Category Archives: reading in kindergarten

Ah ha!

Posted on September 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

My first grade grandson had an “Ah ha!” moment while reading to me this week.

He was reading a short chapter book especially meant for beginning readers.  Almost all the words were short-vowel, one-syllable words.  Many of them were repeated for reinforcement.  Most pages contained only four or five short sentences.  Every page had line drawings to give extra meaning.

Usually when he reads, he sounds out every word and then says the complete word.  But this time—except for unfamiliar words—he said aloud just the word, not the phonics within the word.

“Gramma,” he said, his eyes bright.  “I read fast!  I didn’t have to say all the letter sounds.  Did you hear?”

“You read great!” I said, and we high-fived.

My grandson didn’t know it, but he made a transition that all good readers eventually make.  Instead of reading individual letters, he read individual words and in a couple of cases, individual phrases.

When children are learning to read, we tell children to sound out words, not to memorize the look of words.  But in fact, when we encounter a word often enough, we no longer need to sound it out.  We recognize it from its appearance.

Elite athletes go through a similar phase.  A great diver doesn’t need to think about which way his palms are facing or which leg to lead his spring with or how to tuck his body or whether his feet are pointed at the same angle.  He has done the individual parts of the dive hundreds—thousands—of times and he has developed muscle memory.

As adults, that’s what you and I do whenever we read.  Unless we encounter an unfamiliar word, we recognize words and phrases and no longer need to read individual letters or even individual words.  We read chunks.

Test this idea on yourself.  As you are reading these words, are you pausing over each word?  Or are you reading chunks of words?  For example, in the second sentence, didn’t you read, “As you are reading—these words—are you pausing—over each word?”

I am so proud of my grandson’s progress in reading.  From the day kindergarten ended abruptly in March, he has continued to learn to read using a phonics approach.  How wonderful for him to recognize his own progress.  And how lucky for me to be sitting by his side when he did.

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Posted in beginning readers, early chapter books, letter sounds, phonics, reading in kindergarten

How the “Not Yet, Baby” book came to be

Posted on September 16, 2019 | Leave a comment

I have been asked where the ideas for the beginning reading books came from.  Are they real stories?  Did we make them up?  The truth is somewhere in between, as Mrs. A, the illustrator explains below about the book, Not Yet, Baby:

The idea came to me as I was traveling through national parks in Utah and Arizona a few years ago.  Occasionally I would get a text or a picture from my son, Tom, the dad of two little boys.  The younger one was walking and following his three-year-old brother everywhere.  Whatever the older boy had, the baby wanted.  Whatever the older boy was doing, the baby was underfoot.

I reminded Tom that he too, had been a younger brother and had been a pain in the neck to his big brother, Lou.  Lou would build elaborate corrals with wooden blocks, enclosing a dinosaur in each compartment.  Tom would totter across the rug, destroying the entire habitat.  On the tour bus in the Rockies, as I remembered spending hours restraining the rambunctious Tom, the ideas flowed, and within a few days I had a book full of sketches!

Not Yet, Baby is the story of a big brother and the family baby.  The little one wants to do whatever the big brother does.

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If big brother swims, baby wants to swim.  If big brother eats a hot dog, baby wants to eat a hot dog.  If big brother kick-boxes, baby wants to kick box.  Often in danger, the baby is dragged away just in time.

Not Yet, Baby illustrates typical yet humorous situations that a four, five, or six-year old would understand.  The book uses mostly one syllable, short vowel words appropriate for beginning readers.  Interactive activity pages follow—word searches, matching rhyming words, filling in the correct vowel and completing a crossword puzzle.

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As you read Not Yet, Baby, you may remember being the older child trying to understand the limitations of a younger one.

Or maybe you can relate to a baby trying to keep up, or the adult who works tirelessly to keep one child safe and another one happy.  Maybe the story will lead to talks with your child about your childhood or his.  There’s so much to talk about in Not Yet, Baby.  You can find Not Yet, Baby at Amazon.com.

