Reading with Jen Strange

On being a poor speller . . .

Who's up for more Edward Dolch quotes? (from Problems in reading, 1948.)

Somehow they are poor spellers without knowing why . . . they have given up.  All their efforts have proved vain, and they think they just cannot learn to spell.  These are the students who need our special attention.  They do not need more censure or ridicule; they have usually had nothing else from their teachers for years.  First of all, they need sympathetic understanding.  They are not willfully misspelling.  They are not just lazy.  They are handicapped.  That is the position any teacher must take if she is to help the student improve.  He has some difficulty that has to be located and corrected, and then he will become as good a speller as others.

Even as an adult with a college degree, a lifetime of reading, and very deliberate effort, I have a difficult time spelling.  Mostly I get hung up on vowels in the middle of long words - I can just never figure out which one to use!  This quote is a nice reminder to be patient with those who are trying their best but never seem to succeed.  Be kind.

Education is More Than Standards: How Death Lit Changed My Life

Last Friday my husband's father passed away quite suddenly. We rushed into Nashville at midnight to be with his mother, thankful that we live only a half hour away. It was a somber drive as we rushed in the rain toward a destination we didn't actually want to arrive at - because then the grief would be real. 

 

In the days that followed we fielded phone calls, received flower deliveries, and thanked friends for bringing by food. We helped where we could in making arrangements - I stayed at the house to answer the phone and the door while my husband accompanied his mom to the funeral home to make plans. We wondered if my husband had a suit jacket to wear to the service.  I thought about how grateful I was for the pictures we have of all of us together from Jason and I's wedding just a few months ago. We talked about what a great man Bob had been, and we laughed through our tears as we remembered him. 

 

I simultaneously leaned in and stood back, ready to help however I could, but not wanting to be in the way.  I found myself thinking that the reason I could function and get through these difficult days resulted directly from a class I took in 11th grade. 

Some teaching quotes to make you think

The teacher of the education class I'm taking this semester has a fascinating perspective on how we interact with children.  Last week she said:

Education shouldn't be something we DO to children.

That really struck a chord with me - how often do we look at kids and think ok sit down and shaddup, I need to get through this lesson!

Rudolph Flesch, in his 1954 book "Why Johnny Can't Read" talks a lot about how we can't just force reading on kids and expect them to keep up BECAUSE I SAID SO.

Don't you see how degrading this whole process is?  The child is never told why this heap of letters means "chicken" and not "giraffe" or "kangaroo" . . . Don't you know that the main question in all children's minds is the question "Why?" . . . It's "chicken" because the teacher says so.  Conditioning is an authoritarian process.

Our kids deserve better than that.

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.)

Kids and Poetry

Those of us who love poetry can get a little over-anxious to expose kids to it - and we can make it go right over their heads by introducing the WRONG poetry.

I found another great quote from Edward Dolch:

The truth is, we are far too anxious to bring to the children the great thoughts of literature and especially of poetry.  We give children adult thoughts while they are still playing with dolls and marbles.  Instead, the poetry for children at any point in the grades needs to be close to their view of the world.  The change to adult thinking and adult philosophizing needs to be kept gradual.

The first children's poet that most people think of is Shel Silverstein - and that's ok.  But I'd also like to suggest Jack Prelutsky.  I think he's a complete genius, and I've collected almost all his books.  My 5th grade son needed a poem to memorize for school, so I suggested one that I memorized in grade school.  

I am running in a circle
and my feet are getting sore,
and my head is
spinning
spinning
as it's never spun before,
I am
dizzy
dizzy
dizzy
Oh! I can not bear much more,
I am trapped in a
revolving
. . . volving
. . . volving
. . . volving door.

Come on, now.  That's hilarious.

The other one that makes me laugh every time:

You need to have an iron rear
to sit upon a cactus,
or otherwise at least a year
of very painful practice.

The book these poems are in (The New Kid on the Block) has illustrations from James Stevenson and they just make the poems that much better.  I got this book in 2nd grade and I wore. it. out.

To summarize: when it comes to poems, start silly, move on to serious later (once the kids have grasped the beauty and fun of words in poetic format.)  Here's Jack Prelutsky's Amazon page.

Interesting Dolch quote

Most teachers are familiar with Edward Dolch's list of sight-words, but many aren't familiar with the book he wrote: Problems in reading, 1948.  I've been reading it online, and came across this gem:

Literature does not really mean books.  It means re-living the author's experience.  If it be travel, we travel just as the author did.  If it be history or geography, we see the people and places just as the author saw them.  If it be a story, we live through the thoughts and feelings of the characters just as the author lived through them.  Thus literature is not something to know or know about.  It is something to experience.  It is something intensely individual.  What is literature for one person may not be for another.  It must be to us something alive, vital, meaningful.

Pretty interesting observation!

Reading is . . .

I'm reading some deep discussions of reading, education, and language at www.childrenofthecode.org, and I just came across this amazing quote:

Reading, education, is merely a system that allows us to live as if we had centuries of experience. But you can’t get those centuries of experience if you can’t be taught and a major part of being taught is reading. If you can’t read then you’ve lost a huge segment of what’s gone before.

The page this quote is from (click here to view) delves into the feelings of shame that children experience when they fail to learn to read - or are confused about the process and slowly fall behind - and how that affects their lives.  It's an unbelievable read for teachers.

Books change you

One of the blogs I follow is called GeekMom.  I like it because they celebrate intellectual curiosity - plus they talk about technology, education, science fiction, Harry Potter, and LEGOs, among other things. 

Last week in a post about Goodreads.com (a site I LOVE), GeekMom Ariane posted this:

There’s a certain level of personal connection that is made with a book when you read it, and while not every book is life changing, I’d like to think every book changes you a little bit. You can’t unread it; Once it’s read you will carry that book around with you somewhere in the recesses of your mind for the rest of your life.

Truer words were never spoken.

P.S. the picture is of my good friend Elauna, on a trip to Barnes & Noble.  Oh, how we love that place!

Quote: Why We Read

Today I started reading a new book: Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf.  It's an odd title, I know, but it's going to be awesome.  It's rather technical and scientific, and I can tell already that it's going to challenge me because my brain hurts.  (Totally serious.  Anything having to do with literature or artistic expression is second nature to me, anything having to do with science or math or extreme technicality taxes me greatly.)

OK!  The point of this entry - an amazing expression of WHY WE READ, found on page 7:

While reading, we can leave our own consciousness, and pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, another culture . . . Reading enables us to try on, identify with, and ultimately enter for a brief time the wholly different perspective of another person's consciousness . . . We never come back quite the same; sometimes we're inspired, sometimes saddened, but we are always enriched.

And, finally, what I think might be my strongest reason for being a reader:

We are no longer limited by the confines of our own thinking.

Go forth and read, my friends.  :)

Frederick Douglass quote

This is awesome:

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
- Frederick Douglass

I absolutely love this quote.  It sums up why I'm so interested in early literacy - once you can read, you can teach yourself anything simply by going to the library.  When you can't read, you are so, so limited - and I hate that anyone is ever in that position.