Category Archives: learning

Teaching kinesthetic learners how to read

Posted on January 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Have you ever taught a student who acts like this? 

  • Changing positions frequently—sitting on a folded leg, kneeling on a chair, or wriggling her shoulders?
  • Responding to a question with gestures—thumbs up, a face showing precise emotions, drawing a picture in the air?
  • Reading out loud when he should be reading silently?
  • Miming a situation or a reaction?

These students might be kinesthetic learners, people who need to engage their whole bodies to learn optimally.  Some are hyperactive,  tempermentally unable to sit still.  Some are dyslexic, unable to read or to learn to read the usual way.  Some are autistic, non verbal or preferring repetitive motions or intensely focused on one activity.  Some are artistic, preferring to draw in almost every situation.  Some are actors, dramatizing their responses.  child making letter T with his body

The younger the child, the more apt he is to be a kinesthetic learner.  Males tend to be kinesthetic learners longer than females.  Children with highly focused hobbies or interests—assembling Legos for hours at a time, enjoying sports practice several times a week, wanting everything Spiderman, drawing and coloring every day—are probably kinesthetic learners.

The problem for kinesthetic learners is that most classrooms are made for the auditory learner, the person who sits still and listens to the teacher, the person who reads silently to learn, not for the person who roams, fidgets, mumbles, acts out, or plays games to learn.

Child sitting with legs outstretched, forming the letter L

So what hands-on activities will help your beginning reader to learn the alphabet and easy words?

  • Ask the child to act out the letter shapes, that is, form the letters with her body.
  • Allow nonverbal responses—pointing, gesturing, showing facial emotion, performing.
  • Use games—letter tiles, for example—that offer the child the opportunity to pick up, arrange, and invent. Or hold letter “bees” in  which the children form teams and the you hold up letters or words for a team member to identify.
  • Teach using puppet shows—two characters debating what a given letter is, or how to hold a book, or if “fun” rhymes with “fan.”
  • Let groups of students create an ABC book . The artist in the group might draw and color pictures while other students might cut out pictures from magazines and paste them.
  • After you have read a story to students, ask some to act out the story to test comprehension. Let other students join in.
  • Create an alphabet from Play Doh or Legos or pipe cleaners.
  • Create word family books with drawings or cut-and-pasted pictures.
  • Take a scavenger walk in the neighborhood to see shapes of letters in tree branches, sidewalk cracks, clouds or roof lines.

dhild running with book in hands

You might think, these activities take time and slow down the learning process.  Yes, they do take time, and yes, they do slow down the initial learning process.  But since this kind of learning sticks, you need to do less reteaching and may gain time in the long run.  Just as importantly, students who are reprimanded for not sitting still or for being unable to leave a task they like are praised for their learning.  These students become leaders, helping other children who are not as kinesthetically gifted.

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Posted in ABC's, kinesthetic learning, learning, reading tips, teaching tips

Children learn sounds from big to small

Posted on January 19, 2022 | Leave a comment

children pronouncing elephantLittle children who are learning about sounds in words move from larger units of sound—phrases and words—to smaller units of sound—sounds within words and syllables.  Adults hear “On your mark, get set, go,” but a two-year-old hears “Onyourmark, getset, go.”  Children need to hear distinct sounds within words and to reproduce those sounds properly before they start pairing sounds with letters.

For this reason, most two-year-olds are too young to learn to read.  Even some five-year-olds might not be able to distinguish sounds within words.  In some countries, children don’t learn to read until they are seven. 

A good example of this is when children learn the ABC song.  Most three-year-olds can start the song with A-B-C-D. . .E-F-G-. . .H-I-J-K .  But when they get to L-M-N-O-P they sing L-um-men-oh-P or M-uh-let-O-P.  They don’t hear L-M-N-O as distinct sounds.

I still remember the day when I was in first grade when  my teacher taught my class the words of and the.  I thought, wow, those are two different words.  I didn’t know that.  I thought ofthe was a single sound.

