This is Dr. Andy Johnson and the reading instruction
show. Today we are looking at things we can do
to help your child with reading at home. I want
to give you some tips to keep your child engaged,
some advice on teaching, and you notice I have
quotation marks there, and then some specific
ideas for enhancing reading fluency. I know this
is difficult. I know this is tough. However,
you want to keep things as simple as possible.
There's no complex answers. Usually the simple
things are the best things. There's no super
secret strategies, no best program that you need
to buy. There's no best method or approach whether
you're in school or at home. It starts though
with understanding the basic process that the
brain uses to create meaning with print. That
is key. First of all, reading is not sounding
out words. We often think it's that, and we think
that struggling readers just need more sounding
out word practice. If they could just sound out
more words, you say, then they could read. Or
read better? But that's not the case. But think
about this. When you read the stuff on the screen,
are you doing all this stuff in the microsecond
it takes to look at a word? Are you putting the
sounds to a letter? Putting the sounds together,
creating words, attaching words to other words,
and creating ideas? Is that what your brain is
doing? I think not! Reading is creating meaning
with print. there is a two -way flow of information.
Information from the cortex flows down onto the
page to help you understand. And here is something
that neuroscience has taught us. There is almost
ten times more information flowing from the cortex
down than from the page up during the process
of reading. It's an interactive process. That
means we're using what's up here to understand
what is on the page. That's an important thing.
Now, there are three cueing systems, phonological,
syntactic, and semantic. And we'll get to that
in a minute. But know that effective readers
use very few letter cues when creating meaning
with print. Remember, Reading is creating meaning
with print, not sounding out words. When you
looked at that sentence, you did not process
every single letter. Matter of fact, your eyes
were going this way and that, and you probably
stopped on, oh, maybe five or six of these words,
but your brain, that top -down flow of information,
was filling in the blanks. For example, look
at that sentence. Most of you could create meaning
with that, even though All the vowels that were
not first in the word were taken out. Absolutely.
Creating meaning with print, top -down flow of
information. Our brain, when we see words on
the page, uses not one, but three. We use semantics,
context clues, syntax, which is grammar and word
order, to recognize words. And we use phonics,
letter sounds. Of those three, the phonological
cueing system is the least efficient in terms
of how much space it takes up in short -term
memory. Now, an overemphasis on phonics can actually
impede students' progress. And I've seen students
reading very well. They come to a word and all
of a sudden they stop. and they're looking at
each letter and it slows them up and all that
stuff in short -term memory. Now when I say to
the student, well just say blank and move on.
They say blank, move on, all of a sudden, oh,
they recognize the word. All right, that's using
semantics. It uses far less processing space
and far less time. So to teach them, I actually
say, say blank and just keep moving on. and they
end up going back. It takes far less time and
space. Now this doesn't mean that phonics should
not be taught. Every single person that I've
ever encountered believes that phonics letter
sounds should be taught. It should not be taught
as the exclusive way to recognize words. It's
one of three ways. So we need to create activities
to develop all three cueing systems and word
identification is probably the topic of another
webcast or podcast, all right? So four tips for
keeping your students engaged in reading at home.
First of all, when you're reading with your child
aloud, stop correcting mistakes. This will be
tough. I know it. Now listen to me. Remember,
the emotional component of reading, especially
with struggling readers, is very tough. I recommend
strongly, and this is what I do, when you don't
recognize a word, say blank, and keep moving
on, or just ignore it. Skip the word. All right?
Remember, reading is creating meaning with print.
Often if they skip the word, they're still creating
meaning. They can go back. And as long as a student
is creating meaning with print, they don't need
to sound out every word if they're getting the
ideas. As well, students need the opportunity
to develop Metacognition, that's does it make
sense? So if we jump in and we correct them right
away, they don't develop this opportunity to
say, hmm, does that make sense? And go back and
fix it up. As well, students become very reflexive
if they're being corrected all the time, so stop
doing that. Well, what do you do if this student
stops and asks you for help? You say this, what
makes sense? And again, they're developing semantic
if you say that. Or else say, give it your best
guess. Or else, skip it and move on. Here's three
things you should say when you're reading with
your child. Never say, sound it out. Because
children know that already. You're not telling
them. But again, sounding it out takes more cognitive
space. You're slowing them down. And when you
slow them down and focus on individual letters
and words, They're not focusing on ideas. We
want them to focus on meaning, not letters. And
students are already doing that anyway. Duh,
I know she would sound it out. I'm just not good
at it. Don't do that. Here's something that will
freak you out. 99 % of all students know how
to read. I would say 99 .9. They know the process.
