Saturday, December 1, 2012

The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

J(6.5) started using The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading on and off last year. This year it makes up his reading curriculum and we do several lessons out of the book each week.
I love the lay out and the method behind it. Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington excluded any glamour from the text stating that children will focus on the pictures and glitz, often guessing the reading material based on the picture rather than reading it.
Unfortunately I'm finding that because the lessons are set up so that each covers a specific letter or blend J is really just memorizing the blend and then changing the first letter. Once he knows that "and" says "and" he has no problem going through the list and reading "sand" "land" "hand" ect. Once I figured out what he was up to I started randomly selecting words and guess what? He can't actually read them! Bah!
We're also getting bored bored bored with the repetativeness of it and reading time is turning into a huge battle each and every time I pull out the book.
So....with a little inspiration from the world wide web, I'm shaking things up a little and will be using the lesson text to create games and activities that better suits my kinesthetic learner. 

I'll be posting them as we go along for anyone else that might be interested. We use a lot of game based activities. I have also started having him read picture books such as Dr. Seuss for real life practice.

 

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