Meet Ellen Richard - Teacher, Mom and Creative Resource

Meet Ellen Richard and her family!  Via the Internet, I recently met this amazing teacher and innovative entrepreneur and she's doing something incredible to encourage young children in writing and spelling.  I was so impressed that I asked her to post a guest blog for me here so you could gain from some of her ideas.  I'm also posting her ideas and comments on my sister blog for educators. The topic is spelling and handwriting.  Take it away, Ellen!

Spelling is tough.  But,as a teacher from down in the trenches, I can tell parents that demanding kids write the same words over and over again is not the most productive use of your (or your child's) time. Educators, as a whole, have shifted away from rote memorization and endless tracing of inconsequential spelling lists and instead are spending their time figuring out ways to engage kids.  It's my experience that kids who truly are excited about the subject matter learn more and learn it faster.

Kids who have issues memorizing (there are many of them out there, not even counting those with identified learning disorders), are in a real pickle.  There is not context for the words, and there is not connection made.  Now, in all fairness, sometimes the words rhyme but more often than not they are just a group of words that the publishers of the textbook happened to think were appropriate for all the kids in a class.  One size doesn't fit all.  There are so many kids whose brains just work a little differently and, for those kids, spelling can be a huge problem.

I know, I know -- we have computers who do all our thinking, right?  Wrong!   Even in the age of SpellCheck and T-9 Alpha, kids need to know how to spell.  Why?  Because we still need to use a standardized, easily understandable common spelling for ease of communication.  That will never change and it applies whether your child is just learning to spell or whether they are an older student.

So what can you do to make spelling easier?
Three words:  authentic learning experiences.

Kids need to be engaged in what they are doing.  They need to see how and why spelling is so important.  Tracing or copying a list of words does not help the kids make essential connections that they need to learn how to spell words, or retain that information.  Whether you are thinking young children with growing small motor abilities or older students who've had some experiences with spelling, engagement is key.

I believe it is just fine to have young kids trace words to help them learn how to spell and/or print but here's the catch:  the words have to be meaningful to them.  A list of random words is not meaningful.  A letter to a friend is.  A story written by the child himself is also meaningful.  An article about the child's favorite sport or musician is too.  It's our jobs as educators (and yes, parents are the most important educators in a child's life) to find out what interests our kids and connect writing to it.

Ask questions; dig a little.  What is it that makes your child tick?  Use that to help her spell (and read and form letters and practice handwriting).  Here's the greatest part -- you can do all of this easily at home.  With your older students, let them do the writing while you write something together (a story, a book review or editorial, a fan letter, whatever).

If you are working with young children, you don't need fancy fonts on the computer to be able to have kids trace the words and become better spellers.  Simply make the dotted font yourself using good old paper and pencil.  Ask your child to tell you about his favorite character in his favorite book and jot down what he says in that dotted format.  Then, while he's still excited about the story, have him trace over what you just wrote and he just dictated to you.  Let him use blue marker if he wants.  He'll probably want to read it over and over and over again.  Why?  Because that story is the most interesting think in the world to him, at that moment in time.

Why Does This Work?

Just by talking to your child and writing down his story in a handmade dotted form, you are:

1.  bonding with your child and learning more about her likes and preferences

2.  giving her the opportunity to trace over her own story (that you jotted down)

3.  allowing her the chance to see the words that are important to her, her story and her vocabulary in the written form, and

4.  providing new reading material that is exciting, yet familiar, and fun for her to read.

Many of these ideas from Ellen can also be adapted with your older kids and the bonding is certainly as important as they grow older as it was when they were very young.

Thanks, Ellen!  What great ideas she has given you.  You're going to have a lot of fun.  I really like the way she balances a child writing over someone else's words and writing over her own.  Both are important.

Ellen has done more for us and young children.  She has taken these simple ideas and made them into a small business.  She started Letter Learning while on maternity leave from teaching this past January.  She missed teaching students, and had a million thank-you cards to write.  Because both of those things were on her mind, the idea for educational greeting cards was born!

She remembered how her own students sturggled often with spelling and handwriting and knew how much they love their family and friends.  She also knew that young kids love to "be like Mom" and since 80% of greeting cards are sent by women, it seems that greeting cards that help kids learn to write and spell are a long overdue instrument. Check out the birthday card above; it's an example of Ellen's cards.

