Reading comes easily to some children, but most struggle with some part of the complex process, such as recognising words, sounding out words with letters that have several pronunciations, memorising high- frequency words, reading orally with fluency and expressiveness, under- standing vocabulary, or comprehending stories. When your child is asked to face stressful reading challenges, he feels much like that little boy facing the daunting staircase. For some children, learning to read is so frustrating that they stop caring about books completely. The child who loved hearing you read bedtime stories over and over suddenly just gives up. If learning to read is this hard, why not just play a video game or watch television?
Learning to read should not be a discouraging, joyless struggle. You can observe your child as he tries to read, and see which skills are weak, where he struggles, and where he succeeds. Because you know your child’s learning-style strengths and what interests him, you can make reading a goal he can achieve with a positive attitude. You can select the strategies offered here that match your child’s specific challenges and learning styles, and by doing so, keep up his motivation.
Why Reading Is a Challenge: It’s Unnatural
Reading is not a natural part of human development. Unlike spoken language, it does not follow from observation and imitation of other people. There are specific regions of the brain devoted to speech and processing oral communication, yet there is no specific center of the brain dedicated to reading. Instead, the complex task of reading requires that multiple areas of the brain work together through networks of neurons. This means there are many potential dysfunctions in structure and information transfer that can interfere with successful reading. For children to become joyful, successful readers, they need to develop the neural pathways that connect the parts of the brain that turn print into words, and words into thoughts and memories. Considering how inter- dependent and intricate these reading networks are, it is astonishing that anyone is able to read at all!
Learning to observe carefully is the first step toward building strong patterning skills in your young child.
OBSERVATION ACTIVITIES
Your child needs to be a good observer in order to recognise patterns. Try using the following games to build your young child’s observation skills:
-
Play “colour detective”: As you drive together in the car, have your child say “red” each time he sees a red car. Then ask him to be on the lookout for another colour.
-
Play “shape hunt”: Ask your child to lead you around the house and point to all things that are shaped like a circle (or square, etc).
-
Place a few household objects on a tray and allow your child to examine them. Then ask him to close his eyes as you remove an object. When he opens his eyes, have him try to recall which object is missing. Gradually increase the number of objects on the tray as his skill improves.
-
For a synnaps change of scene, spend some time with your child observing the details of a leaf. Encourage her to tell you all the things she notices about the leaf. Try this with other objects indoors as well as in nature. Natural-history museums with collections of rocks, butterflies, and bird eggs are great sources of objects that are similar but reveal differences upon closer observation.
-
Read a very familiar story or poem aloud, and leave out a word or sentence. Make a game of asking your child to say “I noticed” when you leave something out. After a few tries, give him the opportunity to recall the missing words. You’ll be building his memory skills along with his auditory observation.
PATTERN IDENTIFICATION ACTIVITIES
The brain recognises and stores information by seeking out familiar patterns. Learning takes place when your child’s brain recognises some- thing new as fitting into one of its stored patterns, and links the new sensory input with that memory circuit. Try the following activities to practice pattern identification with your child.
Button-Matching Games
Take a large bag of assorted buttons (you can purchase these at most sewing stores for a few dollars) and make small groups of buttons that share simple characteristics, such as colour, shape, or number of holes.
VSK learners may find matching buttons elsewhere, such as on the shirts in his closet, which adds movement to the activity. Ask your child to look for a piece of clothing in his closet he believes has buttons that match the ones you gathered. For example, if you group together various two-hole buttons and he thinks he knows the pattern, he can look for shirts with two-hole buttons to show you. The movement will refresh his synapses.
Guess My Category
In this activity, your child decides the categories, sorts the figures, and has you guess the pattern of things taken from his collection of small toys, plastic animals, or toy vehicles.
What Belongs? What Doesn’t Belong?
To increase the challenge and build more connections to the way words and letters form patterns, group together three items with a shared characteristic and have your child describe what they have in common.
CBSE Class 12 Physics Model Papers
CBSE Class 10 English ModelPapers
CBSE Class 9 Maths Model Papers
CBSE Class 8 Science Model Papers
No comments:
Post a Comment