Teaching Children to Read: Accomplishing Daily Reading

Many people are busy in their own ways, but homeschooling mothers are busy in a particular way I'm experiencing all too quickly. It really isn't 'natural' to be 'doing school' in a formal way for hours daily when it also is a full-time duty to care for a home and the youngest set of children who aren't in school yet. Some people try to educate in a very informal, real life kind of way to avoid this problem. However one handles these pressures, this is an intensely busy time and I think it is the homeschooling mother's goal to be making her hours work double- and triple-time.

One problem area I had last year was finding time for my then new-reader to read aloud to me daily. It is a common recommendation that, once a child is reading at all fluidly, he should be assigned to read a certain number of minutes per day (e.g., 20 minutes), something beyond his phonics reader, usually a book assigned by the parent so it is stretching the child's reading level, not 'twaddle.'

This was one more thing on My List. My List has far more duties on it than could ever be accomplished and this goal consistently fell off the list.

If a parent is reading books to a child and even if the child is reading books to himself silently, why should a parent take yet more time to have the child read aloud to the parent?

1. The child (with the parent's guidance) learns to read with emotion instead of flat affect, to use 'voices' for the various characters.
2. The parent will discover if the child is simply skipping words he doesn't know instead of pausing to figure out the words.
3. The parent will discover and correct words that the child is consistently mispronouncing.
4. The child's reading speed and fluidity will increase greatly.

In the last three or four months, I've found a great solution: one I remembered from my very own mother! My mom often required me to read aloud to her while she was cooking dinner, telling me that cooking was boring and I could help entertain her. Considering that it was just me and my mom in the house, that was a very quiet, peaceful time of day, which certainly doesn't reflect what my house is like while I cook dinner these days. Nonetheless, a fabulous idea this was!

Instead of putting one more item on my formal To Do List, for months I've been integrating this new tactic into my life, making it natural to all of us. Daily I ask my seven-year-old to sit down and read aloud to me while I finish getting primped for the day, or while I fold a load of laundry, or right after lunch when everyone is dispersing into Quiet Time. Also, when I read a literature book to the children at bedtime, the two oldest often ask for turns reading a few paragraphs aloud to the group, so I now encourage that as well. Honestly, the child hasn't yet figured out that this is a requirement because I express such desire and pleasure at having him 'entertain' me! (If a child did balk and refuse, I'd have to start requiring this because learning to read fluidly is vital for learning all other subjects.)

Two children and one baby all ready for the day; one child getting ready in the other room, Mama still getting ready.
Gathered all but one child into the master bedroom.
Assign 7-year-old to read to 3-year-old and Mama. Baby is toddling around the room, door shut, can't escape.
Bonus: This separates siblings who fight if left unattended and occupies 3-year-old.

I have learned a few things through this wonderful new practice in our home--which may be obvious and boring to my readers, but this problem spot stymied me for about a year so surely I can't be the only one who would benefit from this idea!

1. Find gripping subject matter. We read phonics readers for learning the mechanics of reading. But readers are deadly boring and it is my goal to get away from them as fast as the child can. The children are hearing high quality literature from me or on audio CD in order to increase their vocabularies. But for free-reading time to improve fluidity of reading, I think it is valuable to have the child read something that interests him deeply (again, not twaddle!).

For my seven-year-old son, books that grab his passion are ones like The New Way Things Work, Fifty Famous People, or hagiographies, especially about male saints. While my boy really does listen to a lot of fiction, I notice that right now he reads non-fiction. My daughter reads passionately of other subjects. Finding a passion, if at all possible, helps a lot.

2. Read aloud classics and high-quality literature. I do not like 'twaddle' and I never have. A brief description by Charlotte Mason of twaddle should suffice:

• Talking down to a child
• Diluted
• Undervaluing the intelligence of a child
• Reading-made-easy
• Second-rate, stale, predictable
• Goody-goody story books, or highly spiced adventures of poor quality, titillating
• Scrappy, weak, light reading

Now that I have two fluid readers, I can truly understand why it is advised for the parent/teacher to be daily reading several grade levels ahead to the children. The vocabulary increases and sentence structure improves exponentially, something I see down to our three-year-old. Then when the children start reading in context, they can figure out innumerable words that they may not yet possess the phonics skills to decode but they can get half way there before recognizing the advanced word because they heard it read so many times in all that high quality literature. If any readers of this blog are mothers of tiny tots who think reading aloud books that really stretch the child won't matter much, I want to encourage you otherwise.

