Hearing Your Child Read

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For an 'untrained' parent, hearing your child read can be a very frustrating experience. John Bradford gives some helpful advice

Reading with your child at home can easily become very stressful if it is not handled correctly. It can cause great frustration if you feel that your child is not learning to read as fast as you expect, or if you have discovered that your child is dyslexic. This article will set out some guidelines which have proved extremely helpful to many parents.

The first point is to realize that reading a book together must be for pleasure, and is not the time to be stopping over difficult words and trying to work out what they say from the sounds of the letters.

If your child cannot read a word within a second or two then use the Golden Rule: just tell them the word and move on with the story. This goes against most parents' instincts, but is the only way for the two of you to get on with the book and enjoy the story. When you read the book again the following evening, you will find that your child remembers more of the 'difficult' words you had to supply, and will improve each evening. The important thing is that your child is learning to be confident that you will always tell them a word which they do not know, and can trust that reading with you will be a pleasurable experience.

Unfortunately, the alternative scenario is all too well-known to us all: your child sees a difficult word, tenses up and makes a frantic effort to work it out. Meanwhile, you also tense up, feeling that your child will never learn to read!

Because of the history of the English spelling system, which has grown from lots of different sources, many words are impossible to work out from the sounds of their letters.

'Cat' is straightforward, as are 'log', 'hit', and 'get'. But what about words like 'though'? The spelling has no resemblance to the actual word that we say, and no-one can possibly know what the word says unless they are told. No-one can work out how to read words like 'said', 'early', 'was', 'phone' and thousands more from the sounds of their letters. Unfortunately we have inherited a highly irregular spelling system which we are stuck with!

However, with the growing confidence that you will always tell them a word they do not know, children do learn to read. You will notice them using other clues, like the pictures on the page, or guesses from the meaning of the sentence, and it is good to encourage them to use these clues. Provided that they have the opportunity to go over the same book on different evenings, they will gradually come to learn the new words in it, and to enjoy the story - which is what reading is all about!

Another simple method to make things easier is to share the reading with your child: read one sentence each (while still coming in straight away with any difficult words for your child). This will teach your child to look out for the next period/full stop, and will help them get an idea of what a sentence is.

Repetition of the same phrases also helps tremendously in the early stages, when your child knows that the same sentence will be repeated at each stage of the story.

                 

Books which are ideal for regular repetition are 'Chicken Licken' (who thinks the sky is falling down!), 'The Enormous Turnip', 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' (with the troll under the bridge!) and 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'.
Your child should be working out words by the sounds the letters make, but this should be a totally different activity, quite separate from reading a book together. It can be done as a game with the words being written on little cards, and there are examples in my article The sounds the letters make.

The Golden Rule is to tell your child the word they do not know, and the moment you feel yourself tensing up, just switch over to you reading to your child for the next few pages until you feel a bit more relaxed.

John Bradford
1999

Does the Golden Rule work?
Many teachers and parents have told me what a difference they saw in a dyslexic child when they began using this method. It has to be accepted that confidence-building, which emanates from this method, and learning go hand in hand with a dyslexic child. This is why the Golden Rule is so successful. One teacher wrote to me that, after reading to her using this method, her pupil 'left me with far more of a bounce in his step!' and wanted to take the book to read at home. John Bradford

Success using the Golden Rule
I arranged to listen to a Year 4 pupil (aged 9) who is dyslexic but who I don’t normally hear read. I knew from his class teacher that he does not enjoy reading and is very reluctant to do so as he finds it difficult. During the session I followed the Golden Rule. This is a technique that I have adopted in the past with pupils that I work with but I was interested in seeing how a child that is not used to the technique would respond. At the end of the session Jeremy was eager to discuss the story and had a good understanding and insight of what he had read. I felt that the most important aspect was that he appeared to have enjoyed the session and was pleased with what he had achieved. He has asked if I will listen to him read again, that I feel is a positive step. (B.O., Northants, UK)

Using the Golden Rule (1)
I started to say the word that a child is struggling with for them instead of trying to sound it out. I do it with the dyslexic child I work with and my own children who aren't dyslexic and the results are the same. No more frustration and tears and no loss of meaning from the story. Reading is fun! (S.B., UK)

Using the Golden Rule (2)
I listen to a 12-year-old boy read, who was recently diagnosed as being dyslexic and is adept at using various distraction/avoidance techniques within the classroom to avoid reading.

When I first started listening to him read it soon became apparent that he felt embarrassed when reading (he had a reading age of 6 years), he had very low self-esteem. Initially, to encourage an enjoyable reading experience I ensured the following:

• We read books which were of interest e.g. on skateboarding.
• We shared the reading experience by taking turns reading alternative sentences.
• I would tell him any word as soon as he hesitated. Initially he felt as though I was helping him unnecessarily as he had never experienced this before. He soon found this format very useful. He told me that he was able to enjoy the book because he did not feel pressured into sounding out new words.
• Occasionally I would stumble over I word that I knew he could read – he really enjoyed helping me with these words. It also helped building confidence and self-esteem.
• It soon became apparent to both of us that we were reading more pages than usual. He wanted to continue reading even when the allocated time had elapsed.
• He soon started showing an interest in magazine articles and books with interesting pictures. (P.D., Somerset, UK)

Hearing My Child Read (1)
I have been using the 'Golden Rule' with my student. When my student reads aloud to me, I always tell him the words he struggles with.

At the beginning, before I applied this rule, he hated to read aloud. He has actually begun to enjoy our reading time, now that he knows it is not threatening, that he will not have to struggle to sound out words, or get upset because he forgot what he was reading because he spent so long figuring out a word.

It has taken the stress out of reading aloud and shown him that reading can be fun. He no longer gets anxious when I call him aside to read. He has also recently begun to volunteer when we are reading our novel studies as a group. He knows that I will help him if he gets stuck. Now that the stress has been removed, his reading abilities are improving. He has stopped saying "I can't" and is trying. (E.S., Switzerland)

Hearing My Child Read (2)

This exercise has made the biggest difference to my child so far.

  We sat down to do our usual reading but this time I was going to use the “Golden Rule”. Every time we came across a difficult word, I read the word and we carried on. At the end of our usual half page W asked if we could continue. He was really enjoying the book and getting into the storyline for the first time. We finally stopped at the end of the chapter which has never happened before.

He thoroughly enjoyed himself and started to discuss the way he thought the story might go and even suggested to one of his friends that the book that he was reading was worth them reading to!

It has completely changed W’s and my outlook on reading. It really works and has now made two people very happy, particularly as I now see my son discussing with his friends about books which I never thought I would as it was always a struggle. (I.B., Wiltshire, UK)

• Hearing a Child Read - an Exercise