Reading Lessons

Jesse, who is 5, has a reading lesson with me every morning, it lasts 30minutes maximum. Whilst the oldest sparrow, who is 6, can read well and learnt phonically whilst at school I was not convinced a phonetics programme on its own was the best way to encourage Jesse to read confidently.

So I did a little reading (how ironic!!) and found a scheme in one of Charlotte Masons education volumes (1 I think) that seemed an excellent balance, including both phonics and sight reading.
How does it work? Here you will find my interpretation (with a few personal tweaks) of her scheme....

We alternate daily sight reading lessons and word building lessons. We work from a literary piece, poem, prose or lyrics, that I have previously chosen and prepared. The preparation involves printing out 3 or 4 copies of the piece. One copy is laminated in full, another in paragraphs, one in sentences and another in words (each word is only laminated once and words he already knows are not included). We use one selection until he is able to read it fluently. So far we have used;

• Eensy Weensy Spider (lyrics)



• I Like to See a Thunderstorm (poem)



• The little Red Hen (prose)



• The Zoo (poem)

Eensy Weensy took a little while longer as we were both getting used to the the new system, now he flies through them, it took him just 8 days to do 'The Little Red Hen'. On our 'sight reading' days we take one sentence of the piece (plus recap of those already learned) and I show Jesse, on his wipe board, one of the words. He takes a picture in his mind and then has to find the word 1) in a pile of words, 2) in the sentence and 3) in the piece proper. Once he has it he places the word in a column.

We'll continue like this until we have done all the words in the sentence (in a random order) all throughout Jesse is reading up and down and left and right his word column. We finish with a read through of the sentence and a read through of the selection as far as he can get.

On the alternate days we 'word build' a kind of phonics programme. He has a jar of laminated lowercase letters he uses to make words during these lessons. I feel I should say that Jesse was already familiar with all his initial phonics sounds and also some of the more complex phonemes before we began this programme. I'll choose a couple of words from the piece that demonstrate well how other words are sounded out. Jesse makes as many as he can with his letters and we go though them in a word column as in the other lessons.

I have been AMAZED at Jesse's progress using this scheme, his enthusiasm for reading has ballooned. Previously in school he was just learning phonics and, although he could recognise all the basic sounds, it was painful to watch him use them in reading. Now on his diet of interesting and fun reading selections (Goodbye Biff and Chip, no love lost here!!) he is thriving.

One happy Mama bird.