The letter makes the sound. You put the letter
sounds together that create word. They all know
that. Like I know how to play the piano. They're
just not very good at it. And what do you do
when you're not good at something? Why? I hope
you practice just like practicing the piano.
You need a little instruction, but a lot of reading
practice. So tip number two. Students need reading
practice. Instead of reading class, we should
call it reading practice. Just like you need
volleyball practice and piano practice and writing
practice. Children, adults need practice. You
get better by practicing reading. Now, at home,
reading practice should be a big part of the
instruction or intervention. What they read should
be at their independent level or below. We don't
want to frustrate or overwhelm students. It's
that emotional component. It's the encounter
with words and sentences and phrases that helps
them develop the ability to create meaning with
print. Comic books are just fine as well or graphic
novels. The goal is to get them immersed in print
to help them fall in love with books. As well
with any type of practice we need to be regular
and consistent. 10 minutes a day of focused practice
is much better than spread out practice or 40
minutes in which a child is not focused. 10 minutes
a day for four days better than 40 minutes a
day for one day. Brain gets to process in between.
So regular and consistent it does not have to
be long as long as it's consistent. And here's
the thing. If children are engaged in books for
10 minutes a day, four days a week, if they have
good books to read, they will eventually fall
in love with books. Volume of reading is important,
much more important than reading level. The goal
is to expose them to letter patterns, words,
sentence structure. and concept. So this brain
gets better at recognizing these things, recognizing
patterns, recognizing sentence structure. As
well as part of this, your reading to children
is important. You read a lot of book at bedtime.
A great story that may be, you know, a chapter
book, that may be above their reading level.
This is the stuff you read to them you are exposing.
them to vocabulary and sentence structure and
concepts and you're helping them fall in love
with books. I'm tutoring a child and her mother
is reading Little House on the Prairie which
is a little above her reading level but she loves
it and she's learning new stuff and falling and
being exposed to all these other things. So an
important understanding you don't teach reading
most children know how to read they just can't
read very well. So you are creating the conditions
whereby your child can develop the ability to
create meaning with print. Now it is much like
learning to speak and listen. They learn to speak
and listen by being immersed in real language
and listening and speaking for real purposes.
So you want to create these conditions. Which
leads us to tip number three. Set weekly reading
goals. And I'm gonna give you some ideas here.
And start low, but the goals could be number
of books read, or number of pages read. I would
recommend starting with a number of minutes read.
Start low so you don't frustrate, so that child
can achieve his or her reading goals. Now reading
four days a week out of seven. That's great.
You know, start with four. Seven, of course,
would be great, but you want these goals to be
attainable. Set aside consistent time for reading
practice. Again, 10 minutes a day is fine. Four
to five days a week. If you have good books,
the child will read. Think about a family reading
time where you all read together. You shut stuff
off. and they see you reading as well. That would
be ideal. But I know in these busy times that
you have time and stuff. You have conflicting
schedules. Now, having access to good books is
key. How do you learn to read if you don't have
good stuff to read? That is the big dilemma.
If you have access to a school library, you should
be getting regular books or a community library.
We all have different lending systems. There
are some online books. I use reading A to Z.
They have books of variety of levels. That's
something that I use. And you can reread other
books. But finding good books is one important
thing. Having a school or community library,
that's an excellent resource. A teacher's number
one job is to help children fall in love with
books. After that, 98 % of their job is complete.
The child wants to read. The child will be engaged
and motivated to read. Now, choice is important.
And think about it. When you go into a bookstore,
no one assigns you a book. When you go into a
library, no one says you have to read that book
and you can't read that. So choice is choice
of what to read. Choice, here's an important
one. If you don't like a book, you can stop.
