Teaching Benjamin and Zachary to Read
Plus Thoughts on Teaching Reading

by Tammy Drennan

Teaching Benjamin to Read

Benjamin is my oldest son, so of course, he suffered the burden of being the one I learned on. Fortunately for me, and probably for him, he was a flexible, compliant and forgiving child.

When Ben was little I worked at a laundromat that was situated next to a grocery store. Ben went to work with me, and when we finished we’d walk over to the store and identify letters on walls, cans and boxes (and usually find some little treat). He learned to recognize all his letters this way without the least bit of trauma or effort. As a bonus, he learned that the same letter could be artistically rendered in any number of ways and still be itself. (Try it at home. Instead of, or in addition to, the workbooks, search your house for every a, b or c you can find.)

Some time before Ben turned six, I happened upon an article in Reader’s Digest about Rudolf Flesch’s book Why Johnny Can’t Read. Besides explaining why reading instruction in American schools was in such a mess, the book contained complete phonics lessons.

They were complete enough for me, anyway. Instructions for implementing them are skimpy compared with most phonics programs today. On the other hand, the order in which new sounds are presented is far more logical than most other programs, and the lessons take the student farther down the reading road than most other programs.

I was incredibly thrilled and enthusiastic about teaching Ben to read — really pumped, to put it in modern parlance. That’s not exactly how Ben felt, but he was an agreeable little boy and didn’t put up any fuss when he learned we’d be sitting down to formal lessons each day.

Shortly into our lessons, maybe a week or so, we both found ourselves in tears, and I was forced to reconsider what I was doing.

First, I asked myself if Ben was really ready to learn to read. Yes, I decided. Resistance to a change in his routine, especially when that change cut into play time, did not indicate a lack of readiness. It only meant a change that needed to be adjusted to. Further, he had no trouble learning anything that was fun or that he was motivated to learn.

Next, should I try to make learning more fun? Just how fun should school be? Wasn’t the discipline of learning serious business? Not something to be laughed and giggled through? By making learning into fun and games, would I not be teaching Ben that anything that was not fun should be avoided?

Hey, I was new at this — give me a break. I came around pretty quickly.

I asked myself (asking yourself lots of questions is a good way to find solutions): Did my own humorless schooling provide me with the mental discipline to pursue lifelong learning? No. So, what did? Because I love to learn.

I knew exactly what did it for me. When I was in seventh grade, my parents sent me to a little Christian school. There were 60 students in grades K-7. One day, someone donated hundreds of books to the school. They filled an entire room — boxes and piles of them all over the place. The school’s headmaster, a stern little woman, asked me if I knew the Dewey Decimal System and would be willing to sort the books. Not being one to admit I didn’t know something and maybe being afraid to say I didn’t know something she seemed to think I should, I said yes.

For the rest of the year, I spent a couple of hours a day in that room full of books. I didn’t know the first thing about Dewey or any other way of sorting books, and I never categorized a single book. Instead, I fell in love with reading. I sat in that room and read one book after another, and that scary woman who had commissioned me to create a library for the other students never said a word. She gave me the freedom to discover the joy in learning.

Now I faced a choice. Would I impose on my son the same boring education I’d received up to seventh grade, or would I find a way to make learning exciting? The answer was easy, of course.

Corrective Measures

I’ve found after 25 years of homeschooling, tutoring and teaching classes that most corrective measures I have to take involve how I present material or communicate rather than in trying to improve a student’s attitude or habits. When I adjust my own attitude or methods to suit the situation, the student usually improves in response. It’s easier to blame the student or some natural cause, but in the end it’s usually me who needs the adjustment.

I needed to make learning to read something Ben would enjoy, at least most of the time. So I did four things:

1. I learned how to chill out. If things got tense, I gave us a break. Sometimes that break was for ten minutes, sometimes it was until the next day. Children (and parents, too) are not machines that can be turned on and expected to perform the same every day. Some days are better than others. Some times of the day are better than other times of the day.

