Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 3

I've just finished "Reading" 2nd edition by Frank Smith. The book is about the process of reading. In his book, he claims that whatever reading methods you use, children will learn to read all the same because children are learning beings. They are thirsty for knowledge and are learning all the time.

Franks Smith does not think the reading methods, either phonic nor sight reading, are the best way to teach reading. He feels that it's important that reading is made interesting for children, which means the best way to learn to read is by reading. The more you read, the more you learn. Therefore, it is important to give them reading materials that interest them.

The book itself is a rather dry reading because he talks a lot about scientific data about how the eyes and brains are involved in reading. However, his insights helps me confirm my intuition about reading, i.e. Phonic rules can be dry and boring. I tried teaching Sean some basic ones such as "c-at" "m-at" "b-at" "h-at". It just switches him off and he refuse to even listen. I think he's not ready for it yet. And that, interesting books are very important. Otherwise, you won't be interested to even start reading.

So all I've been doing is to borrow many books from the library, all sorts of types and read them to him. Sometimes he's interested, sometimes he's not. But most of the time he's interested. It's a trial and error thing because I don't know what will he like until we read it.

His current favorite books are "Shiver Me Letters, a Pirate ABC", " ALPHABEEP". This is because they are books about the alphabets which he already recognizes by heart. He has begun to parrot me when I read them to him. Not every page since some of the sentences are rather long.

Recently, I borrowed a book called " Good Night Gorilla" which caught his fancy. The illustration tells the story about how a small gorilla steals the keys and open all the cages of the animals, and then all of them followed the night watchman back to his house, which woke his wife up and she then brought the animals back to the zoo. Unknown to her, the gorilla stole the key again and followed her back to her bedroom.

The few words in the book are just " Good night gorilla", "Good night elephant", "Good night Lion", " Good night Hyena", " Good night Giraffe", " Good night Armadillo", " Good night dear"

This is a great book, not only it's a cute story, the words are so easy that even Sean can read them by himself (except for armadillo and dear). I wish there are more books like this. It tells so much with so few words.

Today, he read (with a bit of help from mummy) a small booklet by himself. It's a scholastic reader from his playgroup, a very short story about little and big. It reads like this:

Little and Big
This truck is little.
This truck is big.
This house is little.
This house is big.
This flower is little.
This flower is big.
This balloon is little.
This balloon is BIG!

I need to prompt him on "this" and " is" and I think he looks at the picture to give him a clue about the objects, but he can read the book! I'm so proud of him =D

And then, excitedly, I got him to read another short book which I scanned and made into a booklet for him.

Costume Party
I am a pirate
I am a doctor
I am a fire fighter (written as fire man)
I am a butterfly
I am a cowboy
I am a space girl (written as space boy)
I am a crocodile.
Snap! Snap! Snap!

He needs prompting on "I" "am" "a", which is basically most of the sentence, and he reads the rest from memory, because "fire fighter" and "space girl" are actually written in the original book that the school let him bring home.

From all these and from what I've read, I just think that early reading is all about memory. It's difficult for children to remember " I", "This" and grammatical rules because they are interested in the meaning of the story, not the actual sentence. To them the words "the", "is", "am" are not important and are omitted in their reading.

In fact, Frank Smith feels that by insisting on word perfect reading, you are actually interfering with the process of reading because it's the comprehension that's important, not the actual perfect reading of a sentence.

Actually, Sean still omits all these grammatical words even when he speaks, so I guess, it's natural for him to omit them when he reads. However, it is already exciting enough that he's started to want to read by himself and not always insisting that I read for him.

I still think Phonics has a lot of benefits despite Frank Smith's disregard. If you are interested in learning more about Phonics, read " Why Johny Can't Read" which deals with phonics and it even teaches you how to teach phonics. However, I don't think I'm going to teach Sean phonics yet. I'll let him enjoy reading from memory first and later helps him with his phonics when the time comes, maybe when he's 4 years old.

Sean, congratulations on reading your first books, "Good Night Gorilla" and " Big and Little". Mummy is very proud of you. =D

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.

Learning how to teach Sean to read- part 1

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

Books Vs TV

Today, I went to The Playcentre Library Association, a non-profit library. Some of the books are old but are of good quality, in good conditions and well-organized. It is run by volunteers and they have many good children books that I would like to borrow for Sean.

One of the volunteers, Judy, maybe a committee member, said that children under 2 should not watch TV at all because the flickering of the TV affects their attention span. I'm not too strict about letting him not watch at all. I think some TV is acceptable. But it's true that Sean's attention span is really short.

Judy read 2 books to show me how to read them out loud. She was really good! I'm not sure if I can read the books the way she did it. Gotta listen to her story telling more and learn =D

So I joined the library membership and am hoping to get more good tips about reading to Sean. I'm supposed to read to him the same book about 5-7 times a day! Not sure if I can do that, but I'll start with once or twice a day. I have been slacking in that area. =P

But it's also because Sean hasn't been interested in books recently. He can't sit still to listen to me reading a book to him. He prefers to watch TV and I've been letting the TV to babysit him too. Sam is into TV and keeps saying how are we going to entertain Sean for so many hours with no TV?

I don't know how to fill that many hours with activities. As it is, it takes a lot of energy just to entertain him for half an hour without TV. But somehow, I've got to start weaning him off the TV a bit at a time again. He really has been watching waaayy too much TV.

I think it's going to be an uphill battle for me. Gotta fight both Sam and Sean!

If you want to join the library, here's the info:

Playcentre Library Association
16, Jalan 6/6, 46000 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 03-77817813

Library hours:
Tue 9.30 am - 4.30 pm
Thu 9.30 am - 12.30 pm
Sat 2.30 pm - 4.30 pm

Sean @ Play - Books & Cars

One thing that I am happy about is that Sean loves books. He is not always interested in listening to a story but he loves looking at picture books, especially those that has to do with vehicles. He can spend many quiet minutes flipping and looking through his books. I like looking at him reading because he looks so serious about it, as if he is concentrating really hard. =D

Sean's current favorite book is "Look & Find: Thomas & Friends". He picked it himself at MPH a few weeks ago. It's not about cars at all, but he likes vehicles anyway. I don't think he enjoys the TV show that much, but this particular book is a wonderful picture book, filled with colors and activities.

When it comes to cars, his eyes are super sharp. He seems to be able to find pictures of cars wherever we go, even tiny ones. We would be flipping through the newspaper of magazine, and he would say "brrmmm brrmmm"... I said "Where?". Then he'd point to a small picture of car in the corner of the page.

We bought a few car magazines for our reading pleasure as well as for him. I'd point to all the different cars and ask him if he likes them. He's rather picky about what cars he likes. He likes them sporty and red.. ha ha ha.... It's probably because of all the Shell Ferarri cars that he has. Whenever we get him a new car (other than Ferarris), we will let him pick and he always chooses red color.

The other day, as he was flipping through the Top Gear magazine. He saw a photo of Jeremy Clarkson, the host of Top Gear. He got excited and started to vigorously point at his picture and said "brrmmm brrrmm" I asked "Who's that?" He said "brmmm brrmmm" and pointed at the PC monitor where we watch old seasons of Top Gear with him. Ha ha ha.. Jeremy Clarkson should feel honored. My son is a fan.=P