If any of you are like me and can’t get enough of our little brill kids reading here is James.
A little back story…
James has had significant speech delays due to major regressions from being potentially on the the Autism Spectrum. At one point he was at least a year delayed. About 8 months ago I found that James would speak when he read words. And only when he read words. It is an oddity to me. And I have been told he is hyperlexic. But I personally don’t believe he is any more “hyperlexic” than any other precocious readers.
James is a sight/whole word reader. He knows all his phonics sounds including blends and digraphs. He can identify a word if I sound it out for him. But he as of yet can’t blend on his own without it being a major struggle that disrupts his fluency.
We will continue to do a segment of readbear daily, but I plan to take a phonics instruction break for a while. I do believe in a balanced approach.
On the flipside I have James read to me for at least 30 minutes a day (2x15 minute segments) from real books. He learns unfamiliar words rapidly with ease and his reading and spoken vocabulary is taking off because of it.
James’ most recent development has been his independent reading. He reads more rapidly than he can speak as you will notice as his finger flies over words, or he skips words. At the end you will notice that he stops to try and figure out the unfamiliar word ‘dirty’ about 2 words before he has read it aloud. I have noticed that he will run his finger under words and read in a tiny quick whisper the same way I do when I am speed reading. I don’t think he has ever seen me do this. I just think he figured out for himself it is faster.
I seems James is getting my hybrid Aussie/American accent too.
Ok… I will try and post the video. I hope it works. I want to see more videos of kids reading. So please post away.
Korrale4kq-
oh, I could just snatch him up for a cuddle! He is so adorable lol
And I love the way that he gives Mummy insistent prompts when he needs help with a word…his little finger taps rapidly underneath, saying "this one mum, I need help with THIS one!!!
He actually seems to make progress page to page!
And as far as the blend of accents, we are in the same boat! Daddy has a British accent, I have spent so much time abroad and with him that I have a strange blend, and now we live in Texas! Alex says things like 'toe-MAH-to, but has a strange Texas drawl to a few words that we have NO idea where it comes from! The water!!!
Haha yeah watah (water) is a big one that he says more Aussie like. One day he had an accident on the floor and he said in exasperation “oh James” with a full on Aussie accent. And one day we went golfing. As we were pulling away from the driving range I hear this little Aussie voice in the back of the truck say. “I had fun. Thank you mate!” I never say thank you mate. He must of gotten that from my skyping with my parents.
He got the little finger tap from me. When he would lose focus I would tap at the word to draw his attention back to it. Now he does it to ask what the word means. It is very effective and doesn’t hurt the momentum much at all.
I love watching your video of James reading. So cute. Ian is not quite at his level yet. He is just starting to read. But, I am super proud of him. :yes:
Ian is so awesome and adorable! He talks so well! Better ever than James does now. At 19 months James could only say “bah”.
He did so well sounding out sun. It was just like watching James. It is such a struggle to get one CVC word.
Mybabyian, did your son pick up letter sounds implicitly from Reading Bear (i.e., did he learn the letter sounds intuitively from Reading Bear )? Or did you use other resources to explicitly teach letter sounds? If you used other resources, what were they? I’m searching for a painless route to learning letter sounds and phonics.Thank you.
Here’s one of my 3rd child. We bought Little Reader about two weeks before this, before that we did YBCR and Meet the Sightwords with a little MonkiSee. I was excited to get these books so we dug into this one. His 2nd birthday was the next day, so technically he was still 1.
Thank you for your nice comments everyone. I am just so tickled that Ian can read. I normally sound out the words for him and then ask him what word it is as I read in DadeDude’s essay that he did it that way and it seemed to work for him, but I just wanted to get him on video doing it himself.
I have thought about the possibility of kids learning the sounds from readingbear too (if/when we have a second baby), but I decided it would be ideal if they know the sounds before they watch. It is an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes when I am in the kitchen and he is watching readingbear I can hear the presentation but I can’t see it. I actually sometimes guess what word they are sounding out and get it wrong!
Some letters sound very similar like “m” and “n” for example. When we listen to a person talk we also, without realizing it, watch their lips move and our brains interpret the auditory signals, the sound of their voices, and the visual signals, their lips moving, to understand what they are saying. Here is a very interesting video to show what I mean. http://youtu.be/gH5G2XCwAeU?t=52m12s
Seeing the letters I think has the same effect as watching someones lips move. This is why I sometimes guess wrong when I can’t see the letters. When I see the letters the sounds are easier to interpret. I imagine it would be the same for a young child. If they don’t know the letter sounds it is going to be that much harder for them.
Tamsyn, he is such a good reader! Ian is about to turn two in a few days so in your video Ian is almost exactly the same age. I love how you have your baby in your lap soaking it all in too.
It has been about 6 months since I have posted a reading update about James. He is now 39 months old. He is reading at a solid 1st grade level possibly lower 2nd grade. We don’t usually push the grade level unless the books is engaging and comprehensible for him.
He is still primarily a sight word reader. He is able to phonetically decode a little bit but he he is lazy about it.
He reads unfamiliar words mostly by context and chunking. Unless I make him sound them out.
It is pretty much impossible to get a video of James reading. But here he is reading a 4th grade level book about trains. It is very challenging for him and I don’t expect him to be close to fluent, as there are a lot of unfamiliar words. You can also see his 3 year old focus, or lack of it. But that is typical reading for us.
Sure. In the video James is reading the Story of Trains. It is an Usborne Young Reader level 2 book. It is very challenging but he loves trains and we are working through it slowly.
I will write a blog post about the books that James currently considers his favourites.
Ok. Blog post done roughly.
Korrale4kq-
I have been very occupied with the business of recovering, and have not been in the BK forum for way too long! I discovered that sweet James has grown and advanced so much in his reading! Please give him a huge hug and tell him well done, and one for Mummy as well
I LOVE his little glasses, he looks so adorable and professorial lol
I have been horrible about managing to capture much of anything on video in the last few months, but did manage to convince Alex to read a bit for the camera a month or so ago, so posting the link below. We buddy-read Charlotte’s Web, which managed to provide her with a plethora of new vocabulary words for her jar…this is what she is attempting to do in the video, hence the pen I finally confiscated because she gets more interested in underlining than reading lol
Thank you Kerri!
Alex is absolutely darling. So expressive. Her fluency is amazing.
James would balk if I told him to read a page with that many words. With help he could be capable. But, he gets so overwhelmed. That and he is still really attached to pictures.
I love how you underlined the words. I might need to do something similar. I will start writing unfamiliar words in a notebook for review.
