Color can add hands-on interaction to assignments

Not every assignment that your child is asked to do will be as "hands-on" as she might need. Some worksheets and study guides tend to be so non-engaging that they end up being more busy-work than instructional aids. However, there are specific modifications you can make to the assignments which can increase her whole-brain involvement without affecting the intent of the assignment (or the grading of it).  One of the easiest modifications is to add extra concept-bridging steps to the assignment through the use of color.

No, I am not talking about coloring pages here.  Handing a child a picture to color rarely engages his brain in any way that reinforces learning.  On the other hand, asking a child to add colors to a diagram, text or drawing in a way that requires analysis of the words or pictures will make a significant impact to his learning.

A net and its solid.

Add color.  Highlighters, markers, crayons, and colored pencils are indispensable when it comes to helping your child sink her brain into a pencil-and-paper assignment.   In a recent math lesson, one of my students was having trouble visualizing the net of a geometric solid.  He couldn't see how the faces of the 3D drawing matched the faces of the net diagram. Ideally, we could have cut out a series of nets, then folded and taped them together to build paper models of the solids-- and we did do one just to make sure he understood the concept-- but that's very time consuming and we had many different solids to figure out.  This was a case where "hands-on" had to be a little more creative, and color-coding became the hands-on bridge from looking at a simple assignment to actually being able to work with it and analyze it.

The net and solid, color-coded.

For this assignment, I had him color-code the faces of the solid figure and the corresponding faces on the net; he was then able to make the connection between the 2D and 3D figures.  Once he could see the way the faces related to each other, where they connected, and the shape of each one, he could more easily match the solids to their nets.






Another use of color can help students understand math processes. For example, some of my students have struggled with long division or multi-digit multiplication, getting lost with all the different numbers that have to interact with each other.  Here we see a number multiplied by 23.  The digits 2 and 3 are color coded to match their products as the number is multiplied out:

In this way, a student can see that 1353 is the complete product of 3 x 451, while 9020 is the complete product of 20 x 451.  Notice the "placeholder zero" is colored an almost invisible gray to reflect the "invisiblitity" of the ten's place zero that makes 23 = 20 + 3.    Division can be analyzed the same way, writing each digit of the quotient in a different color so that the student sees what is happening in the process:

Color coding is equally effective in studying spelling rules.  Students who cannot identify the individual phonograms in a word are stuck with memorizing the unique spelling of every word they encounter, which severely limits their ability to spell. What they need is a way to see the phonograms in a word as they study its spelling. While my favorite hands-on spelling instruction is done by manipulating movable letter tiles, or physically cutting up words into syllables and letter combinations, this is not always practical. Instead, students can be shown how to color code the various phonograms in their spelling words.

Color-coded phonograms.

In this assignment, for example, a student might have been told to simply copy his spelling list.  That's easily done without involving much of the brain, even if he has to "copy each word five times each." Instead, modifying the assignment to add in some color-coding will require the student to analyze and interact with the words in a more hands-on way, which can increase the likelihood of actually learning to spell the words.



For the example above, the student may the words himself, changing the color of his pencil for each phonogram.  He could also write them in regular pencil and then underline the letters in different colors.  Highlighting or using colored pencils to circle the phonograms in a pre-printed list could achieve the same purpose for students who have diffficulty with writing.

The directions for the above example could go something like this:
1. Separate each word into syllables.*
2. Write single-letter vowel sounds in black, single-letter consonant sounds in blue.
3. Write double letter (same letter) consonant sounds in red, two-letter consonant sounds in green, two-letter vowel sounds in purple.
4. Underlined silent e..
5. If a separate, single-letter consonant or vowel sound follows another one, give it a different color (e.g., the "c" in escape, or the "a" in creation).

(*Note: I was taught that syllables are officially divided in the middle of double consonants: bel-low.  However, for the sake of identifying phonograms, the sound of a double letter such as /l/ occurs once in the word, so we can treat "ll"  as a single phonogram spelled with two letters, just like ph or sh, which are never separated.)

Color-coded roots, suffixes and prefix.

Besides learning the spelling of words, adding color can help children learn the meaning of words.  Vocabulary study often emphasizes prefixes, suffixes, and roots from Greek or Latin.  Color-coding can be very helpful for this as well.  Simply highlighting prefixes in one color, and suffixes in another, can help a student focus on the base words and analyze the meanings of words.  Or in a list of words that share certain roots, highlighting each root in its own color can call attention to the shared meaning of the words.

This concept can be easily extended to have students color-code the roots to match the corresponding key words in their definitions:

As you can imagine, analyzing words this way gets the hands, eyes, and brain involved in a manner that simply copying the words over and over cannot do. Similarly, color can be used to analyze text.  People have used highlighting to mark important information for years.  Why not use a variety of highlighting colors more intentionally?  If your child's assignment involves reading for information, he may use color to match information in the text to individual questions, either before he writes his answers, or afterwards.  While it may seem redundant to mark up a text in this way, the process actually increases reading comprehension by engaging the brain in a more concrete way than simply writing an answer.  Some schools teach this technique of "justifying" a response, requiring students to mark the information in the text that supports their answer:

This worksheet becomes more effective when the student

 uses color to match textual information to the questions.

Adding the targeted use of color to an assignment is limited only by the imagination.  A science diagram can be color coded to indicate the function of various structures. A history article might have facts highlighted that correspond to opposing political views. Whatever the student is asked to learn, color can help add hands-on interaction to even the most black-and-white of worksheets.

When Reading Assignments are Above Reading Level

It is not uncommon these days for a student to be given assignments in which the text they are expected to comprehend surpasses their instructional reading level.

Some homework is too hard for kids to read.

Both of the sentences above say similar things-- but imagine trying to wade through the first one when you are still learning to read the second.  This is frustrating enough with a single sentence, but when students are asked to digest entire passages, or even books,  that are beyond their reading level, many simply shut down.  Unfortunately, because the content of standardized testing is designed to be more "rigorous" than in years past, teachers are pressured to increase the rigor of the daily assignments to reflect these tests.

For the record, there are three reading levels that are generally refered to in educational circles: independent, instructional, and frustrational.  All three are determined based on the actual written words that can be identified, the vocabulary used, as well as the sentence length and structure.  A child's independent reading level is the level at which he can comfortably read and understand the text on his own.  The instructional level is the level at which he can read with some assistance for a word here and there.  Frustrational level is defined as the level at which a reader has less than 90% accuracy in word identification or comprehension.

