I’ve decided to throw my hat into the blogging ring. While the first post, ‘Read aloud to increse your child’s IQ’ may be old hat to you guys, do stop by as I would appreciate your comments and feedback.
http://catherinehallissey.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/read-aloud-to-increase-your-childs-iq/
(please excuse the long name - I’m waiting to link another domain name)
Very nice!
Looks good on the iPad too 
Seastar,
Great article on benefits of reading aloud.
Have you read ‘Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever’ by Mem Fox?
(Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Magic-Children-Change-Forever/dp/0156035103/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353664748&sr=1-1&keywords=reading+magic.) I was thinking of getting the book to see if she has anything significant or different to say from Jim Trelease. I have Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook, but since I love comparing the different opinions and insights of different authors, I was thinking of getting Mem Fox’s book too. Your thoughts?
Thanks for the support guys
nee - I haven’t read that book. It seems very interesting and it looks like it would be a quick an easy read. Maybe someone else on here has read it? Like you, I also like to read from a variety of sources. When I first started reading Glenn Doman’s books, I then read ‘Why Einstein Never Used Flashcards’, just to make sure I read something from the other side!
I have read it. I am not going to recommend it. TO be completely honest it’s very basic. I don’t think anyone on this forum ( unless they are very new to the forum) will gain much from it. It’s a book for those parents with no clue. lol it has been a few years since I read it though…I read it when my oldest was 2! lol
I have read Mem Fox’s book. I remember liking it way back when, but I think Jim Treleases’s book was far better. I read Mem’s book through my library. It was a short quick read basically saying that she read to her daughter a lot as a young child and her daughter learned to read on her own. At first she thought she memorized the book, but then realized that she really knew how to read. She advocates reading to your kids a lot. I think we are all on board here with that already. I did like What to Read When and also The Book Whisperer,
You might enjoy those. I read these also through my library.
Nice blog SeaStar. Thanks for sharing. No matter how much I know reading is good for my kids I still enjoy the subject.
Thanks.
Thanks Krista. Those books you linked look great - I’m always looking for more to read in the subject too.
Good article. I am relatively new to this early learning business and have been spending a lot of time looking at different resources. I love the reading 1000 books to your toddler challenge.
Thanks for the support audrachloe.
One of the brill parents on here started the reading challenge earlier in the year. Just in case you haven’t seen it, here’s the link:
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/2012-book-challenge/
I hadn’t seen the link. Thanks for posting it. I feel like I’ve learned so much in the past month or two, but I still can’t get enough information. Wanting to teach him has actually taught me and renewed my own interest in learning.
The article is so helpful and I learned something that I can use to teach my son!I might as well as buy the book on amazon!thank you so much
Saskia - I’m delighted you found it helpful. BTW you might be able to find that book in your local library.
Audrachloe - I feel the same way - teaching my kids has definitely renewed my interest in learning (and teaching)!
Seastar,
Question please. In your blog article on reading aloud (http://catherinehallissey.com/2012/11/22/read-aloud-to-increase-your-childs-iq/), you said something insightful here:
``I recently joined an online challenge to read 1000 books to my toddler in a year. Within a fortnight of beginning, I noticed a HUGE improvement in both her language skills and her interest in learning to read. ‘’
In other words, her language skills took off 2 weeks after you started the 1000 book challenge that someone started on this forum. My question is: what did you start to do differently when you started the challenge? I guess you must have been reading aloud prior to the challenge, but I also guess you started doing some things differently when you started the challenge.
What did you change or do differently when you started the challenge? Did you increase the number of books you read each day? From how many to what? Did you increase the number of hours you read aloud? From how many to what? Did you increase the complexity of books you read? Please share more details here. I asked because I’m trying to get my kid to talk more and enunciate better, and I thought your strategies might be very helpful to me.
Thank you for a response.
nee - I changed a number of things, but the biggest difference was that I greatly increased the number of books we read each day. Prior to this, we had been reading a minimum of 3 books a day (pretty low, I know!). Once we started the challenge, it was a minimum of 10, often up to 20. My husband and I are naturally pretty quiet so our house is definitely not filled with chatter. So, increasing read-aloud time went some way towards Hart & Risely’s quantity of words recommendation.
The next step was Hart & Risely’s quality of words quota. She loves for me to read the same books over and over (and over) again. And, if she likes a book, I tend to buy all the other books written by the same author. However, reading the same books by the same handful of authors was limiting the vocabulary she was being exposed to. By increasing the number of books, she heard a far greater variety of words.
The type of books also changed. As we have a very small library in our town, we quickly went through my first choices & I then had to take what we could get. The resulted in me reading a greater variety of books, many of which were beyond the level we had read up to that point. To counter balance this, I included some very easy books in every session.
