Miriam's New Subject: Reading Comprehension

I added a few new subjects to Miriam's day this year as she is a big 4th grader and all.  One of the subjects is reading comprehension.  At first glance that seems silly as Miriam reads well above her reading level and has no problem comprehending what she reads.  However, I wanted to address two issues with this new subject: test preparedness and critical thinking skills.

Miriam has been doing critical thinking work since Kindergarten, but solving logic puzzles has gotten pretty simple for her.  We continue to bump up the challenge but she understands the process of reading the clues and marking a grid.  (I'm talking here about logic puzzles that have you find a solution based on a few clues.  For example, find 4 people's last names using a grid and clues such as "no person has a last name that is longer than their first name.")  Miriam adores logic puzzles and I think they are valuable so we continue to do them. (We use the Critical Thinking Co's Mind Benders for our logic puzzles.)

However, while that type of logic study is useful it isn't the best way to prepare for the English section of the ACT or multiple choice tests in general.  Well, I guess it is if a person knows to transfer the information.  Never mind everything I just said.  Instead, we'll just say that I wanted more specific practice for the English and science portions of the ACT.  I realize that is many years in Miriam's future, but the sooner you start practicing the better you get and the better scholarship you get.  I used to practice test taking with my public school students and the kids who understood the process, format, and strategies for test taking had such an advantage.

Enter The Critical Thinking Company.  Some days I feel like they should give me a kickback for all the nice things I say about their company.  They don't.  But they should.  :)  I bought Science Detective for 3rd and 4th grade because Miriam hadn't done anything like it before so I wanted her to feel successful and build up to harder problems.  While she reads and comprehends at a much higher level, she doesn't evaluate charts at a higher level or find the sentence that best answers the question at a higher level.  What I'm saying is, I'm glad we didn't buy the 5th and 6th grade book although I debated between the two for quite some time.

Clearly I'm tired because this post feels like it is all over the place.  I apologize.

Let me wrap up.  This workbook contains short passages of non-fiction based on science principles.  The sentences are numbered and the paragraphs are assigned a letter.  Following the passage are a series of questions about the information in the passage.  Most of the questions come in two parts: what is the answer to this question and which sentence best answers the question.  I really like that part because it forces Miriam to evaluate the passage even when she knows the answer already.

So far the passages have all included graphs of various types.  In the question section there are questions that can only be answered by evaluating the graph and for one passage Miriam was required to fill out 3 graphs similar to the one found in the passage.

This book really is a stellar reading comprehension workbook.  It forces Miriam to read carefully, to read the questions carefully and evaluate exactly what is being asked and how and where to find the answers.  It forces her to learn to decipher the purpose and information presented in a variety of graphs.

In short, it does everything I wanted it to do and does it very well.  Plus the passages and number of questions are a perfect and appropriate length for her age--it takes her 15 minutes to complete one passage with questions.  She is assigned two sections per week so she does reading comprehension on Tuesdays and Fridays.  I think it is just the right amount.  As she gets better at it I will probably start having her skip every other passage to get her through the book in one year so she can move to the next book in the series next year.  Then Cowen can use the book and do the passages Miriam skipped when he gets to 4th grade.  :)  I don't see any reason a child would need to do every single page in a book that size unless you did start the child in 3rd grade and expected him to take 2 years to complete the book, or the child really struggled with this type of work and needed the extra practice.

The only other thing I think I should mention is that the Critical Thinking Co markets this as a "core" textbook for science.  Yes, conceivably you could use this book as your science textbook but I wouldn't recommend it.  It doesn't build on itself well and the concepts are not delved into or layered enough to be a stand-alone science curriculum.  Plus, it would be boring.  No experiments.  But that's my opinion, for what it's worth.

Here's the link if you want to "look inside" the book on the Critical Thinking Co's website: http://www.criticalthinking.com/getProductDetails.do?code=c&id=05001

Happy homeschooling!

PS  I'm feeling better.  More stable, happier, less nauseated.  Blessed second trimester.  Thank you so much for all your kind words via emails and comments and for your long-distance hugs.  It really made a difference in my outlook.  I'm so glad I have friends like you.

