Need some help in an unschooling frump. - Page 2

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

Most moms would happily spend an hour a day teaching reading to a receptive child. So how about sitting with him for an hour a day while he plays video games, reading out the stuff he's struggling with? Take up knitting or cross-stitching, or read your own novel, or do sudokus or something if you don't want to follow every moment of game-play, but be there as his "reader." Give him the prompts he needs, read the text aloud when he asks. Help him connect words on-screen with meaning in his game play. Don't be all teachy about it unless he seems to want that. Just read aloud what he asks you to do. Chances are he'll ask for less and less help as he begins recognizing the words you've read frequently to him.

Early reading programs for later readers rely on three components: text that is meaningful to the learner, a format that is motivating to him, and text that has a tendency to be repetitive. Video game text gets three for three on this count, I would say. 

Miranda

ITA!  I used to sit with ds so much when he was using the computer.  I'd sit and knit while he played his Nintendo DS on the couch.  Or I'd just come and read whenever he asked without giving him any sort of hard time (other than saying "when I finish this" if I was in the middle of something).  He gradually asked me for help less and less.  Sometimes he wanted me to read something when he thought he knew but just wanted to be sure.  Any kind of "sound it out" or overt teaching efforts totally shut him down.  It actually increased his frustration level because in addition to not knowing something, I was being a PIA instead of helping him.  It's always worked well with him to just answer his question without trying to lead him to figuring out the right answer by asking him a series of questions (that always annoyed me as a kid, too).  Most of the time, he had an idea of the answer.  It isn't as if he was sitting there asking me questions without a thought in his mind.  Keeping him at the point where he was willing to ask me questions was very important.  For a while, dh tried to lead him to answers rather than just answering his questions.  Ds just stopped asking him.  Not a good thing.  I had to explain a bit to dh how ds worked;-)

Because I was in the habit, I'd read something aloud that was on the screen.  Eventually, ds started shutting me down, saying "I can read, you know!"  Beautiful words:-)  I remember when he was younger (7ish) and he'd state he couldn't read.  That was something grown ups did.  Then (8ish) he started saying "WHEN I can read."  That was also a beautiful thing, a real leap, even though he still couldn't read, lol.

[Yummymummy74]

Originally Posted by SweetSilver 

I want to second the graphic novels.  Word bubbles and lots of pictures were *the* kickstart to my daughter's motivation to read.  Comics collections, especially Garfield.  I've written before about her saying the sounds while I read some of the longer text.  Same for the GNs--I would read the narration and she would read the word bubbles.  Catalogs, too, but she reads them to find out how much the toys are.  She used to love secret code puzzles, especially if the answer was a joke.
 

Great idea! you totally jogged my memory when I was a kid my fave comics were those Archie comic books.. I used to read tons and tons of those! 

I'm absolutely going to find him some comics asap.

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

Most moms would happily spend an hour a day teaching reading to a receptive child. So how about sitting with him for an hour a day while he plays video games, reading out the stuff he's struggling with? Take up knitting or cross-stitching, or read your own novel, or do sudokus or something if you don't want to follow every moment of game-play, but be there as his "reader." Give him the prompts he needs, read the text aloud when he asks. Help him connect words on-screen with meaning in his game play. Don't be all teachy about it unless he seems to want that. Just read aloud what he asks you to do. Chances are he'll ask for less and less help as he begins recognizing the words you've read frequently to him.

Early reading programs for later readers rely on three components: text that is meaningful to the learner, a format that is motivating to him, and text that has a tendency to be repetitive. Video game text gets three for three on this count, I would say. 

Miranda

Yes great idea as well.. I do read it to him and I like the suggestions about the magazines as well (just need to make sure its age appropriate stuff) when I was a kid we had something called OWL magazine or something like that I should look and see if they still produce it or check the library for some copies!

 

[MissBright]

edited away! Can't figure out how to delete. :/ 

:)

Edited by MissBright - 11/26/11 at 2:16pm

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by MissBright 

For you folks, who don't want structure, I'd just be seeing if I could find out what issues or reasons are causing them to not want to or be willing to read. It's a tremendous loss of possibilities for a person if they can't read in our world. I'm sad that some of you seem to accept it, actually, though I'm trying to understand. I don't mean that critically. I am very open-minded, and know kids who were unschooled and are marvelous people doing well. They do all read though. So I'm thinking about this new issue I've just learned of.

Um, I think there was only one person here who has an adult non-reader despite being in school and having his learning disability addressed.  Most of us are talking about 9 and 10 yos who are far from done deals.  I'm quite confident my own will enjoy reading more when he older.  He is already proficient enough to do well in this world despite only knowing a couple of dozen sight words at age 8..  Unschooling isn't about accepting not learning to read, it's about being aware that children grow and learn at different rates and there isn't a need for literacy to happen at a specific age.  As for those who don't master reading despite efforts to have their difficulties addressed, I can see no better approach than to embrace their strengths.  There is more to life than reading well.  Think of all the time people "waste" reading when they could be making things, fixing things, or otherwise contributing to society;-) 

[MissBright]