Most two-year-olds are too young to learn to read.  Even some five-year-olds might not be able to distinguish sounds within words.  For this reason, in some countries, children don’t learn to read until they are seven. 

What can you do to help your child hear sounds more clearly?  Speak distinctly.  Slow down.  Face your child and let her watch your mouth when you talk.  When you hear her slurring sounds together which should be pronounced separately, don’t correct her but instead repeat the sounds properly.

While we’re on the subject of hearing words correctly, children will subconsciously learn the rules of grammar without instruction.  A four-year-old might say, “Mommy goed to the store,” properly making the verb past tense by adding the d sound to the end of the word without realizing go does not follow the rules.  Or he might say, “I amn’t done yet.”  He is learning contractions, not realizing that am can’t be contracted in the negative form.  Or a child might say, “Her said so.”  Objective pronouns are learned before subject pronouns.

To correct these mistakes, repeat what the child says correctly without comment on the error.  When the child hears words said properly enough times, he or she will say words that way too.

 

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Posted in ABC's, early childhood education, English grammar, learning, letter sounds, prereading skills, pronunciation of words, reading readiness., sounds of English, teaching tips

Ask children to use body language and gestures to learn

Posted on June 29, 2021 | Leave a comment

When my one-year-old son was still mostly pre-verbal, I “read” to him books about a baby doing the simplest of tasks—jumping, crouching, and clapping, for example.  Each time I turned the page, I asked him, “What’s the baby doing?”  He would act out the drawing—jumping, crouching low and applauding—all without words.

child making letter T with his body

My son was engaging in the world of books long before he had verbal vocabulary to explain what he saw.  He used what he had—the gestures, the motions of his body—to “say” what he saw.

Another time, I worked with a third grader who had excellent verbal fluency, but she could not read.  We worked on phonics, and she slowly acquired skills to take apart words into letter sounds and to assemble letter sounds into words.  She was an excellent actress, so when she would learn a vocabulary word, she would act it out—standing, moving about the room, using her whole body to memorize the meaning of a word.  I was flabbergasted.  And when she came upon a word she had previously acted out, she would go through the same motions—this time sitting in her seat—to remember what the word meant. 

Child sitting with legs outstretched, forming the letter L

Working with these children opened my mind to using gestures and body language to learn.  These  allow a child’s thinking to progress even when he doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain what he is thinking.  Or sometimes he does have the vocabulary, but it is quicker to respond with gestures than to recall the appropriate words.  What is “slope,” for example? Doesn’t lifting a hand and sliding it downward on a diagonal show understanding?  What is “ferocious”?  If a child bares her teeth and makes a growling sound, doesn’t she show that she knows that word?

Large numbers of children in preschool and in the primary grades are kinesthetic learners.  Yet teachers rarely call upon these children’s body language and gestures to help them learn.  With a little imagination, it’s possible.  Three students stand in a row, holding hands.  One student lets go.  Three minus one equals two.  A child curls herself into the letter “C.” Another creates a big “O” with her arms.  A third stands tall and stretches out both arms into a “T.”  They move close together.  “COT.”  Three students act out “ice” by hugging and not moving.  Three more act out “water” by making swimming strokes.  Three more act out “steam” by dancing rapidly.

Performing to learn takes time, yes.  But it’s also fun.  It engages students.  It uses many of the senses.  It works.

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Posted in kinesthetic lerning, learning, methods of teaching reading, methods of teaching vocabulary, reading readiness., teaching tips, using gestures to learn

“How do I teach my grandson to read remotely?”

Posted on August 16, 2020 | 1 comment

“How do I teach my grandson to read remotely?” asked a grandmother. She plans to use Zoom, Facetime, and ready-to-go reading materials for an hour daily.  After testing the boy informally, she believes she needs to start from scratch to fill in any gaps in basic phonics.

Here is what I advised her:

First, buy two copies of “Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolph Flesch.  Send one to your grandson and you keep one.  Go to the back where there are lists of words.  Start on page one, asking the boy to pronounce the sound of each letter shown.  When he can do that, move on to the page of short a words.  Have the boy read the short a words, or a portion of them.

