Reading and Writing from the Beginning...

Lyuji and his mother, after working hard!

The six year old approached the desk with a deep sigh. He sat down and buried his head on his arms. "I'm tired," he explained. It had been a long day at summer camp, and he was not keen on the idea of a reading lesson at 4:30 on a lovely summer day.

Lyuji is a bright little boy, learning English as a second language. Learning a second language at this age has its advantages and disadvantages; for example, while English reads left to right, Japanese can be read from top to bottom, or from right to left.

But, unlike English, Japanese does NOT go from left to right.

So when you're six, and trying to learn to read and write in two different languages, it can be pretty confusing. Remember all those b's, d's, p's, q's, and you start to get the picture. Those who are learning just ONE language find all those letters confusing, and when you add another language that goes in two different directions, well - it's not pretty.

Lyuji kept his head on his arms, barely glancing at the colorful aquarium to his left. "Hello, Lyuji," (pronounced U-gee) I said cheerfully. "Would you rather read the words on your word ring first, or read your BOB book?" The BOB books are short, simple books that teach focus on teaching sight words, the words we use most often in reading and speech. They remind parents of a certain age of Dick and Jane books, but the BOB books are physically small and easier to hold in small hands. They are perfect for "emergent", or just beginning, readers, especially those faced with the challenges of learning English as a Second Language at a young age.

He lifted his head with a deep sigh. "Book," he decided. Lyuji has struggled with these books, even though he has had them at home, so I offered to "pre-read" the pages. That means I read the sentence as he points to the word.  Then, once I'd read the sentence, he reads the sentence on his own, again.

But by the end of the book, he was reading the sentences along with me, no longer needing my "pre-reading" assistance. "Excellent!" I said, closing the book. "You've really got this one down, haven't you? Give me five!" He slapped my hand and I got a small, proud grin.

"All right, let's go over your word ring next." While many students have just words on index cards, Lyuji has cards that came with the BOB books. The word, alone, is on one side, and the word used in a sentence, with a picture, is on the other side. Lyuji struggled to read the words, written all by themselves. But when he looked at the sentences and pictures, he was able to read most of the words fairly easily.

"He's using his reading strategies well," I said to his mother. "Did you see how he used the rest of the sentence AND the picture to figure out the word? That's great!  And then he was able to remember the word, and read it by itself on the other side. He's making some real progress."

"I thought he should just be able to read the word, all by itself?" his mother asked.

"We do want him to be able to read the words all be themselves, at some point. Sure. But reading strategies are key. So it's great that when he's stuck, he's able to use the pictures, the other words in the sentence - we call that using context clues - and that's really what a good reader does. Think about how we read a challenging newspaper or journal article. If we don't know a particular word or term, we read the words around it, and perhaps use the pictures in the article, to help us take a smart guess as to what that word might be. He's doing that, now!"

She smiled, "Good! I wasn't sure - "

That's the tricky part of teaching your own child to read. It's not always obvious what's "cheating" and what's really using a good reading strategy. Now that she knows that Lyuji is "allowed" to use the rest of the sentence, and the pictures, she will know that she should encourage that when he reads other stories, as well.

But what about writing? With emergent readers, just forming the letters can be so labor intensive that it's hard to get them to write more than a sentence or two. Without guidelines, their letters and entire words tend to wander around the lines, so that they, too, have trouble reading their own words.

We do want emergent readers to feel comfortable writing down their thoughts and ideas. And just as a baby bird emerges from the shell staggers around a bit, we can expect a certain amount of "staggering" as our new reader learns to write. So we offer some fencing and some hand rails to make the act of writing a bit easier. First, we discuss what he wants to write about. Since the act of creating those letters and words is so tough, we can write down some of his ideas as he lists them, so he can copy some words, and remember what he'd planned to say next. A little interview helps to get ideas flowing - what did you do with your grandparents when you visited? What was your FAVORITE part? I hear you went to a Tigers baseball game. Tell me about it!

