Stages infant/toddler go through when learning whole words

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
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Kiwimum, that is a very interesting list of stages, and it is very similar to the way it was with us. And Mom2tiger, I completely agree with you that the debate regarding whole words versus phonics is just irrelevant. I have a theory that when children get exposed to whole words as infants (through YBCR, Brillkids, or other methods), they almost always figure out phonics on their own (in some cases in more than one language), so no need for special phonics program, just reading with some corrections when needed.

I just wanted to comment on the fact that there is a big difference between reading level and comprehension/interest level. One is helped by the other (i.e.if you don’t have to focus on the mechanics of reading, you can comprehend a lot more, and a lot faster), but still there is such a thing as a lack of context for a young child who reads books well above his grade level. Our 3 year old son can read at a 3rd-4th grade level, but he still prefers books with some pictures in them along with a lot of text, and is not really consistently interested in 3rd/4th grade type material (except science type books, because they tend to have engaging illustrations and a lot of ‘real life’ things we can talk about). This is why scholastic has a reading level scale, but also an interest scale.

Rivka at acceleratededucation.blogspot.com or http://tinyurl.com/giftedboy

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Rivka, my son is the same. I have been benchmarking his reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension. Last night he easily was reading at a 3rd grade level, 110 WPM with 96% accuracy, and he answered a myriad of comprehension questions and outlined the passages that he had read…
However… He would not read many books on a list for that reading level as they are mostly chapter books. A few of the easier ones we might buddy read. But frankly he prefers to hover around a 1st grade reading level with high quality picture books. He likes to read those independently. And that is just fine with me.
I do infrequently have him do some challenge reading, above his reding level. But at 3 I think he is doing just fine and he will get better with practice and age.

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Absolutely! At 3yo, there is still a bit of time to master the classics, LOL. We are so just so blessed with our children.

Rivka

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Reading a Book from Cover to Cover (part eight)

It is a special time for you and your child when your child first reads a book from cover to cover. As your child is near this milestone, I want to offer a few ways of helping your child to not only reach it, but to also read at a higher level. The goal while reading, from my perspective, is not simply to decode and comprehend. The goal is primarily to enjoy reading, to be capable of reading at fast speeds and to be able to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate what is being read.

By asking the right types of questions, these higher level thinking skills can be nurtured early in life. With babies, toddlers, or preschoolers who are reading books from cover to cover, parents can ask their young children questions about the books they have read to help build these higher level skills. (I have left out writing and talking from the goal above, but I recommend that you also engage your child in writing and speaking.)

Go to Libraries:

Before writing more about this milestone, I want to reiterate the importance of going to the library – sometimes with your child and sometimes without your child based on your schedule. Please check out hundreds of books a month. I am not exaggerating – please try it and let us know the changes that happen in your home and with your children.

Many libraries limit the number of books that patrons may check out. It may be necessary to go to two or three libraries in order to check out this number of books. I suggest having different bookcases for different libraries. As a full-time student who was working full-time, it had to have been a priority or I would not have done it so consistently for so long. As I sometimes mention in my talks – do the best you can and in no way am I trying to make any parent feel guilty. I believe there are more distractions now than there were 20 years ago and I think it is more difficult to turn off the television and much more difficult to ignore electronic distractions that happen while you are reading with your child. Having hundreds of library books in your home will make it much easier for your child to develop a love or reading, reading and vocabulary skills, thinking skills, as well as acquiring knowledge on many topics.

While it may initially sound like work, you may find that your home transforms into more of a fun learning and play center simply by having hundreds of new books each month. In our home, we were more likely to have the television off and read and do activities related to the books for hours because of all of the interesting books that we found. Many parents write to us about how much they enjoy this bonding time with their children when reading and discussing books on numerous topics.