Of course, most experienced teachers will tell you that the best way to increase a child's reading comprehension is to get them excited about reading, so that they read more and more.  The more a child reads, the more fluent his reading becomes.  It gets easier.  Problem is, the last thing that will excite a child about reading is to feel "stupid" because he can't understand what he is reading! Reading fluency increases when students read books at their level of comfort, and even lower.

So what's a parent to do?

There are actually two problems to address:  the child needs strategies to successfully complete the given assignments that are above his reading level, and uthe child needs help for continued growth in reading.

In order to successfully complete an assignment that is above his reading level, some scaffolding must occur.  "Scaffolding," as the name suggests, is a way of supporting his efforts so that he can work as independently as possible.  This may involve any of the following:

When the low-performing student must answer a bunch of questions that follow a difficult reading passage, he may feel overwhelmed.  (This is especially true in the case of a timed test.) Don't make him slog through the whole article first.  The following procedure (taught locally as R-CURAJ) allows the student to read for the information he needs in the most efficient manner:

1) First, read the questions:  have the child identify the most important words in each question, and circle or highlight them.  Have the child think about what kind of answer he might be looking for.  Will the answer include a number, a place, a person's name? What important word(s) might be found in the answer?

2) Next, have him skim through the passage to look for these words; when he thinks he has found the answer, have him underline the sentence(s) that include the information he needs.

3) Finally, have him read both the question and the answer to see if it all makes sense.  Can he "justify" his answer from the information he has underlined?

Is this cheating, because he may not read the whole passage?  No.  The objective is to have the child gather information from the passage.  Skimming is a valid reading skill that people use to find information without reading a whole passage.

Difficult passages are not just on standardized tests.  Sometimes they are in the students' textbooks. In this case,  the student may have no questions to help her, but must read an assigned text and be tested on it later. In this case, an old technique called SQ3R can help the student get the most out of her reading, and remember the information.

1) Survey: Have her look over the article (or chapter) to get a good idea of what it is about: read the title, any bold words, first sentences in the paragraphs, look at any accompanying pictures or diagrams.
2) Question: The student comes up with questions about what he might learn in the article.
3) Read: The student reads the article looking for answers to his questions.
4) Recall: The student tries to answer his questions from what he remembers in the article, looking back to make sure each answer is correct.
5) Review: The student explains what he learned to someone else.

Sometimes a student must read a short story or novel and write a book report, pass a test, or in some other way show understanding.  If the reading level is too high, this can be a Herculean task. These ideas can keep a student from drowning in frustration:

1. Gather any necessary background information.  If the novel is set in East Berlin during the Cold War,  or ancient Egypt, your student may miss important details simply because she is unfamiliar with the history.  Even a contemporary story may be incomprehensible to the student if it contains details outside of her life experience.  A child raised in a southern suburb, for example, may need explanations when reading a story about a child who lives in a New York City high-rise apartment. Use pictures, maps, timelines, internet resources, and anything else you might have to help the reader connect with the story.   Even better, if there is a movie version of the story, by all means let the child watch it before reading the book!  It is incredibly helpful to have the plot, characters, and setting already fixed in his mind before he attempts to read the story himself.  The movie will be different enough from the book that there will still be things to discuss, but it will be a thousand times easier to comprehend as he reads.

2. Help with unfamiliar vocabulary and difficult sentence structure.  You can pre-read the book and write definitions in the margins-- lightly, in pencil, if it's a school or library book.  If you own the book, you can even highlight the key words of the complicated sentences.  Here, for example, is a scaffolded sentence from the book Heidi:

                         sat down                                                      bottom
Peter generally took his quarters for the day at the foot of a high cliff, which seemed to reach far up into the sky.

3. Help the reader keep track of characters as they appear in the story.  Each character should be accompanied by a brief description. As the student comes across new information about each character, he can add it to the list.

4. Summarize the important events of each chapter.  Summarization is an important skill.  The student should be able to identify the major events in each chapter.  If he has trouble coming up with a summary, ask him if there was anything the main character(s) did or experienced in the chapter that the character(s) learned from, or that might cause or help solve a problem.

5. And of course, if there is an audio version of the book, allow the student to listen to it as he reads.

While these scaffolding techniques will help a child who is struggling with material she must read that is beyond her level, that is NOT the kind of reading that will be most helpful to her progress. The most helpful reading will be comfortable, easy books that allow the mind to relax and absorb the words.  The more of these that the student can read, the faster she will gain reading skill.

Not every child likes to read; however, if she seems to avoid reading, there may be a problem.  The problem could be as simple as not having found a book she likes.  In that case, take her to the library and show her how to look up books about things that interest her.  Does she like art? horses? science? spiders?  There are books for that.  In third grade, my lure was dogs-- I read every dog book the library had.

On the other hand, the problem may be lack of skill in reading. In that case, one of the best ways to get a reluctant student reading is to start her on a series.  Read the first one together, and let the student read the next. The same author writing about the same character tends to use similar vocabulary and sentence structure, so the reading seems easier with each new volume.  Plus, the reader is already familiar with the background of the story, so she can pick up each book with confidence.   Junie B. Jones, Magic Tree House, American Girl, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys-- these are all stepping-stones to better reading.  The series Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants have the added feature of cartoon-style illustrations on almost every page.

Some teachers swear by graphic novels for getting kids hooked on reading.  Like comic books, these novels are highly illustrated, which helps the reader follow the story.  Some, like the Magic School Bus and Max Axiom, are non-fiction science books.  There are also historical graphic novels and graphic versions of classic literature.  Do be aware, however, that not all graphic novels are appropriate for children... some are a little too graphic.

The problem for older struggling readers, of course, is finding books they can read comfortably that don't seem babyish.   Reading aloud to siblings, younger friends, or even pets can sometimes take the sting out of reading low-level books, but there is also a unique kind of literature written especially for the struggling older reader.  Hi-lo books, as they are called, are high-interest books written at a low reading level.  Even high school students can enjoy reading these books.

