This last month has been one of hunkering down and getting on at home more than anything else. Outings and other activities outside the house have been fairly limited. Evan is at the tail end of an ear infection, and Autumn, I am hoping, is at the tail end of a urine infection. The illnesses have caused a period of reflection. Here is part of the thought journey I have been on.
With Evan turning Seven I have had the inevitable panic at his level of reading and writing, feeling a tad insecure about his comparative level, as if I had to send him to school for some reason, at this point, I know that his levels would not be looked on too favourably by his teachers, and would lead to many difficulties, as the school curriculum invariably relies heavily upon the ability to read and write to access the whole curriculum. Which, in my opinion, is why schools see it as so important to get at an early age. I can understand this, having been a teacher myself, I certainly used it a fair amount when I taught Key Stages 1 and 2. It is my perception that the gulf in his ability, in this particular area, between him and his peers means that school, for the time being, would be out of the question as a possibility. I suppose up to now I have kind of assumed if circumstances necessitated, school could be an option open to us. Now, though, I realise, that unless he has some sudden breakthrough, that option is lost to us, for the time being at least. I reacted to this feeling of lack of control and insecurity fearfully by thrusting worksheets in front of both of my kids, in an effort to ensure this option could remain open.
I decided in order to keep the children in control of the majority of their time, I asked them to have kitchen table time with me for the 20-30 minutes whilst I prepared breakfast. Any other time in the day is so variable, I felt it would be unlikely I could capture their attention regularly. For the first 4-5 days this was fairly successful. I found that Reading Eggs, Evan's favourite website, had a new worksheet section. So I thought this would be a nice complementary thing to add to his knowledge and understanding of the subject, and have characters and things that were familiar to him. At first he enjoyed it, but as time wore on, he became increasingly reticent to complete even the most simple of tasks, which I knew were within his capability. Some simple information he seemed incapable of taking on board. Looking back I realise that this is not in line with my philosophy of learning. Evan seems to work much better when he is self-directed and absorbed in the task, rather than pushed into completing and arbitrary number of tasks at a set time. His learning at these times is most likely to be low level, and not long lasting learning, certainly lacking in intrinsic value or motivation. I had begun using fairly high stakes bribes, against my better judgement, to push him into engaging with the materials. Suggesting that if I couldn't help him to learn to read or write, then I would have to send him to school and they would do a better job. If I had been a fly on the wall I am sure I would have been screaming at myself that this was against all the ideas I had about learning, and very unlikely to produce the results I sought. To be honest, I had that fly on the wall in my head... I screamed this at myself as I slammed down a spatula in frustration. Thankfully after a few weeks I stopped and really looked at Evan. Was this doing him any good at all? No, definitely not. I kept coming back to the messages I had received from John Holt, in "Learning all the time", and from friends who have successfully home educated their children in an autonomous fashion, whose children are bookworms, but came to reading a little later than is considered "normal". Children learn everything they need to learn if they are given the time, space and rich environment to do it in, rather than learning everything because we feel we need them to in the manner and time scale we feel is appropriate.
Sadly, my reaction to my fear was not necessarily one which served my children's best interests, even though I had convinced myself that it did. I am really grateful for finding the path back to working with my children again.
Things have shifted though, we have begun using this early morning time, as a productive time rather than vegging in front of the telly, which had begun fairly habitual, and started the day in a sedentary fashion which bled into the rest of our days. I don't feel it necessary for the children to be productive at all times, far from it, but I do see the benefit of a little structured together time in the morning to set the day off to a positive start. I no longer do the worksheets with Evan, but Autumn has keenly begun some workbooks which she is enjoying. Evan, meanwhile does some games on Reading Eggs with my support and encouragement. We took a week and a bit off all of these things whilst they had been ill, and I let them be... Lots of hanging around and resting and cuddling; whilst also enjoying plenty of play. When they were up to it the play between them seemed to flow in an amazing way, games would go on for days and arguments seemed to have almost completely disappeared. A few days ago I realised that I hadn't had to support them in sorting out any battles for quite some time. Instead, when I heard a slight impasse, I heard Evan negotiating and carefully and skilfully supporting Autumn, and backing down when necessary. This was music to my ears, and I realised that this is what I needed to be doing. Listening, supporting, creating rich environments, not shoving worksheets under his nose.
