Lesson 103

Once it gets going the showcase of each lesson in "Teach your child to read" is little story and a little cartoon. You cover up the cartoon and reveal it to the kid after she finishes reading the story. "What do you think you will see in the picture?" and the kid makes a good guess. It's fun.

Before reading the story, tutor and child go through enumerated "tasks." A little bit of something new and a lot of review from previous lessons.

What kind of tasks? There is a giant h to one side of the script, with an arrow underneath it. "Here's a new sound. We always have to say this sound fast. My turn to say it fast." Then you run your finger along the arrow as you say a pure aspirate "h," careful not to say "huh" or "hah".

Or, there is the word said off to one side, the same size as the h. A little ball is printed under the s, a, and i, and a little tick mark under the d. "Sound it out," and the child says "sssaaaiiid." Her "aaa" and "iii" are separate sounds, she doesn't say "sed." "Very good. That's how we sound out the word. Now listen to me say the word: sed."

The distinction between saying a word and sounding out a word, and many other careful distinctions and explications like it, kept her over 100 lessons from ever getting confused.

The long task in each lesson was to practice reading a list of words, some of them new to her, that would appear in the story. For "lots of cars" it was

farm, are, cars, lots, of, has, old, his, sheep

She had to go through the list twice. The first time through to sound out and then say the word—after she read "haaasss" I had to reply "Good. What word?" and she would either remember "haz" or I would tell her.  The second time through to say the words the fast way. It takes a while. When she flagged, or complained, it was usually during this part. The story at the end was dessert, it took concentration but she was happy reading it.

For lesson 101 I gave her a short kids' book, by Crosby Bonsall. The epilogue had recommended it along with a list of words to "preteach": bigger, dead, does, fault, it's, mine, she's, smart, yours. I told her the lessons from now on would be different, and showed her the sheet with the practice words on it: my big handwriting and a hand drawn arrow under each word. When she was through with them I revealed the new book. I might have succeeded to make it seem like a prize. She was proud to be able to read it to herself, and later that day to her grandparents.

The next day I wrote something, about snakes. I made it way too hard, like an encyclopedia article and not like a prize. For the lesson after I thought I should scale it way back:

igh, night, right, light, fight, sigh, day, strange, stranger, saliva, hurt, people

Cats and Dogs

Some people like cats and some people like dogs. Some people might not like cats or dogs.

Some people might like dogs at night and cats in the daytime. Some people like both cats and dogs, all of the time.

Cats and dogs might bite you if you are a stranger. Their saliva does not have any venom but their bite can still hurt!

That was all it took for her to learn to read "people" and words with "igh."