While scaffolding the difficult reading assignments and encouraging comfort-level reading is important, however, if a child is truly struggling to read at grade level, he needs specific help.  There may be gaps in his reading instruction, vision or hearing deficits, or sensory processing issues.  One student I knew had auditory processing problems that originated in infancy, affecting both her vocabulary acquisiton and spelling.  Using subtitles on tv shows allowed her to better process the words she was hearing, and teaching syllabication and phonics patterns improved her spelling as well as her reading.  Other students may be dealing with dyslexia or general learning disabilities.  If you suspect any of these, it is important to get help.

But, as I explained in the opening of this post, your child may be reading at grade-level and still be frustrated with the assignments he is being expected to complete.  If so, please know that you are not alone, and I hope some of these suggestions will be helpful.

Four Easy Reading/Writing Tips

Here are some common reading and writing problems and ways to work on them.  The first two have to do with individual words, the last two with longer passages:

1) When a student reads aloud, he misreads words, substituting similar words, such as "medical" for "mechanical."  Note how the words begin and end the same way-- the brain is tempted to fill in the middle with a word it already knows, especially if the actual word on the page is unfamiliar.   The brain must be trained to look at the middle part, too.

The best way to do this is to have the student divide the word into syllables.  This can be done on paper, underlining or drawing lines on the printed word:  me/chan/i/cal.  (Note: this is a good time to remind the student that ch can represent three sounds: Chocolate, Christmas, and Charlotte.) Using 3-D manipulative letters or tiles is especially helpful, because they move freely and the student can put the word together and apart easily.  Even letters written on small squares of paper can be used.  Alternatively, the word can be written whole and cut up into syllables.  The important thing is that the student becomes so adept at breaking up the word physically that he begins to see the words that way, and breaks them up mentally without thinking.

2) When a student has to spell a long or difficult word,  he may put in the wrong letters, or can't remember which letters are correct.  Have him look at the word syllable by syllable. Practice with 3-D letters as explained above.

Careful correct pronunciation, or over-pronunciation, can be helpful in distinguishing which vowels to use.  For example, "ridiculous" is easier to spell if you pronounce it as rid-ih-cu-lus  instead of ree- dic-you-luss."  “Difficult” is easier to spell if you say diff-ih-cult and not diff-uh-cult.

If a word is particularly tricky,  mentally mispronouncing the word (phonetically) on purpose can help her remember how it is spelled.  For instance, say "deter + MINE"  instead of "deter + men."  "Rendezvous" is easy to remember if you say it in your head as "rehn" "dez" "voos"  instead of "ron" "day" "voo."  "Perseverance" is easier to spell "per + sev + er + ance "  but be careful not to say “enss” at the end. 

The preceding tips were for single-word errors; now, let's look at a couple of common problems students have when reading paragraphs or articles:

3) When a student is called upon to determine the main idea, or central idea, of a passage he is reading, he chooses a sub-point from the passage instead.  The task is harder than it sounds, especially while the brain is still developing abstract thought.  Students must not only read and comprehend the information, but they must mentally sort supporting details from over-riding themes.

To practice this, have students start with easy part-whole exercises, such as "Parts of a house"  "roof" "wall" "window" "door" "foundation."  If you have two identical pictures of a house, and cut one up, the student gets the idea quickly.  Put the whole house picture at the top of the desk, and line the parts up below it.  The idea is for the student to see that the "main idea" includes all of the supporting details.  And each supporting detail is a part of the main idea.

Similarly, you could use "parts of an ice cream sundae" "ice cream" "chocolate sauce" "whipped cream" "nuts" "cherry,"  or "animals on the farm" "cow" "horse" "pig" "goat" "chicken."  Then move on to words instead of pictures.

Finally,  give your student a set of several entire sentences instead of words-- cut them into sentence strips and have your child find the one which works best as the main idea.  Can you pick the main idea from this set?

• Tortoises and lizards, spiders and scorpions are desert inhabitants.
• Many animals make their home in the desert.
• The javelina, or peccary, enjoys the cactus fruit in late summer.
• Jack rabbits hide among the prickly pear.
• Snakes of many kinds roam the desert floor and sun themselves on rocks.
• Coyotes roam the desert in search of prey.

(You picked the second one, right?)  

If your student has trouble sorting the sentences, have her underline 3-4 key words from each sentence.  This will help her focus on what each sentence is about.  In this way, she can see that of the sentences above, most are about individual desert animals.  Only one has the general "many animals" as its topic; this is the main idea that all the other more specific sentences fall into.  Some students will need a lot of practice with this skill.

If the student is supposed to come up with the main idea on his own, or choose between a few given possibilities,  have him write facts from the passage on sticky notes.  Write possible "main idea" choices on a white board.  See which main idea choice can have all facts fit underneath it.

Writing a cohesive paragraph requires the same understanding of main idea and supporting details. The only difference is that the student has to decide what details to include in order to support his main idea.  So when your child can easily distinguish between main idea and supporting details, try giving him a set of main idea and supporting details with an added red herring-- an off-topic detail for him to identify and discard.  For example, in the list above,  an off-topic detail would be, "Dolphins prefer the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean."  When he can find one, try giving him a set with more than one discardable detail.  This will help him when he looks at his own writing.  At that point, writing his thoughts on a graphic organizer such as one of these might help him develop his paragraph(s).

4) A student comprehends what he reads, but can't skim for information that he needs quickly.  He doesn't change his reading speed whether he is reading for pleasure or for information.  While most students have been taught to read through the questions on an assignment so they'll know what to look for in the text, they often don't realize that reading every word of the text is not always the best means of then finding that information. Sometimes they just need to know a certain fact.  So they need to be able to focus their search logically.  For example, if a student is looking through a passage for the answer to "How far is the earth from the sun?" ask her what are the most important words in the question.  How far, earth, sun.  What words might be in the answer?  Earth, sun, and some number. 

When the student understands that she is looking for a number and the words "earth" and "sun," she must then be able to skim efficiently through the passage, ignoring everything that isn't a number or those two words.  Just as importantly, having found the words and/or a number,  the student should be able to read the sentence they appear in to verify that it does indeed answer the question.

Skimming is an eye+brain discrimination skill, and takes practice.  It is one of the skills honed in word searches and those 'hidden pictures' games we enjoyed as children.  But there are ways to build proficiency; when the student knows she is looking for numbers, for example, she can try to underline all the numbers. That will help the brain focus.  Also, when looking for a particular word,  she can get a picture in her mind of what that word will look like.  A good way to practice is to pick a page of a book at random and ask the child to find a specific word.  Make it a word that is at least half-way down the page at first; then try other words that may be nearer the top or bottom of the page.  The student should try to find it as fast as possible.