Since my revert to going with the flow life has suddenly become much lighter. We are all enjoying ourselves much more. Yes, I would still like Evan to be reading books independently and getting great enjoyment from them, but I realise that it will happen at the right time for him, and he isn't all that far off anyway. I know that if I kept my regime going he would kick against the constraints and avoid any reading for a good long time. I don't want to take that risk, and I love how much fun he is having.
______________________
Updated September 2014
With Evan turning Seven I have had the inevitable panic at his level of reading and writing, feeling a tad insecure about his comparative level, as if I had to send him to school for some reason, at this point, I know that his levels would not be looked on too favourably by his teachers, and would lead to many difficulties, as the school curriculum invariably relies heavily upon the ability to read and write to access the whole curriculum. Which, in my opinion, is why schools see it as so important to get at an early age. I can understand this, having been a teacher myself, I certainly used it a fair amount when I taught Key Stages 1 and 2. It is my perception that the gulf in his ability, in this particular area, between him and his peers means that school, for the time being, would be out of the question as a possibility. I suppose up to now I have kind of assumed if circumstances necessitated, school could be an option open to us. Now, though, I realise, that unless he has some sudden breakthrough, that option is lost to us, for the time being at least. I reacted to this feeling of lack of control and insecurity fearfully by thrusting worksheets in front of both of my kids, in an effort to ensure this option could remain open.
I decided in order to keep the children in control of the majority of their time, I asked them to have kitchen table time with me for the 20-30 minutes whilst I prepared breakfast. Any other time in the day is so variable, I felt it would be unlikely I could capture their attention regularly. For the first 4-5 days this was fairly successful. I found that Reading Eggs, Evan's favourite website, had a new worksheet section. So I thought this would be a nice complementary thing to add to his knowledge and understanding of the subject, and have characters and things that were familiar to him. At first he enjoyed it, but as time wore on, he became increasingly reticent to complete even the most simple of tasks, which I knew were within his capability. Some simple information he seemed incapable of taking on board. Looking back I realise that this is not in line with my philosophy of learning. Evan seems to work much better when he is self-directed and absorbed in the task, rather than pushed into completing and arbitrary number of tasks at a set time. His learning at these times is most likely to be low level, and not long lasting learning, certainly lacking in intrinsic value or motivation. I had begun using fairly high stakes bribes, against my better judgement, to push him into engaging with the materials. Suggesting that if I couldn't help him to learn to read or write, then I would have to send him to school and they would do a better job. If I had been a fly on the wall I am sure I would have been screaming at myself that this was against all the ideas I had about learning, and very unlikely to produce the results I sought. To be honest, I had that fly on the wall in my head... I screamed this at myself as I slammed down a spatula in frustration. Thankfully after a few weeks I stopped and really looked at Evan. Was this doing him any good at all? No, definitely not. I kept coming back to the messages I had received from John Holt, in "Learning all the time", and from friends who have successfully home educated their children in an autonomous fashion, whose children are bookworms, but came to reading a little later than is considered "normal". Children learn everything they need to learn if they are given the time, space and rich environment to do it in, rather than learning everything because we feel we need them to in the manner and time scale we feel is appropriate.
Sadly, my reaction to my fear was not necessarily one which served my children's best interests, even though I had convinced myself that it did. I am really grateful for finding the path back to working with my children again.
Things have shifted though, we have begun using this early morning time, as a productive time rather than vegging in front of the telly, which had begun fairly habitual, and started the day in a sedentary fashion which bled into the rest of our days. I don't feel it necessary for the children to be productive at all times, far from it, but I do see the benefit of a little structured together time in the morning to set the day off to a positive start. I no longer do the worksheets with Evan, but Autumn has keenly begun some workbooks which she is enjoying. Evan, meanwhile does some games on Reading Eggs with my support and encouragement. We took a week and a bit off all of these things whilst they had been ill, and I let them be... Lots of hanging around and resting and cuddling; whilst also enjoying plenty of play. When they were up to it the play between them seemed to flow in an amazing way, games would go on for days and arguments seemed to have almost completely disappeared. A few days ago I realised that I hadn't had to support them in sorting out any battles for quite some time. Instead, when I heard a slight impasse, I heard Evan negotiating and carefully and skilfully supporting Autumn, and backing down when necessary. This was music to my ears, and I realised that this is what I needed to be doing. Listening, supporting, creating rich environments, not shoving worksheets under his nose.
