Reading

It is cooler upstairs, although I think it has more to do with the Akira Air Con that I had installed in April, and nothing to do with the shape of the building or the temperature outside.  It is hot here: hot and humid. 

So I have decided to spend my time doing something useful.. how about a blog on what it is that I do: teach English to children whose first language is, for the most part, Malay. 

I will start with Reading. 

How important is it? Very: we acquire well over 50% of our vocabulary through reading.  Some say the figure is more like 85% for some.  

I remember when Gabe started reading.. “Let’s go to the Caef” He said.. meaning Café.. He had never said the word aloud before, but he was hungry.  It needed to be said.  

You can read a lot of things: signs, notes, text messages... books. 

And there are almost as many ways to ‘read’ –

         Just holding the book is a skill: I remember walking in on Monte when he was toilet training: sitting on the ‘John’ with a book on his lab.. upside down.  Imitating his dad I guess. "Mom!  Get out of here!"

        
         Modelling is how we transfer attitudes, and odd habits apparently. 

         Holding a book and talking about the pictures counts! Kids love sitting close to their mom or dad and talking about a story.  “What is that? A chicken!  Balk.. Balk!  A yellow chicken!  Grandma has chickens!” 

          Not all kids have parents that read to them however.  Very sad.  But, because of this, and a huge number of English as a Second langage students in schools all over the world, there has arisen a new breed of people,  ‘specialists’,  that study language acquisition in native language speakers and write books about how parents and grandparents pass on language. Scholars have given reading the pictures a name..  Dialogic Reading. 

         It is all about the dialogue.. talking about the pictures: developing vocabulary.

         You can read the words too.  You can read the words in some children’s books 50 times.. kids love it!  Many have a special book they want to hear over and over.. Mom’s know it, and reading gurus know it too: reading a book over and over develops vocabulary.. it teaches grammar.. kids learn pronunciation.. it builds confidence.

          Adults do it too.  We like to go back to a good book.. or a good movie.  It is familiar, reasuring.

         The ‘specialists’ call it ‘scaffolding’.  Scaffolding is the way we support language development.. repeating it in different ways, coming at in from different directions.. providing kids with opportunities to hear, see and use language.  You can call it scaffolding.. or you can just call it practice.  Practice works.

         The kids can repeat after you: words, chunks, sentences.. They can choral read.. ‘everyone read together’.  They can buddy read with a classmate.. someone better than them, someone not as good – or ‘homogeneous’ groupings (people who are at the same leve.. another specialist work). 

         Books can be based on a phonics family: like Dr Suess! with his lovely 'ish family.. fish, dish, wish.., Or on a grammar point: Present Perfect: ‘I like to swim, I like to walk’.  Present Continuous: ‘I like swimming’.. phrases that are repeated and repeated so that kids know what comes next and can 'read' it themselves. 

         Books can be ‘levelled', with a limited number of ‘sight’ words, and/or new vocabulary placed into simple sentences and getting progressively more difficult as you work through, you got it, the 'levels'.

         We can read for fun.  We read for information.  We can read our part in “Reader’s Theatre” or an actual ‘dress’ up drama presentation.

         We can read a card, the words to a song, a note.

         We can read the questions on our exam. 

         Yuk!  Sometimes we do need to demonstrate comprehension.  I mean, otherwise how does anyone know they are reading?.. what is reading?

         Reading is made up of lots of things, but there are five main things we do at school. 

         The first in Phonemic Awareness.  This isn’t really a new thing, but it was popular when I was in Australia: schools were almost worshipping a new program called “Jolly Phonics” and it has caught on here in Malaysia too.  Ah Ah Ah Ant! .. Phonemic Awareness is the first step in learning to read phonetically.. sounding things out.  Some kids really need drilling on it, others catch on immediately and can move on.  There are only 26 letter in the alphabet, but over 40 sounds.  Lots for kids to learn!  Phonemic awareness is the understanding that those funny squiggles on the paper each make a sound. 

         The second is Phonics.. the relationship between the squiggles and sounds: segmenting (breaking a word into its sound parts like b    a     t) and blending (putting the sounds together into a word  bat)…

         Fluency is getting the children to read, or blend the sounds, faster. 

         Vocabulary Development 

         Comprehension: I once worked with a ten year old boy with autism.  He could read the year ten science book.. fluently!  But, understood nothing.  Teachers need lots of strategies to help kids understand what they are reading, but they also need to learn how to ‘test’ kids in a way that actually helps us figure out what sort of strategy a particular child needs to ‘get’ it. 

Reading is fun and it is important.  Yet, it has been hard to get teachers to even consider making reading a part of their English program.  They want to teach ‘literacy’, but.. why teach kids how to read if they don’t understand any of it?  Or, understand why they should learn to read?  I mean.. who reads in English anyway?  Certainly no one they know: certainly not their teachers! 

I am making levelled readers this month.. having the kids colour the pictures, sharing the stories with them.. doing some Dialogic Reading, some phonics, trying to build some comprehension.  I have been reading a lot of books to them, but there are very few for them to read to themselves or each other. 

I am attempting to scaffold the importance of reading with my teachers.. It has been fun.. but I think they still wonder what the heck I am doing. 

It isn’t in the curriculum. But.. aren't there things that just need to be read?

But, what the heck.  There is air con up here in my bedroom where I work.. and there is air con in the room at school I have been assigned to this week.. so I will keep colouring, cutting, pasting and laminating. 

Air con can be expensive… I maybe should have read the specs on these puppies.. some of them are much more expensive to run than others. 

Read.. hmm..

Who’d of thunk?!