These four tips are not overnight game-changers, but with practice, can make a difference in how well your child reads and performs in school.

Playing with roots to build vocabulary

Want a painless activity that can improve working vocabulary, reading comprehension, spelling proficiency, and future SAT scores, all at the same time?  Here you go!

One of the quickest ways to build English vocabulary is to learn how root words, prefixes and suffixes work together to build words.  A child who knows the word mutation, for example, can more easily remember the meaning of immutable if he recognizes the part of the Latin root "mutare" in both words, and knows the function of the prefix "im" (as in possible/impossible).

(Note: A root is the basic part of the word from which its main meaning comes.  In English, many of our word roots come from Latin or Greek.  An affix is a piece of a word that can be placed before or after a root to modify its meaning.  A prefix comes before, a suffix after.  In the word removable,  re is the prefix, move is the root, and able is the suffix.)

Building a collection of word parts is an easy hands-on method to study roots and affixes.  It's kind of like Legos for literacy.  All it takes is some index cards, colored markers or pencils, and a notebook.   The cards are color coded to make them easer to use.

1. Write (or have students write) prefixes and suffixes on index cards, one affix per card, using one color for prefixes and a different color for suffixes.  For example, orange for prefixes,  blue for suffixes. Here's a list.  Prefixes should be written against the right side of the card, and suffixes up against the left, so they can build words more easily.  At the bottom of each card, students should write the meaning of the affix.

2.  Have students make cards for common Latin and Greek roots. Here's a list of roots.  Red may be used for Latin, and green for Greek.  The meaning of the root should be written at the bottom of the card.   Just do a few at a time.  You might want to focus on roots that appear in words he will encounter in his studies, or just pick some that you think he might hear or read frequently.

3.  Give the student a short list of words that can be made by combining the roots and affixes that they have written.  At first, you may want to start with pairs: for example, predict, encrypt, and decorate can all be made from two cards each.  Three cards are required to make predictable, misanthropy, encryption, and redecorate.  Have him find the pieces of the word in his card collection and assemble the words from the list.  The object of this activity is to help the student recognize both the root and the affix in a word.

4. Tell the student that the meanings on the cards are only clues to help figure out the actual definition of the word.   "Redecorate" does not mean "again ornament process," but it might be thought of as a process of ornamenting a place again.  Still, that's awkward!  Ask the student how each clue helps figure out the word.  Perhaps you might use an ornament of some sort to decorate. "Encryption" might be "a process of causing something to be hidden," as long as the thing being hidden is information, such as encrypting a message in code. Let the student try to guess what the word might mean based on the clues, and then look it up in the dictionary and see how the ideas compare.

5. Continue to add to the student's vocabulary base by giving him new roots to use.  Be sure to have a list of actual words that he can make with them!  Otherwise he'll end up making nonsense words like "precrypty." (Granted, some kids might get a kick out of making up nonsense words, and that can be great as long as they also make up a logical definition, matching the meanings of the roots and affixes, to go with it.  Perhaps "precrypty" could describe the expression on somebody's face when they're about to tell a lie -- i.e., hide the truth:  Mary's eyes became suspiciously precrypty when her mother asked her how the lamp had broken.  But this word play might only be confusing to some students.  You probably know whether your child would enjoy it or not.)

6. Later, when a student learns a new word in his regular studies, have him look it up in a dictionary that includes the etymology, or history of the words.   An online dictionary would generally include the word origins.   Some may be from other languages, such as German.

You may need to help the student find the root.  In the example at left, the root is that part of mutabilis that is also found in immutable--  mutab.  (If you follow the link to mutable you would see that the main root is mutare, so the root could also be thought of as muta.   Muta is the same root in mutate and mutation.)  Use these new roots to make new cards.   Choose a new color for language origins other than Greek or Latin-- perhaps brown for German, and yellow, pink or black for somewhere else.

7. When the student discovers new affixes, have him add those to his collection.  He should check the dictionary to make sure it is a legitimate affix, and be able to give at least two examples.  For instance, "ex" can be found in "exchange," "exhaust" and "excommunicate," and each time the dictionary identifies it as meaning "out."

8.  Challenge the student to come up with as many real words as he can find in the dictionary that are made with the roots and affixes he has.  He may keep a running list in a notebook, organized alphabetically by the root.  So under "decor," he might list the derivatives decorate, redecorate, decorated, undecorated, decorative, etc.   Perhaps he could set a goal and get a reward for the first 25, 50, or 100 words.  But the words have to be found in the dictionary-- "exdecorate" doesn't count!

Want a similar experience, without having to do so much work?  Read on:

There are some great vocabulary-building workbooks that use roots, but for hands-on fun, nothing beats a good game.  One that we used in our homeschooling days was Rummy Roots.  It's a card game that introduces both Latin and Greek roots, and gives students practice in forming new words.

A  more comprehensive vocabulary curriculum is  Vocabulary Vine, which has students specifically studying the roots and related words, and then provides several games the students can play to reinforce their new knowledge.

Whatever way you go, learning to use roots and affixes provides a huge boost to academic success. The student begins to build new vocabulary words by recognizing familiar parts in newer, perhaps longer, words.  Spelling improves because the student can see the patterns of the roots and affixes used over and over again.  Comprehension improves because the student is making idea connections between words that are related, and SAT scores improve because the student's verbal skills are greatly enhanced.

What's in a name? A great place to start reading!

You have Dr Seuss' ABC memorized.  You can recite The Cat in the Hat in your sleep.  If you read Richard Scarry's Best Mother Goose Ever out loud one more time, you're going to sprout goose feathers yourself.   But is your child ready to start actually reading?

(And by "reading," I refer to a child being able to decode not only the words he is familiar with, but also words he has never before seen in print that follow similar patterns.)

So---is he ready?  Maybe.  As long as you're not in a hurry. If you take it slow and provide plenty of hands-on practice, your child can probably begin to read, even before kindergarten.  But this is assuming his cognitive development is at the right spot.  Because after establishing good phonemic awareness, the next requirement to learning to read is being able to hang on to small pieces of information long enough to process them together.  For example, to read the word "dog," a child must not only know the sound represented by the letters, but also be able to string them together to form a word. A word like "documentary" takes a lot more memory to process.  And in order to comprehend whole sentences, the reader must remember the beginning words by the time she gets to the ones at the end.