Now It's Your Turn

Take time to sit down with your child and really talk with him.  Every child has at least one thing that really piques his interest.  It is your job to find out what that is.  Once you do that, the rest is easy!  So, now it's your turn.  Tell us what has helped you work with your child on spelling and writing at home.  Send a link to this blog to another mom or dad you know.  Share the complementary teacher blog with an educator you know who is enjoying a bit of R&R this summer.  It's when we take action from the words we read that we make a difference.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Secrets Parents Need to Know About Beginning Reading

Kathy Stemke, the Educationtipster on Blogspot, recently called for an interview which you'll find posted on her blog.  I always appreciate any opportunity to reach out and communicate to parents with children of all ages and certainly do this one.

One of the comments on the blog asked questions that would require too long an answer on the comment segment of Kathy's blog so I'm jumping over here to give it a go.  Her questions were:

What are your views on the various techniques for teaching reading?

How have they changed over the years?

What's most effective with children who have reading difficulties?

I certainly won't offer an entirely comprehensive answer here but enough to get you started and heighten understanding.

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TEACHING READING

One of the wisest people in reading research today (Dr. Richard Allington) tells us that "there are many roads to reading".  One size does not fit all.  Different individuals come to reading through different mechanics.  And reading is a multi-level complex set of skills rather than just one so it takes years to reach true competency.  Part of the importance of partnerships between school and home is decyphering those needs and addressing them as needed with each individual youngster. 

Children need to understand the alphabetic principal early on (knowledge of letters and shapes, their understanding that print has unique meaning and that letters represent sounds in our spoken language).  As they gain the connection between letters and sounds, they now have the beginning tool to figure out the squiggles on the page.  There is an excellent explanation of this part of reading on Reading Rockets in their First Year Teacher segment and it's devoid enough of education lingo to be of value to non-educator parents.

It Starts Long Before . . .

The truth is that the strongest readers are created from day one in a cocoon of language and experience with print.  As I've often said, that doesn't mean creating a structured academic hothouse at home.  It doesn't mean buying workbooks and sitting your 4-7 year old down at the table to work.  It means experiencing literacy in all its forms in our world.  If we could just get that right at the beginning, are consistent (just as we are in giving our children good nutrition or adequate exercise), and combine it with strong phonics instruction, we would virtually eliminate reading difficulties by first or second grade. 

So my message to parents is always, "be the commercial for reading".  Show children how interesting, how much fun reading is and, as Bob Keeshan AKA Captain Kangaroo says (I'm showing my age), "They will follow as the night follows the day."  Read in front of them (not just novels, cereal boxes, street signs, bill boards).  Show them that reading and writing are tools for life and show them that every day.

Again, regardless of the method used to teach reading at the beginning, those with such experiences will have an easier time acquiring beginning skills if they have a strong foundation in oral language and exploration and interaction (not conventional reading) with print. 

Having said that, the best scientific research we have in education today says that most children respond most positively to the instructional "learn to read" components of kindergarten and first grade through an method known as phonics (learning the correlation between letter and letter combos and sounds, then applying those in blending those sounds into words that connect to our spoken vocabulary or become a new term we understand).  The good news is that virtually every school in the U.S. (public or private) teaches children to read that way.   


So phonics instruction is important.  With these numbers, that's the first approach to use.  But it is important for both parents and educators to look beyond phonics if a child isn't getting it after an adequate period of time.  Have a parent-teacher conference to discuss progress, alternatives, and come up with a plan together, teacher and family.

In such occasional instances where phonics truly isn't the best way for your child to learn to read, it's better to encourage alternative approaches (sight word reading or memorizing the "shapes" and "patterns", going back to the foundations needed for phonics, phonological awareness - how the patterns in our oral language work without the connection to print).  For a lot of children, those are not as efficient a means so make sure, along with your child's teacher, that phonics really isn't for your child before moving on to alternatives. 

That could be a whole other topic and, in fact, I give definitions of some of these terms in an earlier posting on my blog.  Listen to the child and find ways that they can be successful at reading, not forcing them into a mold if they are the minority who don't learn to read with phonics.  Some children even develop an "organic" sense of how the patterns and sounds in our language work with no formal instruction in phonics, combine it with other strategies (figuring out words from picture clues, recognizing some words on sight, etc.).

BEGINNING READING IS MORE THAN PHONICS

Now for perhaps the most important message in this blog: 

phonics or any other beginning reading strategy for "figuring out words" is only a tool.  

It is not reading.  

And phonics is something that, once learned, should then serve as a tool to successfully decode words enough times that those words then become automatic, almost a sight word - one we recognize on sight rather than having to dissect it each time it is encountered.  The mistake too many educators make is an over-focus on phonics.  They stay on it too long rather than having the big picture in mind and moving children to that next level.  That's when children get the idea that they must decode each word they encounter, even if they already know it on sight and that actually disables reading growth or at least deters it.  That's also where you see motivation decline because how much fun is "manipulating phonemes"?

