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As parents and educators we all agree that being able to read is fundamental for both school and life success.
However, when it comes to learning to Read, one sizes DOES NOT fit all! With schools and teachers focused on helping students pass standardized testing, everyone has hyper focused on decoding and reading fluency as the “be-all end-all” for having kids become successful readers.
This phonics-only approach to teaching reading is not for everyone
We receive calls daily from parents from around the country concerned about their child’s school success. Some report that their children are struggling so much with reading that they flatly refuse to sit down to read; they are too anxious, not attentive or too active to sit and learn.
Others report that their children are actually fairly good readers---- yet they do NOT UNDERSTAND anything they read!! We have come to identify breaking up and sounding out words as READING, when in actuality that isolated skill is decoding not reading. My definition of reading, which I think most parents will agree, is
Reading is the ability to understand what the words mean that are being read ( i.e. creating pictures in your head about what the words are describing). Reading should be an experience that can take you away to wonderful places.
Most children have vivid imaginations, and are able to make up stories or play make-believe. They are wonderful, natural, “right-brained” learners as pre-schoolers. They are sensitive, emotional, creative, visual, and hands-on learners! Once letters and their corresponding letter sounds (this is considered a “left-brained” activity) are introduced, some children start to become frustrated and parents start to recognize that their child is starting to have difficulty remembering letters or words.
Like all children they want special books read over and over again and parents start to think that their child is just “memorizing” words - not reading them. As children get older and they continue to struggle, their frustration leads to refusal to read and they fall further and further behind. Parents often experience total shutdown and are at a los for what to do.
With children that have language difficulties or delays, the process of learning to read is an even more stressful process. If you think about it, the act of reading is fairly complicated: it involves one to sit still, (be attentive), focus BOTH eyes together on the same small spot on the page, and then be able to have your eyes move together across a line of words.
If that weren’t enough, you need to recognize that the letters in a particular order (a pattern,) actually make a word—a word that has a meaning—or picture. Then you need to string all of those pictures together to make up the meaning of an entire sentence. If certain words repeat themselves, you need to be able to recognize that those words are words that you have seen before. (memory—especially visual memory!) It is no wonder that children just want to look at the pictures--- reading is HARD.
So many skills are needed to be ‘in-place’ before a student can master reading. Imaginative play, using LOTS of language in many situations, singing, doing finger plays, even throwing and catching a ball helps a child to follow an object with their eyes.
Have your children start to recognize words that are associated with things. Have you ever noticed that once your child has been to some place like McDonald’s that you can hardly drive by one without their noticing it? That is reading!!! Put words on cupboards, doors, chairs etc— include the word and a picture of what the object is.
Today, many more children—very smart children, are experiencing difficulties with reading, spelling and writing. There is usually not one “cause” for these difficulties. In our center, we have worked with thousands of students and their parents to help them achieve success in school. Over the past 15 years we have developed a comprehensive integrated program that includes physical movement: getting the mind and body to work together in a coordinated fashion, neural timing to build neural pathways for information to flow from both sides of the brain and body for effective learning and our patented approach to word building to strengthen both visual memory and vocabulary comprehension. More than anything we have realized that students need to be connected to what they are learning and learning needs to be both engaging and fun. Children have many strengths, and it is important that learning builds on those strengths. They realize success in a relatively short time period, and want to continue that success spiral. Success breeds success.
Understanding how your child learns best is essential. IF your child learns best when material is presented in a hands-on experiential way, please call our center at 561-361-7495 or go to www.3dlearner.com/parents and explore the possibility that reading can be learned.
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