Select Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Help Your Child Develop a Love of Learning:

Use books that your child has already memorized as an advantage:
• Ask your child to point to each word as he or she says them.
• Ask your child to find specific words on a page.
• Write down words from the book on paper or elsewhere.
Write down four of the most frequently used words from the book and see if your child can find them on word cards, on a whiteboard, or some other out-of-context location. If your child gets these correct, then write down more words and play a similar word game to see if she can read the words. If your child needs help learning more of the words in the book, add the words from the book onto word cards and help your child learn the words. Once you are convinced that your child has not only memorized the story, but also the written words in the story, then it is safe to say that your child is reading the book.

Find some books that are below your child’s current level of reading:
Reading a simple baby book that your child has not seen much is a great accomplishment. You could review some of the words that are in the book prior to your child reading it. Baby books are great for many babies, toddlers, and preschoolers because usually there aren’t too many words on the same page. Some babies and toddlers – even when they can phonetically read every single word individually – don’t like too many words on one page. I explained this in more detail in the “Reading Two- And Three-Word Phrases Milestone.”
Another advantage of your child reading these books is your child can begin reading independently. You can help your child gradually transition from reading books with a small number of words to books with more words.
You may be able to teach your baby or toddler to read these books silently by describing “silent reading” and modeling how to do it. I remember using words such as “look at the words without saying them” with my babies to describe silent reading.

Find books that match your child’s current level of reading:
• Introduce or review the most frequently used words in that book prior to reading it.
You can use the book you are reading for this or you can write the words down elsewhere. If you use the actual book, you may want to have a blank piece of paper to cover up the pictures and some of the other text. You could point to one word and ask what it says or you can point and say some of the words you think your child may have trouble reading.
• Read these books with your child and help as much as is needed.
Some pages may have too many words or too many unfamiliar words – help as much as is needed. Remember, one of the keys is that your child enjoy reading the books, so try to move at a fast pace and use the books to learn new words. Either your child is reading the words and you could point to the words or you can be reading the words and make sure that your child is looking at the words as you say them.

Find books that are just higher than your child’s current reading level:
There are many advantages to reading books with your child that are written at a higher level than your child’s current level. Many of these advantages have to do with learning new vocabulary, thinking skills, and a love of stories. If there are difficult sections of the book, your child’s task could be to point to the words while you are reading them. This would keep your child engaged on the print which is obviously critical for learning to read. You can get in the habit of letting your child read the last word of each sentence in these situations. Gradually, transition from you reading most of the book to your child reading most of the book.

• Take turns reading sentences or pages and help your child as much as is needed.
• Point to words from left-to-right as they are spoken when there are not too many words per page.
• Cover up a line or two with a sheet of paper, so your child only sees some of the words.
I think a really good method is for one person to point to the words, while the other person reads them. Try taking turns doing this. In other words, your child can point to words while you are reading them, then you can point to words when your child is reading, then switch roles. It is very important that your child is focused on the words while you are reading them in order to learn new words. The average 4- or 5-year-old only focuses on words for 5 seconds per book when the parent is reading to a child, so this is not the typical way that reading is done. It is, however, a fantastic way of teaching reading once your child has a base of a hundred words or more.

Find books that are significantly higher than your child’s current reading level:
Find the balance between ‘challenging’ and ‘too difficult’ when it comes to using these books to help teach reading skills. Some books will be read for the love or joy of stories without teaching reading. If the book is too difficult, then read it but don’t use the book for teaching the reading of individual words. Please use these books to help your child’s vocabulary and to encourage higher level thinking skills. By checking out hundreds of books from the library every month, there will be many books that keep your child’s interest that will be ideal for this. You want this to be a very enjoyable experience, so interact in a joyous, but also curious, manner. Read these books with your child and ask many questions, and based on your child’s answers probe deeper and ask additional questions.

Model These Behaviors:

• Read fluently – use inflection properly for questions and statements, pause at periods, etc.
• Use character voices and be animated when appropriate.
• Talk about the main ideas in the book or the moral of the story.
• Pay attention to punctuation and point it out to your child when needed.
• Read books silently. This will be important in order to excel at “fast reading” – the next milestone.
• Read in another language. This can help with learning advanced phonics skills as well as learning many other thinking and language skills.
• Summarize stories.
• Evaluate what you liked and didn’t like about the books.
• Compare and contrast books.
• Talk about the main ideas or the moral of the story.

