MAKING READING LOGICAL

By Barb Sanderson, Home Economist
TEAM Resources

TEAM Resources received an article from Bev Jaremko, a teacher from Calgary, who has created a reading course for her son and three daughters. Her philosophy is to make reading logical from the child 's point of view, not just a guessing game.

She decided to teach one letter at a time, not all 26 at once. She taught only lower case letters first, so as not to confuse the child with the upper case. She simplified the task further by teaching the sound the letter makes rather than the actual name of the letter.

Bev said it took years to put together the progression, lesson by lesson, but it works. She has received an outpouring of interest from parents and schools, and has put the material into books and on video.

Summary of the Progression

• To encourage appreciation of reading, read to the child from birth, before nap time and at bedtime. Let her or him be involved in turning pages, feeling the books, admiring the pictures, predicting the outcomes, and stopping when he (she) wants.
• At about age three, when the child shows an interest in the printed word, play a guessing game of what the word would be from the starting sound, so the child cues in to listening for the beginning sounds of words.
• Teach one letter, eg. the letter O. As on Sesame Street, find the letter O everywhere. Make O cookies and cheese slices, find O cereals and Os on street signs, and call it oh.
• Teach another letter, eg. h. Sing songs with h in them, eat foods with h (hamburgers), do actions (hug), label objects (hat), and find hs in signs.
• Continue teaching letters and put together logical words based on letters known to date.
• Create a poem of memory devices, adding a line with each letter, eg. O is for octopus.
• Eventually, make possible combinations with the learned letters and short vowel sounds. Print these words around the house.
• Teach the child that the letters were small, but as they got older they grew up. Start logically with letters that look the same only bigger, like C, O, K, P, S, V, W, K, Z.
• Teach stories for the shape of the other capital letters.

This is just a short summary of how Bev teaches a child to read. As I see it, the greatest benefit may be the appreciation of reading that is acquired while the parent spends time playing with letters and words and having fun with the child. For more information, call 403-283-2400, or write 521 18 A St NW, Calgary, AB, T2N 2H3.