Fly Swatter as Educational Tool

My son Cowen is a kinesthetic learner. In plain English that means Cowen is a boy and therefore CANNOT HOLD STILL TO SAVE HIS LIFE.

I have such fond memories of Miriam curled next to my side, soaking in the reading lessons, happy to be with Mom and more than willing to actually look at the words on the page.

Not so with my son. He cannot hold still long enough to look at more than one letter of a word, and so he makes wild guesses at what a word says based on the first letter. Or, if glancing at the word is too much trouble, he just guesses without referring to the text at all. While the guessing and glancing is going on, he's also busy sliding off the couch, turning upside down, making strange noises, and flailing his limbs about in boy abandon.

I've reduced reading time to three measly pages a day. It is all I can handle.

However, a university student of mine told me about a great idea she got from watching a kindergarten teacher that I now use with my son (did you follow that?). The kindergarten teacher gave her students fly swatters and had the students hit things.

Brilliant.

Imagine my son's utter happiness when I handed him a fly swatter and told him to whack the letter that makes a "sssssss" sound.

He gives himself extra points if he makes any letters fly off the table from whacking so hard.

We've used the fly swatter idea for a variety of activities. We started with hitting the correct lower-case letter (he is a lot stronger with upper-case than lower-case). He's also whacked the letters that make certain sounds. It can also be used for sight words.

He loves it.

Don't imagine that he actually stays standing on that one chair. No, no. He stands on one chair, hits something with the swatter, jumps to the next chair, crawls around to the bench, jumps to the ground to get the letters that have flown to the floor, does a few kicks and scrambles around, and then winds up on the first chair again.

It drives my hubby bananas to watch it.

Most days I think Cowen is hilarious.

Other days, I wish he'd snuggle next to me and hold still for a few minutes.

But mostly I think he his hilarious.

PS--Another good trick for kinesthetic learners is to focus on writing. My son enjoys writing because it involves movement. He loves to make up sentences that he thinks are funny, like: "My Dad sat on a cactus." If you put that sentence on a paper and tried to get him to read it he'd act like it was written in Chinese. However, he has no problem writing it.

Another good idea is have your kinesthetic learner spell out words with letters spread over a table or the floor. The more he/she has to move to get to the letters the better. So spread out the letters and then say, "Write the sentence: Mom is fun." The learner finds the letters he/she needs and puts together the sentence. Works like a charm because there is no holding still involved.

If you have a kinesthetic learner at home--good luck!! We need it. :)

What Else We've Been Doing: Reading

I'm sure it comes as no surprise, considering I don't think children should attend school until they are 8, that I am adamantly opposed to teaching children to read in kindergarten.

Especially boys.

ESPECIALLY BOYS.

Here's why. Most boys are not ready to learn how to read as early as girls are. Their brains usually focus more on physical things and less on abstract/academic things during the early years. By early, I mean until age 8.

As a teacher I saw firsthand what happens to students who fail to read at the ridiculously young ages that we try to teach them. They give up. They tune out. They hate school. And most importantly, they think they are stupid.

Let's review a very important child development fact: anything you teach a child before said child turns 8 is pretty much a permanent fixture in the child's brain and almost impossible to change their mind about. That was confusing. In essence, before 8, a child believes everything you teach him/tell him and it is almost impossible to convince the child that the information is wrong later. So if a child thinks he is loved before age 8, he always will. If a child thinks he is smart before age 8, he always will. If a child thinks he is NOT SMART before age 8, he always will.

Eight is a magic number in child development.

So what happens to the child in kindergarten, the grade in which reading is currently being taught in most elementary schools, who is not ready to learn to read? You guessed it. The child assumes he is dumb and believes it the rest of his life.

I am opposed to teaching children, especially boys, to read before they are seven or show many different signs that they are ready.

But, you say, won't the later learners be behind?? No. Research shows that early and late readers generally reach the same reading competency by age 11. Meaning, it all evens out before they hit middle school years/adolescence.