Ask Questions:

• Ask questions to see if your child understands what was read.
If your child doesn’t understand the meanings of many of the words in a book, you can either describe them while you are reading the book or you could look up the meanings of some of the words before or after reading the book. Later, you may want to reread the book, if your child enjoyed it.
• Gradually make your questions more and more challenging. Wait for your child to answer. If your baby or toddler can’t verbalize much, then ask “yes” or “no” questions or multiple-choice types of questions.
• Ask your child to guess (or predict) what might happen next.
• Ask your child how the book is similar or different from other books.
• Ask your child how they would like stories to end before you are finished reading stories.
• Ask your child to summarize the book.
• Ask your child what he or she liked or disliked about the book.

Make your own books:
Make a list of words that your child can read. For many of you at this point, it could be many of the 166 words that are on the word cards plus some other words. Write a story using words primarily from this list. You can write a story by yourself to model how to do it or you can write a story together. You may want to write the stories on a whiteboard, on paper, using a laptop, or with something else. Once you are happy with your story, you can quickly turn it into a book either using folded paper, a photo album, or construction paper, etc. I remember making many simple books by using inexpensive photo albums I found at a closeout store. I printed the words for the book with a printer since my handwriting is not neat. I added photos or drawings to the book. You can print short phrases to go above or below the photos or you could put words on one page and the photo on the next. You could also make the book a lift-the-flap book by putting a flap over each image similar to the YBCR books. You or your child could even draw pictures for your books. Please don’t put too many words on the same page for your child to read the book if you want your child to read it independently.

You could make several books about your baby. For example, “Joshua Plays!” could show photos of the baby playing with blocks, toy cars, playing with words, playing with a favorite toy, playing a game matching words with objects, playing at the park, etc. Near each photo, you could write a very short phrase such as: “Joshua is playing!” “Joshua is playing with blocks.” “Now, Joshua is playing with a toy car.” You could also write stories about a typical day: “Joshua is sleeping.” “Joshua wakes up.” “Joshua is eating breakfast.” “Joshua is reading words.” and so on.

Encourage your child to write books:
This not only can motivate your child to read the books, but you can begin nurturing your child’s writing abilities. Your child may say the story aloud and you can write down the words as your child says them. You can read it back together and allow your child to revise it before making it more permanent.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and please continue to share your stories about your babies, toddlers, and preschoolers acquiring these reading milestones. Currently in the US, only a small percentage of children read at advanced levels. The studies are consistent that learning to read earlier has long-term advantages compared to learning to read later, so please know that by starting early you have already taken a really important step to help your children read at more advanced levels.

The next milestone is “Fast Reading.” It is a very important ability that is not typically addressed in traditional approaches to learning to read.

Dr. Bob Titzer

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@Korrale4kq:
Did I read your post correctly? Did you teach both boys to read fluently by 3, however, within two years (kindergarten age), they had ‘lost’ it all (my interpretation: it went dormant), and so they ‘started’ all over again in school, but then zoomed ahead of the others? … or were they ‘equal’ to the others? and if they ‘lost’ their reading skills, do you think this was because they had such little exposure to the written language??

great thread, btw. thanks to all who’ve contributed.

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They were emergent readers. They could read level one easy books.
Books that said the same type of sentences over and over with a lot of sight words.
I like blue cars. I like blue balloon. I like blue fruit.
That kind of reading.

Then for 2 years they went into a traditional daycare that did a little light academics. They would bring home a letter of the week worksheet. When I saw them at this point they could not read the simple books that they once read easily. But when they did go into K they flew up the reading ranks. They were at a second grade reading level by the end of K. They are now in 2nd grade and they can pretty much tackle anything they want to read, if they choose to do so. But they don’t read a lot. Mostly just the required school work reading, and maybe a few minutes before bed. Sometimes this is like pulling teeth though. They have a preference to non fiction and they read it well, with comprehension. They like to sit in the same room reading a book and tell each other random facts from the book that they are reading.
They have yet to read a chapter, or even chapter type book (think Frog and Toad).