And as our young writer expands on the wonders of a visit to indulgent grandparents, or the awesomeness of seeing his first professional baseball game, I write down a central word or idea in the middle of a circle (such as baseball game or grandparent visit!). Then, like rays from the sun, I write down the details that our writer provides, and I probe for those bits of fun such as the goofy baseball hat that was EVEN BETTER than his brother's. Everything goes down.

Second, we organize. Together, we discuss which aspect of the baseball game he would like to describe first - the hot dogs? the home runs? the extra innings? And we number each idea, so that as he writes, whoever might be helping him can remind him what he planned to write about next.

Third, the actual act of writing. This is no minor deal for a young writer who has only just mastered forming the letters of the alphabet. Balancing helping and fostering independence is not easy. In general, the more the child can write on his own, the better off he will be, as he comes to own his writing and gains real pride in his accomplishment. But what about spelling? a parent may ask. Nearly every word there is misspelled! Wouldn't a period or two help? Surely...surely we should be teaching those skills.

Yes, of course - all those skills WILL be taught. But just as we have all written rough drafts with a handful of errors, a young writer will do the same - although perhaps there will be a few more than a handful! The key is insuring that the adult, or assistant, can read what the writer is composing, so that at a later date, the assistant can write a "translation" lightly above the initial scrawl. But how can we insure that these words are at least phonetically decodable, if not accurately spelled?

Before the pencil hits the paper, we rehearse the sentence he will write, in short chunks, if necessary. Then the assistant draws horizontal lines for EACH WORD that our author will write. I am often guilty of making those word lines too short. If this is a problem, I simply join the lines together, and add more at the end. Creating these lines for each word helps the writer space the words appropriately, and at the same time he remembers to keep the letters of the words together. We forget that we had to learn this - that each sentence is composed of a number of word "puzzle pieces", with space between them. Without these lines, an emergent writer's writing often looks like a jumbled, randomly-spaced collection of letters that is very difficult for any reader, the writer included, to read.

And then the sweat and toil begins; initially, Lyuji looked at me helplessly, as I read him the first topic he had chosen to write about. "What sound do you hear at the beginning of the word, We?" I asked him. W always poses a problem, as does H. Their names don't reveal anything about the sounds they make, unlike B-b, and D-d. Double-U? How does that help? Aitch? The names of these words are completely useless to the beginning reader.

But I persisted, as went and was had both been in the book he'd just read sucessfully. He stared at me, and then at the line on the paper. "W-w-w?" he asked.

"Yes!" I said. "Exactly. What's second sound?" I made a tapping gesture at the top of my arm. This kinesthetic, or physical, method of sounding out a word has helped Lyuji. "First, w." I tapped up by my shoulder. "Then ...w-e-e-e. What letter makes that sound?" I tapped by my elbow.

He looked perplexed briefly. "E?"

"Right! That's it! W-e!" I made a swooping gesture from my shoulder down to my wrist. "W-e, We! Go ahead and write w-e! Nice work!" He looked a bit startled at his own success, and with great effort created a w, and then a somewhat scrunched e. He erased that and re-wrote the e clearly.

The next words went a bit more quickly, although still at a somewhat glacial pace. Occasionally he would hear the phonetic chunks of the word but would mis-represent them. I saw his mother raise her eyebrow, and I gestured to her to let it go.

Later I explained. "When we force a student, at the very beginning, to write every single word correctly, they become paralyzed if they can't spell a word. They can't write anything unless they're POSITIVE it's absolutely correct. We want them to think in terms of a first draft. No, this is not perfect. But we will help them fix it, and we WILL teach the right spelling. Just not at the very first moment of creating."

His mother nodded. "Barbara, at his school, does it the same way."

Lyuji sweated through three sentences, spaced evenly and with every letter created roughly accurately. He was exhausted. "You have done a beautiful job! You can finish this at home," I said. "Let's find a fun book to read, and you are finished."

And that was how we always end things - remembering why we're here. We're here so that Lyuji learns that reading and writing give us the good stuff: the funny books, the cool stuff about volcanoes, the sitting together on the cushions, and learning and sharing. He and his mother work together, during the week, and he's getting there, in two languages. Slowly but surely.

see also www.lesemannlearning.com for all of my students' webpages...including Lyuji's!