Originally Posted by 4evermom 

Um, I think there was only one person here who has an adult non-reader despite being in school and having his learning disability addressed.  Most of us are talking about 9 and 10 yos who are far from done deals.  I'm quite confident my own will enjoy reading more when he older.  He is already proficient enough to do well in this world despite only knowing a couple of dozen sight words at age 8..  Unschooling isn't about accepting not learning to read, it's about being aware that children grow and learn at different rates and there isn't a need for literacy to happen at a specific age.  As for those who don't master reading despite efforts to have their difficulties addressed, I can see no better approach than to embrace their strengths.  There is more to life than reading well.  Think of all the time people "waste" reading when they could be making things, fixing things, or otherwise contributing to society;-) 

Sorry I misunderstood. Since I agree with everything you say, and it matches my own beliefs, I think I misunderstood or worded my reply poorly. My apologies. :) 

[4evermom]

Sometimes disagreements here seem to be more about semantics than actually disagreeing:-)

[MissBright]

I suspect that's the norm in most forums, no matter what the topic!

We're thinking, we're talking with our fingers, we hit send...and--oops! ;)

[Snugglebunnymama]

Originally Posted by 4evermom 

Um, I think there was only one person here who has an adult non-reader despite being in school and having his learning disability addressed.  Most of us are talking about 9 and 10 yos who are far from done deals.  I'm quite confident my own will enjoy reading more when he older.  He is already proficient enough to do well in this world despite only knowing a couple of dozen sight words at age 8..  Unschooling isn't about accepting not learning to read, it's about being aware that children grow and learn at different rates and there isn't a need for literacy to happen at a specific age.  As for those who don't master reading despite efforts to have their difficulties addressed, I can see no better approach than to embrace their strengths.  There is more to life than reading well.  Think of all the time people "waste" reading when they could be making things, fixing things, or otherwise contributing to society;-) 

Completely agreeing here. Unschooling isn't about just turning out illiterate kids who can't add to save their lives. 

It's about letting kids live their lives and learn freely. It's about not *forcing* our children to learn things that we as adults know are unnecessary. It's about refusing to drill useless facts into our kids' minds all in the name of "keeping them on grade level." 

We all understand and appreciate the need to be able to 1) read proficiently 2) add, subtract, multiply and divide, and 3) write well. No argument there. 

The challenge comes in when we start talking about what it is a kid "must" do in order to achieve 1-3 above. As long as kids have the ability to do 1-3 above by the time they are of adult age, we don't need to worry needlessly. I'm assuming you've probably seen the show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" While I appreciate the show for its humor, the problem with the entire premise of the show is that it relies on an adult's ability to remember USELESS facts (for the most part; some are useful, like knowing which continent China is on...). That is the measure of "who is smarter" in that show. If an adult cannot pinpoint the direct object in "John will walk his dog on Tuesday," that adult is considered not smarter than a 5th grader. Really??  Yes, because we all know just how important diagramming sentences is in the real world... 

The point here is above: unschoolers believe that our children will learn what they need to learn WHEN they need to learn it, when it has meaning to them. We don't buy into the assumption that one's life is over or doomed if they don't start reading proficiently until middle school or don't start algebra until they are 19 years old. Life is not OVER, and we adults can attest to that fact. 

I've gotta run, but I also wanted to point out that seeing people in my graduating class (1998) several years later (thanks to Facebook, lol) has been a huuuuuuuuuge eye-opener for me.  It's been incredibly interesting to see where the people I remember as being super studious, highly competitive (academically), obsessed with which college they were going to and that college's rankig, etc...................are in their lives, 13 (even 10) years later. VERY telling. 

[sonuptosondown]

I agree with littering his seating areas, the car, wherever with any magazines or catalogs he might be interested in leafing through.  Especially now, if he wants to make a Christmas list.  My ds took off with reading at about 9.5 years old.  He is 10.5 now.  I read everything to him up until then.  I remember one DS game he played called Hardy Boys Treasure on the Tracks (I think that was it) and he needed to read the dialogue.  He asked me every day to sit there and read it all to him as he played.  It was mostly enjoyable for me--unfortunately too much reading to be able to knit through:)  I didn't ask him to sound anything out, just read whatever he asked.  I'm not sure I realized how much that may have helped him learn until I saw that suggestion in this thread!  Go me!

Spongbob Squarepants comic books, Lego catalogs, National Geographic Kids magazine were all things he would pick up and look at.  They have short factoids, stories, descriptions that seemed to appeal to him.  He'd ask his younger brother (who seemed to magically start reading at age 5) to read words he didn't know.  Oh, another good book was Guiness Book of World Records!  He would sit and work at reading that for longer than I'd ever seen him try before. And the new one is in the stores now.  I think the SHORT blurbs in all these above things gave the right balance for difficulty and content for a 9 year old.  One trying aspect of a late reader was finding things that weren't too babyish.  He wasn't interested in Magic Tree House anymore, but he couldn't both decode and understand Harry Potter at the same time.

I really was amazed when ds did finally start reading, and quickly was reading long books like Percy Jackson.  It was very frustrating and embarrassing (for me) for a long long while when everyone around us assumed he could read at his age!  All I had to go on was the reading I had done like Better Late than Early.  Most people do not understand at all that late readers are not unusual and that pushing before the child is ready can make things worse, depending on the kid.

Sorry for type-o's and grammatical errors.  I used to be smarter...