As to your questions… Maybe they didn’t lose the ability, maybe it just became dormant for 2 years. I have no way to tell. It is quite possible that they would have learnt to read just as easily without any instruction also. Was it worth it to teach them? Definitely. We had many fun times snuggling up reading many books over the years. If they had kept reading between 3 and 5 would they be better readers now, would they love books more? Maybe, maybe not.

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Fast reading #9

By Dr. Bob Titzer

When a child’s natural speed for reading is fast, the child will have more time for other things in life. The benefits of reading at a very fast pace are enormous and potentially life-changing. Obviously, if your child reads at a faster pace, he will have more time to play or socialize while reading the same amount of material.

Your child’s speed of reading is very important and every decision related to this multi-sensory, interactive approach considered the child’s speed. The goal is for your child’s “natural” or default speed to be very fast. For example, the first baby to use Your Baby Can Read! (my daughter, Aleka) read all of the stories in her first grade literature book in under 20 minutes as I drove her home on the first day of school. When she was older, she could read many Harry Potter books in the same day. This allowed her to have extra time in her childhood that could be used for playing, relaxing, socializing, learning new hobbies, etc. because her natural speed is extremely fast. [Disclaimer: My daughters’ reading abilities are exceptional. This does not mean that your baby will end up reading at the same levels as them or other babies and toddlers in the videos/testimonials posted by parents on this website or any other website. The typical results of using Your Baby Can Read (YBCR) are that babies and toddlers who consistently use YBCR for at least 6 months learn to read some words and they learn vocabulary skills from using the program.]

I do not expect every baby to learn to read as quickly as my daughters. I would love to be able to be able to read at those speeds, but I can’t. Because I have been reading for so many decades it is probably more difficult for me to improve my reading speed at this point than it would be for a child who has just started reading books silently. It is still possible to improve your reading speed later in life, but it will likely require effort and focus over a long period of time.

My hypothesis is that it is easier to change a child’s speed of reading before she has been reading for several years at a slower “default” or “normal” speed. This means that parents need to be aware that there are positive and negative consequences when slowing down your child’s reading speed when she appears to skip over a word when reading aloud.

Reading quickly often leads to better reading comprehension while reading slowly is often linked to poor comprehension1. In addition, speed can increase with training in the early years2. It is possible to learn to read at fast speeds in the in the first several years of life according to a case study I did in the early 1990s3. While this is not evidence that reading quickly is likely when learning during infancy, at least we know that it is possible. Additional case studies indicate other children who learn to read during infancy also have been reported to read at fast speeds4.

I think it is important to know not only what is typical, but what is possible. The average adult reads at around 200-350 words per minute5,6,7,8 while reading silently. The speed depends in part on the difficulty of the text for the reader as well as how the text is presented (e.g., number of words or characters per line, number of lines per page, on a computer screen, whether the words are presented in way that requires faster reading, etc.). A speed of 300 words per minute would be a good estimate of the average adult’s speed while reading for pleasure. Some research indicates that there are people who read at 2000 words per minute with complete comprehension9. Of course there are reports of people reading much faster than that.

I mention these extremely fast speeds because I think many parents have a tendency to slow their children down too much without thinking about the future consequences this could have on speed. Your concern may be that your child skipped a word. While you don’t want your child to lose any comprehension while reading aloud, there are times when infants, toddlers, and preschoolers may read faster than they can talk and this can lead to occasionally skipping a word while reading aloud.

These activities helped my babies and many others develop natural, faster speeds while reading silently:

Once your child is reading complete books silently, encourage your child to read a little faster.

Get two copies of some books your child can read. Race your toddler to see who can read faster – you or your child. Explain that you are only going to look at the words (not the pictures) while playing this game. My daughters loved this game. Please make sure that it is always fun. The objective is to only look at the words and not the pictures. I would tell my babies that I was going to look at the words as fast as I could and that I would look at the pictures later. Find books that have about the right number of words per page for your child to enjoy this game.

