Once again, this chapter made more sense to me than the first two that we read in this book. While I appreciate all of the debate about phonics versus whole language, I agree with Jamie that there needs to be a balance between them to be used in the classroom. What I found more interesting were in the first few pages of the chapter.
I love the first sentence of this chapter: “One of the more fascinating things about children is their ability to grasp complex linguistic relations without much effort, simply by experiencing them.” For years, I have thought this to be true. I was the “crazy lady” in the grocery store, talking to my 3-month old baby, saying things like “Hmm, should we get purple potatoes today or red potatoes?” I was looked at as crazy, because who talks to a baby like that?! But, I had read, somewhere among all the stuff you read when you are having your first child, that it is good to talk to your baby as you would anyone else, and not to always use baby talk. It is also why I always try to talk to my 2-year old nephew like he’s a real person, and not just a little kid. Yes, we talk about trucks and colors, but I don’t use baby talk with him. Baby talk doesn’t give kids the complex linguistic relations that they need to use by the time they are in school. I have never said, “Awww, is Wyan a widdle tired?” No, I would say, “Ryan, are you tired?” I hate when people don’t treat kids like people, and don’t talk with them like they would talk to a friend. Even simple sentences (I hungry.) start them on the path to understanding how language is used, better than baby talk. Williams has re-confirmed my thoughts on this. Yeah, one thing I did right as a mom! ;)
The point made early on about pre-writing scribbles also applies to our house. We worship trees, Crayola, and recycling in our home. Why? Because we could fill the entire house from top to bottom (probably within two months) with all of the paper used to make drawings and to practice writing here. It is hard to count how much paper is used here. And my refrigerator is always messy-looking because we have so many “notes” and “lists” taped to it. And I’m only talking about how much is used by my five-year old! She goes through so much paper, we joke that everyone should buy her a forest for birthdays, because she’ll need to replace how much she uses in paper. She knows the value of recycling all of her paper too, so that we do save some trees. It’s hard to get mad at this though because even when the notes are illegible, she is experiencing writing, and she is experiencing creating things to be read. She recognizes that there are a variety of things that we read: books, magazines, grocery lists, calendars, ticket stubs, programs for concerts, dog collars, etc. She gives me a new thing every day. My recent favorite is my backstage pass to get into her room, because she’s a famous rock star. It has my name written on it, with a picture of me, a picture of her, and “Backstage Pass” written as a border. Almost everything she does now includes some kind of writing, even if it is writing her name on the back of a drawing. She writes, writes, writes, which means she reads, reads, reads. She is now into making her own books, and what she can’t spell out, she is writing by sounding out or drawing pictures. She knows how a story should be told. She wouldn’t know this if she wasn’t allowed to write, and she wouldn’t know this if she wasn’t read to constantly. She uses a combination of phonics and whole language, I think, and whatever she’s doing seems to be working.
In her kindergarten class, they seem to do a combination of both. They use Kid Writing every day. It is a process where they draw a picture, then write a sentence or two about their picture. They have certain words (the, an, and) that they are now expected to know how to spell and write correctly, and other words they sound out to the best of their ability. Last week she wrote, “My frend Rachl and I are holding hands.” She has used phonics to get the sounds in the words friend and Rachel, and uses the whole language approach that de-emphasizes correct spelling in order to keep the process engaging and less frustrating. She also figures out how to write new words by using other words that she does know how to spell as starting points (I know how to spell book, which rhymes with look, so I think I need to change a few letters from book to make look.).
Finally, the statement on page 153: “children do not learn by instruction; they learn by example, and they learn by making sense of what are essentially meaningful situations.” This is also true here in my own house. I have said before, my kids learned how to read early on. Books are a big part of our family life. My kids are both drawn to books with lots of words too, which makes it imperative that we read them together to learn all of the words. But, the best compliment I got about my kids came last year when my youngest was in preschool. She wanted desperately to read a book to her teacher, so we arranged for her to come in 10 minutes earlier than everyone else so she could do this without interruption. The teacher thought that she was about to hear a simple, pre-level 1 reader, one that has simple 3-8 word sentences. Imagine her surprise when we walked in with a level 3 reader, which my daughter read well. The teacher, after getting over her initial shock, turned to me and said, “Wow! Not only did she read the words, but she had all of the right inflection and intonation. How does she know how to do all of this?” My answer was, “Audio Books.” I have been using audio books with my kids for years now. At naptime, they would fall asleep listening to books being read. I feel that the audio books gave the kids an example of how to read. It was another example beyond my own reading aloud to them that helped them learn about language and about reading and writing. Children’s books are full of meaningful situations that kids can relate to, so giving them examples of how to read about them and how to write about them early on has allowed my kids to grasp that knowledge.
To me, reading and writing all comes down to practice. The more the students practice reading, the more they hear some reading aloud, the more they practice meaningful writing, the more they will grasp the tools necessary for reading and writing in our culture. Our examples need to be varied, balanced, and meaningful and we must try lots of different ways to get students to enjoy reading, enjoy writing, and then they will want to get better and better.
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