3. The various ways we learn really matter. I am far from knowing all there is to know about the various learning styles of the typical human brain or all the possible learning disabilities. At its most basic, experts say there are three learning styles:

• Auditory
• Visual
• Kinesthetic

And some experts way there are more ways of learning, but navigating through the basic three gives a homeschooling parent plenty to consider.

By teaching my own children spelling and reading, I have learned just how powerful a style of learning can be: apparently, I can't learn aurally (via my hearing) almost at all. Note that I have been a voracious reader since four years old, I majored in English literature, I write (still blabbing on in this blog post!), my spelling is almost perfect, and, before I married, I ran a self-supporting business editing books for publishing houses.

Yet I can't hear the word when it is spelled to me!

How often does this happen with a young child reading aloud?

"Mama, what does this word say? M-I-C-E."



Only in my house, it goes like this:

"Mama, what does this word say? M-I-C-E."

"Um, what did you spell? Say it again."

"M-I-C-E."

"You're going way to fast. Speak slowly."

"M-I-C-E."

"Just show it to me. Oh, that says mice."


As my children asked me to spell more and more words, I noticed that I could not for the life of me hear them. And that's when I put together the pieces of the puzzle showing that I don't learn with my ears.

When I took lecture courses in high-school and college, I had to transcribe the professor's talk. Just listening would mean I came away retaining almost nothing. Therefore, my notebooks are ridiculously fat, containing hundreds of pages of scribbles. It's not that I had to review my notes so often but that writing down the words put them into my brain in a way that listening to the words could not. (When an early Christian, I transcribed my pastor's sermons each week. Once I began having babies, I had to hold squirming tots and never again could take notes during homilies. This was a sorrowful loss to me: if you ask me after Mass what a homily was about, I'm going to tell you, 'I have no idea.')

When I listen to people talking to me, just chatting in conversation, I don't retain well what they are saying. So once I learned to type in junior high-school, I developed an odd quirk: I type with my fingers on my palm. If you notice my fingers twitching while I'm talking or listening to you, it is because I am typing out what you or I are saying. And that 'types' the words in a visual field in my brain so I can actually absorb them.

People who come into my home often comment on my huge white board in the kitchen showcasing our calendar and every list, chart, or tasks we need to do. How many times have I heard in my life, "Oh, you're so organized!" No, I'm so forgetful. If I don't write something down, it doesn't count. My husband can attest how many months he can remind me to buy shaving cream as we're upstairs readying for the day, but that doesn't stay in my brain long enough to walk downstairs and write it on the grocery list. (You know what? Finally, I'm going to solve this problem by posting a secondary Upstairs Grocery List in the hallway up there!)

So, what do I glean from those three puzzles pieces:

• I have to write it down.
• I have to write it down.
• I have to write it down.

Which translates to: I have to see it. Visual learner to the extreme.

Why does this matter? I'm no longer in school. (No: life is school! Continuing education forever!) It matters because I now have a glimpse into other people's brains. A child I'm teaching could learn this way or any other number of weird ways I can't currently conceive. For example, what if a child possessed almost no aural learning and for reason of young age or physical disability, lacked the fine motor skills to write things down? It could appear that the child couldn't learn at all. But perhaps that child just needs extremely creative accommodations to learn visually.

Now I realize that if a child seems to be hitting a major roadblock in learning, the parent/teacher needs to explore deeply how that child is learning or not learning, then try to create accommodations. Truly, I never before realized how important is this factor. I thought we had learning preferences that were nice, but not critical. But seeing (pun intended) my own inability to hear the words my children spell to me has made me realize otherwise.

(On this subject, I still rave about All About Reading and All About Spelling because the program teaches visually, aurally, and kinesthetically simultaneously: all types of learners will benefit!)

If fellow homeschooling families (or parents in general) have tips to share on how to encourage our children to read daily, please do share in the comments section!