 

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Posted in beginning readers, books for beginning readers, CVC words, early childhood education, how to make learning fun, illustrated books, phonics, reading in kindergarten

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Younger kids in a class are more likely to be assessed as ADHD

Posted on December 5, 2018 | 1 comment

For months I have been teaching a playful kindergartener how to read, but progress has been slow.  Recently I learned that this child has a November birthday and is probably the youngest in her private school class.  Her birthday comes several months after the cutoff date for public school kindergarten registration.

Now I understand that she is not slow to learn at all.  She is doing fine for her age.  Most kids her age are in pre-K.  If she were too, she would be one of the oldest in her class, not the youngest, and one of the most advanced.

New research shows that not only is the ability to read affected by the age of a child in a class, but so is the likelihood of that child being diagnosed as ADHD.

The younger the child is in a class, the more likely that child is to be diagnosed as ADHD, according to findings just published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

According to that journal, “rates of A.D.H.D. diagnosis and treatment were 34 percent higher among children born in August than among children born in September in states with a Sept. 1 school entry-age cutoff.”

Knowing this is important if you have a child with a summertime birthday.  Your active, exuberant child might be perfectly normal for his age, but might be more active and distracted than older children in his class.  His teacher might suggest he is hyperactive.  You might begin him on medical treatments which can be harmful and which aren’t necessary if the child’s biological age is considered.

If your child with a summertime birthday is scheduled to start kindergarten next fall, consider his activity level.  All little children are active, but some are noticeably more active than others.  If your child is like this, he might have trouble sitting still in class, listening, following directions, and focusing.  He might have trouble monitoring his own behavior and keeping it appropriate to the setting.

Another study shows that younger children in grades are more likely to be assessed as ADHD by teachers, probably because those children are being compared to the group as a whole.

If your child will be young for kindergarten, consider waiting another year to start him.  There might be a cost to you (if he is in day care, or if you, the mother, are hoping to return to full time employment), but the cost to your child over his academic career could be greater.

I’ve often thought that schools should have two “crops” of kindergarteners:  older students starting in the fall and younger students starting in January.  Too much of an age and developmental difference exists between a five-year-old child and a six-year-old child to collect them all in the same class.

 

 

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Posted in early childhood education, hyperactivity, kindergarten readiness, learning, listening, reading in kindergarten, reading readiness.

Bob Books author dies

Posted on September 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

The author of one of the easiest-to-read and most popular reading series has died.

Picture of 9 Bob Book sets.

Click the photo for a link to the Scholastic selection of Bob Books.

Bobby (Bob) Lynn Maslen, 87, author of the Bob Books, died August 16 in Portland, OR, of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mrs. Madden created the first Bob Book in the 1970’s when she was teaching reading to preschoolers.  One day she took typing paper, folded it in quarters, and asked her students to help her write a story.

The result was the first Bob Book.  It comprised about 12 pages and used just a handful of letters which spelled CVC words.  “Mat sat.  Sam sat.  Mat sat on Sam.  Sam sat on Mat.”  Mrs. Maslen stapled the pages together and sent the books home with her students to reread and to color.

The illustrations were almost as simple as the stories.  Eventually, Mrs. Maslen standardized her books into three sets of 12 books each.  She printed hundreds of copies and packaged them into little sandwich bags for her students.

Demand for her books grew.  Mrs. Maslen’s husband, an artist, provided new drawings.  The books were published by Portland State University, then by the Maslens themselves, and later by Scholastic.  Today more than 16 million books are in print, according to Scholastic.

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Posted in Award Winning Books, CVC words, early childhood education, methods of teaching reading, reading in kindergarten, reading readiness.

When the student becomes the reading teacher

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

Sometimes my best teaching strategies come from children themselves.

I was working with a PreK student the other day.  She has mastered reading CVC words (consonant-vowel-consonant words like “cat” and “six”).  Now we are focusing on blends at the beginning of CCVC words like “swim” and “spill.”