2. I adjusted the workload and gave Ben some control. The program I was using contained five columns of words in each lesson, all in regular book-size type, not kid-size type. I let Ben choose two columns to read for each lesson. This made what I was asking of him more reasonable and gave him a more personal stake in the game.

3. I injected humor. Since the program was only word lists and there were no sentences or stories, I would stop Ben every six or seven words and ask him to use that word in a sentence. Now I suggested that he try for funny sentences. Sometimes I made up funny sentences with the words, too. When he could read enough words to tackle short stories, I wrote him a funny little book about a boy named Benjamin and a monster.

4. I used prizes. For every column Ben read with a good attitude, he got to pick a little plastic dinosaur from a bucket I’d bought. (I probably wouldn’t use money or food for prizes — only childish little things that children will eventually consider themselves too old or mature for.)

These simple steps drastically improved our reading lessons. I started each session now with a positive, happy attitude and so did Ben. We still had tense moments and even occasional tears and had to take breaks, but learning to read became mostly enjoyable.

Tweaking the Program

As the program progressed, I found I had to make some additions and adjustments. I felt that some lessons presented too many sounds at once, so I split those lessons up. I made flash cards for some of the lessons and added sentences and short stories that I wrote myself. Most programs today have all that in them, but you may still find the need to make changes for your particular child. Or, in the case of modern programs, you may find the need to eliminate elements.

There were two things I did not do that the program recommended. I didn’t require Ben to write the words as he learned to read them, and I didn’t cram the program into the few months it said I could (the author used it to teach his granddaughter to read over one summer vacation).

I know many programs insist that writing in conjunction with learning to read reinforces reading skills. I’m no expert and am in no position to argue from an academic standpoint. I only know that if I had it to do over, I’d do the same thing. I used the same approach with my other son, Zachary, and was still pleased with it. I wanted the focus to be on reading and did not want to add the tedium of writing at such a young age. Ben did practice writing letters and words at that age, but it was unrelated to the reading program I was using and was done as a fun activity rather than a part of school. I’m firm in my feeling that it is better not to combine the teaching of reading with writing, but you are perfectly free to disagree.

The Results

By the end of the school year, Ben had finished his phonics lessons and was enthusiastically reading. He sometimes needed a little help, but because the program had been so thorough, he didn’t often ask what a word was. While he was able to pick up my Reader’s Digest and read most of it, you can probably guess that wasn’t his first choice. He read what interested him — books about animals, short biographies, Dr. Seuss, all those kiddie books you can get at the grocery store (like The Berenstain Bears).  The more he read, the better he got.

Improving Skills

Reading is a skill and as with all skills it can be improved almost indefinitely and it can also fall into disrepair when ignored. Since I wanted Ben to be not just a good reader but a compulsive reader, I worked to make reading something that would come easy to him. Here are some of the additional methods I used to enhance his ability:

• Practice reading lists of unusual words from particular categories, such as musical instruments and terms, branches of science, professions, etc.
• Ben read through the Open Court Readers (without using the program in any other way). Besides liking the variety and quality of the stories in them, I liked the little word exercises and the fact that stories containing unusual words listed those words so the student could familiarize himself with them first.
• I added simple workbooks that emphasized phonics, vocabulary and sentence building. I usually picked these up at grocery and discount stores and was always pleased with them. I also presented them as treats, not requirements, so both my boys thought they were fun to do. Lessons were always short and colorful.
• I read aloud excerpts from things I was reading for my own pleasure or information. I would say, “Listen to the way this was written” or “This is really funny.” This pushed their interest in things outside their normal reading as well as their knowledge of things outside their normal experience. It added hooks in their brains to hang things on as they pushed their reading level.
• I talked about words and shared my own fascination with them.

Reading to your Children

I’m all for reading to your children, but I didn’t do tons of it myself and didn’t do it in the usual way. When they were little and couldn’t read for themselves, I read them fun books. As the years progressed, I continued to read to them if they wanted me to, but increasingly they read to me. I often read aloud blurbs from things I was reading, including the newspaper.

