My "Late" Reader, the Reading Tutor

Betsy has started college* and will soon begin her dream job. Her work-study assignment is (drum roll, please): reading tutor in an elementary school. This is a rich and lovely thing indeed, as this is the girl who was my "late" reader.

I never labeled her "late" -- I am not fond of labels. I did realize that she was learning to read in a way that was very different from how Anne-with-an-e had picked up on it. I realized that God had indeed tricked me into homeschooling and that now I had to actually become a creative teacher. (I realized I needed to deliver a satisfying rant to God before I could get back to business. I delivered the rant.) I worried, I researched, I asked friends.

One day, I heard Betsy label herself. "Anne is the reader. I'm not really the reader in our family." My heart sank. I didn't want any of my children to give up on reading before they'd had a chance to embrace it. I resolved to keep reading aloud to her as often as I could (not that I would ever stop reading aloud....) and I simply kept plugging away, exposing her to various ways of learning, waiting for the quintessential click.

The click came.

Here's a post I wrote a few years ago, about Betsy's reading journey:

On Learning to Read, Part II 
(this post originally ran in 2009):

Last week, I talked about how Anne-with-an-learned to read. I came away from my experience with Anne thinking that "teaching reading" was a snap. The only thing required of me was to read to my child, talk, talk, talk, and point out a few phonetic anomalies.

Then came Betsy. Different child, different brain, different wiring. A brand, new experience. I no longer felt like the SuperMom of Homeschooling. Was I doing something wrong?

No.

Betsy, who is every ounce as sharp as Anne-with-an-e, just processed things differently. Initially, though she loved having me read to her and enjoyed our family read-aloud times as much as Anne did, she was not inclined to watch the page and see what the words looked like. At one point, I noticed that rather than watching the page as I read, as Anne had, Betsy watched me, watched my mouth move as I read. Betsy wanted to hear the story, experience it, be a part of it. She was more auditory and kinesthetic than Anne had been, and so reading came to her in a different way.

With Betsy, I took the more traditional route of phonics rules and reinforcement, but I taught it with games:

• I made simple board games ("Read the word and move ahead three spaces.")

• I printed out Jan Brett's phonogram flashcards and we played charades with them. This was possibly one of the best things we ever did.

• I had her tell me a story -- she narrated it to me orally, I wrote it down, then had her copy it onto pages which she then illustrated. She then read her composition ("Jat's Bat" -- I still remember that the cover she made was decorated with glitter) to me again and again.

• We found Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter and Tabby series and Betsy loved it (and so did I.) We read those repeatedly, too, until she was reading them on her own.

This mixed bag of approaches worked, and Betsy began to read, and to love independent reading as much as Anne did. She just had to arrive by a different route, and I had to tune in to what would help her get there.

Today, they are both excellent readers and I don't think anyone would know which of them read "early" and which read "late" (and I'm glad that they didn't have to deal with such labels, which really aren't helpful and can be detrimental.) Though an "early reader" might make things easier on a teacher, the age at which a child reads isn't really important to the child or to her overall journey. She will read when she's ready, and when she's offered the right opportunities to be ready.

~~~~~

Betsy became (and still is) one of the most voracious readers I've ever known. She is also the writer of her own books these days, too. The Jat's Bat legacy lives on. 

~~~~

*Cue the Hyperventilation-of-Disbelief

How to Raise Readers (Or Convince Yourself That's What You Did)

1. Buy that Jemima Puddleduck board book when your first child is just a couple of months old. Convince yourself that your brilliant baby actually indicated to you (yes, right there in Barnes and Noble! She did!) that she would love to own that book.

2. Read Jemima Puddleduck daily. Sigh over the illustrations. Snuggle your baby.

3. Read My Name is Big Bird (and all the other -- many, many, many -- My Name is... books) over and over and over again. Because you love your child, because you love the way she is smitten with Big Bird, and because you love reading. But mostly because you love your child. Resist the urge to say something inappropriate and sarcastic when she asks for this book nineteen times in a row before lights out.