So, you say, explain the picture below.

Hmm.

How embarrassing. Caught *gulp* teaching my five year old son to read.

My only explanation/defense is this: sometimes my children don't care about all my education expertise and INSIST that I teach them what they want to know.

In other words--Cowen was showing a lot of signs of reading readiness.

For example, if I asked him to spell a word like "hat" he could do it by sounding out the different letters in the word.

He knows all his sounds and letters.

He knows how to tell when a word starts and stops.

He understands that a period marks the end of a sentence/idea.

He turns six in March and has been begging me to teach him to read for two years now. He wants to read Ranger's Apprentice. And every other book with cover art that includes a knight/sword/hobbit/horse/or cowboy.

He's desperate to be able to do what Miriam does.

There was no need to wait any longer. He was ready. We're proceeding slowly and cautiously--ready to slow down even more if any signs of trouble pop up. For now, he's progressing rapidly and loving it.

There are several methods/programs out there for teaching reading. Most are junky. Most are overpriced. Most introduce too many words too quickly.

I taught Miriam how to read using a white board. When she knew her sounds, I wrote "at" on the white board and showed her how to combine the two sounds. Then I added different letters on the front of "at" to make "cat," "hat," "sat," "mat," "fat," etc. When she was reading those words confidently I would write a silly sentence like "Miriam sat on the cat." I would read her the sentence, she would giggle, and then I would have her circle the words she could read.

Then we moved on to "it" and all the words that end with "it."

Etc., etc., etc.

Until she was comfortable with the concept of sounding out.

Then I moved her into the following program called Little Books: Set One.

http://iseesam.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8_9&products_id=1

When you first see this series you will think it is plain and possibly non-academic because it is all black and white pictures. Trust me, the color of the pictures matters not. In fact, every once in awhile I would copy a picture for my daughter to color to keep her interest level high.

These books are fantastic. They introduce new words and new word families and new sounds very slowly so a child always feels success. That is very important.

I used the whole first set with Miriam and half of the second set. By then she was ready to move into early readers at the library so we discontinued using them.

Cowen spends ten minutes with me every day on reading because he insisted. That's plenty for a wiggly boy child. He started with the white board until he was comfortable spelling lots of easy sound-out words. (Oddly, Cowen could spell words long before he could read them. Boy brains are weird--I'm just saying.) Recently, I let him get out the first Mat the Rat book (what my kids call the Little Book books). Cowen was THRILLED. Learning to read is a big thing at our house--a privilege of sorts.

He's currently passed off the first three books and is still practicing with Level One: Book 4 and Level One: Book 5. He's still loving it. He's still feeling very successful.

Yeehaw!!

If you have a baby, the best thing you can do to raise a reader is to read yourself. That's even more important than reading to your child. If you lack time, like myself, I tell my children about different books I love. As I walk by my bookshelf I'll casually pull a book out and skim through it and mutter to myself, "I love this part." My children will beg to know more.

There are a whole bunch of preliteracy strategies and they work. The more you make your child want to learn to read, the better reader the child will be.

Other preliteracy strategies include ordering a monthly magazine for your child so the excitement of getting mail transfers to reading the mail. I recommend the National Wildlife Federation magazines. We started with Animal Baby, moved on to Your Big Backyard, and now adore Ranger Rick. There are a lot of good options.

Reading a story so many times that your child can recite it is also a good strategy. Then have your child "read" the book to any person willing to listen. Heap praise on the child for his "great reading!"

There are others. My basic point--be very, very careful with reading. Preliteracy is key. Absolutely essential. Then, don't start teaching reading until you know your child is ready. Set them up to succeed. Always praise, praise, praise when it comes to reading. And if you have a boy that is not reading as early as you think he should--relax. Most boys will be ready to read by age 7, but some not until they are 8. It will be fine.

Hope some of this info was useful.

I also recommend reading: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences by Leonard Sax.

And The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon by David Elkind. This one is a little dated, but it still provides excellent food for thought.

Happy reading!