Teaching children how to read

I am witnessing the failure of reading that is decontextualized. So much emphasis is placed on teaching kids how to decode, but they, or at least Hannah, does not have a clue what she is reading. Instead, when I ask her to read from a book that has context and she likes, she attempts to make meaning from the text. So why this emphasis on decoding and measuring kids ability to read from reading decontextualized text?

This week

Hannah has been reading and writing every day this week. She is much more confident, but she has trouble pronouncing words in which there does not seem to be a clear pattern, from her perspective though what has been working is using reading strategies. For example, she had difficulty reading The and all words starting with the, like them, there then so I taught her how to read the and then add the other syllables. The other strategy is pronouncing /u/ when there are two o's in a word, like room, pool, root, moon, etc. these two strategies are working but I have to build on them....

Reading in English

Hannah is beginning to read. She is in the process of developing automaticity. But she has trouble remembering some of the sight words she is supposed to remember by now. I keep questioning whether this is the effect of having to work with two languages or whether she has a learning problem. Those little books that have a lot of sight words repeated allow her to repeat the words, but she is simply repeating and does not retain the info. This is because she looks at the pictures and she relies on her background knowledge. What seems to be helping is having her read a book she really likes, like Pinkilicious. This book has a lot of the sight words she is supposed to know. But at the same time, it has content! And she is more interestered an invested in reading this book than in reading those little books that only provide repetition.

I need to have Hannah develop reading confidence, which is what she lacks. As a parent, it is very difficult to see your child struggling and you are telling her. Yes! You see! You can read! This is great! If anyone can give me suggestions on how to help her develop confidence, I would really appreciate it!

The bilingual brain and Hannah's first language? Does she have only one?

Hannah's teacher thinks that Spanish is her L1. This is based on the fact that Hannah’s stronger language is Spanish. It is true that Hannah's more dominant language is Spanish, but she is growing speaking and learning two languages concurrently. So she is not an English as a second language learner. I don't, in any way, have a problem wit her being an ESL learner, but what I fight is the assumption that speaking a language other than English creates a deficit. And this seems to be the attitude her teacher has.

How did I come to this conclusion? This morning I had a conversation with her teacher. As the proud mother of a bilingual child, I said: Hannah is doing very good!  And the teacher, with an expression that showed doubt, said, well... It's coming.  Her first language is Spanish. Her Spanish vocabulary ia great (meaning that her English is not good enough) To describe Hannah, she also said: she likes to play and is not yet listening, (though I should note that she sees listening as a skill that will come with time).

The one strength this teacher identified was Hannah's social skills.

It’s unfortunate that this teacher, who is a very good and committed teacher, has not had an opportunity to see Hannah’s interest in science. Hannah loves to watch her soft warms and her cocoons develop into moths and butterflies. She knows the vocab in English and she loves to talk about animals!

Hannah is also doing a lot of inner speech, I can hear her using rehearsal as a strategy she uses to practice and learn English.

And how about the cognitive flexibility she is developing?

I have emphasized learning through play. How can a child get to enjoy school if it is not through play?

We need to change people attitudes toward bilingualism! See the article on the bilingual brain http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

Cognitively demanding questions!

We know that "why" questions are not learned early in the language development process. I have been watching Hannah as I ask her why questions in Spanish and in English. For sure, up until today, she could not answer why questions. As for Por que, Why in Spanish, at first she was able to answer the question, though with a lot of support from me. Eventually, she answered the question without too much prompting from me. She would say: por que... porque.... and then the sentence.

Today, Hannah had a playdate with her good friend Rebekah. As we were driving home, I asked her a why question: Why can't you do something...? And she said Because I have to eat lunch! I immediately gave her a high five and I think Hannah did not quite understand why I was so excited!

So one more milestone! I will keep watching my why questions!

Watching TV and Parenting

As a mother (and single mother!), I feel awful when I have to grade or work on the computer and I let Hannah watch TV. Now, she has moved from the Sprout Network to Nick Jr. What I like about Nick Jr is the fact that there is Kaitlan, who is Chinese, Diego, who speaks Spanish, and Little Billy, who is African American, but not bi-dialectical.  I let Hannah watch some of these programs, though I control how much TV she watches. And TV helps with her English language skills. And she is also learning some words in Chinese, which both she and I are excited about! The fact that she is acquiring English through TV makes me feel less guilty about her TV watching habits!

Hannah and Verbs!

Hannah will start kindergarten in the fall. Hannah's language of schooling is English. But she does a lot of code-switching. It is just great to see how flexible she is when it comes to using the two languages. I wish I could do a brain scan to see what parts of her brain get used when she switches from one language to the other. She is fluent in both languages, and it is interesting to see how, when she uses verbs in Spanish, she regularizes them. So for example a ver like "poner" (put on), the past tense if "puse" (Me puse...) but she says "ponio." Or for "hice" (de hacer), she says "hicio." Therefore, the process that she went through to learn English verbs is the same process she is going through to learn Spanish verbs. Though the process seems to be slower, which makes complete sense, given the amount of Spanish she hears.