Reading is getting the meaning out of print.  So in addition to phonics instruction, children need a steady diet of great stories read aloud to them and shared one on one as well as in small and whole group.  Families can have a great influence here, especially if your child is in a school where the phonics is isolated and overemphasized and no read alouds of delicious stories that are not easily decodable occurs.  What's the benefit?  Children get that big picture:  they are exposed to complex sentence structure, new vocabulary, the sound of a fluent reader sounding like he/she is talking when she reads, they get the meaning because 100% of their little brains are freed to understand the story rather than being divided between decoding (which can take up most of the brain power early one) and comprehension.  Then they get the idea of what really is (and the motivation to do it themselves).

WHAT ABOUT STRUGGLING READERS?

My advice with struggling readers (my new friend, Donalyn Miller calls them "dormant readers") is always - look for the building blocks they are missing.  Just using repetition on too high a level with a child is frustrating for the child and everyone involved. 

Good teachers, whether they are parents or professionally-trained educators, recognize such "holes" and step back to more fundamental skills.  Here's an example.  If a child is having trouble blending sounds, make sure they have a strong, almost automatic recall of letter sounds.  If they have to work at blending and at recalling the sound, it may be a brain overload.  Think more concrete to less concrete, less abstract to more.  Use the concrete to help bridge them to the abstract.

With young children, the emotional support of a positive rather than negative experience, is so critical. Reading researcher, Dorothy Strickland, says, "It is the broader pattern of child-adult activities and interactions that support a child's language and literacy development."  If we do not give children mostly positive experinces with books, they will not choose to be readers.  

If a struggling child does what seems to them to be nonsensical exercises, how do we think that is going to give them the emotional fortitude they need to practice and become competent?  Think games, think tying whatever method you are using to teach to a positive experience, balance that instruction and practice that is necessary in the context of great read aloud experiences so your child sees the end they are working so hard to get to -- being able to read ANYTHING THEY WANT.  I have seen it time and time again that reading difficulties, when paired with appropriate balanced instruction, can be overcome.

CLOSING

This ended up being longer than I expected but I hope I answered the questions raised by my visitor on Kathy's blog AND perhaps some of yours.  Follow-up questions posted will be addressed (blogging is a great forum for that type of dialogue).  I also welcome, as always, your comments.

And today, share this blog with a parent or teacher, just one, that you believe can benefit and we'll spread the revolution!  Check out my book, Anytime Reading Readiness, for more ideas about supporting your young readers.

Focus on Early Childhood (Do You Have A Infant, Toddler or Preschooler)?

A GLIMPSE INTO THIS WEEK'S WORLD 
OF THE LITERACY AMBASSADOR

Tomorrow I'm attending a wonderful north AL institution:  the NW Alabama Childcare Conference.  I always get excited because I get to see all my friends in the early childhood world (teachers and directors) from across the northern part of our state.  And this year, we have a keynote speaker I know will be incredible:  Steven Layne.  I wish those of you who are parents could be here to hear him.

I met Steven at a conference several years ago and so applauded his message:  we need to spread a PASSION for reading!  Check out his books, Love the Baby and My Brother Dan's Delicious, now available on audio too!.  What I like most about Steven is that he isn't your typical stuffy researcher from the university environment.  He indeed has a passion that is contagious and we need that kind of epidemic.  Don't be afraid to catch this bug!

RESOURCES FOR BUSY FAMILIES 
(and teachers)

I also want to share with you parents of 3-6 year olds a new video from TLA, Inc. that teaches you how to play a game, Rhymin' Simon, with your young children.  It's drawn from my new book, Anytime Reading Readiness, and its partner for educators, Before They Read, and is a quick easy way to build early skills while having a great deal of fun. 

Rhyming is the doorway into the world of thinking about words for the sounds within them (apart from their meaning).  The ability to recognize and even generate (eventually) rhymes comes as early as age 2.5 or 3 but it starts with simply playing with the language.  As you talk daily with your child, you have given him many great tools in the language he uses; this activity and others like it are the way to effectively build on those experiences as he/she moves on the road toward getting ready to read. 

My last gifts to you: 

1) a list of books to support rhyming and other early childhood literacy skills.  Enjoy!

2) a chance to win a copy of Anytime Reading Readiness!  Just cut and paste this email address with the words ANYTIME CONTEST in the subject line and you'll automatically be entered.  Contest runs through the end of February.

