The Awesome Mystery of Growth in Reading

Something has happened over the last few weeks.

My eldest son has caught the reading bug!

He is working with a will now in our reading lessons. Eager, interested, proud.
He is asking to read his vocabulary cards and play games with them.
He is showing off what he can read to his Papa.
He is asking for his reading lesson before breakfast is over.
He is finding books everywhere that he can actually read, and he is reading them.

Now, I must admit that these are not difficult books. There is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Hop on Pop, Who is Coming to Our House?, and a few Bob Books and A Beka Readers. His ability has not taken a huge jump. Yes, his reading vocabulary has been slowly and steadily increasing with daily work, but this is not the difference I'm noticing. The real difference is that he wants to read now, and that he realizes he can do it.

How did this happen?
The truth is, I don't really know.
We have worked away steadily at the mechanics for several months now, learning phonics, memorizing sight words.
Charlotte Mason taught me to keep the lessons short and interesting. We have tried never to have a boring or a frustrating reading lesson. And yet, he would have liked some of those short lessons to be shorter yet.
But not anymore.
What is going on here?
Why is it that this sudden growth in interest seems to have little to do with the slow and steady work we've done up to this point?
And why am I getting the feeling that it really doesn't matter what I teach him from this point on? He will read, no matter what I do next. Oh, I'm sure I can still help the process along, but even if I don't, nothing will stop him now.

The mystery of growth in reading seems a lot like physical growth to me. You feed children meal after meal, day after day. You make sure they get plenty of fresh air and sunshine. And yet, they stay about the same height and weight for months at a time. Then suddenly, in the span of a week or two, they shoot up by an inch and a half! (This is often accompanied by eating everything in sight.) It's mysterious and a bit unpredictable, this process of growth.

And yet, would healthy growth have occurred in the same way without day-to-day nutrition and exercise? Our daily lessons, our games, our little motivational record of "Books I Can Read All By Myself," our newly instituted "Quiet Time" when he could choose to read or rest quietly...they were all healthy nutrition to support this growth spurt. And I will continue to supply him with his daily "meals," which will be taken in all the more voraciously now that he's so very hungry for them.

I've been trying to make the lessons a joy.
Now, they are a joy.

This, my friends, is success!

{Big Red Barn Reading Lessons} Lessons 2 and 3

We've had some bad colds at our house in the last week, and with some holiday busyness, we didn't manage to do much "school". We have done two more Charlotte Mason style reading lessons on the book Big Red Barn. Here they are:

Lesson 2

Objective: To learn the words "great", "green", and "field" by sight.
Method: I wrote each word in turn, telling SA what they said. Then I mixed it up, writing the words in different order and at different angles on a piece of paper until I was confident he knew each one by sight. Later, I pointed out each of these words in other stories we were reading, and he read them confidently.

I hadn't intended to do related phonics work until the next lesson, but SA brought it up himself. He noticed that "great" and "green" both started with "gr", and offered some other words beginning with the same blend on his own, without my prompting: "Grandma" and "grapefruit." I wrote these words down for him as well so he could see how they looked.

Lesson 3

Objective: To learn the "ink" family (in relation to the word "pink" in the story)
Method: I found a list of "ink" words in Phonics Pathways, and had SA sound them out. (I use this book as a resource. I do not really recommend it as a phonics program for young children...it seems more suited to remedial work. Sayings and humour seem more suited to older students. Lists and lists of words to read can be mind-numbing for children if you're not careful. There's a reason I'm using real books to teach reading, at least for the child I'm teaching now.)

Later in the day, SA found the Big Red Barn book, and read the first two pages on his own. Though we had not gone over the words "learning" and "squeal" yet, he read them confidently from memory. We'll still have to go over them so I'm certain he'll know those words anywhere, but next lesson I think I may make a puzzle for fun. I'll write out the first two pages on a sheet of paper, cut apart the words, and let him put them together correctly. We may also make other sentences using these words.

If you missed my introduction to these lessons, you can find it here.



