A Mother-Daughter Pair Who is Doing It Right...

It's so fun when you see the good stuff happening!  So here's a SHOUT OUT to Sarah and Sofia DiPirro, who are new to the Lesemann Learning community. Recently the two of them have been reading a book together that's just a little too hard for Sofia to read on her own. Sofia loves to read a series about horses, given a choice...but she's in sixth grade, and she knows she needs to move along. Her aunt gave her this great book set in Michigan, in the copper mines back in the early 1900's - Living on Sisu -The 1913 Union Copper Strike Tragedy by Deborah K. Frontiera.

It was a little rough reading at first, so initially Sarah read it to Sofia. But pretty soon, Sofia started to read it aloud, too, sometimes reading the paragraph her mother had just read aloud to her.

It still wasn't so easy, even if she had just heard that very same paragraph. There are words in Swedish, but Sofia realized that the words were translated right after they were used in a sentence. Or in the sentence before. "I didn't really need to know Finnish," she said, grinning. "The meaning of the words were right there." Reading the book together taught Sofia many little strategies like that. Don't know a word? Look around. The writer gives you lots of clues to help you along.

"I still read most of it out loud to Sofia," Sarah said. "I enjoy it, and we talk about it. And you know, now I can't fake it, if I mess up a word. She's following right along! Rats!" Sarah grinned.

There's no room for skipping a sentence or two when you're tired, when your kid's got your number. And Sofia's got her mother dead to rights. She's learning about Michigan history, about the Finnish population and girls her age who lived back then. And she's learning how to use the words that she knows to figure out the words she doesn't know.

In other words, she's learning to use context clues, as we say in the reading biz. She watches her mother use them, and when she reads a paragraph aloud, she does it, too.

So - Go, Sofia! and her mighty mother, Sarah! The DiPirros rock some serious historical fiction.