Three Secrets to Helping Kids Read

Today I visited with Pat Montgomery of ParentsRule radio and we talked specifically about helping young children come to the reading table "at their prime time".  This post will serve as an additional resource to that interview (which you can hear via podcast anytime this week if you missed the live show).  Pat also has a blog with more information from her shows so you can find even more important information there.

Did you know . . .

Children begin to read normally between the ages of 4-6 (a few exceptions on either end of that spectrum) and it is important to know that each child comes to the reading table at a different time (and reading later than 4 doesn't mean your child is "behind").

Did you know that the vocabulary level of children by 1st grade can predict at least 30% of their success in comprehending what they read when they are 16 or 17?  The details are included in a longitudinal research study summarized in the book Beginning Literacy with Language.

THREE BIG IDEAS

Conversations are important.
Exploring print and books together is important.
Playing with the Language is important.

All of these work when they are consistently applied.  More details on all three of these concepts are covered in detail in my new book Anytime Reading Readiness (for parents) which makes a great holiday gift for a young family (or a stocking stuffer for yourself!)    Easy, fun activities that can be slipped into busy days, without too much "academic" pressure (which can be counterproductive) are what you will find in this family-friendly handbook.  It's also designed so you can find just the areas you need more information and ideas on or, if you want an overview, you can read from front cover to back.

If you are looking for a great gift for the preschool or kindergarten teacher in your life, you can choose the companion book to Anytime Reading Readiness, called Before They Read.  Covering the same three big ideas mentioned above, this takes a more academic focus for easy application in the classroom while retaining the important essential elements of reading readiness and emergent literacy.  A plus is that this book's margins are full of teacher tips and more ideas for involving families in complementing what is happening at school.  I purposely wrote both these books at the same time to give families and schools a target for working together because that is the way children learn to read most easily.

Here are a few of the resources mentioned on Pat's program today:

Indistructibles, great wordless books for "reading" and exploring with young children

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton, one of Cathy's early favorite books

Singing (which we didn't get to) is always great - check out Fran Avni's CDs for great songs that are fun (and foster learning).

Join my revolution to draw families and schools together without an "academic hothouse" approach.  Reading and writing are tools for life, not just something that happens as an assignment or work in the classroom.  The most important part of reading, talking, and playing with language at home is that it gives time for a strong relationship between adult and child to grow.  That is the best part of literacy, combined with the fact that literacy is the doorway to all learning.  As a parent, don't worry if you're not a bookworm:  think - "It's bigger than the book" because it is.  The interaction you have with your child will grow literacy skills but it also helps the two of you grow closer.  It helps you understand your child more deeply; it helps your child connect with you.

You can also be a part of the revolution by sharing the resources from  TLA's website with schools, parent-teacher organizations, community family-friendly groups because literacy is everyone's business and children's literacy is our future.  TLA is currently booking me for events and conferences for 2010 and 2011.

Post questions you have in response to the radio show or to this blog and The Literacy Ambassador will be happy to respond!

Calling All Parents: Practical Reading Ideas for Gifted Kids

If you missed the live show with host Audrey Borden and literacy expert, Cathy Puett Miller, now is your chance to hear a podcast of that event.  Lots of practical ideas to match up with our recent post.  You may need to listen to the hookup intro for a few seconds before the show actually starts so settle back, be ready to be inspired about reading with your child and finding the perfect book to share with your gifted child.

This podcast isn't just for parents of gifted children.  It has excellent tips for anyone interested in promoting their child's literacy.  Focusing on helping your child have positive experiences with reading, tons of references to great books and solutions to finding time to encourage reading and writing at home are all included. 

P.S.  Be on the lookout for a revolution starting in just a few weeks with the release of Cathy Puett Miller's two new books - Anytime Reading Readiness and Before They Read.  Never before have two books been so relationship-building between the teacher of 3-6 year olds and the parents of that same age group.  With these tools, parents will learn the three big essentials to getting their children ready to read and preschool and Kindergarten teachers will find fun skill-building activities to integrate into your curriculum with great results.   Stay tuned!

Where the Radio Shows Left Off

We're breaking the pattern from alternating between the "snuggle and cuddle" stage and older, independent readers. I am visiting a couple of radio shows this week on reading, families and young children and there's just so much to share that we never have time to talk about everything. One is with my friend, Stacey Kannenberg, the Ready to Learn mom.

If you get to this blog tonight (9/22) or in the morning of 9/23, you may be able to listen in live at 11EST at The Get Ready to Learn Mom Radio Show. Otherwise you'll be able to find a podcast after the fact at this same website.

FAMILY FRIENDLY DEFINITIONS OF A FEW TERMS


COMPREHENSION - understanding what you read (and the real reason we read).