Granted, there are folks who insist that you can Teach Your Baby to Read , but that is only possible by sight words, which trains the brain to "read" in very impractical way-- a whole word at a time, with no breakdown of the component sound parts.  A great explanation of the general outcome is explained in this dad's blog.  It's what I have seen most often in my students-- guessing at words, misreading one word for another ("diffidence" for "difference"), poor spelling, and a complete inability to break down unfamiliar words into syllables in order to read them.

In general, the older a child is, the longer sequence of information he can store in his memory, in order to make sense of it.  That's why you give a three-year old short instructions: "Come here, Joe."  "Stop hitting."  An older child can usually process more information, so that you can tell a ten-year old, "Take the hamper to your room and fill it with your dirty clothes."

It's the same with reading.  The younger the child, the fewer pieces of data he's going to be able to hold in his short-term memory long enough to make sense of it all.  Whether you're talking sounding out a word or comprehending a sentence, age tends to give the advantage.  That's why older children tend to pick up reading more quickly.  In fact,  research has shown that by the time students are in third grade, there's no noticeable difference between the reading ability of kids who started to read early vs kids who started "late," as long as they have developed phonemic awareness skills.

(Which drives me up the wall because schools insist on forcing *all* kindergarteners to read these days, or they can't pass on to first grade.  Forty years ago hardly anyone even began reading instruction until first grade, and then it was heavy on phonemic awareness.  Today some kids are so rushed, all they have time for-- and the cognitive ability for-- in kindergarten is memorizing the Dolch Sight Word list.  Then they just keep piling on sight words in the next grades and never get the full benefit of learning the phonograms. Are the kids now smarter by third grade, reading better, achieving more?  Um, no. Hopping off soapbox now.)

But let's say your child has excellent phonemic awareness.  She is already really good at making rhymes, and can distinguish the different sounds in a 3- or 4-letter word.  Maybe she even knows the names of the alphabet letters and some of their sounds.  What now?

The most important word to your child is her own name.  So why not use it to start teaching her to read and write?

Maybe your child can already write his name.  If not, even a toddler can learn to at least recognize his own name.  And if you make learning it a hands-on activity, it can be a lot of fun.  As mentioned in previous posts, using some type of moveable letters is the key. Starting off with 3-D letters, such as wooden or foam alphabet puzzles, is my recommendation.   (Using a puzzle with all capital letters is probably the easiest to begin with, although you might need two.  I have a puzzle with upper and lower case letters, so that is what I show here.)

Later on, letter tiles make a good transition from 3-D letters to 2-D print.   Some kids who have no trouble recognizing a stick-figure person or a simple line-drawing of a house will get all confused when presented with letters in print.  Why is that?  I suspect it is because they already know what the stick person or line drawing represents, because they understand what a person and a house are.  If the child has had real-life experience with the 3-D letters, then seeing and distinguishing the letters in print later may be much easier.

So if I were starting from square one to teach a child to read,  I would start by showing him his name in 3-D letters.  Even if the child's name is "Poindexter,"  he needs to see what his own name looks like.  If the child's name is Bob or Anna, so much the better!

(By the way:  if your son or daughter is at the age where s/he insists on being called "Batman" or "Elsa," feel free to go with that name.  One of my brothers used to sign his name "Lowly Worm.")

So I take the 3-D letters and place them in order on the table or floor.  I tell him that when we read, we use pictures of the sounds.  These sound pictures are called letters.  Sometimes a sound picture is one letter, sometimes a sound picture is more than one.  Each sound in his name has its own picture,  or letter.  I chunk the letters into syllables and say the sounds as I point to each phonogram:

For very young children, especially with long names, this is a good start.  Later I might take out the P and ask him to put it back where the /p/ sound goes.  Or have him point to the part of the word that is "dex."  But as mentioned before, that's about all his memory files can hold.


For a little older child (older 3, 4), I would later play with the letters a bit, move them around, and tell him,  "If we move these letters here, your name would be

   

(or   OBB or NANA or whatever you have).


Once I'm sure he knows what sound each phonogram represents, I might take some of the letters in his name to spell new words-- if that's not practical, you can add a new letter to make a nice rhyme. The main thing is to keep the sounds the same as they are pronounced in the child's name (instead of, for example, taking "Cristy" and spelling the word "city."  Try adding an M for "misty" instead.)

So our little Poindexter might see me make words like point, pet, den, Ted, text (adding an extra t) and net.  But at this point I would not separate the O and I, because in his name, they represent a single sound.

Of course, some names don't have enough sounds to get terribly creative:  Ed, Al, Bo.  Mae.  That's fine.  You don't want to focus on more than 3-4 sounds at a time, anyway.  You can add one or two letters just to give you something to play with.  Ed, plus a "b" and an "r" perhaps (bed, red), or Al with a "p" and "s" (pal, Sal).  Mae would be easier to rhyme with real words if you had spelled it May (though either way it still has only two phonograms-- M AE  vs M AY)  but you can always add f and r to spell Fae and Rae.

In the name at the top of this post, there are 6 phonograms:  B  R  AE  L  Y  N.  Unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of combinations of these phonograms that will make actual words, so it might be easier instead to simply move the letters around:

"What would your name be if we took out the /b/ sound? " (Remove the B to spell  Raelyn.)
" What if we took out the /r/ instread? "  (Remove the R to spell  Baelyn.)
"Or what if we switched the /r/ and /l/?"  (Move the letters to spell  Blae-ryn.)

The important thing is that your student begins to understand that the letters represent sounds, and when you change the letters around or switch them out with other letters, you get a new word.  (Granted, it may be an imaginary word like "tob," but that's okay!)

You may want to encourage your child to try writing her name.  That's great-- most children are excited and proud to be able to write their own name-- but if she resists, please don't push it.  Fine motor skills that allow a child to control a pencil can take time to develop.

If your child is not yet ready to try printing her name,  she can continue to play with the 3-D letters, model some with play-dough, even stamp them onto paper using stamps or foam letters and paint.  Writing in a tray of sand or baking soda helps children get a feel for the the correct motions. But if your child is very young,  accuracy in letter formation is not really the point.

Understanding that the letters she is writing represent the sounds in a spoken word is the point.

