Sarah Carothers

Joy wrote:
Why push and force a child to read, making them feel worthless, when if you
wait 6 months they take off on their own.
Patience is the biggest gift we can give our children.

>>>
We're beyond that point of "waiting 6 months and taking off on their own". This child *wants* to read but struggles with most every word. It's not a situation where the parent wants this to happen but the child doesn't.
Every night, she brings a book to me and she tries to read it. If it's a level one, she usually finishes it, then looks at the back and sees where it says something like "level one.. for preschool through grade 1". What a deflater *THAT* information is! :( The next night, she picks a more difficult book, barely gets through it, flips it over, sees it's level 2 for grades 1-3.... gets deflated again (she knows that other kids her age are considered 5th graders).
Before somebody goes off on me about grades :-), I don't "do" grades but they are all around us... on the back of books, on the corner of toy boxes, on software (well, that's usually ages). It's hard to hide that sort of stuff... I've thought about stickers on the back of the books but that just seems to call even *more* attention to it.
Sarah



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kolleen

>Sarah writes:
>We're beyond that point of "waiting 6 months and taking off on their own".
>This child *wants* to read but struggles with most every word. It's not a
>situation where the parent wants this to happen but the child doesn't.

If you look deep down, and really look at the substance, its possible (I
said possible, not probable) that the child wants to PLEASE the parents
so they initiate it.

Like the kid who waits for the clap at the end of everything they do
because thats how they LEARNED to do things.

>Every night, she brings a book to me and she tries to read it. If it's a
>level one, she usually finishes it, then looks at the back and sees where
>it says something like "level one.. for preschool through grade 1". What
>a deflater *THAT* information is! :( The next night, she picks a more
>difficult book, barely gets through it, flips it over, sees it's level 2
>for grades 1-3.... gets deflated again (she knows that other kids her age
>are considered 5th graders).

If she gets deflated at seeing the 'level 1' words, instead of elated
that she read a book, then the issue isn't with reading.

Its an outrageous concept. One has to mull it around like fine wine for a
time...

>Before somebody goes off on me about grades :-), I don't "do" grades but
>they are all around us... on the back of books, on the corner of toy
>boxes, on software (well, that's usually ages). It's hard to hide that
>sort of stuff... I've thought about stickers on the back of the books but
>that just seems to call even *more* attention to it.

If it bothers either of you because its all around, then again, its the
fact that it bothers you that is the issue here.

Have patience with yourself if you truly *want* to unschool, it takes
time to unlearn the pressures of society.

Good luck,
Kolleen

Tia Leschke

>
>
> >>>
>We're beyond that point of "waiting 6 months and taking off on their own".
>This child *wants* to read but struggles with most every word. It's not a
>situation where the parent wants this to happen but the child doesn't.
>Every night, she brings a book to me and she tries to read it. If it's a
>level one, she usually finishes it, then looks at the back and sees where
>it says something like "level one.. for preschool through grade 1". What
>a deflater *THAT* information is! :( The next night, she picks a more
>difficult book, barely gets through it, flips it over, sees it's level 2
>for grades 1-3.... gets deflated again (she knows that other kids her age
>are considered 5th graders).

Can you get a sense of just where her difficulty lies? Does she have
difficulty with phonics, or has she not developed enough of a sight
vocabulary so she has to sound out every word? If it's phonics, I worked
with Lars using a book called The Road to Reading. It isn't geared toward
really young kids, and it really helped with his phonics. (The fact that I
was insisting that he do it caused other problems, but if your daughter is
really wanting to learn, it shouldn't cause her any.) If the problem is
with sight words or other fluency difficulties, there are sites on the
internet that offer exercises in increasing reading fluency. I'm afraid I
don't have any urls for you, but searching on reading fluency found me a
bunch when I looked before. They didn't help my son, again because he
didn't want help at that time. The other thing is just lots of
practise. Maybe you could get right away from the books with reading
levels. Go to the library and get short picture books or early chapter
books without any grade levels on them for her to read. If you can get
book and tape sets, all the better, though you might need to sit with her
and help her keep her place. A lot of them go too fast for the early reader.

The more you can pinpoint where the problem is, the easier it will be for
us to come up with suggestions. Above all, help her find books she
enjoys. You do still read to her don't you? A lot of people find that
getting the child to read every second chapter or page or even paragraph
can improve the reading skills with less frustration than asking them to do
all the reading. Even asking her to read the first paragraph of every
chapter or something would give her practise.
Tia

Tia Leschke leschke@...
On Vancouver Island
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It is the answers which separate us, the questions which unite us. - Janice
Levy