DECODING - refers to the various skills we use to decipher text into understandable words. It has more specifically been used to talk about the phonics approach of breaking apart words into different single sounds, then calling those sounds and blending them together to figure out a word. No all words can be decoded strictly in this way, only those that follow regular phonics rules.

DIBELS - a screening used by many schools to determine whether a child has competency in several key early literacy skills including at the beginning of Kindergarten alphabetic knowledge, an ability to attend to single sounds in words and break words apart into single sounds (orally, not by reading). This same screening later (up to 3rd grade usually) is used to evaluate fluency (whether a child sounds like they are talking when they read), comprehension, and decoding abilities.

FLUENCY - as readers move beyond calling out one word at a time and having to decode, sound by sound, most words, they begin to sound more like natural speech when they read aloud. Not only is the pace regular and smooth, but the reader adds expression and phrasing and recognizes most words in that given text easily.

GUIDED READING - in simplest terms, that is the time in class when children read text that is fairly easy for them to "decode", concentrating on understanding and being fluid in what they read (sounding like they are talking). Guided reading or leveled books have a limited number of words in them and the vocabulary is more "controlled".

HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS - these are words that appear most often in real reading text. Drs. Dolch and Frye created age level lists of these words, from the simplest in Kindergarten to higher levels in the upper grades and, if our children practice with reading that contains those (mostly sight words, see definition below) and maybe practice reading them off a list as well, our child will be able to automatically read those words with little mental effort. Knowing the high frequency words helps a child become a more fluent reader who understands more of what he/she reads.

LEVELED Readers - Books that have been carefully written to include a limited number of words (and words from a certain Dolch/Frye grade level list). Teachers carefully select these books for each child so that individual child has a chance to read something that contains lots of words they are already familiar with. If a child can easily read about 95% of the words in a book, they can put more mental power toward understanding what they read and less on recognizing and decoding words.

METACOGNITION - thinking about how you think

ORAL LANGUAGE - This is more than just speaking. It is the complex system that we humans use to relate sounds to meanings. It has three parts: the phonological (how we combine sounds in words to translate/transfer meaning in speech -- not reading, just speaking and listening); semantic (understanding that the smallest units of meaning, whether those be words, prefixes, or suffixes, can be joined together. We deal with semantics when we make single words plural for example) and syntactic (rules that enable us to combine those smallest units of meaning into sentences so meaning is communicated - in the beginning, humans use short syntactic phrases to communicate like "more cookie" which are later expanded as our abilities with language grow to "I would like another cookie, please.") Who knew speaking and listening was so complex. It is amazing that our children develop all this without direct instruction!

SIGHT WORDS - those are words that don't follow the phonics rules so we have to know them "by sight" as soon as we see them. Learning sight words takes seeing them over and over until you immediately recognize them. Think of the word "give". It breaks the rule that when you have two consonants and two vowels, the first vowel most of the time says its name (is a long sound) and the second vowel is silent/quiet. In the word "give" the first vowel is short and the second one silent.

If there are other terms that you need a translation for, add a comment and I'll edit this blog to include them.

Some of my favorite quotes for parents on reading:

If we do not give our children mostly positive reading experiences, they will not choose to be readers . . . Dr. Michael Pressley

If you are reading regularly -- every day -- to your children, taking a reading time of fifteen or twenty minutes, whenever it can occur, before bed or whatever, that shows a respect for books. It shows that you have a reverence for books. That's the only way to reallky get kids interested in reading. Show how interesting it is and how much fun it is. If you read, your child will follow your example, as the night follows the day . . . Bob Keeshan AKA Captain Kangaroo

What we teach our children to love and desire will always outweigh what we teach them to do . . . Jim Trelease, author of The Read Aloud Handbook.

FIVE OF MY FAVORITE PLACES ON THE WEB
FOR PARENTS READING WITH CHILDREN

Reading Rockets and Colorin' Colorado - sponsored by PBS
Just One More Book, a podcast about children's books we love
The Reading Tub, a source for great book reviews for parents
Planet Esme, a website full of great resources about reading with your children
Stories for Children Magazine, an ezine for children ages 3-12, with a great interview with Stacey, complete with stories and advice

News flash - I just saw that Jamie Lee Curtis (one of the few "celebrities" writing quality children's books) has a new book out in October called Jamie Lee Curtis's Books to Grow By Treasury. I can's wait to read it!

That's all for now. Stay tuned next time for answers to the question: My child is beyond the "snuggle and cuddle" stage - what do I do?

Remember, if you have questions or want to share what works in reading with your kids, feel free to add your gems of wisdom.