Why Memorizing is NOT Cheating

So you are reading this right now pretty quickly, much more quickly than a young child would. How are you doing this? You have a sight vocabulary of many thousands of words. In regular person language, this means you have a lot of words memorized. Almost all the words you read are memorized. So when you read, you see whole words. You put these together to make meaning. Congratulations! 

But what did you do in the face of all these daunting black squiggles on the page back when you were a little person who didn't yet possess this amazing skill? Well, you did a number of things. ONE of them was sounding words out, but that didn't come until you were already a little bit of a reader. Believe it or not, sounding out words is a pretty advanced skill, which comes after a few other things in the reading teacher's playbook.

So back to memorizing. If your child's books have highly patterned language and highly supportive pictures, memorizing the pattern and using the pictures to figure out the part that changes is the most effective way to make meaning. So the book goes like this:

The dog is walking (picture of a dog walking)

The dog is jumping (picture of a dog jumping)

The dog is sleeping (yes, picture of a dog sleeping)

and so on

Do not try to get your child to sound out all these words. If the book is a good fit, the words may still be too hard to decode in this way. Instead, talk about the book as you look at the pictures together. 

Say, "Oooh, look at all the things the dog is doing! What is the dog doing here?" Then your young genius will say, "The dog is walking." That's when you say, "Wow, that's exactly what the book says! Here, say that again and point under the words this time. I bet they'll match up!" Now the child should say, "The dog is walking," WHILE POINTING to the words. The finger and voice may not stay synced, so your job here is to coach your child to point to the same word she is saying, right as she says it. You may have to demonstrate, or go back and forth. Make sure to give lots of compliments and do lots of cheerleading. That's what will make your child want to keep on trying.

At the end, don't forget to talk about what the book was about, even in a sentence or two. The purpose of reading is not to say words, but to make meaning.

In order to be able to work on this skill of matching spoken words to printed words, children have to memorize the text. They are putting plenty of mental energy into trying to get their fingers synced up to their voices, so don't worry that this is some kind of easy way out.

As children get older and their books get harder, they will move away from this and into more rigorous decoding. This phase can't last too long, because as soon as children outgrow heavily patterned books, they're forced to move beyond memorizing.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Do Book Levels Matter?

A parent recently asked me how to tell what her daughter's book level was. I wondered why she wanted to know. It seemed to me like one of the joys of being a parent and not a teacher is that you don't have to concern yourself with leveling. You can just read. But of course she just wanted to know how to help her daughter choose books in the book store or library. I feel like when I was little we just picked out books that looked interesting, and flipped through a few pages to see if they felt about right. Now so many books seem to be slotted into a hierarchy. 

Now as a former teacher and a consultant who works with teachers all over the country, I'm familiar enough with book levels to know that it's a Babel of different systems. Is your child a G? a 17? A 1.8? And even when publishers claim to use a system, the person whose job it is to level the books may have different ideas than the person who has that job at another publisher. There is just not a lot of consistency out there. So my first answer is to ignore anything you see on a book that has to do with a level. If you're not convinced, try this. Go to your local book store. Go to one with a good children's book section. Pick three "I Can Read" level 3 books and look inside. Do they all seem to be the same? Maybe, but maybe not, depending on the titles. OK, now try a "Ready Reader" level 3. Is it the same? Try another imprint or another level. Once you start looking you'll see. It's meaningless. 

So how do teachers know? Well, hopefully your child's school has chosen a system and everybody uses it. (Resource Room or Reading Recovery teachers may use another system. They're allowed.) These systems take into account things like number of words per page, font size and spacing, picture size and relevance, number of multisyllabic words, complex sentences, repetition, inflected endings (like -ed), and clarity of story, to name just a few things. But the other thing teachers use is their particular experience. They have read a million children's books and have watched children learning to read them They know what is going to be tricky and how to help. They also know what is appropriate to expect at what levels and when it's time to teach a given strategy. They know how to tell what sorts of strategies your child already uses to decode and understand what he reads. It's pretty impressive, actually.

This is just not feasible for a parent, nor is it necessarily desirable. School reading and home reading are different. As a parent you do not always have to teach something new. You can function more as a coach, partner, cheerleader, or audience. So back to the level question. How do you help your child choose books well? Try this:

Take your child to the book store/library. Start with a few books that seem about right. If they are pretty short (anything up to a Frog and Toad type book) read a few pages and then say, "Oooh, this looks good. It seems to be about x." X being a brief teaser that gives a little information but tantalizes the young reader into wanting to find out more. If you see any obviously hard words ahead of time, include these in your introduction. Like this: "Oh, and the farmer's daughter also tries to help pull up that pesky turnip." Then hand it over. Does it feel good? Is your child reading along with a bit of confidence and some fluency? Not stumbling over too many words? Only needing a bit of help and only once every, say 10-20 words? Understanding what she reads? Able to tell back what she just read? Good! Get that book! 

If not, you need to get something a little less challenging. You cannot even hint that this might be disappointing, though. Instead, try to make it seem like the best luck in the world. Like this: "Oh, phew, I was hoping we could spend some time reading these cool 'Brand New Readers' (or some other book that is more appropriate than the one you just tried)! They are so-o-o-o-o good and there are so many characters we can get to know! What LUCK!"

(These are lovely books, by the way. Brand New Readers is an imprint of Candlewick Press. I have nothing to do with this publisher and will not profit from the sale of their books, but I do like them.)

I guess what I think is important for parents to know is not what level your child reads, but whether your child enjoys reading and feels successful at it. If it feels like torture, it is. Make it stop now. The quickest way into higher level books is by spending quality time in books that feel comfortable.