(Don't sigh over the illustrations as you did with Jemima Puddleduck. But do sigh over the delicious cuddle-and-read time. It's sighable, and it goes too fast.) 

4. Cynthia Rylant, Jim Arnosky, Barbara Cooney, Allen Say, Josephine Nobisso, Tomie  de Paola, Barbara Helen Berger, Robert McCloskey, picture books about saints, Laura Numeroff,  poetry everywhere, Eric Carle, Mike Venezia....

Stacked in the living room. Strewn in the bedrooms. Piled in the kitchen. Rummaged through at the book store....

Ramona, at the bookstore when she was four years old.

5. Read aloud at breakfast. Read aloud at lunch. Talk about books at dinner.

6. Don't worry about when your child starts reading. An early reader will not necessarily become a better reader than a "late" bloomer. What's important is to keep the love of books alive, whether that happens through independent reading, read alouds, audio books,  or, even better, an ongoing combination of all those things.

7. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Melissa Wiley, Beverly Cleary, C.S. Lewis, Maud Hart Lovelace, L.M. Montgomery, E.B. White, Eleanor Estes, Edward Eager, J.K. Rowling, American Girl books, Jean Craighead George, Peg Kehret, Rick Riordan, Brian Jacques, Hilda van Stockum, Jean Fritz, Jeanne Birdsall, Andrew Clements ....

  

8.  Go to the library. Make it a regular habit. Show your children how to use everything: the card catalog, the helpfulness of the librarians, the amazing fun of the self-checkout, the way the stacks are so perfectly constructed and suited to plopping down on the floor to peruse a book together until you ultimately decide, "Yes! Let's check this one out, too!" Teach them to bring their backpacks with them. You'll never check out just one.

9. Don't be the mom in the library who can be overheard saying things such as, "No! Put that back! You read that one last week -- get something new!" or, "Stop it! That one's too easy for you! Get something more challenging, why don'tcha?" Please don't say these things. There's nothing wrong with rereading a book, whether it's a classic or brain candy. Can you ever gaze too many times on a Caravaggio? Have you sworn off popcorn since you already enjoyed it once? Do you ever say, "Stop it! You've looked at that priceless painting before! Move on!" or, "Isn't that popcorn too easy to eat? Why don't you tackle something with some culinary layers?" Nope. Don't do it.

10. Remember this very important rule: no one is ever too old for picture books. Picture books are an art form. The best of them are beautiful and complex while appearing to be simple and simply inviting. Cultivate consumption of them. It's a great habit to acquire.

11. Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Madeleine L'Engle, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, Suzanne Collins, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, poetry everywhere, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Shakespeare. Stack them, strew them, pile them, rummage through them. Read them, share them, talk about them.

12. Don't turn books into idols, but do teach your children that books -- the written word, human communication, hearts and souls and minds poured out and preserved on paper -- are vital. They are our story, our history, our future. Books help us sift through who we are, why we are, what we are, and where we want to go.

13. If you do all these things, you will quite possibly raise readers. We did these things, and we have three daughters who love books.

On the other hand, it's quite possible that all the things we did had nothing to do with raising readers. It might just be in the genes. Atticus and I may have ink in our veins, so it's conceivable that no matter what we did, even if we'd spent their lives saying things like, "Put that book down and come watch Gilligan's Island!", they would have wound up loving books. I know people who love books who haven't necessarily raised "readers." It happens, no matter how much some people strew and read and stack.

The truth is, we can't predict what our children will become or mold them into what we want them to be. They are unique souls; they aren't here to be grand reflections of what book lovers we are, or of anything that we are. But, that's another blog post.

Even if we can't guarantee that book-loving steps will lead to book-loving people, one thing we can be certain of is this: Jemima Puddleduck, generally speaking, leads to good things.

On Learning to Read: Part II

Last week, I talked about how Anne-with-an-learned to read. I came away from my experience with Anne thinking that "teaching reading" was a snap. The only thing required of me was to read to my child, talk, talk, talk, and point out a few phonetic anomalies.

