Tuesday, September 13, 2011

On reading

Emily thinks she can read.

She can't. She can sound a few words out, but she much prefers to just guess.

I do oral reading every day with the three oldest as part of our homeschooling, and sometimes she just can't stand being left out (I do reading with the youngest three as a group as they are all at about the same place), so occasionally she begs me to allow her to read to me. While I would love to encourage her, it's honestly incredibly painful.

Let me illustrate.

She gets a reading book and begins going through the pictures and telling me the words she knows. Then she gets to C-U-B.

"Cat?"

"No, Emily, sound it out."

"Cup?"

"No, try again."

"Basement?"

Sigh.

4 comments:

MoserUpdates said...

Eli does the same thing. He keeps going back to the word "envelope". Really? Cat looks like envelope? Silly kids! Glad to know I'm not the only one :)

Tonya said...

I lol'd :)

Every one of my kids has gone through this. It makes me want to scream when it's me sitting there -but I laugh when it's somebody else (cause it really is funny,either way:).

Molly said...

My sister would just go "bleblebleblbelbgbkebgkbs" if she got to a word she didn't know, and then she'd keep going! So listening to her sounded like this: The cat sat on the blehbleh with her hat.

Anonymous said...

I used to work part time in a reading centre, with kids that were 6/7 years old. We had a flashcard game where we showed them a word and a picture and they would try to read out the word, using the picture to help out. One time, the word was 'pot' and the little girl was having difficulty. We sounded it out many times 'Ppuh Oh Tt' and then I made some very unsubtle pointing gestures to the picture. She finally got the hint, and proudly declared 'saucepan'.*exasperated sigh*

Frustrating at the time, but a year later she was reading well above what was expected for her age.
Time will do that.