I never read things like classic literature out loud to my children. I rarely even read books that couldn’t be finished in one sitting. That was reading they had to do for themselves. Sometimes, if I wanted them to push their reading level I would begin reading a book out loud then conveniently not have time to continue. I’d read just enough to get them hooked.

On the other hand, my children read quite a bit to me. Sometimes I prompted this (when they were younger) by asking them to read while I cooked dinner. But they often chose things they wanted me to hear. Ben has read endless short stories (O. Henry is great) out loud to the rest of us, as well as books like Great Expectations and books of history. Zach also reads history aloud to the rest of us and he read The Lord of the Rings to me (so I could see the movie, which I was forbidden to see before reading the book).

Reading is a major part of our lifestyle. If this is not the case for you, you’ll need to find methods that fit your style.

Teaching Zachary to Read

Every child is different, as I discovered when it came Zach’s turn to learn to read. Zach is five and a half years younger than Ben. He was a new baby when Ben learned to read.

While Ben was an easy-going, relaxed little boy, Zach was intense, wiggly and extremely strong-willed with a temper to match. He was a delightful child but also saw no reason anyone should be dictating his life.

When Zach was four years old, he asked me to teach him to read. We started in the same lessons I’d used for Ben, and in a short time Zach decided he wasn’t so interested after all. He was capable and ready, but at age four, I saw no reason to push the matter. At five, he asked again, and we repeated the scenario. At six, I decided it was time.

We had a rough start. When Zach decided he didn’t want to do something, he wasn’t kidding. It took more patience and persistence than with Ben. My children know that I’m not much for punishing, but I have the patience of Job when it comes to seeing a thing through. I won’t yell or spank or threaten — but I won’t go away, either.

Giving Zach breaks had to be done differently from giving Ben breaks when things got hairy. Ben could run off and play for a while and return refreshed and ready to try again. Zach did better if he didn’t get to leave during a break. Instead, we would sit together, usually with me holding him on my lap, and talk or play. I’d wait a few minutes and ask if he was ready to try again. If not, I’d wait a few more minutes. When he saw that the lesson would go on, he eventually conceded. If things remained too tense, I’d let it go till the next day.

I don’t know what the books say about dealing with strong-willed children; I’ve never read them. But I was a strong-willed child myself and related well to what was going on inside Zach.

Strong-willed children often need more control over their lives than other children, and I think it’s better to teach them how to manage themselves than to insist that they be managed from the outside. For this reason, I had many talks with Zach about the need to read well and the need for him to commit to learning. I put part of the responsibility in his hands, which is exactly where he wanted it, then I let him know I expected him to live up to that responsibility. Our talks were never lectures or sermons — they were serious discussions.

Because Zach also had a temper that sometimes got the best of him and because he was very wiggly, I did often have to physically restrain him during our talks and sometimes during lessons. I would sit next to him and keep my arm around him or pull him onto my lap while we studied and practiced. He would sometimes resist, but I held tight until he calmed down.

It can be hard to find the right sort of outside restraint to use with a strong-willed child. The best seems to be something that makes them feel safe rather than threatened (like spanking). Also, holding a child to help him calm down helps him learn that patience and stillness can calm an over-worked spirit.

Because Zach didn’t like to sit still for too long, I made practice cards that I hung along a wall. Each card sported four or five words that fell in line with a phonetic rule we’d learned. Several times a day, Zach would walk down our hall of words and read the cards aloud.

One other addition to Zach’s lessons that proved very successful was our jail for rule-breakers. I drew a jail on a big piece of poster board, and every time we encountered a word in a book that didn’t follow a rule we’d already learned, we wrote it on a piece of paper and put it in jail. If we could think of any family members who had broken the law, they went to jail, too (thank goodness we weren’t studying government at the time). So when “could” went to jail, so did “should” and “would.”

Each day, we visited our inmates and read them and checked our records to determine if any evidence had surfaced to prove their innocence. If not, they stayed in jail. If so, they were happily freed. This was such an incredibly easy way of dealing with sight words and words beyond the current lesson that I’d recommend it to everyone.

