When my husband was in school getting his music teaching certification he took many classes covering teaching for all grade levels. Recently he was weeding out some files and came across this simple sheet that he’d saved. It is titled Ashton-Warner’s Organic Reading Approach. (You can read more about Ashton-Warner and her similarities to Reggio Emilia here.)
I love the ideas for learning to read recorded on this sheet, which appears to have come from SUNY Oneonta’s teaching materials, which you can read on your own by following that link, so I’m not going to list it all out here, rather comment on a couple of the points.
I love point 2, “Each day, engage the student in conversation and get him/her to tell you a word that’s very important to him or her that day.” The idea (from point 3) is to write it on a index card (point 1) and help the child learn to read it and for the student to create a pile of all the words they know (point 5). Using words they ‘own’ engages them in learning to read!
We began writing words down on cards when Cutie Pie was in kindergarten, and he had assembled quite a large pile all hooked together with a ring. He loved seeing just how many cards he had, because that was how many words he knew how to read! It was a great motivator, but I wonder how much more motivated he would have been to read if we had started adding in words he used in his everyday?! (Believe me, that would be a lot, he’s got quite the vocabulary!)
Cutie Pie is only 6 and in first grade, so I think I’m going to start with point number 2 now, capturing words that he declares are important to him. Of course, he’s already got a lot of homework each night, which limits his playtime, so I will do this in a play sort of way! There are so many new words learned and used every day, even for me! It’s never too late to start learning how to read words you use, right?!
What strategies have you used to encourage your kiddos’ love of reading?
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