One at a time I was showing her illustrations of CCVC words.  At the same time I was sliding a handful of letters near the illustration.  The letters included the letters needed to spell the word plus some distracting letters.  My student’s job was to pull out the letters needed in the correct order and “write” the word under the illustration.

Except that she didn’t want to do that.  She wanted to write her name using the letter tiles.  We were getting nowhere, so I let her write her name.  Then, after her name she wrote the word “is,” and after “is” she wrote “not.”  Then she wrote the word we were trying to spell in the picture, “twin.”

“Chaulian is not twin,” she said aloud, laughing because she knows she is not a twin.  I pulled out the letter “a” and inserted it into her sentence.   “Chaulian is not a twin,” she read.

“You wrote a sentence,  Chaulian.”

She was engaged again.  I pulled another illustration, this time of a plum.  I took away “twin” and put six letters in front of my student.  From them she picked “plum” and changed her sentence to “Chaulian is not a plum,” laughing once more at the ridiculousness of that thought.

We continued, with Chaulian writing little sentences about herself using CCVC words.

A few days later I tried this same approach with an even younger child.  She is learning CVC words, but of course she already knows how to spell her name.  I asked her to spell her name with letter tiles and then I added “is not a” and pulled illustrations.  Nneka is not a cat.  Nneka is not a map.  Nneka is not a ten.  Like Chaulian, Nneka’s interest in our reading game increased when her name was used.  And when she read aloud her nonsense sentences, she laughed and laughed.  Our work together had turned into a silly game.

Little children are self-centered, so of course it made sense to use their names.  And wacky little sentences made our work fun.  I was thrilled to keep their attention longer than usual.  Win-win.

Chaulian is a teacher.

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Posted in CVC words, early childhood education, how to make learning fun, learning, methods of teaching reading, methods of teaching spelling, phonics, reading in kindergarten, reading readiness., Spelling, teaching tips

Colleges offer remedial reading and writing courses, but too late for most students

Posted on September 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

Many community colleges and four-year colleges in the US offer remedial reading and writing classes to incoming freshmen to raise lagging students to the base level expected for beginning freshmen.  These remedial courses offer no credit, so by the end of freshman year, students who pass these classes will not have accumulated the 30 or so credit hours expected for the first year of college education.  These students’ chances of graduating in two years from community colleges and four years from traditional colleges and universities are almost impossible.  And this means that many poor readers and writers drop out and never earn a college degree.

Colleges and universities are rethinking their remedial English courses for many reasons.

  • These remedial courses, in both English and math, cost about $7 billion each year.

 

  • Few freshmen who require remedial courses ever earn a degree.

 

  • 96% of two- and four-year colleges and universities enroll students in remedial courses.

 

  • In one state, California, more than 70% of community college students qualify for remedial English courses, and of those, only 60% pass the remedial courses and start credit courses, according to a 2016 study by the Public Policy Institute of California. Of those 60% who do pass, most never finish a college level English course with a C grade or better.  California is pretty typical of the rest of the country.

 

  • Starting in the fall of 2018, all such remedial courses will be eliminated at California State University, the largest public university system in the US. The stated purpose is to enable more students to graduate in four years.

 

What does this mean if you are teaching a young child to read?

Reading and writing are two of the most make-it or break-it life skills.  If a little kid is having trouble, now is the time to intervene.  The longer a student flounders, the more he falls behind and the less likely he is to catch up, even with help.  By the time a student reaches college, high school, or even middle school, it’s usually too late.  The time to learn to read and write is when a child is four, five, six and seven years old.

If you want your children to succeed, do whatever is necessary to ensure that they can read by the time they start third grade.

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Posted in early childhood education, learning, reading disabilities, reading in kindergarten, reading tips, US education

My child can’t read CVC words after finishing kindergarten. Should I hold him back?

Posted on August 6, 2017 | Leave a comment

“It depends” is not the answer you want, but that’s the best I can do.  Let’s look at some of the factors you should consider.

Young child writing C-A-T.

  • Is your child doing poorly in reading only? Is he struggling to read but doing fine in math, for example? This kind of disconnect could signal a particular learning problem with reading.  He might need a reading specialist or a tutor to work with him in first grade so that he can catch up to his classmates.
  • Is he performing at a mediocre level in reading, math and most kindergarten skills? If so, he might not be intellectually ready to move on to first grade.  Kids’ brains develop at different rates just like their bones do.  An extra year to grow can make a great difference in a child’s ability to learn.
  • Is your son one of the youngest children in the class? Younger children in a kindergarten or first grade class sometimes are immature compared to their classmates.  Their attention span is less.  They have more difficulty sitting still.  They are more impulsive.  If your son was barely old enough for kindergarten, chances are that he is barely old enough for first grade too.
  • Is he showing signs of stress? Is he more babyish than his classmates, more apt to cry or sulk when things go wrong?  Our emotions grow at various rates too.  A student with good self-esteem will be better able to weather poor grades in reading and not blame himself compared to an insecure student.
  • Did your son miss school often because of sickness, moving, or problems at home? Is he depressed?  How motivated is he to learn?
  • What are the expectations of the kindergarten curriculum at the end of the year? (You can go online to find out your state’s curriculum requirements.)  Has he met them?  Kindergarten reading skills provide a base for first grade reading skills.  Will CVC phonics be taught in first grade or will it be reviewed quickly with the expectation that students already know that?
  • Does your son’s school have a strong intervention plan and well trained teachers for outliers like your son? If so, how will it be determined if your son meets the criteria for this special learning?  And when will the intervention begin—in September or in January?
  • Does your state have mandatory third grade retention laws, so that if your son is still doing poorly at the end of third grade, he would be forced to repeat that grade?
  • Do you have the time or the ability to work with your son to catch him up? If so, can you commit to this teaching, knowing your son will fight you?  If not, do you have the money for a tutor to catch him up while he moves into first grade?
  • Is there a younger sibling? Will both children be in the same grade if the older child repeats?   If the older child continues to do poorly, will his family status be threatened?  Will his younger sibling become a star in comparison?
  • Are grandparents pressuring you one way or the other? If so, how knowledgeable are they about your son’s skills?  Is their status threatened if your son repeats a grade?
  • Can you talk to teachers who know your child well or who have taught kindergarten or first grade, educators who can give you first hand advice?

When you weigh all these factors, one is most important:  What is best for my child?

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Posted in reading in kindergarten, reading readiness.

My son’s kindergarten reading teacher says he won’t talk. He talks at home, but he is really shy. What’s going on?

Posted on November 14, 2016 | Leave a comment

It helps to know the reason for the speechlessness so that your son’s teacher will know how to modify her teaching style to make the student and teacher comfortable.  Since he has normal speech at home, perhaps he is selectively mute.

EPSON MFP image

Selectively mute children might be speechless all the time or only in social situations which make them afraid.  They might show anxiety, excessive shyness, fear of social embarrassment and withdrawal.  Symptoms* include

  • “consistent failure to speak in specific social situations (in which there is an expectation for speaking, such as at school) continues despite speaking in other situations.
  • “not speaking interferes with school or work, or with social communication.
  • “not speaking lasts at least one month (not limited to the first month of school).
  • “failure to speak is not due to a lack of knowledge of, or comfort, with the spoken language required in the social situation
  • “not speaking is not due to a communication disorder (e.g., stuttering).”

Ask that your son be evaluated by a speech pathologist.  But also have his hearing tested.  Sometimes persistent middle ear infections can make hearing hard.

After you have pinpointed the problem as much as possible, then you can plan how to make your son verbal in school.  This may take several professionals working together—the school psychologist, the speech pathologist, his teacher, you and possibly his pediatrician.

In the meantime, inform his reading teacher that you are following up on her observation.  Ask her to accept that this behavior is normal for him right now.  Ask her to find nonverbal ways for him to respond and participate in group activities until an intervention plan gets underway.