Reading lists of words is tiring, so do maybe ten minutes of such work and ask the boy’s parents to do another ten minutes at night.  Or read from the list at the beginning of the lesson, then do something else, and then come back to the list.  Move through the lists at whatever pace indicates that the boy is mastering the words.

Why use “Why Johnny Can’t Read” a 65-year-old resource?  The simple answer is because I know it works.  I have used this phonics-based resource for almost 35 years with native born children and with immigrant children.  All of them hated it, true, but all of them learned to read quickly.  There are other reading primers, but for me this is a tried and true resource.  It’s available in bookstores and online.

Second, buy two copies of “Explode the Code” workbooks 1, 1 ½, 2 and 2 ½.  (Eventually, buy the next sets in this series, but for starts, these workbooks are enough.)  This series teaches reading using a phonics-based approach.  Kids like it because of the silly illustrations.  Have the child start reading while you follow along on your copy, noting and correcting mistakes.  Eventually, the child might do some of the pages for homework or with his parents.

“Explode the Code” reinforces the harder work of reading lists of words.  It does not follow the exact sequencing of skills in “Why Johnny Can’t Read,” but you can adapt one to the other easily.

Why “Explode the Code”?  I have used this series with dozens of children, and all have liked the silliness of the drawings.  For children whose vocabulary is limited, the drawings and distractor words offer opportunities to develop new vocabulary.  There are other workbook series, but because of the humor and sequence of phonics development in “Explode the Code,” I like it.

Seated young boy is playing a portable video game..Third, buy a set of letter tiles.  You can use the tiles from a Scrabble game or from Bananagrams.  Or  use a keyboard.  What you want to do is to introduce, teach and review new concepts. using tiles or computer words.  If you are teaching short a, for example, manipulate the tiles so the child can see them to form “cat” and then “hat” and then “fat,” etc.  Changing the first letter while keeping the ending vowel and consonant is easier for beginning readers to decode.  Using tiles or computer-generated words enables you to go quickly.  Later, you can move from “mat” to “mate” or from “mick” to “mike” and back and forth quickly to show differences in spellings and sounds.

Fourth, recommend to the child’s parents that the child watch the Netflix series “Alphablocks,” an animated series using silly letter characters to teach phonics.  This British series offers tiny segments of  three or four minutes to teach particular phonics skills.  Even three-year-olds will learn to recognize letters from watching this series.  Older children will be able to read words as they pop up on the screen.

All of these materials are readily available, allowing you to start teaching immediately.  Young children need variety, so move from one resource to another every 10 or 15 minutes.  The younger or more distractible the child, the more necessary it is to have a variety of approaches—as well as learning materials the child can manipulate, like the tiles.

Reading lists and reading tile-made words or computer-screen words does not require the fine motor coordination some beginning readers lack.  When I use “Explode the Code,” for some children I allow drawing lines from words to drawings rather than writing words.  Keep in mind you are teaching reading, and even though it would be nice for the child to print the letters, or to spell correctly, that is not necessary to read.  For particularly uncoordinated children, I will write or draw or encircle providing they do the reading.  Anything to keep them reading!

Start each lesson with a quick—two or three minute—review of past work, slowing down if the concepts haven’t been learned.  Then introduce new work or repeat old work if that is needed.  At the end of the lesson, review the new work of the lesson.  Review, teach new, review again.

Finally, FYI, I am not being paid to suggest these particular products.  I am suggesting them because I know they work, they are available and they are affordable.

Please share your experiences teaching reading online.  That is the kind of information we are all wanting right now.

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Posted in beginning readers, consonants, learning, letter sounds, methods of teaching reading, methods of teaching vocabulary, phonics, practice reading skills, reading readiness., reading strategies, reading tips

How to teach tiny, short-vowel (CVC) words to a beginning reader

Posted on January 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

So you are teaching your four-year-old to read.  She can duplicate the 40+ sounds of the English language.  She can recognize many of those sounds at the beginnings of some words.

