Magic!

I’ve always said that when I die, I don’t want to know the meaning of life… I want to know what happens in the brain of a child when they finally “get it”. When it all finally clicks and they’re suddenly reading.

Now, when I say “get it”, I do NOT mean they finally sound out the word dog, which they’ve been labouring over for eons… This moment is actually a huge pain in the ass for most parents.

I remember when my nephew memorized the letters of the alphabet. He was about two and so proud. He had learned them from the regular ways… the leappad games and phonics computer (all essentially worksheets) he had been bought as gifts, the ABC song with mom and dad, and grandma, and auntie, and TV shows like SuperWhy. He and I were walking to the park. It was a looooooong walk and he was already verrrrrry slow. He had to stop… point to… and name every letter he saw on every single sign. As fluent readers we don’t realize how much environmental print we encounter on a minute by minute basis… until you have to stop and cheer for EVERY letter named. It’s really exciting, but damn annoying at the same time.

I had a parent come to me with a similar quandary. She actually said, “Damn you Ginger for teaching R how to read!”. She then laughed at the confused look on my face. That was my job as his grade one teacher. She clarified that they just couldn’t get ANYTHING done anymore. R had to stop and laboriously sound out every piece of environmental print he encountered. He was very stubborn about doing it all by himself too, so his parents and older brothers couldn’t just read it out to him. “Do you know what it’s like to have your grocery shopping time tripled when you have three hungry boys to get home and feed?” Her lament was in jest, but a truly frustrating (and thankfully short lived) time.

What I’m talking about is the minute reading clicks in the brain…

• the strategies all work (self-monitoring, decoding and comprehension)
• there is a purpose for reading (other than saying the right sounds and words to a parent or teacher or just getting the word sounded out)
• there is attention, persistence and motivation
• the comprehension is there
• the whole text has meaning
• reading is fluent (to a point depending upon the text, topic and age)
• the meaning is driving the reading and the reading is driving the meaning
• reading all of a sudden seems easy and fun

I experienced this wonderful moment of magic recently. I volunteer in a disadvantaged school. I was reading with W, an Aboriginal boy who wanted desperately to do well in school. He wanted to please his parents and teachers more than anything and it was very apparent by the look on his face and the earnest nature of his work. When we started reading together, he would read a few words and then look at me expectantly. “Is that right Miss?” In the beginning, I needed him to become comfortable with me, so I would give him lots of reassurance, praise and encouragement, but that just made him ask more often. You see, Walter was only sounding out the words to impress me and do what he thought I wanted him to do.

Once he was comfortable with me, I changed my tactics big time. I asked him, “What do you think?”. His first reaction was, “I dunno…” but I persisted. After only about 5 minutes of this, he asked if he could start the book over. You see, he realized that he had forgot to understand and enjoy the story. We not only went back, but started talking more about the pictures, what was going on in the story and making predictions together. He couldn’t wait to go read to his teacher and celebrate his new found independence!

When I read with a child, here are some of the guidelines I always stick to:

CALM… HAPPY… EASY

Appropriate text level (if they’re reading below a beginning grade three level or below their expected grade level). It should be 98% accuracy rate for home reading. If I’m doing individual or small group instruction in the classroom I’ll go up to 95% accuracy, but that’s highly scaffolded, supported and structured. Independent “free reading”, which involves just looking at books, digitally supported reading, being read to, or just talking about the book knows no level, stage or age.

Read the title to them. Often titles are written at a more difficult level than the rest of the book. It’s often also a huge clue to the meaning of the text and a predictor of vocabulary in the text.

Do a picture walk. I always make a joke that they’re: “NOT allowed to read during the picture walk!!! Don’t do it!!! You’ll get in big trouble!!!” They think this is hilarious. Usually I’m reading with a group of 4 or so, so there’s always one little monkey who “breaks the rules” and reads while we’re talking about the picture. Obviously, I let this happen.

• During picture walks for very beginning readers I sometimes preview vocabulary I think kids might struggle with. For example, I intentionally point out the word hedgehog with Aussie kids when we preview the book, “Hedgehog is Hungry”, because they would probably automatically go to the word echidna or spiny anteater. With Canadian kids, I might clarify if they call it a porcupine but otherwise leave it because it will become a really great teachable moment.
• For more advanced readers, we read the pictures and visual text features. This means we read titles, headings, captions, graphs, speech bubbles, lists, labelled diagrams, cross sections, maps, glossaries, indexes, tables of contents, and so many more. Yes… the picture walk is a rigorous process and extremely important at any age. It’s the first thing I do when I pick up a magazine in the line at the grocery store!

Now to the actual reading. When the child comes to a word they don’t know, you can respond a few different ways:

1. Child pauses, say, “Try it.”
2. Child still pauses, encourage an APPROPRIATE strategy (aka, one that has a possibility of working). Eg. “Make the first sound”, or “Look at the picture”
3. Give them a good 3 seconds (we usually only give kids about a second or a second and a half wait time) and if they still don’t get it, just tell them the word.
4. Encourage them to go back (with their finger) to the beginning of the page or sentence and re-read, thus incorporating the word into the meaning of the text and reminding them where they are and what’s going on
5. Give specific praise for positive reading behaviors… even if it’s just sitting up straight or paying attention.

When the child reads a word incorrectly, wait until they get to the end of the sentence. We don’t want to interrupt fluency and meaning. Wait for a couple of seconds.

The best case scenario is that the child realizes for themselves that they made a mistake and goes back and tries to self-correct!

If this happens, praise like hell and be specific. You can ask them, “How did you know? Hopefully their answer will be something like, “It didn’t make sense.” (or look right or sound right). If they don’t know, you can point out that it didn’t make sense (or look right or sound right) and then praise those self-correcting behaviours like crazy!

If they don’t realize they’ve made a mistake, and you’ve paused at the end of the sentence to allow time for self-correction, then you will want to repeat exactly what they said word for word: “You said, ‘The hat in the cat he knows where it’s at.’ Were you right?” As always, this question is calm and kind so as not to raise the alarm and put your child into fight or flight mode.

REMEMBER, we can’t think when we are in our caveman brains

I might also over emphasize the word/s that were wrong slightly with my voice to clue them in.

Hopefully they giggle and say, “NO, that didn’t make sense!” and you re-read and share a laugh.

AGAIN, if they don’t get it right away, you need to fill in the correct reading and say, “That didn’t make sense” (or look right or sound right) with humor and NO JUDGEMENT.

After we correct a mistake or clarify meaning, we ALWAYS go back and re-read. In beginner level books (less than 4 sentences on a page) go right back to the top of the page. For longer texts, the beginning of the sentence is fine. We want to keep reminding kids that when we take our attention away from the meaning of the text to focus on something else for more than 3 seconds, we need to remind ourselves what’s going on and where we were. I always tell my students about my own reading. When I go to bed, I sometimes fall asleep reading or am very tired on the last few pages/paragraphs. Because of this, I often have to re-read a paragraph or even a page to remember what is happening when I resume reading the next night.

Reading with your child should be a shared, loving, calm and happy time. If it isn’t at this point, it’s not too late to change that. Start by choosing familiar texts or those that are waaaaay too easy. If you fix the confidence and anxiety struggle first, the rest CAN come together. Remember, we wouldn’t expect a 6 year-old to swim competitively against Olympic athletes in their first year of instruction. We can’t expect them to compete with adults in reading during their first year of instruction either. They need years of modelling, teaching, coaching, practice, praise and TIME.

Then… just watch the magic happen!