That's just fine. Choice of when to read. Now
this does not mean total choice all the time.
It could be a choice between this and that. But
the idea of choice is motivating to the child.
A choice of... how to read and where to read.
How to read the book. Do you want to read it
sitting down? Do you want to read it in your
bed? Do you want to read it here or there? That
is how to read. That's kind of a where to read
as well. All right. Here's tip number four. Create
some chart to keep track of stuff. The minutes
read or the books or the pages. So on Monday
you'd say we read these books and these were
the minutes and these were the pages. if you're
reading chapter books, and have this someplace.
Adopt and adapt this, by the way. Where you could
keep this in a notebook, in a file folder someplace,
on a computer, you could put up a poster, you
decide. But keep it someplace, keep it regularly.
Now, in an ideal situation, the child would be
able to record this as well. minutes read pages
and the names of the books read that day. Maybe
the same book is spread out over several days.
That's fine if they're older reading chapter
books. I would encourage some sort of rating
system, either inside cover of the book or on
the chart or refrigerator someplace or on a Google
Doc where you're sharing it with other students.
Here you have the title of the book and the title
of the child decides to give it some rating.
Excellent. Good. Okay. Didn't like. Stinker.
Of course, adopt and adapt this system. This
gets them talking about books. Now, when I'm
working with many students, I like to have a
common place where they can rate because it creates
conversation and social interaction. Oh, I didn't
think that was a stinker. I thought it was great.
Or here's an excellent book. I loved it. And
when children find other children liking books,
they're more apt to want to read that book. It
goes back to that motivation thing again. And
again, adopt and adapt some sort of rating. We
have the title. For younger kids, sometimes it's
a happy face, a straight face, and a sad face.
Adopt and adapt. So four tips. Stop correcting
mistakes. Practice reading. Set weekly reading
goals and keep track of stuff or simple tips.
Now, ideas for the child who is highly resistant,
and I've worked with many of these. Set short
specific goals. Today we're just going to read
two pages that's short and specific, all right?
Be regular, short and consistent again. Five
minutes of focus time is better than 15 minutes
of unfocused time. 10 minutes of focus time better
than 30 minutes of unfocused time. You need to
have lots of good reading material for the child
to read. And sometimes it's a choice. All right,
we're going to do this for 10 minutes. Your choice
is you can sit there and you can do nothing or
you can read. Maybe the first day they'll do
nothing, but eventually they all choose to read.
The choice is to do nothing and sit there and
read, and you're all reading. The child will
read. I'll bet you $20. And then scaffolded oral
reading. I'm going to explain that. Three specific
strategies, scaffolded oral reading score, language
experience, activity, and fluency. Really silly
stories. Now with score, this is a variation
of the neurological IMPRESS method, and I'm going
to demonstrate this in just a minute, but you're
reading out loud with the child, but you're reading
just a millisecond ahead to provide just a scaffold.
You don't pause if the child does not recognize
a word or stumbles. You keep moving and you provide
a scaffold and you use a quiet voice just enough.
to keep the child moving ahead. If the child
is more proficient, maybe just sound out the
first word or a couple of words here and there.
You decide every other paragraph. You can have
the child read independently one paragraph and
then you use score the next one, etc., etc. Variations
of score. whole passage or maybe you do every
other passage, they read one independently and
you read the next one using scaffolded oral reading,
independent score, independent score. Now let
me show you an example of scaffolded oral reading.
this together. Living in Africa, cheetahs spayed
across Africa's grassy savannas. Cheetahs are
the fastest animals of all time. Excellent. Because
the animals, yes, running makes cheetahs hot.
They find a cool place. choice is very important
after a page or two you always ask you want to
keep reading or would you like to find another
book just like you and I they should be able
to choose which book they want to read and I
would do this maybe two or three times Okay,
you get the idea. That's scaffolded OR reading,
and that is me demonstrating that. The language
experience approach. This is so good. The child
is reading. First you have an experience, and
then you write about it. It's a child that dictates
to you. What did you do yesterday? Okay, well
let's write about it. And I usually have... I
like to use a computer. I use 24 -point fonts
so I can save it, but I do this every day. The
child dictates and then the child rereads until
fluency is achieved. Now, when I do this, I usually
have a minimum of five sentences and I use it
in paragraph form. And you can see what I actually
did this summer. Don't do it in list form. With...