Now it is time to pair letter sounds with a handful of letters and to form words.  Your child might not be able to recognize all the sounds yet, but as long as she can recognize some of them, she can begin to learn words.

Most phonics programs start with three letter words using the vowel sound of “short a” and easily recognizable consonant sounds such as “b,” “h,” “m,” “t” and “s.”  You could just as readily start with the vowel sound of “short o” and other consonant sounds.  Choose one short vowel sound and four or five consonant sounds which you think the child knows.

I recommend you use letter tiles.  If you can find lower case letter tiles, great, but if not, use capital letter tiles.

Show the child a letter tile and ask the child to name its sound.  If the child is not sure of that letter sound, don’t use that letter tile yet.  Choose a different one.

Lay out three letter tiles which form a word, such as “h,” “a,” and “t.”  Separate the tiles by an inch or two.  Say the sound represented by each letter as you point to the letter.  Ask the child to do the same.  Now, slowly move the letter tiles closer together while pointing and saying the letter sounds until you are saying “hat.”

Try to make this a game.  Reward the child with a high-five when she is able to say the word as you are moving the letter tiles closer and closer.  Then try another word.  If you keep the vowel and ending consonant the same at first, all the child needs to concentrate on is the first letter.  So after “hat,” you might try “bat,” “mat,” and “sat.”  Review each word several times.

What your child is learning is called phonics, or the forming of words from letter sounds.  Some children will pick it up quickly and others will take many lessons using just those same half dozen letters.  Don’t rush the child.  Keep the learning time as game-like as possible.  Aim for short lessons of ten minutes here and there rather than a half hour at a time, especially if your child is a young four-year-old or is resistant.

When the child knows the handful of words ending with “t,” change the ending letter to one of the other consonants, such as “m.”  Go through the process again, moving the letter tiles closer and closer until the child can hear the words “ham,” Sam,” and “bam.”  When you are sure she knows how to recognize and pronounce the words ending in “m,” alternate words ending in “m” with the already learned words ending in “t.”

These three-letter words are sometimes referred to as CVC for consonant, vowel, consonant.

Resist the urge to move quickly.  You want your child to build confidence about reading.  To reinforce her confidence, you could start a phone or computer document listing all the words she knows.  Or you could hang such a document on the refrigerator.  As she sees the list growing, she will feel proud.

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Posted in ABC's, consonants, CVC words, how to make learning fun, learning, letter sounds, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading readiness., sounds of English, vowels

So you’ve decided to teach your four-year-old to read–part 2

Posted on January 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Once you are sure your child can hear and say the sounds of the English language, the next step is to make your child understand that we use letters to represent those sounds.child making letter T with his body

One good way is to explain that people a long time ago figured out how to make pictures of sounds.  Those pictures of sounds are called letters.  In English those pictures are called ABC’s.

Say the child’s name.  Emphasize the sound at the beginning of the name.  Then show or draw the letter which the child’s name begins with.  You don’t need to call the letter by its name yet; rather, call the letter by the sound it represents.

For example, if your child’s name is Teddy, say his name emphasizing the “t” sound at the beginning of the name.  Show or draw the letter “t” but when you point to it, say the “t” sound.  Collect or point out objects which begin with the same sound.  Help the child to see that the “t” sound is in many words.  Kids will hear the sound more readily at the beginnings of words.

Some kids catch on fast and you can add another letter sound almost immediately.  For others you should focus on one sound at a time for several days.  Start with names of family members.  Focus on the first sound of the name, not middle sounds or ending sounds.  Move on to objects the child sees or uses daily.  Keep reviewing the letter sounds the child has already learned.

Stick to sounds which follow a one-to-one sound-to-letter correspondence.  For now, avoid names like Yvonne or Celine in which the first sound of the name is not represented by the letter usually associated with that sound.  Names which begin with digraphs like Shelly or Thad should also be avoided for now.  Four-year-olds can understand one-to-one logic.  Save words in which one sound is represented by two letters until later.

