Section 3 – The ‘experience’ approach to reading
It’s worth establishing how babies learn to understand speech – this makes it easier to see that they are using the same processes when they learn to understand print.
We can also see that parents employ a different approach when they are helping their children learn to hear language, from the methods used in most schools when teaching children to read.
Schools tend to adopt a performance based approach to literacy. They feel children should be ‘doing it’, unaided, as soon as possible – remembering individual words, sounding out written words by themselves, reading simple books aloud slowly and haltingly.
In contrast, parents follow an experience based approach to understanding language. They surround their children with meaningful speech almost without thinking about it. They don’t worry if a child hasn’t remembered a word first time around, they carry on talking. This is because their main purpose is not to find out if their child has remembered what he has learned. No, it is simply to make speech meaningful.
So the child learns at his own pace and in his own way, without feeling under any pressure to ‘perform’. And in no time at all he is understanding everything he hears – so long as it’s relevant to him.
The exciting thing is that it’s quite possible to use the same experience based approach to teaching reading.
Forming mental images of written words
Obviously, a child does need to remember written words. Our job is to make this as easy for him as we can. Doman (Teach Your Baby to Read) says that the first words a child learns to read should be intensely meaningful, and begins with the words mummy and daddy, on cards, in huge red letters 5 inches high. (This helps the youngster to form really clear mental images.) Words in later vocabularies gradually reduce in size, until the print in the first book is only ¼ inch high, and normal black.
Seeing meanings in written words
The important thing is to help a child see the right meanings in the words. Show him the words on the cards, tell him what they mean (and what they say), linking them with pictures, or people, or objects. If you want to reassure yourself that he really has learned the words, choose encouraging ways of finding out – e.g. “Show me the word that says…” (rather than “What is this word?”). If he isn’t quite sure, point it out again, and remind him of its meaning with a big smile. (Babies often hear a new spoken word several times before it registers clearly.)
Another stratagem is to prop up three or four word cards on a book shelf, tell them sternly that on no account must they run away and hide, then close your eyes and listen to the muffled giggles as your child whisks them away. Eyes open, ask him to “make that naughty word ‘porridge’ [so he knows what he is looking for] go back on the book shelf where it belongs” – and if he chooses the wrong card, tell him he is “nearly right”, and help him to find the word ‘porridge’ yourself.
When you move onto simple books, you can have a fine old time making word cards for each word in a new sentence. (Type them on your computer, and print them off.) Teach the words individually, first, then help your child to arrange them as a sentence, reading each word to you while he does so. He can stick the cards on a wall with blu tack, and rearrange them to make silly sentences of his own.
In ways like these, we make sure that children have all sorts of practice in correct word identification, without ever feeling that they are ‘bad at reading’, or ‘getting it wrong’.
What we need to do is recognize that our primary purpose, as teachers of reading, is to help children ‘see meanings in written words’, rather than ‘say written words aloud by themselves’. (Independent reading aloud happens in its own good time, a bit later on. See Section 4, What about phonics?) Once we get our heads around that one, everything else really is as easy as falling off a log.
Reading to children while they follow the print
The very best way of helping a child to ‘see meanings in written words’ is by reading to him abundantly, the yummiest and most irresistible books you can find, and encouraging him to follow as you go along.
It isn’t difficult to establish the activity of reading aloud to children, while they follow the print, even in school. We can enlist parents’ help to do this in a classroom (and at home), teachers can read ‘big books’ with whole groups of children at once, word-for-word tapes/CDs are a godsend.
Here is the Reading Instruction Leaflet I offered to the parents of my literacy strugglers, at secondary level:
Reading Instruction Sheet
1. Help your child to choose a book he really wants to read.You can reject his choice if you wish (then you must choose another). But try to go along with it if you can.
2. You should both look for an attractive, enjoyable book, with super illustrations. The book should be a bit too difficult for him to manage on his own. (This is the exciting part.)
3. You read to him for about fifteen minutes. (You may need to read for longer if you are starting a new book, and want to get both of you into it.) You do this reading even if his own reading is quite good. You are sharing an enjoyable book together. Hold the book so he can see the print. Encourage him to follow as you read. If necessary run your pencil or finger under the words as you go.
4. Concentrate on enjoying what you are reading. Make it as dramatic as you can. Shout or growl for the angry bits. Whisper the frightening bits. Stop and talk about where the story is going, if you want. (Or discuss what the material is about, if it’s more factual.)
5. When you reach a good stopping place, he reads back to you for about five minutes. He should read back the last couple of paragraphs you have read to him, if possible. If you think he would enjoy a more exciting bit from earlier on, you can re-read just that part to him. You want the meaning to be really fresh in his mind when he tackles it himself.
6. If he gets stuck on a word, give him a couple of seconds to think about it – then just tell him what the word says. Don’t try to make him ‘work it out’. (You will be helping him to ‘work out’ words later. It’s important not to bother him with all that at the beginning. Concentrate on enjoying the book.) He should repeat the word correctly, then carry on.
7. Praise him. Say things like, “That was super! That was fantastic! I never thought you were going to get that word right – and you did.” Say things like, “Hey, that was incredible! I thought you were supposed to be bad at reading. You are not bad at all – you are ace.” Whenever he gets a word right that he got stuck on before, say, “Well done! You’re learning it. That’s
excellent.”
8. Praise him. (See above.)
9. Praise him. (See above.)
10. (It works.)
A certain amount of reading back is vital. Then we know the child is focusing on each word in turn, and having the experience of understanding it, as well as reading aloud correctly.
Once this routine is established, you can branch out in all kinds of exciting directions. My young granddaughter and I were sharing Enid Blyton’s stories from The Magic Faraway Tree. The ‘deal’ was that she would follow the print while I read the first two pages of each chapter; and listen, without following, to the remaining pages. After that we went back to the beginning of the same chapter, and it was Iona’s turn to read.
One evening, instead of re-reading the first couple of paragraphs to Iona, I asked her to read them ‘inside her head’, asking me for help with any difficult words, before she read the same text aloud to me.
It dawned on her that silent reading was easy, fun, and bursting with meaning. She insisted on reading the third paragraph ‘just to herself’ – but before I knew it, she had reached the bottom of the page, asking for only occasional help. Then the next whole page, and the one after that! Her eyes were like stars as she realized what she had achieved. Her Mum had gone to bed early, but fortunately wasn’t yet asleep, so we both tumbled upstairs and Iona bounced around the bedroom in utter delight, gasping, “Three pages! Three whole pages! Inside my head!” with every hop.
Reading over the phone
It’s quite possible to share books with children over the phone. (Make sure it’s a landline, so you don’t fry your brains.) Iona’s elder brother, Morgan, is dyslexic, and we have read books together for most of his life. When the family moved away, we carried on, devouring the Harry Potter books. Each of us had our own copy, and took turns reading aloud while the other one followed. In between times Morgan carried on with the book by himself, and told me about what he had read at the beginning of our next session.
He is in the middle of his GCSEs now, and we are sharing the Inheritance cycle, by Christopher Paolini (Morgan’s choice). It gives him that extra bit of encouragement to read on his own. (See Section 6 for an explanation of dyslexia, and suggested ways of tackling it.)