Since my revert to going with the flow life has suddenly become much lighter. We are all enjoying ourselves much more. Yes, I would still like Evan to be reading books independently and getting great enjoyment from them, but I realise that it will happen at the right time for him, and he isn't all that far off anyway. I know that if I kept my regime going he would kick against the constraints and avoid any reading for a good long time. I don't want to take that risk, and I love how much fun he is having.
______________________
Updated September 2014
You know that saying, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Well, this sprung out at me this morning when talking to my husband about Evan's reading. He is highly intelligent and takes on new skills fairly quickly, and very much a self starter. Where reading is concerned this doesn't seem to be happening, despite the many hours on Reading Eggs, Teach your monster to read, reading books at home, and words in the environment. During my teacher training I learned all sorts of ways to engage children in the beginning stages of reading, and support them with a variety of strategies. Despite this, Evan still really struggles with developing in this area, and lacks motivation to persist. It is possible it just isn't the time for him, but in the back of my mind it does come to me that he may be one of those people who masks their inability to read with a variety of strategies - all too easy in this technology filled world.
Sat down with Pat we discussed this, and I explained the areas where he seems to struggle, and he mentioned that we should play to his strengths, and the key one of those is his amazing capacity for remembering things. Which clearly points to using whole word reading strategies. Pat himself doesn't get Phonics and I cringe when he tries to support the kids with this, as he doesn't get it. Yet he reads very well, and has a number of degrees under his belt, so he must have done something right. Most people reading this area probably screaming at the screen saying - well of course... we only relatively recently began using Phonics as a key way of reading. Most of us parents these days learned to read via whole word reading strategies, with books such as Peter and Jane, and my favourite, Jennifer Yellow Hat. I recall having lectures during my Education degree looking at the evolution of literacy education in the UK, and learning that the reason Phonics came on the agenda at the time was due to the fact that (I think this is correct, but my memory is not quite as fool proof as my son's so I may have a few things slightly muddled) the education secretary at the time was married to an educational consultant who was heavily involved in the development of Phonics reading programs. I know that phonics can support the learning of reading, and breaking words down so that you can decode new words, but to be honest, I don't think that I ever really use it. I think I may look at different parts of words that are similar to words I know and see the make up of them, but certainly not in the synthetic phonetic way.
Anyway, back to my reason for blogging this morning. After this revalation of a new way of looking at evan learning to read, Pat suggested a good way in would be either through Minecraft - his current obsession (more info in another blog coming soon no doubt) or board games which he really enjoys. I agreed, but was definitely a little concerned at the bland nature of decontextualised words on flashcards as a motivator to learn new stuff. Pat said try Pinterest, so I did. A few ideas popped up, but none which leapt out at me, so I began google searches, which appeared more fruitful, I think as many of the things that were suggested actually involved some interactive games (without the prerequiste .jpg for pinterest). Unsure of where to put all the information I was gathering I decided to turn to this blog and post them all here. So after that ridiculously long introduction here are my findings. [please note: I have not tested or tried ANY of these things out with Evan, merely looked and maybe played some of the games to test their suitability for our purpose, I will add to the blog when we've tried some things out, maybe with some pictures if I get lucky]
Here is a site with links to others with Sight Word games
Interactive Game with Roy the Zebra
Interactive Game with flowers
Interactive Game with Dinosaur Eggs
Interactive Starwords game (from BBC) - needs shockwave player
Interactive Word Game - matching pairs
Interactive Flash Cards (pick words from high frequency list to practice with words read out
Interactive Word dragger game - drag words into sentence - uses pictures for uncommon words
Interactive recognition game - slow game play & easy to click and not pay attention to real answer unless supervised by adult. Words read by american child, can be a little unclear at times - switch off the music for greater clarity. No end point. A little dull.