Then came Betsy. Different child, different brain, different wiring. A brand, new experience. I no longer felt like the SuperMom of Homeschooling. Was I doing something wrong?

No.

Betsy, who is every ounce as sharp as Anne-with-an-e, just processed things differently. Initially, though she loved having me read to her and enjoyed our family read-aloud times as much as Anne did, she was not inclined to watch the page and see what the words looked like. At one point, I noticed that rather than watching the page as I read, as Anne had, Betsy watched me, watched my mouth move as I read. Betsy wanted to hear the story, experience it, be a part of it. She was more auditory and kinesthetic than Anne had been, and so reading came to her in a different way.

With Betsy, I took the more traditional route of phonics rules and reinforcement, but I taught it with games:

• I made simple board games ("Read the word and move ahead three spaces.")

• I printed out Jan Brett's phonogram flashcards and we played charades with them. This was possibly one of the best things we ever did.

• I had her tell me a story -- she narrated it to me orally, I wrote it down, then had her copy it onto pages which she then illustrated. She then read her composition ("Jat's Bat" -- I still remember that the cover she made was decorated with glitter) to me again and again.

• We found Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter and Tabby series and Betsy loved it (and so did I.) We read those repeatedly, too, until she was reading them on her own.

This mixed bag of approaches worked, and Betsy began to read, and to love independent reading as much as Anne did. She just had to arrive by a different route, and I had to tune in to what would help her get there.

Today, they are both excellent readers and I don't think anyone would know which of them read "early" and which read "late" (and I'm glad that they didn't have to deal with such labels, which really aren't helpful and can be detrimental.) Though an "early reader" might make things easier on a teacher, the age at which a child reads isn't really important to the child or to her overall journey. She will read when she's ready, and when she's offered the right opportunities to be ready.

On Learning to Read: An Introduction

How do children best learn to read?

I can't answer that. I'm not a reading expert; I can't even name the many, varied methods with accuracy. What I can tell you about is how my children learned to read.

I always say that God tricked me into homeschooling because my first child learned to read so painlessly. It left me thinking, "I am SuperMom! I will be the Wonder Woman of Homeschooling! I can do anything!" My brilliant children would absorb all necessary knowledge by a sort of academic osmosis, because I'd bathe them in a rich learning environment. Everything would simply happen, as reading had happened for Anne.

It was, it seemed to me, something like this passage from To Kill a Mockingbird:

"Teach me?" I said in surprise. "He hasn't taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain't got time to teach me anything," I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. "Why, he's so tired at night he just sits in the living room and reads."

Indeed. I wouldn't have to teach anything. Reading to Anne was all I'd done. I read to her, Atticus read to her. When she asked questions about letters, sounds and words, we answered them. When we played with her Sesame Street bathtub sponge letters, we made words, spelled out her name. When she looked at the pages as we read picture books, we pointed out what we were doing, running fingers under the sentences, so she could see what particular words looked like, where sentences began and ended. Not that we talked about any of this. We just did it.

One day, when I went to pick Anne up from preschool, her teacher told me Anne had read a book to the class. "She read it," the teacher said, with an expression I couldn't quite decipher. Perhaps it was a bit of what Scout Finch's teacher showed:

... after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste.

"Yeah, she's been doing that," I told the teacher, thinking that this was how all children learned to read. (Of course, Anne's somewhat precocious reading didn't stop the teachers from being critical of other things ... I remember the "messy handwriting" comment that prompted me to check out a couple more books from the library on homeschooling, muttering all the while, "Messy? She's four! It's supposed to be messy! I can do this. I can teach. Where's that book by David Guterson?")

So. That's how Anne learned to read. The Scout Finch way. We had simply substituted Clifford and Charlotte's Web for the newspaper:

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills To Be Enacted Into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow -- anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.
                                             

Next up:

Guess what? Children Are Different!