Learning to Read

Last monday evening I had the pleasure of meeting twin girl children. They are six years old. T and M. M told me that she's three months older than her sister, but I considered that for a moment and decided she must mean minutes. They know their letters and sort of the sounds of their letters, but they are a little over-confident some of the time. They had a tendency to put all the letters of C-A-T together, but not in order. I kept reminding them to sound out the letters in the order they had put them, and then they noticed where they had gone wrong and ultimately fixed each problem.

Before that, though, I gave them a packet of alphabet flashcards and asked them to put them in order alphabetically. It became a race. A race which was marred only by the fact that the pack included only one each of Q, X, and Z. I made up spares by writing them on a piece of paper for Little Miss T.

When each had a side of the table covered in the alphabet, I asked them to sound out each letter and then went on to ask them if they could spell particular short words: "Can you spell 'cat'?", followed with "What other words can you make if you take away the 'C' and put other letters in it's place?". They figured out hat, sat, mat.

After a lot of running up and down the side of the table making up words ('hax?'), I asked them to each choose a book and we would sit and read together. As it turns out, I did all the reading. But I had them look for particular words (and, the) in the pages with me. All told we read five books that night. Their favourite by far was The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg. Miss M decided that she would dislike The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry before we began, but I told her it was my choice (the choices are rather limited on the picture book shelf) and I wanted to read it to them. She listened, but afterward they begged me to read If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff before they left for the night.

While we read, they squished themselves as close to me on either side as they could manage without actually sitting directly on my lap. It was cosy. If there's one thing I've noticed on the nights I've been working with these children, they are affectionate little creatures. Starved, you might suggest, for attention and love. They are loved - I imagine, although I don't see a lot of it with the Littles. I don't often meet the parent or guardians. This time I did meet Grandma, and she seemed uptight. At the end of the evening she asked whether I thought they would get better at reading... I said I certainly thought that they would - that the more reading they did and had done for them, the better/easier it would be for them. They are bright little girls. I hope to see them on Monday evening. I rather suspect I shall, because Grandma seemed pretty strict and as someone mentioned to me as we left for the evening, perhaps not altogether as bright as them herself. Plus, she's Grandma. She's carrying the weight of bringing up her grandchildren, most likely alone. I can understand why she's concerned. But as I said, they are six years old! They have time.

I picked up a copy of 100 Words Kids Need To Read by 1st Grade by Lisa Trumbauer, on the basis that I can copy some of the pages so that I can offer an actual lesson of sorts in the weeks ahead. Activities based around words. It seems as though five, six, seven is the age group I'm working with. And it's a brilliant place to begin. Although it's vaguely terrifying to someone who isn't actually a "teacher".

As always, I appreciate any ideas you all have.