Really emerging readers, I might have two sentences,
but usually it's five. So we reread it until
fluency is achieved. Usually it's once or twice.
So they're practicing reading using words and
experiences and concepts with which they are
familiar. This is much easier. They're learning
to read using words that they actually used.
There's an example there. Then we use analytic
Phonics meaning there's a word here that ends
with the no sound. Can you find it? Yes, open.
Okay. There's a word here that has the long a
or the a sound. Very good. All right. That is
an example of analytic phonics. You're analyzing
sounds within a word and these are words with
which they are familiar. Okay. Save on a Word
document. This is why I like using a computer
screen because I save them and at the end of
the week we can practice reading stuff that they
have written and we can save them and they have
books that they have written and they can practice.
That's a good thing to practice reading. every
day. Students can include pictures as well. I
had a student that had a picture of her dog.
She loves her dog so she sent me that. We put
it in the Word document and she was, what do
you want to say about your dog? And she said
a whole bunch of stuff and we practiced reading.
It was great. It was great. And the last idea
is really silly stories. This is a great idea,
great activity for developing reading fluency.
Now there's three deficit areas. word identification,
three deficit areas for reading, word identification,
fluency, and comprehension. Today we're working
just on fluency, all right? Now, Really Silly
Stories is designed to develop reading fluency.
This takes three to five minutes at most, and
it develops self -efficacy because students see
themselves getting better. and it really enhances
reading fluency. Fluency is the ability to quickly
process letters, letter patterns, and words.
Now here it is. It's a story that's silly. It
has a lot of repetition, repeated words, and
it has dialogue. These are all things with which
students are familiar. They're more familiar
with dialogue than they are expository text because
that's the sound of the language around them.
And I have marked off the 30th word and the 40th
word. We read to, if they're very beginning,
the 30th word. If they're more advanced, the
40th word and we time them for each attempt.
They get three attempts and we time their times
each after each attempt. First try, second try.
third try they see themselves getting better
this was day one 40 words and these are the times
at five weeks twice a week we see at 50 words
we see the times going better so this really
is effective and i'll show you some results that
we had this is a really silly story again it's
a story that's kind of silly They read either
to the 30th or 40th word. You time each attempt
and you record the times somehow. Lots of repetition,
dialogue. I have a bigger story broken into six
to 10 parts. They do just one part each day and
they record each attempt. You can record them
in a table like this, a line graph like that.
This would be each of the three attempts. or
a bar graph, and I like to have students record
this. And again, it develops self -efficacy.
They can see themselves getting better. Now,
there are some free really silly stories at redocity
.com. You can go there and you will see them.
Printable directions and the stories are right
there. That's free. You can use that. I recommend
it. Bunch of really silly stories with the 30th
and the 40th word marked. Now, I have been doing
this with a student from October to December.
We started at that lexile level, 50 words per
minute, word identification, and we weren't working
on word identification. All right, but then we
moved up to the 440 lexile level. You can see
this is the biggest increase, and this was 14
sessions spread out over Seven weeks a third
grade student. This is a pretty dramatic increase
in words per minute score and this student's
mother also made sure the student had books and
practice reading at home and Mother was reading
Little House on the Prairie with the child every
day as well So all that combined reading practice
with the really silly stories and things I was
doing but the really silly stories really helps
so three specific strategies, scaffolded oral
reading, language experience approach, you can
do both of these, and really silly stories. That's
a repeated reading activity to develop fluency.
Hopefully I've answered that question and given
you some ideas to think about. Keep it simple.
There's no one idea that works for everybody.
If you have questions or things you'd like me
to cover on a future podcasts or webinars. There's
my address right there. Happy to deal with any
one of these issues. Let me know. And this is
a book I have coming out soon, designing meaning
-based interventions for struggling readers.