ReadWorks

She was reading. Could I just get her a library card, and let her educate herself? 

In June she was still unsure about words that end in y, and about double effs and double esses and double ells. In November, so far, I'm still not raising a bookworm. I once in a while catch her reading the side of a cereal box, or one of her old board books. But I'm glad we kept on doing reading lessons.

If it was complicated, she couldn't read it. Not in June. But if most of the words were familiar, and the sentences were short, and there was lots of repetition, she would bring all her concentration to it. At least for one page of big print. She might read it from start to finish, or she might stop after every sentence and react. Talking to her is not the same: she zones out or interrupts or tries to change the subject. Our conversations are fun but they are not didactic. Reading lesson was a new channel of communication between us.

What should I send down this channel? Most of the world's written knowledge is news to a five-year-old. When I was counting the days until I ran out of the "100 easy lessons", I found this idea on a website called ReadWorks:

Article-A-Day is a 10-15 minute routine designed to be done every day to build background knowledge, vocabulary, and reading stamina. Article-A-Day complements a broad range of curricula and is recommended for kindergarteners to eighth-graders. ... The Article-A-Day sets are grouped topically or to systematically build vocabulary. Find sets that gradually become more challenging as the school year progresses and are coordinated by topics across grade levels.

They don't cost money but you have to make an account to see their articles. I was disappointed when I did. What they have that is pitched at kindergarteners is meant to be read aloud by a teacher. The kids fill out a worksheet after. "If the students cannot write yet, they can draw their responses." For a new reader it wasn't great for practice, and I wasn't excited about the content.

But I liked the idea of a little bit of nonfiction every day. After one false start it wasn't hard to write 100 words about a subject that was new to her, in words she could handle. I made it easier to write that much the next day, and every day, by having a big part of each passage recapitulate yesterday's passage.

I wanted to write about history but she knew very little about calendar dates, or even about numbers. The day after "Cats and dogs," I didn't make her read anything but this:

five, zero, ten, one, two, hundred, thousand

Each of those in large handwriting, an arrow drawn underneath, and a box to the side for her to print numerals. It was a worksheet. She already knew in speech the words "hundred" and "thousand," but only now in November is she maybe starting to know their magnitude. "Five" and "zero" were established favorites for her. The irregular spellings of one and two drew out a nice conversation. "A thousand years ago I think they actually said it t'whoah but we don't say it like that anymore."

Here's the lesson from the day after that: 

Spain, Genoa, India, Bahamas, America, ght, caught, light, bought, hundred, tried, year, years, month, people, explore, explorer, exploring, think, thought, heard 

A new way to get to India

Five hundred years ago, the king and queen of Spain paid an explorer to find a new way to get to India. That explorer was from Genoa and his name was Columbus. The king and queen thought that he was good at exploring.

The old way to get to India was by land, but Columbus looked for a new way to get there. He tried to get there in a ship. Two other ships went with him.

After one month, their ship found land. There were many people living on that land. He thought that he had found India and that those people were Indians. But that land was not India. It was the Bahamas.

The Bahamas are close to America. Until then, the king and queen of Spain had never heard of America. No one in Spain or Genoa had heard of America.

and the day after that:

Columbus, Ferdinand, Isabella, Spain, India, Aragon, Castile, first, paid, country, marry, married, merge, merged, treat, treated, people, prince, princess, remember

The first king and queen of Spain

Remember the king and queen who paid Columbus to find a new way to get to India? Their names were Ferdinand and Isabella. They were the first king and queen of Spain. Before they got married, there was no country called Spain.

Ferdinand was the prince of a country called Aragon. Isabella was the princess of a country called Castile. They were born almost six hundred years ago. They got married and then later they merged Aragon and Castile into one country. That country was called Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella were a prince and a princess once, but they were not heroes in a story. They treated some of the people in Spain badly. Sometimes you get that from kings and queens!

If I had read them aloud to her she wouldn't have listened. She engaged with them when I made her read them aloud to me. If part of the reading went over her head, I sometimes would expand on that part the next day—it didn't have to be important to me, it just kept away writer's block.

For one session a couple of weeks later, I had too little time or maybe I did have writer's block. I didn't have something new ready for her so I had her read "The first king and queen of Spain" again. It took her almost 40 minutes the first time and only 10 minutes the second time.