I wrote yesterday about tips on learning to read, and made reference to Frank Smith's whole of reading language approach.
Now, I'll sum up a couple of points Mr. Smith makes, and try not to bastardise his views too much. Smith is generally opposed to the use of synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading to children. In this Wikipedia entry about reading education, Smith is roughly aligned with the print exposure/cognitive aproach. He reckons the more a child is read to and learns the format of written English (discrete words as collections of alphabet characters left to right and down the page, story structure, headlines, subheadings, pageination etcetera) the better.
In the list of NEA reading tips I linked to yestereday, the second bullet point on that list generally follows Smith's guidelines, as does the fifth point.
Gabrielle and I have discussed how we will try to help Edward to learn to read. At the moment, we're using Smith's approach. We're also influenced by Mem Fox's advice on reading aloud to children here and here.
We've been reading aloud to Edward since he was born. At least 2 story books per day, sometimes as many as 10. Often when I read aloud to Ed I show him that I'm following the words I'm reading with my finger, sometimes as a continual flow, and sometimes moving the finger from word to word and pausing briefly on the the word as I am saying it aloud. This is to show him the relationship between the printed symbols on the page to what I am saying. To give him a background to help him unlock the puzzle of reading.
Today I discovered that showing him how I write also leas to mimicry of my writing.
This morning I got a piece of paper and a pen, and esplained to Ed that I was writing a shopping list for the supermarket. I sat next to him, and he started grabbing at the paper and pen saying, "I write shopping list. I write shopping list." I managed to quickly finish 3 scribbling three items on the list as he was grabbing the pen. In a cursive script I wrote:
nappies
nappy wipes
sard spray
When he wrested the piece of paper and the pen from my grasp he scribbled over the top of what I had written. I was interested to see that when mimicing my writing, he used a scribble about the same size as my handwriting, and that he also kept roughly to the lines along which I wrote.
Here's a pic of his writing over the top of mine.
And here's a closer view>
He's scribbling, but not randomly.
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