*According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

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Posted in methods of teaching reading, reading disabilities, reading in kindergarten, reading tips

Should my kindergarten son read aloud to me? How about my third grade daughter?

Posted on May 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

Reading aloud to a parent or teacher has two purposes:  to show that the child can decode words properly and to show that the child can read with fluency.  If the child is learning English as a second language, showing proper pronunciation is also a purpose.

child with adult helping to read

First decoding.  Probably your kindergarten son is at the decoding stage, that is, learning how to link language sounds with letters to form words.  If he is at this stage, then yes, he should read aloud.  That way you can tell what he knows, what he needs more practice on, and what he needs instruction on.

If you know from previous reading aloud that your third grader has mastered decoding, then your daughter needn’t read aloud for that purpose.  You might sit next to her as she reads.  If she has questions about pronouncing an unfamiliar word or if she asks about the meaning of a new word, you can help.  Occasionally you might ask her to tell you what she has read to be sure she has understood.

If your older child comes to English from a second language, she might be able to pronounce words perfectly yet have no idea what they mean.  If so, ask her to underline words she doesn’t know so you can talk about them.  If there are context clues, you might help her identify them.  With such a child, you should work on vocabulary development.

As for fluency (reading at a normal speed with voice inflection, pauses for punctuation and emotion in the voice) the kindergartener and ESL child should read aloud.  Some readers who are at the decoding stage spend so much energy on decoding that they miss the meaning.  By listening to how you say a line and then mimicking the way you say it, the child can pull together decoding and fluency.

Your third grader should be able to read fluently within her head.  However, if you notice that your child has trouble with comprehension even though she can decode well, then her reading aloud could help you to figure out why.  Is she ignoring punctuation and lumping parts of one sentence with another?  Is she sliding over longer words without decoding them because she is lazy or in a hurry?  Does she have short term memory problems, allowing her to forget the beginning of a sentence or paragraph before she gets to the end?  Is her emotional voice flat?  Is she missing inferences?  Some of this you can tell by listening to her read aloud, and some by asking her about what she has read.

In general, newer readers should read aloud with instruction and monitoring while experienced readers should read silently.

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Posted in English as a second language (ESL), fluency, methods of teaching reading, phonics, practice reading skills, reading comprehension, reading in kindergarten, reading strategies, working memory

Numbers, numbers

Posted on March 9, 2016 | Leave a comment

2-3      Between 2 and 3 years old, toddlers learn a new word every day.

3rd      Third grade is long past the time to intervene for a struggling reader.

3-4      3 to 4 letters/spaces to the left and 14-15 letters/spaces to the right of where we fix our eyes is where we pick up meaning from what we read .

4          There are 4 ways to pronounce the letter A using standard American English.

4-5      Children should be speaking in complete sentences by 4 or 5 years old.

6-12    Between 6 and 12 months old, infants should start babbling.

10-15   A typical student needs to interact with a word 10 to 15 times in order to learn it.

12-18   Children usually say their first words between 12 to 18 months, but not always.

18-24   Children usually say their first tiny sentences between 18 and 24 months.

20        If a child can count to 20, that is a sign he might be ready for kindergarten.

20-30 Kindergarten children should read or be read to 20 to 30 minutes daily.

24th    US students scored 24th out of 65 countries taking the latest Program for International Assessment tests.

30       First graders should read or be read to 30 minutes daily.

42-44 The number of letter sounds in standard American English is 42 to 44, depending where you live.

220     There are 220 Dolch words, better known as sight words.

300    Children from professional families hear 300 more spoken English words in an hour than children of parents on welfare.

1,000 Parents should read to their children 1,000 books before kindergarten, according to the 1,000 Books Foundation.

2,000 A student learns about 2,000 new words a year.

88,500 An incoming high school freshman should know 88,500 word families.

2,250,000 A student reading an hour a day will read 2.25 million words in a year.

32,000,000 Children from professional families hear about 32 million more words—including repeated words—than children from poorly educated families.

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Posted in letter sounds, reading in kindergarten, reading research, vocabulary