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Posted in ABC's, digraphs, early childhood education, exceptions to phonics rules, learning, letter sounds, literacy, methods of teaching reading, phonics, reading readiness., reading tips, sounds of English, teaching tips

Learning to read begins with mimicking sounds

Posted on December 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

So many preschools teach the ABC’s before they teach letter sounds.  This is a mistake.  Knowing that a certain triangular shape is called an “A” is less important than knowing how to say and recognize the sound of “a.”

When I teach a beginning reader, I teach with sounds, not letters.

First I say the 42 sounds of English and ask the child to repeat those sounds.  You might think, “Is that really necessary?”  Yes, it is.  Almost always I encounter a sound or two that a child cannot say properly.  For one child it was the “z” sound.  For another it was the “ch” sound.

Reading begins with sounds, with recognizing the sounds of English and with pronouncing those sounds correctly.  Once you are sure a child can do that, only then is it proper to associate a sound with a letter.

Child seeing letter on dog's collar

One technique I have found useful is to associate a letter sound with a particular noun which begins with that sound.  This can be especially useful for vowel sounds.  I taught a four-year-old to read this way.  Picturing the known object which began with that letter sound helped her to sound out unknown objects.  When she saw picture of an ostrich, she would say “o as in octopus” and compare that “o” sound with the sound in ostrich to see if the words started with the same sound.  I used pictures of an apple, elephant, igloo, octopus and umbrella, but any pictures would do as long as they are familiar and easy to remember.  For brand new readers, I kept those pictures on the desk.

To teach a child reading, I start with consonant sounds which are distinct.  The English alphabet has 16 sounds which always sound the same at the beginning of words.  Those 16 letters are B D F H J K L M N P Q[u] R T V X and Z.

The letters “b,” “d,” “k,” and “p”  are distinct because no other consonants sound like these sounds.  A child can make a “b” sound and always match it with the letter “b”—a one-to-one correspondence.  That is what I mean by distinct.

But other sounds are not distinct.  For example, a “c” and an “s” sound quite distinct sometimes but if a “c” is followed by an “e” or an “i,” it is not distinct.  And an “s” can sound like a “z” sometimes.  A “g” can sound like a “g” or a “j” depending on which letter follows it.  There isn’t a one-to-one correspondence of a single sound to  one letter, so they are not distinct matches.

All vowels make multiple sounds.  When you start combining letter sounds to form words, start with short vowel sounds, some of which are more distinct than others.  Short “a” and “o” sounds are distinct.  “E” and “i” sounds can be hard to differentiate.  “U” sounds are easier than “e” and “i” sounds, but are harder to differentiate than “a” and “o” sounds.  So I would start associating short vowel sounds with either “a” or “o” first.  Most phonics systems start with “a,” so if you are using prepared materials, you might as well start with “a.”  But really, “a” or “o” would suffice.

Let’s recap.  Suppose a child can recognize and pronounce the sounds of English.  Then it is time to choose one short vowel and five or six distinct consonant sounds and begin to associate letters with them.  When the child can correctly assign one sound to each letter, it is time to form words with them.

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Posted in ABC's, early childhood education, learning, letter sounds, phonics, sounds of English, teaching tips

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.

Benefit of reading to children: reduced hyperactivity

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Want to improve your baby’s, toddler’s or preschooler’s behavior?  Read to your children.  And play with your children.

That’s the conclusion of a study reported in the April issue of Pediatrics.  Two sets of children, one from birth to about three years old, and another from three to five years old, were studied.  Parents were videoed reading to their children or actively playing with the children, and later the parents’ positive interactions were reinforced by the researchers.

The results show that both groups of children’s behavior benefited from the active reading and play by parents, compared with control groups of children.  Hyperactivity at the time the child started school was reduced compared to hyperactivity in a control group, and remained lower for one and a half years.

The researchers recommend that pediatric primary care pediatric practices encourage parents to read and play actively with their babies, toddlers and preschoolers in order to achieve more desirable behavior in the children.

For more information on the study, got to http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2018/04/05/peds.2017-3393.

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Posted in hyperactivity, learning, learning in infancy, reading research, teaching tips

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