Big Red Barn Reading Lesson 1
Big Red Barn Reading Lesson 4
Big Red Barn Reading Lessons 5, 6, and 7
The Awesome Mystery of Growth in Reading

{Big Red Barn Reading Lessons}: Day 1

This morning SA asked me to read Big Red Barn to him. I looked at it and decided it would be a great book for his next reading lessons. While I can't claim to have put a lot of thought into this decision, there are a few reasons why I think it will prove to be a good choice:

1. It has a good mixture of short, three-letter words and longer words.
2. It has a bit of repetition, but not so much that it becomes boring.
3. It is interesting and fun for SA.

I have written before about using Charlotte Mason's approach to reading. To summarize our process here,

1. I choose books or poems that are interesting and fun for SA to read.
2. He learns the words of that book by sight so that he can recognise those words anywhere he sees them.
3. We base our phonics lessons on the words he has learned by sight.

I believe this summarizes the heart of the Charlotte Mason learning-to-read process. She gives specific examples of reading lessons in Volume 1 of her Original Homeschooling Series that are very helpful. I don't slavishly follow the mechanics of her process, (using loose letters and words) though I do this occasionally. Most of the time, I simply make use of a notebook.

My intention with this series is to give a concrete example of a reading lesson in our homeschool. It may be appropriate to note here that SA knows all his letter sounds and can sound out three-letter words quite easily. He reads some words quite confidently. For this reason, we started by finding out how much of the book he could already read. (I am starting to think it may be helpful to keep a notebook of all the words he knows so far. For now, this works, though.)

Lesson 1

SA and I read Big Red Barn together. I allowed him to read the words he could. Any time he hesitated, I smoothly supplied the word. I did not prompt him to "sound out" anything at this point. This read-through was simply to find out what words he already knows so we can focus on the ones he doesn't.

When we were finished reading the book, I pointed out to him how many words he already knows, and that it would be pretty easy to learn to read the whole book. He didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure he's interested and looking forward to being able to read the whole thing.

Words He Already Knows: (He reads these words confidently, without hesitation.)
by
the
big
red
barn
in
there
was
a
pig
to
horse
little
on
is
weather
of
pile
hay
but
are
an
his
Cock-a-doodle-doooo!
too
hen
leg
egg
ten
moo
cow
old
cat
red
dog
bow
wow
with
puppy
all
day
grass
sun
went
one
last
out
end
day
play
moon

These are the words that need to be learned by sight:
(He is able to sound some of these out, but there was hesitation when we were reading through it, so they need reinforcement.)
great
green
field
pink
who
squeal
learning
very
every
vane
golden
flying
course
that
where
children
story
away
only
animals
here
today
sheep
donkey
geese
goats
were
making
funny
noises
down
their
throats
old
scarecrow
leaning
hoe
mouse
born
corn
rooster
pigeon
white
under
quiet
bantam
clutch
count
them
brown
black
meow
tiger
tomcat
yeow
some
round
warm
they
lived
together
played
when
down
lowed
squealed
stomped
sweet
gave
bray
sleeping
nests
even
took
rest
bats
flew
away
night
long
sound
asleep
mice
left
rustling
squeaking
while
sailed
high
dark
sky

Now that I look at it, that looks like a long list! I will start at the beginning, working through the book in order. As he can read the words, he will be able to read that portion of the book. Every other day, we will do phonics lessons related to the sight words he learns. For example, I anticipate teaching him the words great, green, and field by sight in lesson two. Then the next day, I'll make up a phonics lesson using the "gr" beginning blend. (Why choose that particular phonics lesson? I won't use "great" to teach other "eat" words, because "eat" usually sounds like "eet," not "ate". We have learned about "ee" before, so I won't go through that now. "Field" uses "ie" to say the "ee" sound, but the same combination can be used to say the long i sound (pie), or even the short e sound (friend). If he was familiar with the meaning of "wield" and "yield", I would teach him those words in connection with "field," but since he's not, I won't focus on it right now.) As you can see, my plan is highly individual to my own son.

As I usually do, I will feel my way along, deciding what to teach as I go along. This time, though, I'll blog through it. Maybe this will give me some insight into my own process.


Big Red Barn Reading Lessons 2 and 3
Big Red Barn Reading Lesson 4
Big Red Barn Reading Lessons 5, 6, and 7
The Awesome Mystery of Growth in Reading