his body parts but don't know how to read them yet. =D

I've also started to borrow beginning reading books which have very few and easy words. From our nightly reading, I think he can read some words now, such as "cat", "hat", "bee","flower", "butterfly", "car", good night", "tree". I think he knows more than these, I just haven't been noting down what they are.

So I was doing these reading lessons at a very leisurely pace and try not to push too hard and try to remember to be very enthusiastic every time he gets something correct.

I haven't been doing anything much to teach Sean recently because I just haven't had the energy nor the inclination to do so. But I've had some time to read one or two books which help me to understand what the "war on reading" is all about.

It's about the different views of educators in terms of teaching how to read. Some views that sight reading is the way to go. A lot of beginning to read books are actually about sight reading. They repeat the words in many different ways so the child will recognize the words. The new reading schemes have more interesting stories that the old ones like Peter and Jane, and they use many stories to show how each word can be used. However, this method doesn't really teach reading. It's more like memorizing how a word looks like (the chinese words method) and therefore cannot help a child to read any words they have never seen before.

Another method is Phonics which teaches a child how the letters sounds like. There are about 44 (I think, I can't remember exactly) sounds of words which include the 26 alphabets. They also include ck, sh, th, etc. It's harder to teach because the child needs to learn how break a word into different section.

We think it's easy because as adults we automatically do it. But a young child has to start from scratch so it might be easy to learn the alphabet because each letter sounds different, but when you put them into a word, they need to learn that combination such as ck, sh, th, need to be sounded separately.

So it is harder to teach but once the child can do it, supposedly he/she can read new words, which mean reading will become interesting because they can read more types of books and can build up their vocabulary easier.

Now that I understand all these, it doesn't mean that it's easier to teach Sean how to read because whether or not you can do it in "60 days" like the way the single dad in the book claims, it really depends on the readiness of each child.

In "Teach you child to read in 60 days" He was a single father (impressive) who uses the time he had (in the morning and evening) with this 2 daughters to play these reading games. Firstly, he has 2 daughters. One 4 years old and the other 2 1/2 years old. I just think daughters are easier to teach because many starts speaking earlier and therefore have a bigger vocabulary already. They were already pretending to read, which means they were interested in learning how to read. And there were 2 of them, competition between siblings helped to egg them on to learn since it was done in a form of a game.

In Sean's case, he has too many distractions. I think I need to hide the toys before I start the games again. He's also very stubborn and just wouldn't listen when corrected. So it may be that he's not ready to learn yet. At the moment, the few words that he knows is more from sight reading because re recognize the words, or he may just guess it from the pictures. I haven't really taught him phonics yet because I think I should do it when we are in better mood.

But whatever the case, I think I'll get better first before starting again. Being sick shortens my temper and I wouldn' t want him to associate these games with mummy being grumpy. =P ha ha ha. After all, I'm suppose to be super enthusiastic! Shudder..... I'm just not in the mood to be enthusiastic.