Every Waking Hour

Jen of Aquinas Academy Adventures asked about late readers here and also wrote a post about her visual-spatial learner which was very interesting. She writes:

After the last couple of months of trying to teach my 7 year old in a “normal” way (ie, like I teach my oldest), I am coming to realize how different he is from his brother. I’m fascinated by the “visual-spatial learner” concept, because he shares about 85% of those traits. I do believe that he is going to really benefit from an “unschoolish” approach.

I’m concerned, though, because at almost 7.5, (technically a 2nd grader, though his late July bday makes me think of him more as a 1st grader) he isn’t “getting” phonics, has lots of sight words but isn’t at all a fluent reader, and he doesn’t want to, (nor is able to) write (as in, handwriting) at all.

This certainly reminds me quite a bit of some of my sons and I thought I’d share some of our experiences here. Stephanie at Throwing Marshmallows wrote a good post about late readers and Cindy at Applestars wrote a follow-up . One point was that in past times, and even now in some countries, people have waited until 8 or older to start seriously teaching children to read. Raymond and Dorothy Moore have done research that seems to indicate that some children, often very bright ones, are not ready to read until later than six or seven.

My oldest learned to read in school, right on track, at age 6. His teacher told me then that children varied widely and legitimately in their reading progress — some could already read fluently by the time they hit first grade, others would still be hitting their stride in second, but by third grade it had generally evened out and you couldn’t really tell which had been the early readers. Now that I have homeschooled for so many years I think that for homeschoolers, the range is even wider. I have heard of 3 year old readers and children who finally became literate at 11 and 12 and still did fine and moved right into advanced literature. People who don’t understand homeschooling may think that a ten year old non-reader will miss a lot but it doesn’t seem to be true.I think that preserving a love of reading, as Cindy mentioned, is a key goal. My kids and I know so many teens who learned to read at school presumably “on track” but dislike reading and never do it by choice.

In my oldest’s case, learning to read was such a struggle for mastery that though he could read well, he didn’t enjoy it. That was one of the things that decided us on homeschooling. He had always loved books and had the highest comprehension scores in his 2nd grade class but would no longer pick up a book unless he had to. I spent the first part of his third grade just READING to him — good books — then gradually we started round robin reading — I’d read a chapter then read him a chapter. Finally he took off on his own. Though of course, I still read to him for many years to come; but the spark had been lit and he could do it on his own and enjoy it.
I taught my second and third children to read at the same time. Brendan was seven, and Clare was five and already trying to write little invented spelling stories. Some of the strategies I found myself using:

• A chart (I used a simple 100’s chart) — we put stickers on each lesson as we completed it, and I gave them a few M&Ms after every lesson as well. Rather schooly by our standards, but it seemed to provide a visual sense of our progress.
• Short Lessons. Old stand-by in our homeschool and probably one of my favorite Charlotte Mason methods. Go in, do the work and get out before the child starts phasing out. OK, it was my first introduction to teaching reading so I did push it a bit, but I always regretted it.
• Consistency. We tried to go for the same time and place every day. Even if I saw it wasn’t going to work (I was in my first trimester of pregnancy at the time and we had a lively toddler) we would still sit down, but cut the lesson short and do review.
• Review. Maybe “consolidation” is a better term. My learners didn’t need a whole lot of repeition but they do have lulls and cycles in their learning when they need confidence-building and some down time to rest on what they’ve already mastered.
• Very minimal writing to reinforce the phonics. VERY minimal. Just a letter or two done with utmost care worked better than a whole handwriting page.
• I mentioned it already, but I learned to expect lulls. A child who is understanding blends will suddenly have trouble sounding out “rat”. And if you don’t work with this, you will have tears and complete shut-down. This is not a discipline issue in itself, though it may exasperate the child into a discipline issue if you get into a locked-in struggle. Having lived through this, I was so charmed to discover it is a common trait of VS Learners, according to Jeffrey Freed.

Oh, and possibly more important than everything. Read good literature to the child. Literacy is so much more than “exploding the code“. Especially with a visual spatial learner: the child needs to have good experiences with the subject, to “observe” or have a time of input before he can be expected to produce. I know much of this is rather obvious but it is key in my opinion.