My daughter was not the keenest reader. She’s learning quickly now, but she’s always been the sort who doesn’t want to do something until she can do it well. This is not really conducive to learning to read, since learning to read involves a lot of stumbling over words, sounding them out, and then finally, triumphantly, realizing that you can read! At least that’s how it has worked for her. Once she had enough words to read the easiest readers, things became a lot smoother, and the vast quantities of complaining abated.
But in the beginning, it was a hard, hard time. I didn’t want to turn her off reading by pushing, yet I know that she needs a kind and gentle shove to push herself over the hurdles and start to do the things that feel hard to her. With another child, I may not have pushed. Knowing this one, I did. Part of my pushing was using the computer as a teacher. She felt safer making mistakes there, and she would turn to me as a resource, rather than pushing against me.
What worked for us?
Starfall is a free reading web site that also has a more intensive curriculum. When we first introduced letters, Starfall was wonderful. The ABC section has songs and games about each letter, and it focuses on the shapes and sounds of the letters. She loved the ABC section. However, for a child who’s not particularly motivated to read, Starfall presented a bit more of a challenge. The stories are wonderful and encourage a lot of sounding out. However, the reason we turned to Reading Eggs was its focus on a step by step program.
Reading Eggs offers a free trial, and after that it is a paid subscription. For us, it was worth it. I saw a lot of progress during the time that she spent using Reading Eggs. I loved it that they assess the child’s reading level before beginning the program. As I mentioned above, Reading Eggs offers a step by step reading program that moves children through different levels. When a child completes an activity, the child also gets “coins” to spend on virtual objects in the store. This step by step approach was an excellent continuation after we’d played around with Starfall’s ABCs during the preschool and early kindergarten age.
I do find that Reading Eggs moves fairly quickly from easy to substantially harder, and ultimately this was what stopped us from using it. After that, we turned to the easiest readers, since she’d achieved a reading level that was good enough for reading simple books. We used both of these programs in conjunction with the Bob Books and Rocket Phonics.
How do you teach your children to read?
Image Credit: [demoza]