I’m reading a book called Proust and the Squid about how children learn to read. The author spent a lot of time discussing the invention of writing as well. As a quick aside, did you know Aristotle was dead set against writing because it was sure to destroy people’s minds?
Anyway, I love the part about how children learn to read and the discussion of the undeniably advantages of reading to your children. When we talk about how children aren’t learning to read well and blame it on the schools alone, it might be a good idea to understand the disadvantages that so many students are operating under. If they weren’t read to as pre-readers, it is very difficult to ever make that up. Too many people in our world complain about schools and children not reading well without an understanding of why.
I am working on documenting an app for parents to track their reading so I was leveraging my Teaching Ella to Read blog where I mentioned the books we read to her. I’m going back and pulling some of those to add in the app so I can see how it really works. In doing so, I came across an interesting post that fits right in with this subject.
I’ve included below a screen shot of one of that post. This post includes an explanation of how we used reading to teach our children many words. Proust and the Squid very much stresses the importance of this strategy. It was timely that I would find this post while reading that book. Love it when things work out that way!
Learn more about the blog at https://phonogramuniversity.com/teachingella/
This strategy is just one hugely important part of children learning to read well that parents can do relatively easily. The problem is, most parents don’t know how important it is. I’m not faulting parents, mind you. Having spent five years teaching first grade and watching children struggle burned it into my brain and it is why I’m such an advocate for parents stepping up. My fortunate experience with teaching reading is why I spend so much time trying to spread the word.
As for that app I mentioned earlier, I sure do wish I’d had it when I was a new parent. It is available here at Phonogram University at the URL below. In the app you can track all your reading and include quotes, comments, images, and audio snippets up to 15 seconds long. You can even create an e-book listing all the books and the related text and images!
