My philosophy on teaching reading
is far different from many homeschoolers I’ve met. I believe that children can learn to read at
a very young age. Children younger than
3 are introduced to letter names and sounds though aren’t expected to retain
the information.
Once
children are 3 years old they have the ability to learn letter sounds and how
to use them at the same time. We focus
on one letter per week. We do not learn
the letters in alphabetical order. We
learn them in an order that presents the highest number of CVC words for them
to sound out. As we focus on a new
letter each week we add it to the letters we've already learned to successfully
read decodable texts.
When you
give young children this power to successfully read they are so proud of themselves. They look forward to utilizing their new
found skills in increasingly difficult books.
We can
encourage a love of reading by providing children the opportunity to be
successful readers. Giving them the opportunity
to be surrounded by books encourages them to pick up a book, even if it just
means looking at the pictures.
We also
encourage a love of reading by demonstrating a love of reading. We can take the opportunity to read for
ourselves as well as read to our children.
I love
using a child’s interests to encourage them to read more. My oldest (a kinder) has a set of picture
encyclopedias. His reading lessons go as
follows:
· *He gets to browse through all the encyclopedias
any time he is interested.
· *If he’s interested in something specifically we
read the encyclopedia page about the topic.
He reads the words he can read and I read the rest.
· *If that satisfies his thirst for knowledge on
the topic we move on and browse again.
· *If he’s still interested in a topic after we
read the encyclopedia we find other sources of information. Sometimes this means visiting the library,
finding books around our home, or utilizing an online leveled book library. We find a text on his reading level about the
topic of interest. We also find a text
that is much harder that we can read together.
He takes both books and highlights the words he can read (either with a
highlighter or highlighter tape). This
empowers him by giving him the responsibility to discover what he can do.
· *Lastly, we read the books together, over and
over.
As we read together children are improving their reading
skills and learning about ideas or reading stories on a topic of interest.
We read
things according to our interest in the topic.
We love reading because it satisfies something within us. The stories captivate us. The non-fiction texts empower us with
knowledge. It’s crucial to give children
the same satisfaction with appropriately leveled texts and support for their
current skills.
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