At the end of each session, of course, you would want to have your child spell his own name correctly with the letters, helping him if necessary: "Which sound comes first?  Which letter shows that sound? (Note:  people do commonly speak of letters making sounds,  but to be most accurate, letters never actually make noise at all.  They just record in print the sounds that people make.)

After a few short sessions of playing with the sounds in her own name (depending on how many sounds you have to work with, it may keep you occupied for a while), keep adding in letters a few at a time. Eventually you will have the whole alphabet.  Stick to adding single-letter phonograms at first.  If the child's name has a multi-letter phonogram, of course, work with it "as is," using the same sound, for a while before you introduce the sounds for its individual letters:

You wouldn't go directly from learning Jean to spelling an, for example, because "a" does not stand by itself in the name.  Instead, you would first make rhymes like bean and mean.

A name like  H  ay  l  eigh  has 4 phonograms, but two are multi-letter, so you first might want to play around with the order of the sounds to make "Layheigh"  "Leigh-hay," and then make rhymes like Cayleigh and Tayleigh for a few sessions,  before eventually introducing the fact that the letter "a" by itself can be a picture of the sound /a/ in "cat."

As you add new letters, help your child be alert to the same sounds in other words.  Audrey and autumn share the same beginning sound, as do Casey and cat, Bentley and baseball.

So, a little bit at a time, you continue to play with the letters, adding new information gradually as the old is absorbed.  Before too long, your child will be reading on his own.

In a later post, I will explain how using colored pencils to mark words as he reads and writes can accelerate his mastery of spelling and reading.

Phonograms? Phonemes? I just want my child to learn to read!

Now learn your ABC's right quick,
Or go get walloped with a stick.

This rather threatening verse in the classic book Heidi appears when the little Swiss girl begins to teach her goat herding friend Peter to read.  He is more than a little intimidated!  (Yes, I know, Heidi was not originally written in English, but it's the same idea.)  Learning to read and write in English can indeed seem a daunting task.  People point to sentences such as

 

and decide that the language is simply "not phonetic," therefore impossible.

It's not, really.  English is phonetic.  It uses letters to represent sounds, and these letters are written in the order that the sounds appear when the word is spoken.  It's not as straightforward as a reading Spanish, of course, in which each letter has a single sound, but for that you can blame all the early settlers and conquerors of the inhabitants of the little island known as England.  They all left their marks on the language.

The problem, then, is that you can't simply learn 26 letters and sounds and be done with learning to read, much less to spell.  Last time I counted, there were about 70 phonograms in the English language.

A phonogram is the written representation of a single vocal sound-- a letter or combination of letters  (from the Greek:  phono=sound + gram=writing).  The letters "ph" make a phonogram for the sound  /f/.  A phoneme is a distinct vocal sound, like /f/, /ah/ or /sh/, that you combine with others to speak words.  A baby's first word is often a combination of two phonemes, /m/ and /ah/, repeated: "mama."

Although phonograms and phonemes are different things, every spoken word will have as many phonemes as there are phonograms when the word is written.  There is a 1:1 correspondence-- in the word "cat," for example, when spoken, there are three distinct sounds /k/ /a/ /t/ each represented by a single letter in the written word.  Three phonemes, three phonograms.

The confusion for reading and spelling English stems from the following issues:

1. Many phonemes can be spelled in several different ways;  and
2. Many phonograms can represent more than one sound.

For example, the single letter "a" is a phonogram for the vowel sound in the words April, amber, and all.  Meanwhile, the sound /ay/ can be represented by a, ay, ai, ei, and eigh.

So how do you teach a child to read English without confusing him?  Should you teach him all the phonograms and each sound they can represent, or should you teach him all the phonemes and all the ways they can be spelled?

Well, if done correctly, the child eventually ends up with the same information either way.  And in general, you're going to start off simply, introducing a few short words with distinct phonemes that can be represented by single-letter phonograms.  Cat, bat, sat.  So in the beginning, it isn't a huge issue.

Sometimes where you go from there depends on which curriculum you use.  For example, The Writing Road to Reading is organized by phonograms.  The student learns all the sounds represented by "a," all the sounds represented by "b," all the sounds represented by "ough," and everything in between.  On the other hand, Reading Reflex focuses more on the phonemes.  The student learns all the ways to spell the long /a/ sound, the /k/ sound, etc.  You may prefer one or the other, or a combination of both.

Still, 70 phonograms!  That seems like a lot.  But it is not all done in a single week, or even a single year.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  (A very user-friendly way to eat the elephant is the new Spelling You See program.  I have only seen the samples online, but they look excellent!)

Which bite you offer first is up to you.  My favorite introduction to reading is Dr Seuss' ABC.  It introduces the basic alphabet and the concept of letter-sound representation, and throws in those very important rhymes that are essential to developing phonemic awareness.  But wherever you start, you can make it fun!

Here's where the hands-on part comes in.  When a child is beginning to read, she can increase her mastery of the reading and spelling when she:

1. manipulates letter tiles or puzzle pieces to represent the sounds in the order they occur as they are spoken:

The moveable letters are perfect for showing how rhyming patterns work.  Simply by changing out a tile, you can turn "dish" into "fish,"  "dawn" into "pawn."  Internal and end sounds can be changed, too, so that the student learns to focus on each phonogram in the word-- "dish" and "dash" are different words, as are "fish" and "fin."  When the student has mastered three-phoneme words, he can combine them to make compound words: pigpen, dishpan.  Later he can use the tiles to break longer words into syllables:  car pen ter,  so fa, sing er.

2. forms phonograms out of clay, string, or pipe cleaners to spell words;

In this case, you might have the child form the letters to spell "pan."  Then have him add the sound /t/ at the end and read the new word.  Finally, he can add the /s/ and have another word.  This kind of word-building is used in the series Sequential Spelling, which has wonderful lists of words that students learn to spell one sound at a time.

3. writes letters in a tray of sand or baking soda as she says each distinct sound of a word;

Writing in the sand is a also great way to work on the fine-motor skills of forming letters.  Just be sure the student is forming the letters correctly!  If your child struggles with printing or cursive, a great handwriting program that is developed by a physical therapist is Handwriting Without Tears.

