Teaching Reading With Stories

When a child first begins reading, I think it's important for them to find the connection between sounding out words and real books. Choices when they are only reading short-vowel words are limited, though. Early phonics readers tend to be contrived and, due to the limited vocabulary, not that well-written or interesting. Another option is to read a book to the child, stopping at the words he is capable of reading and having him read those words. However, this method disrupts the continuity of the story and can make a fun read-aloud book more of a chore.

Yesterday I happened upon a third option that Luke enjoyed. As I read Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins aloud to him, I quickly jotted down a list of words we encountered that he could read, words like hut, men, lost, gift, and rest. By the time we finished the book, I had 20 words on the paper. Then I told him, "Look Luke, these are words from the book that you can read. Let's hear the story again, and you can read them." I then retold the story in my own words, stopping to let him read. Because they were already in the same order as the book, it was a fun review of the plot and a way for him to tell the story again. I plan on trying it at storytime every day.

All the World's a Stage

"How did you get your students to memorize all those lines?" a girl asked me at our Shakespeare class performance of As You Like It. Memorizing the lines for a play that is over two hours long is no easy feat, made even more difficult when much of the language is archaic, written over 400 years ago. In addition, the character Rosalind has more lines than any other woman in a Shakespeare play, and I cast two students in the role, each acting Rosalind for one of our performances. While I consider memorizing to be an accomplishment, many of the other skills my students acquired as we rehearsed and performed As You Like It are even greater. Each of the following will serve them well throughout their lives.

• Commitment: Every student chose to participate and to put in the work necessary for a smooth performance. I could not make everyone memorize their lines even if I wanted to, but they cared enough about having a good performance that they all practiced on their own and learned their parts. 
• Enunciating and projecting: These two abilities are the foundation of all public speaking. A person who can be heard and understood encourages the audience to listen and care about what they have to say.
• Empathy: Acting requires empathy because an actor will only be convincing if they understand and enter into the feelings of the character they play. As the director, I watched my young cast members mature into their roles over the course of our rehearsals, progressively bringing greater depth of expression into their acting. The ability to empathize may be the foundation for all moral behavior. According to the Collins English Dictionary, empathy is "the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings." Unless they understand that others have feelings different than their own, people will not care how their actions affect another person.
• Teamwork: Participating in the cast of a play requires cooperation. If a cast member forgets lines or fails to come onstage at their cue, every other actor on the stage needs to cover for and try to help them while appearing to the audience as if this was the way it was supposed to be. In some group projects, one person can get stuck doing most of the work, but in a play, a few good actors can't make up for several who consistently forget their part or play it woodenly. The success of all depends on each one in a transparent way.
• Literary Interpretation: Close readings of a text yield the best interpretations. Too often when people read literature, they form their opinions quickly, without an indepth study of the text to justify their conclusions, but acting requires memorization. My students know Shakespeare's own words in a way that a cursory reading and discussion in a class would never provide. They had to think about what each of their lines meant to become the character and to help the audience catch on even when the language was opaque. My own understanding of the play gained clarity and depth through all the rehearsals and even the performances.

If asked I wouldn't know how to grade my students on their participation in the play. Education can't be easily quantified. Schools tend to focus too much on requirements and benchmarks, constantly measuring incremental mastery of knowledge or skills that appears systematic but is really arbitrary. I measure education in a more personal fashion. Have my students grown in skills and character traits that will expand for them the experience of being human? Will they desire to know other things in the future the way they now know As You Like It? Do they work better with others? Can they communicate better? I believe they have, and I hope as they all find and play a meaningful role in the world, they will remember that "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

A Simple Way to Teach Reading

My mother teaches reading with abundant energy and effort, producing flash cards and games on her computer that require reams of paper, cardstock and many printer cartridges to make the student encounter something new nearly every day. I admire the way she does this, but due to sheer laziness, I haven't been able to get myself to follow her example, so instead I have searched for the best beginning reading curriculum, finding little to like in most that I have examined. As I flip through the pages, they appear either too complicated or too much like a chore that must be completed. What I want is something systematic yet simple.

