There’s more than one way to learn to read.  Actually what I mean is that there’s more than one way to read.  I think we’re pretty clear that there’s more than one way to learn.  But people actually read differently.  Some never get the hang of sounding out, for example.  Sylvia Ashton-Warner built a whole system of literacy teaching around choice and recognition of words.  Here’s a link to a post with an excerpt from her book Teacher as well as a lengthy bio.  The book is worth reading for anyone interested in learning of any kind for any reason.  Another related resource is Katie Johnson’s book Doing Words which describes the method she developed based on Sylvia Ashton-Warner’s work.

From Teacher: “Organic reading for beginners is not new; it’s our rejection of it that’s new.”

I discovered a reference series at the library this morning: Everything You Need to Know about ******** Homework (the asterisks are for the kind of homework, not an expletive that might precede the word).  I looked at the American History volume, but there are others on other subjects.  This one seemed the most genuinely useful to me, because it lends itself well to the desk reference, while the others tackle things like “English” and “math.” My guess is that those volumes are less helpful as references because their content is less look up-able. (All  of these volumes declare suitability for grades 4-6; make what you will of the publisher’s choice to target and market them that way. You can see sample pages on amazon of the various volumes and decide if the readability and content would be useful in your house.)

The one I looked at was very easy on the eyes (not too many words, not too crowded pages), and was light enough to be held by a young child (and therefore less likely to be abhorred or otherwise shied away from by a person of any age or strength).  It’s written as though the person who wrote it wants the person who’s reading it to understand what it says and means.  I think this is a good way to offer information. Have a look if you might be able to use something like this.

…makes the heart grow fonder, or so they say.  It can also make the plants seem like they’re growing faster, if you leave at the right time of year and the weather cooperates.

. … and 11 days later…   

Things can happen when/because you’re not micromanaging them.  My elation at the size of the plants upon my recent reminded me of that, along with something I heard on Radiolab some time ago.  The episode was about sleep, and in one of the segments,  Guilio Tononi, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Madison, talks about practicing and practicing and practicing a piece of music and never quite getting it right, until enlisting sleep as a learning tool, or maybe a learning catalyst.  He wakes up and the music is there, ready to play flawlessly.

It’s worth remembering, I think, that sometimes things happen when one is not hard at work at something. The brain’s working all the time, fussing around with what we’ve been doing, what we are doing, what we’re about to do, and it’s a lot easier to think that learning something is a simple cause and effect process that happens predictably and reliably with time and effort commensurate with the time spent.  It’s so much more complicated.  What might the implications be?

Have a listen to the Radiolab episode if you’re interested in the sleep stuff, and/or how it helps with learning.

A popular way to teach vocabulary is to issue a list of words and then instruct kids to look them up, write them in a sentence, record the part of speech, and complete a variety of other related tasks.  Often we give them blanket tasks to perform for all the words even when the tasks can’t be applied to some of the words.  (Adjectives with very specific meanings like “indentured” that don’t really have antonyms, for example.  I heard a child suggest “someone who has to work for their own servant?”)

Kids mostly glaze over at this kind of assignment.  Particularly if it’s a regular part of their school or homework, they just slog through it.  Kids who can’t make sense of the definitions, and this is a lot of them, come away with at best a vague understanding of a few of the words, at worst thorough but inaccurate understandings.  Dictionary definitions are not written for people who have been reading for only a few years.  They’re written with great formality, and by formula, so as to be consistent.  Unfortunately the form renders them nearly unreadable to young readers.  (Not to mention that it exposes a great hypocrisy.  Kids are told not to use a word in its own definition, but the dictionary, it’s OK for the dictionary to do that (and don’t try to tell them that what we meant was they couldn’t use the exact form of the word in its definition; they know that’s not different).) The dictionary ends up feeling like just another club kids aren’t invited to be a part of.

But I digress.  I went looking for an online dictionary that might be written such that it conveyed for at least some words a degree of meaning that could be ascertained by a typical 10 year-old reader.  Here’s the best I found, Scholastic Word Wizard.  Pronunciations, definitions, synonyms, antonyms (where possible), and often a sample sentence.  The pages are mostly unencumbered by advertisements, which can’t be said for most online dictionaries I’ve found.  If you’ve found a better one, please let me know and I’ll pass it on.

A recent New York Times article apparently inspired some chatter about book choice for young people. Here’s Nancie Atwell’s clarification of her approach and her response to some of the criticism.

The Roscoe Riley series has recently lit up one of the reluctant readers I know, so I figured I better include a quick mention, though I’m sure it’s probably already popular with most library-frequenters.  My young reading friend shared a passage that had us both chuckling, in which Roscoe describes his fractured femur as a “busted leg.”  Roscoe’s narrative voice (thanks to author Katherine Applegate) feels spirited and authentic.  The stories seem to revolve primarily around school, where Roscoe finds himself to be something of a trouble magnet.  Each book in the series has as its subtitle the cautionary tale told inside: Never Swim in Applesauce, Never Swipe a Bully’s Bear, Don’t Tap Dance on Your Teacher, Don’t Swap Your Sweater for a Dog, Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs, and the latest Never Walk in Shoes that Talk.  The chapters are short, and there’s plenty of white space on the pages.

Ten-Second Rainshowers: Poems by Young People is a great little book. The poems are useful not only for their potential to inspire other young poets but also for expanding the notion of what makes a poem a poem. Most are free verse, and many do not rhyme. One of the uses for the book that’s proved more popular than I expected was a little game of Guess the Age of the Poet. Each of the poems is listed with its author’s name and age.   The premis of the game is as it sounds - I’d read a poem, and then take guesses as to the author’s age. I didn’t expect it to be much fun, but the young people I tried it with seemed to enjoy thinking about what kind of frame of mind the author would have had to have been in to write each piece, and then what age person might have that frame.  It definitely got my young writers thinking about the act of writing, and realizing that there were actual people behind it. This book offers the opportunity for kids to relate a little bit more to published writers.