4. divides words into syllables and mark each distinct phonogram in a word by circling or underlining with a separate color.  In this example, the student has first divided all the multi-syllable words, then circled all the multi-letter phonograms (missing the "ee" in Queen), and has begun to mark the separate single-letter phonograms:

The pencil-marking activities are probably best done after a student has had practice using the letter tiles.  What you have your student marking depends on what they have learned.   Some reading programs have the student indicating certain spelling rules they recognize in the words. In Writing Road,  for example, the students learn 5 reasons for using a "silent e," and when they find one they underline it twice and identify it with a number, 1-5.  They also number different sounds for multi-sound phonograms:  the ch in "choir" gets a 2, the ch in "Charlotte" gets a 3.

Each of these four techniques can be used during different practice sessions, to reinforce the student's mastery of phonogram-phoneme patterns.  Some activities may be more beneficial than others for particular students at different points in their learning.  For example, the clay models of the letters are suggested in Ron Davis' book The Gift of Dyslexia because, as he theorizes, the dyslexic student sees the letters 3-dimensionally, and forming them in clay helps the brain transition from the 3-D image to the printed 2-D version.  So this might be a critical activity for certain children. On the other hand, you wouldn't expect a beginner to take a pencil and mark all the phonograms in an entire paragraph.  But all of these activities can help the child focus on the details of the words, add variety and interest, and ultimately make the student a better reader and speller.


A complete list of phonograms (accurate to the degree that your dialect of English matches mine) can be found here.

Hands-on ways to encourage reading, Part One

There are many ways to discourage reading, but are there any hands-on ways to encourage reading? Happily, yes!  While reading skills themselves can be developed using manipulatives, sometimes a reluctant reader knows how to read but just can't seem to connect with a book.  Or maybe reading is just difficult enough that it doesn't seem worth the trouble, let alone fun.  It is generally better to supply the reluctant reader with books he is comfortable reading-- not too difficult-- although a challenging book that the child is very interested in is better than an easy one that bores him.  The key is to decrease the frustration level by raising familiarity with, and interest in, the reading material.

Here are a few hands-on ways to help your children connect with their books:

1.  Hands-on books:  The youngest pre-readers, toddlers, enjoy books like Pat the Bunny that motivate them to interact with the text.  In their preschool years, my children enjoyed the humor of Pat the Beastie, in which Paul and Judy poke the poor monster's boogers and pull his fur.  Lift-the-flap books, and chapter books with interactive elements, such as the Captain Underpants series, all encourage children to associate books with fun.

2. Tie-ins to videogames.  What???  Yes, my daughter read her first Nancy Drew book after a friend introduced her to the Nancy Drew computer games.  She loved the games, then she read the whole series of books.    My son became interested in reading about history after playing Civilization on the computer.  How did this work? Because of the games, they had some knowledge of the characters and/or events before they even picked up the books, so it made the reading less of a struggle.  The same idea worked for me when I was studying Spanish in college-- the first novel I read completely in Spanish was a translation of The Empire Strikes Back.  Because I knew who I was reading about and the basic plot line, the vocabulary and grammar were less of a struggle.

3. Field Trips and gimmicks.  Find opportunities to tie in real experiences with the books your children are reading.  When we read Red Sails to Capri, we celebrated by drinking Capri Sun (as we looked at the Blue Grotto online).  When we read The Secret of the Andes-- what else?  Andes candies  (while we found the real Andes in the atlas and looked at pictures online, of course).  Capyboppy, Mr Popper's Penguins, Dr. Doolittle-- these animal tales could inspire a trip to the zoo. Whether silly or serious, a tie-in can add fun to reading.

4. Creative projects: Sometimes it's exciting to do the things the characters in your books are doing.  The popular craft and recipe books that go along with the American Girl and Little House books are testimony to this.  When your child is reading a Magic Treehouse book about Ancient Greece, maybe he would like to stage an Olympics.  Perhaps he could build a chariot or a temple out of Legos.   Planting something green indoors or out, or even planning a garden on paper, could help a child connect to The Secret Garden or Princess Chamomile's Garden.  Let your child come up with her own idea of a project based on what she's reading.

5. Detective work: Finding background information on a character can add interest to the story.  If the location and time period are important to the story, the student can find them on a map and timeline. What other things were happening at the same time in history?  What clothes would they have worn, and how would they travel?  What technology did the character have access to?  Could Henry Huggins search for Ribsy on the internet?  How would life be different for the characters if their story was set in today's time?  Would Sarah Plain and Tall have found her husband on match.com?  A child might be challenged to collect things in his own house that would (or would not) be a part of the character's daily life, using clues from the story, or live "a day in the life" by dressing, eating, or in other ways doing what the character would have done on a typical day.

6.  How-to books.  There are tons of non-fiction books out there that can teach your child something he or she would like to learn.  My daughter enjoyed recipe books and craft books.  One pre-teen summer, we went through a book on making homemade beauty products, and we made several of them.  Yes, the internet has videos and websites for this sort of thing, but instead of spending hours browsing Pinterest, sometimes just the right book can be less overwhelming.

It's not easy to motivate reluctant readers, when there is much easier entertainment that competes for their time.  And every child is different, of course; what works wonders for one may fall flat for another.  What didn't work for my children was the very popular Accelerated Reader (AR) program at their school, in which students took tests on the books they read to earn points and win prizes.  They hated the tests, and the whole points-and-prizes system felt manipulative, as if reading was so terrible that the students had to be bribed to do it.  Perhaps none of these ideas I have listed will spark an interest in reading for your child.  However, I hope I may have sparked an idea in your head that you can use to encourage your reluctant reader.

Spelling starts with hearing. (And so does reading.)

If you've ever seen an English Bible translation made for deaf people, you may have initially wondered why it was written in such simple language.  Of course, it is not an indication of a lack of intelligence. It is because the written word is based on letters representing spoken sounds.  People who don't hear the language, then, must memorize the spelling of every single word they read. Unlike hearing people, they have no massive collection of speech "files"-- the sounds of the letters, the patterns of the words and sentences-- to draw from. Instead, the language areas of their brains are filled with the complex patterns and nuances of signs (at least for those who learn sign language-- not all do).  When a deaf person is learning to read print, then, each word has to be learned without the prior knowledge of what the word sounds like or how it is used.  So learning to spell and read English is at least as difficult for a deaf person as it is for an English speaker to learn to read Chinese.

