How Natural Reading Happens
Dateline: August 25, 2003
by Susan Viator
During the summer between kindergarten and first grade, our
son Matt learned to read. He went from not reading anything to
reading everything overnight. He read cereal boxes and
billboards and parts of the newspaper. He read his animal books,
his stories about the solar system, and the greeting cards in
the grocery store. He read the labels in clothing and grocery
lists.
"Isn't this weird, Mom?" He asked me. "When
I didn't know how to read, the letters didn't make sense. Now
when I look at a word, I can't help reading it!"
While I cared for his new baby sister that summer, he sat
beside me and read to us. By the end of August, he was reading
from the encyclopedia. Not knowing all the words didn't slow
him down, he spelled them for me, and I told him what they were.
After reading a book from the library about magnets, he had
a revelation.
"Mom! he exclaimed." Now that I can read, I can
learn about anything I want!!!"
We were excited right along with him until he went to first
grade and started bringing home phonics worksheets to do each
night. Phonics? When a child is spending hours at home perusing
the encyclopedia and reading words like hydrogen or Coelecanth,
going to school and learning about Mr. M who likes
Muffins and Milk is well, boring. For some
strange reason, he didn't sit still for reading lessons. He reacted
like a typical six year old and became a clown in class. His
teacher phrased it differently. "He's disruptive and is
making it difficult for the other children to learn." First
grade was Matt's last year in school for many reasons.
Our family was having a wonderful time learning together after
bringing Matt home, and we knew that Alyssa wouldn't be going
to school at all. I began thinking seriously about the reading
process. Why did Matt learn to read all by himself? We hadn't
taught him, had we? It just sort of happened.
After some careful thought, I realized it hadn't just
happened. We didn't start with the goal of teaching him to read,
but the activities we did sent him down that road anyway. We
started reading to him when he was about a year old. Sometimes
it was only a minute or two before he fidgeted and wandered off
to play, sometimes we read so long he fell asleep on my lap.
By the time he was two, he brought his favorite book and snuggled
up with me every time I sat down.
We sang the alphabet and he learned to spell his name. Word
games were fun, too.
"Ball, bear, and barn all begin with 'B'. Can you think
of other words that start with 'B'?"
"Bubble, Mom!!!"
"Fat, cat, sat. Can you make a rhyme?" (He could..
and did.)
When we had secrets, we spelled things in front of him. That
stopped working when he was about three and we planned a surprise
t-r-i-p to the z-o-o. He wasn't surprised and he told us where
we were going as we got into the car.
I decided to do many of the same reading and word activities
with my daughter, and see where it took us.
Alyssa loved books. She carried them all over the house,
and any time she saw an open lap, she clambered up with a book
to read. She slept with us, and so did a few of her favorite
volumes. It was fun to wake up in the morning and see her holding
them proudly upside down 'reading' to us. I enjoyed it more when
she did it at ten in the morning instead of waking us up at six,
though.
When she was about two and a half, I used index cards and
a marker and labeled everything in the house I could think of.
Refrigerator, cupboards, television, bookcase, floor, wall. Any
surface I could attach a card to had one. She began to understand
the concept that those words meant something and started
asking me to write other words. I wrote any word she asked for
and taped it to the front of our kitchen cabinets. It was quite
an eclectic collection. Magnificent (one of Matt's contributions)
was taped up next to monster. Lint ended up next to belly
button entirely by accident. Chicken, for some reason
was posted by toenail. I read the words
with her occasionally, or I pointed them out in books while we
were reading.
"That word is banana! That's one of your words!!"
Ownership of the words really pleased her. Whenever we read a
book that she knew contained some of her words, she bounced up
and down next to me and excitedly pointed to them and shouted
them aloud before I could read them. Reading was a joyful experience
for her and reading with her was fun every time.
I never did get around to playing the word games with her.
She started them with me when she was about four.
"Mommy, my name starts with the letter 'A' doesn't it?
When I answered yes, she said, "Apple and amazing start
with 'A', too!"
When Alyssa was about five, I took all her cards down and
gave them to her. More than two years of words made a hefty stack.
She lined them up across the floor like a train and made sentences.
She quickly discovered that little words like and and
the were missing. She asked for more words and I bought
another package of index cards.
She discovered the ability to make humorous sentences using
words like stinky, ugly, (and I am only slightly embarrassed
to admit this) toe jam. From the sound of her giggles, it was
apparently quite amusing to make sentences like Mom has stinky
toe jam or My brother smells funny.
 One evening few months
before she turned six, she was sitting on the couch with her
brother while he read to her from Dr. Seuss' immortal Green Eggs
and Ham. She commented that she would like to try reading it
herself. My son, bless him, wordlessly handed her the book. She
opened it to the first page, began reading it, and read every
single word on every single page to the end! Then, she skipped
off to her room as we applauded and cheered wildly. About ten
minutes later, she re-appeared with one of my grandma's old scarves
tied around her head, an aqua satin pajama shirt tied by the
sleeves around her neck for a cape, and her teddy bear under
one arm. She JUMPED into the living room, flung out the other
arm dramatically and shouted, "I am SUPER reader!!!"
I ran for the camera. I took a picture of her in costume, holding
the bear in one arm and the book in the other. That picture is
still one of my favorites.
Alyssa is nine years old now. Yesterday, she stood next to
me in the kitchen, watching me toast a muffin and reading the
package.
"Sour dough?" she asked. "That's a misnomer,
isn't it? It doesn't really taste sour at all."
I stood there looking blankly at her. My nine year old just
said misnomer to me?
She looked up and asked, sweetly, "Don't you know what
that word means, Mom?"
"Um.. yes I do, Dear." I answered her. "I just
didn't realize you knew that one."
"Of course I do!" she said, " I READ!"
|