By the time we were two-thirds of the way through our lessons, Zach took off with his reading and I let the lessons drop. He had the added advantage of an older brother who loved to read, as well as a rather competitive spirit himself. He read everything in sight.

One day, after finishing a book he’d been reading, Zach came to me and said, “Mommy, thank you so much for teaching me to read. I can’t believe I didn’t used to know how.” There are few joys greater than watching a child you taught lose himself in the joy of reading.

Toward the end of the school year, I decided that Zach really should finish the lessons. Even though he could read all those other words, I saw no reason he shouldn’t be aware of the basic rules that applied to them. It wouldn’t take long and it could only benefit him in the long-run. I told him we would do a fast run through them, and he was agreeable. It only took a couple of weeks.

Sight Readers vs. Phonetic Readers

There’s a lot of controversy over what types of learners different children are. Obviously, there are many ways people learn, and it’s a mistake to become obsessed with only one way of teaching.

But there is no logical reason why a sight learner should not be able to learn to read in phonetic order. You might find yourself needing to emphasize sounds less, but your child will still learn the logic behind the way the words look.

The Value of Word Lists

The program I used consisted entirely of words lists. Some people feel this discourages comprehension. I worried about that even as I used the lists, in spite of the fact that at the time I hadn’t encountered the concern. I compensated by stopping and asking my children to use words in sentences and by adding short sentences and writing little stories myself.

But if I had it to do over, I would still use the word lists as my primary means of teaching. They have several advantages, including:

• Students get to practice many words together following the same rule.
• They can be used to practice speed (ask any adult who is a slow reader how frustrating it is).
• It’s easy to do things like go through the list and ask a student to pick five words and use them in sentences, so you’re sure they’re perceiving them as meaningful words and not just strings of sounds.
• It’s less frustrating for students to struggle with sounding out individual words, all following the same basic rule (or, in the case of mixed practice lists, several basic rules) than to deal with a string of words following numerous rules and the meaning of the sentence itself, too. Once students have mastered the words, dealing with them in sentences is not so hard.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many theories about teaching reading. I’m sharing my own experience and resulting conclusions, but you may have a completely different idea or experience. If it works for you, go for it.

Consistency

No matter what program or method you use, if you do not use it consistently, you can expect poor results. I’m amazed at how often people will insist they’re being consistent when they are not.

Brutal honesty with yourself is necessary in this area. To determine whether or not you’re being consistent, keep a written record of how often and how much you work on reading — and whether or not you’re following the program as directed or as you’ve intentionally and thoughtfully modified it for your circumstances.

Every skill requires practice. Your child will not become a good pianist or cellist or gymnast or artist — or reader — if he practices half-heartedly or only once or twice a week.

The good news is that once the basics of a skill are acquired, practicing becomes increasingly less painful and eventually enjoyable. If the basics are never adequately mastered, though, the skill will always be painful.

The beginning musician may find his music irritating to the ear and hard on the fingers or the lungs, but as he masters the basics and his sounds become smoother he begins to relish his abilities and the feel of ownership and mastery.

Give your child the gift of your consistency when you teach him or her to read.

Finally (you didn’t think there was going to be a finally, did you?)....

Your Anxiety is Their Anxiety

Maybe that’s all I need to say here. You’ve been there, no doubt, as we all have. Stressed children don’t learn well. Stressed parents don’t teach well. Stressed families don’t function well. Check out our article on Stress Busting.

Okay, just one more thing... Ben and Zach today...

Do they still read?

Ben works at a historical bookstore. He reads history, classic literature, literary criticism, politics, theology, philosophy and more. He writes a history column for his company newsletter and has written three novels (he’s working on publication), a slew of short stories, literary criticism and biography.

Zach is a supervisor at a large antique mall. He reads history, some fiction, anything to do with birds and horses, business, finance, management, and more. He takes notes as he reads and keeps a journal and detailed financial records.

Both Ben and Zach read the Wall Street Journal every day.