I know there are people who insist that some children can only learn to read by sight, and that "phonics" will not work for them at all.   While that may be true,  in my experience those children would be extremely rare.  The increase in horrendous spelling habits I have seen in recent years has more to do, in my opinion, with the lack of a solid foundation, rather than an explosion in true dyslexia.  I suspect that many people who have attempted to teach a child to "sound out the letters" without success have begun before the child has developed adequate phonemic awareness and auditory processing skills-- that is, before the child can distinguish and identify separate sounds in words.  This is why many effective remedial reading programs, and dyslexia specialists, begin with identification of sounds.  (See Reading Reflex and Barton Reading and Spelling.)

Reading by sight-only can be done, as many literate deaf people can demonstrate, but it is unnecessarily difficult for people who have normal hearing.  It means you have to use a lot of visual memory just to comprehend what you are reading.  Yes, I've seen those memes that "prove" that people only read the first and last letters of words, but that is not true for a beginning reader, or anyone else seeing a particular word for the first time.  To fluently decode new words and to spell well, a child needs to be able to match the letters they see to the sounds they hear or have heard.

Phonemic awareness begins with hearing sound patterns.  This is why nursery rhymes and Dr Seuss books are so important for pre-reading.  Children hear the rhymes and begin to distinguish sounds and recognize sound patterns.   Although one might think that any child who can speak can also recognize sounds, there is another level of connection that needs to be made before a child can begin to read phonetically.  Some children make this connection naturally, while others may need a bit of help.

The colored golf shown balls above can be used to increase a child's phonemic awareness in a fun way.  Each ball represents a separate sound. (Note that a sound such as /ay/ can be represented by different letters-- a, ae, ay, eigh-- but is still a single sound.)  "/Ay/" could be represented by the blue ball.  "Ape" has two sounds, /ay/ and /p/, so would be represented by two balls.  "Tape" has three sounds:  /t/, /ay/, and /p/, so three balls would be used.  "Tapes" would use four balls, to represent the  four sounds /t/, /ay/, /p/, and /s/.

To play the sound balls game, you would start by saying a one- or two-sound word and having the child identify the sounds and place a ball down for each sound heard.  Words such as a, pay, say, day, I, pie, lie, my, oh, dough, no, sew, and toe are examples.  When the child has mastered identifying the separate sounds, ask him what would happen if you replaced one sound with another--  take the /p/ out of pie and use replace it with /b/.  (buy)  Take the /i/ out of pie and replace it with /ay/.  (pay) Have the child physically take the ball out of the correct position and replace it with a different colored ball.

This activity should be done in short sessions.  It is better to do it a few minutes a day, every day, rather than an hour or two once a week.

Three-sound words are the next step.  Have the child identify the separate sounds in words like cat, sit, top, live, ham, .  Words with vowels in the middle are easiest, but you will eventually want to work on words with consonant sounds back-to-back such as try, ask, blue.

Next, try four-sound words: seeds, sled, trip, lights, chimp.  Start with a single ball for a single sound, sound and add one ball/sound at a time:  I /i/  Put /p/ in front:  pie.  Put /s/ at end:  pies.  Put /r/ between p and i: prize.  The middle sounds are more difficult, so you may need to keep working on first and last sounds for a while.

While you're working on the sounds, don't feel obligated to stick to real words.  You can also use nonsense words like gat, glat, frub.  The important thing at this point is the sound discrimination.

Please bear in mind that the more sounds there are, the more memory is required to process them.  Some children may stall out at 3-sound words.  That's fine; try a four-sound word every once in a while but don't push to the point of frustration.

Once your child is comfortable using the colored objects to represent the letters, you can begin to introduce the letters.  This is where Scrabble tiles, alphabet puzzle letters, or other manipulatives are used.  (Paper, felt or craft foam squares with letters written on them work fine.) Four at a time is probably sufficient, and it is probably best to start with sounds that are represented by single letters.  For example, the letters s, t, o and p can be used to form op, top, stop, pot, and pots.  ("Post" has a different sound in the middle, so don't use that one.  If it happens to show up, you can simply explain to your child that letters can stand for more than one sound.)  Later on you will need tiles with letter combinations that represent a single sound, such as ch, ck, wh, th, sh, ll, ue, ew, ay, etc.  Please note that consonant blends (dr, br, sl, tr)  are still made up of separate sounds, so they do not get their own tiles.

So that's how you use manipulatives to increase phonemic awareness and begin to build a great foundation for reading and spelling.

For a complete list of phonograms and the phonemes they represent, jump to this post, available Tuesday 6/16.

My favorite manipulatives for teaching spelling, reading and writing

What are golf balls doing in an article about teaching literacy, you ask? Well, I'll go into more detail in another blog, but the short version is they can help the student learn to identify the sequence of sounds in a word.  Colored tiles, pieces of colored paper, beads, Legos, and many other things can serve the same purpose.  This technique in various forms is found in Carmen McGuinness' Reading Reflex,  Susan Barton's Barton Reading system and other literacy programs.

The other items I have pictured here are more obvious-- the alphabet puzzle, Scrabble tiles, and letter stamps can be used to play with the sounds in a word to practice both reading and spelling.  

The colored pencils are used to mark spelling patterns in words and divide them into syllables.  When we were homeschooling, one of the best spelling programs we used was The Writing Road to Reading.  An important component of this program was having the students mark the sounds represented in each word, and identify rules that applied to each.  For example, each occurrence of silent e was numbered according to which of the five reasons for using a silent e was in force.  It was a tedious process, but was very helpful for my children.

Recently I have seen a newer program, Spelling You See.  This one looks like a keeper!  It is put out by the Math-U-See people.  This program also has the student marking spelling patterns, and includes workbooks to make things less tedious.  There is a dictation component, as recommended by education gurus from Charlotte Mason to Susan Bauer, so the students are analyzing words in context.  If I were homeschooling today, I would definitely give this one a try.

Other manipulatives that can be used include magnetic letters, modeling clay for forming the letters, dry-erase or chalk boards, and letters cut from foam, felt, or sandpaper.   Pans full of sand or baking soda are great for tracing the letters.  Glass markers can be used on windows and mirrors, sidewalk chalk in driveways, and soap crayons in the bathtub.  Beginners would appreciate the large wooden "curves and lines" made by Handwriting Without Tears that allow them to practice letter formation before they have the fine motor skills to print.

While "hands-on" is not the first thing one might think of when the subject of literacy comes up, there are actually many techniques and tools that can help a child build a foundation for reading and writing.  In future blog posts, I will go into more specifics.