The Suzuki Piano School books meet these requirements, only they teach an instrument. Each piece in the books builds on the techniques and musicality learned in previous pieces. Teachers receive training and rely on the pedagogical method they have learned rather than directions on a printed page: other than a brief foreword, the books are free of text, and the style and speed of teaching are dependent on the teacher, who can utilize her own creativity and knowledge of each individual child as she teaches.The children build a "vocabulary" of all the pieces they will learn through daily listening, so they can mentally hear anything they learn to play.

I have looked for something similar to teach early phonetic reading, and the closest match has been a series of lists at the end of Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch. They have no glamor or even cuteness about them. List 1 teaches three-letter words with the short "a" sound and consonants "b d f g h j l m n p r s t v w y z." I first used these lists ten years ago while teaching Karina, my oldest, to read. She never read the lists of words straight out of the book, but I used it as more of a reference for the mother than the child,  like the early Suzuki piano books, when the child cannot yet read music. The lists ensured that I progressed logically in teaching Karina to read, building on and reviewing previous steps. With a pencil in hand, I wrote words in a notebook for her, coming up with simple activities for the words on the spot.

Now I have typed the lists into my computer, making alterations to the order, adding words I like that weren't included in the original, and I am turning to them again as I have begun teaching Luke. The "games" we play are very simple. His current favorite is to circle all the words he thinks are good with a blue pen and all the words he thinks are bad with a red one. Today I felt disappointed when he circled the word "sun" in red because, in his words, "I hate the sun," but young children here in rainy western Washington do seem to find the sun's brightness painful. We also act out words, find animal words and pretend to be that animal, read words for food and pretend to eat it, point to body parts we read, or anything else I can think of that gives him an instant reward for reading. He enjoys linking the letters he strings together with words that are already part of his vocabulary, words that he can mentally hear and begin a conversation about. This is much more gratifying than sounding out incomplete or nonsense words, something many curricula include.

Once Luke can comfortably read the words in one list, I move on to the next, continuing to review previous words as he learns new sounds. I find these lists to be a simple yet thorough way to teach reading that easily adapts to the varying velocities of learning. Each of my children has followed their own trajectory in acquiring the ability to read, and I like the flexibility a simple series of lists gives me. Here are copies of the first five lists as I have adapted them, covering lists 1 through 10 in Flesch's book. I hope someone else may find them as useful as I have.

List 1: Vowel "a," consonants "b c d f g h j l m n p r s t v w y z"
Ann bad bag bat bam cab can cap cat dad Dan fan fat gas hag ham hat jam jazz lap mad man map mass nag nap Nat pad pal Pam pan pass pat rag ran rap rat sad Sam sat tag tan tap van vat wag

List 2: Vowel "o"
Bob boss cob cod cop cot dog doll Don dot fog God got hog hop hot job jog log lot mop moss nod not pop pot rob sob Tom top

List 3: Vowel "i"
bib big Bill bin bit did dig dip fib fig fill fit hill him hip hit Jill Jim kid kill Kim kin kiss kit lid lip mill miss nip pig pin rib rip sin sip Sis sit Tim tip wig will win zip

List 4: Vowel "u"
bud bug bun bus but buzz cub cuff cup cut dull fun fuss fuzz gum gun Gus huff hug hum hut mud muff mug mutt nun nut puff pup rub rug run sum sun tub tug

List 5: Vowel "e"
bed beg bell Ben bet den Ed egg get hem hen jet keg leg less let men mess Ned net peg pen pet red sell set Ted tell ten web well wet yell yes yet

Beatitudes

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

I have a full heart today as I work on memorizing the Beatitudes, my first step towards memorizing the Sermon on the Mount. Last week my oldest daughter Karina asked me if I would memorize it with her, so we have discussed and read verses in the car and copied them into our journals. Her "hunger and thirst after righteousness" fills me with gratitude. When I became a mother I had no idea that the greatest reward of motherhood would be the privilege of helping and working closely with fine people. Suzuki writes, "We must try to make [our children] splendid in mind and heart also." I have tried and am trying to do this, but I always end up feeling like I have contributed little to minds and hearts full of splendor from the beginning. I feel that each human life contains nobility and we only have to keep from destroying it to allow it to blossom.