Reading with Jen Strange

Sink or Swim? How about swim.

I was just re-reading through some of my old blog entries, and I found this from a few years ago:

[I was playing a game with a tutoring student.]  When we landed on a space, if we read the word, we could have the M&M (if she wasn't sure how to read a word, I helped her sound it out.  I don't give my kids a sink or swim ultimatum, I help make sure they swim every time.)

I have thought this for a long time, but it bears repeating: make sure your children / students experience success when they are learning to read.  Don't act like a wrong answer or a wrong word is the end of the world - correct them kindly, and non-judgmentally, and move on.  They're kids, and their emotions matter.  Success breeds success, while feeling overwhelmed or frustrated causes an emotional disconnect.  Kids who emotionally disconnect from the process are NOT going to learn anything.

P.S. Here's another comment I found from 3 years ago:

My stock answer when students are way off is "Well . . ." and then usually a statement of the answer I was looking for.  The important thing when a child makes a mistake during a learning activity is to acknowledge the mistake, but in a neutral way - there doesn't have to be emotion assigned to it.  Just "Well . . . actually it goes this way" or the like.

I don't ever want the kids I'm working with to be afraid to give me a wrong answer.  The most awesome thing about childhood is the intense curiosity - curiosity that adults can easily kill off so easily by being negative.

Correct with Kindness

So for Valentine's Day, I made a digital scrapbook page to post to my mother-in-law's Facebook wall, because she always sends us cards in the mail - for every holiday!  She is just lovely.  I worked hard to make a really pretty design, and was quite proud of it!

The next day, I was writing directions for a game I designed, and found myself writing "Always correct with kindness."  I didn't realize what I was writing as I wrote it, but then I sat back and thought: HOLY COW!  This needs to become the core of who I am as a teacher!  So many times, students are really trying to learn something, but they just don't GET it.  As teachers, our job is to figure out how to HELP them to understand - and to give them the benefit of the doubt instead of getting annoyed.

So anyway . . . yeah.  I opened that scrapbook page back up in Photoshop and changed it up a bit - now I have this.  (And for posting on the web, I had to add my name to it.  Share if you want, it's all good.)

Disclaimers

I very obviously have some strong opinions / beliefs on the matters of learning to read, sight-words, child development, etc.  And sometimes I state these opinions / beliefs as fact.  So let me add some caveats:

:: Everything I say on this blog is my own opinion, which you are free to dismiss if you don't agree with it.

Cast of Characters

Well, there's me.  I'm Jen.  I'm a nerdy bookworm.  I figured out how to read when I was 4 and have read anything I could get my hands on since.  My favorite things to read are Jane Austen novels, Emily Dickinson poetry, and non-fiction on topics like child development and American History.  I started teaching piano when I was 15, and you would be amazed at how many of those skills transfer to early literacy education!

There's Jake.  My son.  He's awesome.  As I write this (fall 2011) he's starting 3rd grade.  I taught him the basics of how to read before I sent him to Kindergarten, and we have always had fun with it.  He consistently tests beyond grade level and I'm quite delighted with the level of his love of books.  Right now he loves Diary of a Wimpy Kid, joke books, and Harry Potter.

There's my best friend's 3 kids: Elauna, Aowyn, and Lorien.  I help them all with schoolwork here and there and experiement on them when I am working out a new teaching concept.  Their mom and I have been friends our entire mommy journey.  They're kind of our extended family.

::::: 

My first official tutoring student was A.  We met her when she was in Jake's preschool class.  She was having some trouble in 2nd grade mid-year, so she started coming to hang out with me to work on reading.  She was the catalyst for my reading dozens of books about literacy.  When we started she was testing at 10-20 wpm for reading fluency; she is now at 40-60.  Still a little behind, but we're making progress and she's such a hard worker.

My second student was Kay.  She is an interesting case due to an attention disorder.  She came to me because her school was considering having her repeat Kindergarten.  I can honestly say that the school's focus on sight words had confused her beyond belief. We worked together for about 6 weeks before the school-year ended, and they determined she could move on to first grade.  (Go Kay!!!)  Now we're working on strengthening 1st grade skills.  She requires an amazing amount of out-of-the-box thinking on my part, and I'm learning that she needs a LOT of multi-sensory activities to make things "click" - but I'm fascinated by multi-sensory learning, so we're a good fit.

Update:

After this, I started with D - our plan was that we would work during the summer, and we felt that he made enough progress after a summer that we didn't need to continue meeting.  Here's how I describe him in a blog entry:  "I have a new reading student, and my first boy since I've started tutoring - we'll call him D.  D is 7 and just finished 1st grade - and he is NOT taking well to the way his school is teaching reading.  His mom says that sight words completely confuse him and he can't keep up with what's expected when they read, and HE says he's stupid because of this."  Once I showed him that there was nothing wrong with him - he was just being taught in a way that ignored how he learned - and I met him where he was, listened to him, and responded to his specific needs, he blossomed.

I've had a few kids since D, but the only other one I've written about here is S.  Here's what I wrote about him: "On Thursday I started with a new student; he is a rising 3rd grader who loves sports and animals - we'll call him S.  Dark hair, grown-up teeth growing in and looking just a little too big for his mouth at the moment."  He's a darling, and was experiencing almost exactly the same problems as D (which makes it easy for me to address, as I've played this game before.)

Hi

Learning to read is the most important task of childhood.  While it's a complicated skill to master, there's no reason the process can't be filled with fun, games, creative thinking, lots of movement, and quality family time. 

When I work with kids who need help catching up to their peers in reading, I approach our time together as a chance to discover how enjoyable language can be. 

We also eat M&Ms.  Because we can.

This blog is a touch-point for me to reflect on my work with my kids (I consider all my students "my kids."  Even my piano students from 15 years ago - still my kids.)  It also might help other parents to look at early literacy learning in a different light.

Enjoy, friends.