Interactive game - best suited to classroom setting - as a spelling test type program. Ability to add your own words, but time consuming for supportive adult and little motivating features
Starfall - matching game
Bingo game - with downloadable bingo cards
Interactive flash cards with test (no speech)
Look-cover-write-check game
Read a sentence (with speech) then check word recognition
MORE challenging stuff (300 word list)
Spelling game
Writing frames
Non computer-based games
Bank Street College - reading rockets - including Monopoly style game
Bristol Council Website - reading game ideas
BANG! game instructions
Other Resources
High frequency words flashcards - PDF download
First 100 words flashcards
Variety of word cards and flashcard - same words but different backing types e.g. rocket, raindrops, bricks etc.
Word bank books - mini word book which can be added to
More theming ideas with HFW
Places to buy some useful flash cards etc.
Sat down with Pat we discussed this, and I explained the areas where he seems to struggle, and he mentioned that we should play to his strengths, and the key one of those is his amazing capacity for remembering things. Which clearly points to using whole word reading strategies. Pat himself doesn't get Phonics and I cringe when he tries to support the kids with this, as he doesn't get it. Yet he reads very well, and has a number of degrees under his belt, so he must have done something right. Most people reading this area probably screaming at the screen saying - well of course... we only relatively recently began using Phonics as a key way of reading. Most of us parents these days learned to read via whole word reading strategies, with books such as Peter and Jane, and my favourite, Jennifer Yellow Hat. I recall having lectures during my Education degree looking at the evolution of literacy education in the UK, and learning that the reason Phonics came on the agenda at the time was due to the fact that (I think this is correct, but my memory is not quite as fool proof as my son's so I may have a few things slightly muddled) the education secretary at the time was married to an educational consultant who was heavily involved in the development of Phonics reading programs. I know that phonics can support the learning of reading, and breaking words down so that you can decode new words, but to be honest, I don't think that I ever really use it. I think I may look at different parts of words that are similar to words I know and see the make up of them, but certainly not in the synthetic phonetic way.
Anyway, back to my reason for blogging this morning. After this revalation of a new way of looking at evan learning to read, Pat suggested a good way in would be either through Minecraft - his current obsession (more info in another blog coming soon no doubt) or board games which he really enjoys. I agreed, but was definitely a little concerned at the bland nature of decontextualised words on flashcards as a motivator to learn new stuff. Pat said try Pinterest, so I did. A few ideas popped up, but none which leapt out at me, so I began google searches, which appeared more fruitful, I think as many of the things that were suggested actually involved some interactive games (without the prerequiste .jpg for pinterest). Unsure of where to put all the information I was gathering I decided to turn to this blog and post them all here. So after that ridiculously long introduction here are my findings. [please note: I have not tested or tried ANY of these things out with Evan, merely looked and maybe played some of the games to test their suitability for our purpose, I will add to the blog when we've tried some things out, maybe with some pictures if I get lucky]
Here is a site with links to others with Sight Word games
Interactive Game with Roy the Zebra
Interactive Game with flowers
Interactive Game with Dinosaur Eggs
Interactive Starwords game (from BBC) - needs shockwave player
Interactive Word Game - matching pairs
Interactive Flash Cards (pick words from high frequency list to practice with words read out
Interactive Word dragger game - drag words into sentence - uses pictures for uncommon words
Interactive recognition game - slow game play & easy to click and not pay attention to real answer unless supervised by adult. Words read by american child, can be a little unclear at times - switch off the music for greater clarity. No end point. A little dull.
Interactive game - best suited to classroom setting - as a spelling test type program. Ability to add your own words, but time consuming for supportive adult and little motivating features
Starfall - matching game
Bingo game - with downloadable bingo cards
Interactive flash cards with test (no speech)
Look-cover-write-check game
Read a sentence (with speech) then check word recognition
MORE challenging stuff (300 word list)
Spelling game
Writing frames
Non computer-based games
Bank Street College - reading rockets - including Monopoly style game
Bristol Council Website - reading game ideas
BANG! game instructions
Other Resources
High frequency words flashcards - PDF download
First 100 words flashcards
Variety of word cards and flashcard - same words but different backing types e.g. rocket, raindrops, bricks etc.
Word bank books - mini word book which can be added to
More theming ideas with HFW
Places to buy some useful flash cards etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment