Time to Tell Parents the Truth about Helping their Kids with Reading

Speaking of parent involvement, here is an interesting article by a parent https://www.parent.com/sight-words-are-so-2016-new-study-finds-the-real-key-to-early-literacy/ which cites current research on the importance of invented spelling.

Invented Spelling in Kindergarten as a Predictor of Reading and Spelling in Grade 1: A New Pathway to Literacy, or Just the Same Road, Less Known?
Ouellette, Gene; Sénéchal, Monique
Developmental Psychology, v53 n1 p77-88 Jan 2017

Thank you Dr. Shanahan for all of your insight. I work with English Language Learners in grades 3-5. Many of them started school between grades K-2. Since these children were learning to comprehend the language and gain those basic language skills in English, they did not all grasp the phonemic awareness, high frequency words and fluency. So, by the time they reach grade 3 or higher they are challenged by all of the academic language and tier 3 words. If you have any experience with English Language Learners, what might you suggest for closing that gap for ELLs?

And research on ELL student indicates that their parents can and will help — if asked (but usually those parents are not asked).

As a reading specialist who has spent many years working with students in preschool through fifth grade, keeping it fun is the name of the game, especially when reading is a real challenge. Unfortunately, some of the fun wears off for struggling readers around first grade when the pressure to meet benchmarks manifests. Parents don't need to have a teaching degree to help their children, but there are times that well-meaning parents can hinder a child's reading progress. Allow me to explain. "You KNOW that word, you JUST read it on the last page!", sound familiar? Parents are eager to help their children and can become frustrated when reading doesn't come easily and progress is slow and inconsistent (even when you provide them with good strategies like 3P's). Ask most teachers who have tried to work with their own children and I think you will find that the endless patience we posess in the classroom is harder to muster at home. Struggling readers need more support and more ENCOURAGEMENT. The last thing they need after being in school all day is another round of frustration and pressure. I recommend that parents in grades k-2 read to/with their children because that experience is usually positive, pleasant and offers a pathway to literacy. Practicing sight words and repeated readings are great, but if the student sees reading as all work and no payoff, what's the point?

This article provided me with great insight on what to do as a teacher if I have a child who is struggling to read. As a teacher, I often have parents ask me how they can help their child make progress toward their goals at home. When a parent offers to help their child with school work at home, I immediately light up. Many of my students' parents have other challenges in their lives and working on academic skills with their kids is at the bottom of their list. While I am not condemning these parents who are just too busy to focus on school, it is exciting to have a parent ask me how they can help. I can imagine the frustration a parent might feel if they are told to read to their child when that is already something that they do regularly. I would assume that if a parent is asking about how they can help their struggling reader, they already do things like read to their children. It surprised me that research indicates that reading to school age children at home does not lead to positive reading gains. After reading this article, I will make more of an effort to give my parents specific interventions to work on with their kids. I love Dr. Shanahan's suggestion to work on oral reading fluency, phonemic awareness and high frequency words and letter names.

It certainly is always the right time to tell parents their child needs more help with reading. Parents need to be held accountable just as much as teachers are in helping their child grow. It does no good for a child to be expected to come to school to learn and then get home and nothing educational takes place. Early literacy starts at the home as parents are equally, if not more important than teachers are to teaching their child reading skills. However, as teachers, it is very important that reading specialists are active amongst schools, especially at the elementary level, to devise ways to help parents teach the required reading skills. As reading specialists, there are various ways to help parents get involved. On parent/teacher meeting nights, parents can be taught different strategies to implement when reading. Parents can be given books if they do not have access to books at home. Another big way parents can get involved is through family literacy projects where the whole project is done at home with the parent and child and then the child receives a grade based off their work. There are many different ways parents can get involved and they all need to be told when their help is needed.

My aunt is a teacher and vents to me often about how kids are suffering in the reading department. She can tell which kids have parents that read to them, they are above others and their comprehension skills are better then peers. My aunt forwards this product to the kids that are lagging behind their classmates, and immediately sees improvement. http://f76aforhzlu47wayrfvesjszqj.hop.clickbank.net/

At 2 years and 4 months, my son can read an entire book by himself.

He is reading at a 2nd grade level and at our church school, his teacher is amazed.

Here's how he did it:

http://www.healthwise101.com/learn_reading_solution

Best of luck!

I always thought that reading was important so when my kids got old enough I started teaching them to read early I was doing pretty good on my own but then a friend introduced me to this reading program and it did wonders on my kids reading all of the are reading above grade level thank u to the programClick Here!

I wasn't a struggling reader but I was certainly a reluctant one. I felt like because I was more than willing to read aloud, and able to do so effortlessly with great expression, I didn't need to practice the task independently. I carried this attitude into young adulthood and my older three children suffered greatly in school because of it. They were great readers, too and therefore (like me) did "just enough" to get by.

It wasn't until I became the para for an amazing reading specialist that I saw what we had all been missing. I realized that enforcing the "read 20 minutes at home" rule and simply having relevant conversations could've made their academic studies less stressful.

How can I be so sure?

I bore two more children (now 12 and 9 years old) who are having a completely different, pleasant academic experience. Sure there have been a few changes in education and a few teachers have retired, but the major difference is one thing and one thing only...Me! (the parent). When the kids saw that my attitude towards reading changed, everything changed.

I took on what some of us Christians call the "strengthen what remains" mentality and started implementing the knowledge I gained as a para. I'm happy to say that although they were middle and high school at the time, they finished strong. Now, I have a 23 year old college graduate, a 22 year old bookworm and a 19 year old who is finishing up his freshman year in college with great academic success!

Still, there's a bold confidence in my younger children that didn't exist in my older children when they were in school. Not only that, but their language skills are much more developed.

We parents are our child's BEST option. So I'd say to parents of struggling readers AND reluctant readers:
1. Team up with the teacher, take on the role of a mentor, and take immediate action.
and
2. Develop a growth/learning mindset and instill that same mindset in your reader (regardless of age).
"Oh the places you (BOTH) will go!"- Dr. Seuss

Here is more information about Reading Bears.

http://donpotter.net/pdf/reading_bear_scope.pdf

What is the name of the phonics books or the basal readers that Harriet recommends? It would be helpful. Thanks, Mary Dunne

Really! No. I agree with teachers. Kids get enough drill at school. And having you child read to you is part of reading with your child. The PPP suggestion is great! But drills at home are not a good idea. Kids learn to read at different ages. We need to acknowledge that. And stop grading reading. Reading can be fun if it’s not seen as drills. But more drills at home is not the answer.

The books I've been sending home are the Houghton Mifflin decodable readers (10 green for first grade, 6 orange for second), which our district had purchased after the NRP published its report, and which I had salvaged when we went on to a different ELA program a decade ago. Now with distance teaching, I'm using the books made available through Fly Leaf Publishing https://portal.flyleafpublishing.com/instructional-resources/, which are currently free. They come with smart board lessons that I either use as is or modify during my Zoom lessons, and then the children read these books to their print partners, just as they've always done. One thing I like about the annotate function in Zoom is that the kids can choose a "stamp" (arrow, check, heart, star), and I can stamp underneath each word as they read, which is especially useful when reading multi-syllabic words where kids often get the first syllable right and then guess. Here's where we can stop, and I can take the pen and use the stylus to guide kids toward mapping out the sounds in each syllable. I'm trying my best to make lemonade out of distance learning lemons.

Peggy
If more parents took responsibility (and many want and these days need to) fewer kids would get lost in the system. Your notion that reading is just for fun and you don’t need to do any work to gain it is great for the kids who learn easily and it’s hell for the other 90 percent.

Tim

Thank you for your blog Tim.
I would like to share our positive experience of working with parents.

In my school we have special reading information meetings for the parents of the youngest children. We expect someone from every child´s home to come to this meeting. We explain how we teach reading, what we do when kids are having trouble learning to read, how we assess reading skills and what parents can expect this first year of school. We make it clear that we expect cooperation from the parents and what this cooperation entails. We also provide them with some methods like echo reading and choral reading and tips about what they can do when reading training at home is not going well (yes, parents are expected to listen to their child´s reading every day and we tell them how to do it and provide books). They listen to how a child, reading about 60 words per minute, sounds just to get the feeling for where they are heading with the training. Last - but not least we tell them that teaching children to read is a joint venture, that they can always contact the teacher if they are worried or frustrated, and that their contribution is extremely important for their children. We have been doing this for the past 8 years and our experience shows that almost every parent is up to the task. Between 90 and 95% of parents attend and almost everyone is taking care of the training at home as we expect.

Auður—

I remember vividly being surprised that for school age children, reading to mom or dad had a bigger effect on learning than the parents reading to their kids. I read to my kids a lot but I also engaged them in the types of activities noted above.

Thanks for sharing.

Tim

I have the same type of question as Kim -- my students are 6th graders, but many are still struggling readers. Playing word games or reviewing high frequency words are likely going to be less useful for these parents. What can they do to help their students?

Kim--

It is going to matter what it means to be a struggling reader. Are they 1-2 years behind or 5-6 years behind. If it is the latter they are still going to need a substantial amount of explicit decoding instruction. If it is the former, I would focus more on fluency work, morphology, comprehension, writing, and the like. Word games won't cut it in my opinion.

good luck.

tim

I have two girls at home from school due to the pandemic. My oldest has had some trouble in the past with writing but mostly reading. I searched the internet for help and tried hooked on phonics and one other my wife chose and they didn't click with her. I decided to let my daughter help pick and we chose this. I wanted to share this because it honestly helped. Not only my daughter but my wife and I too! The stress level is lowered a ton. bit.ly/3jEkYmJ