Posted on 12/17/2014 5:52:27 PM PST by Jamestown1630
Read aloud to them when they are in your lap from birth onwards. That’s what my parents and grandparents did for me in the 60’s and I did for my own son in the late ‘90’s.
I started reading at the age of 5. My son started reading at 3.
As others have posted, the Dick and Jane books were popular in the 60’s and Dr. Suess. His books are still a classic. ‘Go Dog Go’ was one of my sons first reads. Colorful illustrations with large words draw a child in and make them curious about those ‘squiggles’. They want to know the story and be able to tell it too.
I remember word flashcards from the early sixties. That seemed to be a memory/word recognition strategy that sometimes frustrated some of my classmates.
My grandfather had an extensive (middle class people, mind you) library that was fascinating to me. He and my grandmother gave me a subscription to Johnny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and Andy series books when I was very young. I treasure those books and still have them today.
I love reading. Can you tell? :)
It's "pattern recognition", it works even if you substitute numbers that resemble individual letters.
Regards,
GtG
Let me post a tribute to my mother, kind of tying to a thread just above. My mom had been a teacher and she taught me to read. A-B-Cs then phonics then flash cards. Dick and Jane then wonderful golden books.
I was far ahead in reading when entering the first grade and I love reading. I owe my love of reading and what success I’ve had in life to my mom’s early teaching. Thanks for the opportunity to think back to this foundation.
I appreciate your post. Some of my greatest inspiration throughout my life has come from my Grandmother, who largely raised me: her valorous life, her principles, her love; and my Father, and his principles and appreciation of and love for others.
Remembering back to our good roots, and what we learned from them, always strengthens us.
-JT
That’s a very sweet tribute to your mother. She gave you the world through the gift of reading. Not to mention, it is a very special time spent truly together. It is an experience we never forget as evidenced by your writing.
I hope my son writes similar words about me someday. :)
You jogged a memory with the golden books. Now I am going to have to dig through some boxes. LOL
In addition to singing & reading Dick & Jane, I seem to remember a lot of flash cards for both letters & numbers
I have always loved reading and spelling came naturally to me. For some reason I had trouble with g e o g r a p h y until my dad made up a verse. George eat old gray rat at Pa’s house yesterday. Never had any more trouble. I do not know why that has stayed with me from age 6 or 7 way back in 1950/51. My mom was a great speller too and won school spelling bees.
I remember a childhood book; and I think it was a Golden Book.
There was a picture of sun-rays coming out of a cloud; and, as a kid, I thought that the rays were God.
Fast Forward to High School, when a classmate and I were talking about the Golden Books (this would have been 1971).
We both remembered that book, and remembered thinking that the rays of the sun were God.
We hugged, sharing a childhood memory.
-JT
Yep.
When I was in 3rd and 4th grades, we folded a sheet of paper so we could do math problems. There were about 6 or so problems across our math book and the whole page would be full. We folded the paper to a new row and wrote the answers-—addition, subtraction, division,, and multiplication. Is that clear as mud?
Taught my boys to read. Homeschooled. Easy and beautiful! Go look at seton homeschool website and you will see the schooling program and books I used. Can just get/take reading for your neighbor through highschool! Could not reccommend it more.
That’s clever. I’ve always remembered OBAFGKM, the same way.
-JT
(No, I am just a dilletante.)
Phonics works best to teach how to read, whether for children or for adults. I benefited from it when I was taught to read in Catholic elementary school. At the time, a little more than five decades ago, phonics was regarded as old-fashioned, with the look see method then all the rage in public schools. Yet phonics has endured, while the look see method and other innovations have wreaked havoc in the public schools.
You can get a re-issue edition of McGuffy or a copy in PDF format all divvied up into individual lessons. If you’re interested I can send you the information. It is what I used with my home schooled kids.
I recall other lessons based on mistake made due to some sounds being different than the general ones. I pronounced "said" as "sayed" and we had another lesson about recognizing words as their own units that sometimes sounded different that what we expected from the spelling.
Phonic based would be my choice - takes patience to get familiarity with the letters and their sounds and then building, but it works and embeds the skill indelibly.
My teachers never used the word "phonics."
They just told us to "sound it out."
In those days, the readers they used repeated “know on sight” words, like “look, see, and, here, there, she, he, was, were,...”
They taught phonics to read, but not always in individual letter sounds. There were rules to memorize and that were practiced in readers. For example, kids were taught to memorize “tion” sounds like “shun.” So the word “question” the child would sound out ques as individual sounds and then add the memorized sound of “tion.” Their readers were designed to memorize these rules of phonics and the occasional exceptions to the rule.
Liberals always made fun of how “boring” the “Dick and Jane” readers were. They were not intended to be novels. They were intended to teach reading to young students so they could actually come to read interesting novels.
When you say it just seemed to happen naturally, it is probably because you had memorized sounds within words and enough sight words that could suddenly you could just look at a sentence and know the words.
Liberals erased the “boring” idea of rote memorization in reading and in math.
My oldest son was reading at age four because I showed him these sounds of words as we read every day. Then he started reading me books and I acted the part of an enthusiastic child.
We picked funny books with twists on word meanings or absurd story lines that struck his funny bone. These books showed him words sound the same but are spelled differently with different meanings. Like Amelia Bidella books where she is a maid and in one story, asked by the lady of the house to stake the tomato plants in the yard. Amelia thought that was a strange idea, but she did what she was told to do. So the lady of the house returns to find pieces of steak tied to each tomato plant. Or Morris the Moose, whose human friend wanted to feel his forehead to see if Morris had a fever. Morris says “I don’t have four heads!!!!!”
Yes, I remember “sound it out”.
-JT
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.