Some children enjoy getting timed while reading a favorite book. You can log the times and encourage your child to develop a very fast, natural speed. Encourage your child in a joyful manner to go a little faster.

Continue playing the “fast words game” (included in the Deluxe Kit) with the word cards. The game is primarily for older babies, toddlers, and preschoolers who can read words, but it can also be used to teach new words. This is an important game to develop your child’s focus and speed of reading.

Show your child how to play by having one parent hold up word cards for the other parent (or any other experienced reader) to read. One parent should flip through about five cards (ten words because you will use the front and back) as quickly as possible while the other parent reads the words aloud. Once your child sees you in action, she or he will want to join in. Initially, only use words that you think your child is familiar with and remember to always have fun! Later, you can add more than five cards.

For added variety, you should go through the words forward and backward and flip some cards around to show the words on the back, so your child doesn’t memorize the order of the words. For example, if you use the double-sided cards in the YBCR Deluxe Kit you might use: hi/arms, clap/clapping, nose/mouth, wave/waving, dog/cats. Your order might be something such as:

hi, clap, nose, wave, dog, hi, clap, hi, clap, clapping, clap, clapping, nose, mouth, nose, wave, nose, wave, dog, cats, hi, cats, hi, arms, clapping, nose, wave, nose, mouth, nose, mouth, clapping, clap, mouth, nose, wave, waving, wave, waving, cats, etc.

Since you are going at an extremely fast pace, the above 40 words could take less than one minute. Have fun!

Evidence shows that fast readers pick up more information per fixation on text5 than average or slower readers, so I believe this information should be incorporated into approaches that are concerned about a child’s speed while reading. We do this primarily in the songs and poems in Your Baby Can Read!. Your CHILD Can Read! provides many opportunities to get longer sequences of text in one fixation at a fast pace.

Another way of allowing your child to learn to pick up more information per fixation is to play a game similar to the “fast words game” (in #4 above) except instead of using individual words use phrases or sentences such as “clap your hands” or “The toy train is red and black.” Flip through the cards and only show them to the experienced reader for a second or so while your child is watching. Right after the card is turned face down where the readers can’t see them, then the experienced reader should say the sentences. Adjust the speed so that you are showing them just barely long enough for the experienced reader to have time to read them, then stay at least that speed for your child. If your child gets them correct, try to either go a little faster or write slightly longer phrases or sentences.

I wrote a simple program that showed words for a fraction of a second as the words went across the screen from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom. We do this in Your CHILD Can Read!, especially in the last three DVDs.

Each step while learning to read with this multi-sensory interactive approach has considered speed. For example, I don’t suggest teaching the names of the letters of the alphabet to babies and toddlers who don’t know how to read is in part to avoid slowing down the child reading words. If your child is taught the names of the letters before reading at an automatic or fast pace, he may think about the names of some of the letters in the words for a short time instead of instantly and automatically thinking about what the words say.

The same is true with focusing on the sounds of the letters – if your child is saying the individual sounds instead of saying the words instantly your child may also be developing a pattern of reading slowly that could influence your child’s later reading speed. There aren’t studies comparing reading speeds of babies who used the YBCR approach with other children, so this is my hypothesis that is based on the information in this article as well as in the Scientific Rationale for Using Your Baby Can Read.

Read for enjoyment. Some evidence shows that reading extensively improves reading speed10. One factor to consider as it relates to babies, toddlers, and preschoolers is to find books where there are at least a few lines of print per page in order to gain important experiences that could transfer to reading books with only text. If the books only have one line of print per page they can be great for many other reasons, but they won’t give your child the experience of quickly going from left to right, then immediately going to the next line.

Please let us know if your child is reading at a fast, average, or slow pace after starting early in life. We love to hear from the parents who are teaching their young children and we especially love hearing from older children who learned to read during infancy.

Dr. Bob Titzer