The positive changes were dramatic for us. I know she may have been due a language burst anyway, but in my heart I feel it was down to the reading challenge.
Something I have found very useful for developing speech is to discuss our day. We call this “The Story of Today” - she is OBSESSED with it. Before going to sleep, I run through everything we did that day. I have been doing this for around 18 months. I really think it has helped develop her language skills as it ensures she has the words to describe her experiences. She also has an incredible episodic memory, which I feel is due, in large part, to this activity. We have expanded this to include “The Plan of Today”, where we discuss our schedule for the day - although I must admit that I often forget to do this.
I am also doing my best to talk, talk, talk, explaining everything I do, why I am doing it, and answering her endless questions as truthfully as I can.
Pretend play is another big one for us - we role play all day long. She likes to act out each of the classes we attend and we take turns being the teacher. She also likes to role play common activities, such as going to a cafe, going to the shop etc. A hugely positive effect of this is that she seems to be working through her fears - for example, we constantly have to act out going to the dentist. We went to a Halloween parade & she was terrified of a giant witch on stilts there. Well, this has been incorporated into her play almost daily, where she gets me to pretend I am saying ‘hello’ & shaking the witch’s hand. She hates putting her head under the water in swimming class. But this has improved dramatically since we have been acting it out as part of her play.
Anyway, I know this is all pretty basic stuff, but it has worked for us.
Seastar,
Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I greatly appreciate the detailed explanation. I’m implementing your strategies immediately! I’ll report back in a few weeks time to update you on our progress.
Please, if you remember other things you did to improve speech and vocabulary via read-alouds, I’ll be very happy to hear them. Thank you again for your detailed explanation above. I’m extremely grateful.
My pleasure! And please do report back - I love to hear how other people are getting on and it inspires me to do more.
BTW have you read the section on narration in The Well-Trained Mind? They promote narration as a way to develop the child’s understanding and story-telling skills. However, it also has an incredible impact on language skills. At a basic level, you simply ask questions as you read. Eventually, you ask the child to summarise the story by asking something like: “What was the story about?” They recommend the following questions to help the child hone in onthe book’s central theme: “What was the most exciting thing that happened in the book” or “Who was your favourite character?”, “What did your favourite character do?” Of great importance is that the child answers the questions in complete sentences. Well, inspired by the book, I have started to insist on complete sentences in all of her speech, with great success.
Two other things I forgot to mention in my last post: I talk a great deal about the illustrations in the books which really develops her understanding of the story, character’s emotions & motivations, and provides her with the langauge to describe the story. Also, around the time of starting the book challenge, I introduced audio books for car journeys. Initially, I was just using CDs of books we already own. However, after a week, her listening skills had developed enough to introduce new books. (PS - I’m part way through a blog post on audio books so hopefully I’ll have more to add then).
You have so much to share! You should write on your blog the things you wrote here, too. They are precious pieces of advice, you know? Thank you, and keep going! I’m a beginner-blogger too, learning from this big and great community
That’s a good idea, thanks andreasro. Have you had your blog for long?
Seastar,
It appears you were reading my mind. When I read the ‘Story of the Day’ idea you implement with your child at the end of the each day, I thought: ``that appears to be narration; here the child is narrating the events of the day rather than a storyline of a book’’. Thanks for sharing your experiences. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
Yes, I’ve read the Well Trained Mind ideas on narration. Have you read Charlotte Mason’s ideas on narration? I think her stuff is powerful too. Catherine Levison has written 2 primers on Charlotte Mason’s methods. One of her books is: `A Charlotte Mason Education’. I quote from the chapter titled ‘Narration’:
``Narration is assimilating information and retelling it. Anyone would listen closely if they knew they were going to retell what they had heard. Just like when you’ve seen a documentary and tell your friend all about it the next day, you will remember it better.QUOTE ENDS.Charlotte Mason uses an illustration of a doctor visiting a sick person in hospital. The patient is in extreme pain and the doctor has written a remedy on the card. He tells her this will alleviate the pain, however, he’s only going to let her look at the card for a few minutes. Then the card will be destroyed permanently, and he won’t be writing it for her ever again. Can you imagine the attention she would give to that card? This is the kind of attention Charlotte wants the child to pay to their reading. When they are retelling they have to leave some information out and that’s one of the choices being made by their minds. Charlotte says it is not a mere act of memory because we let their minds act on the material in their own original way. They will classify and connect information. Remember, you cannot narrate what you do not know. If you can narrate it, you know it.
Narration can be used in all school subjects and in all experiences. Charlotte says years later the child will be able to narrate the same passage with ``vividness, detail and accuracy of the first telling’’.
HOW TO: Read one single reading aloud, about 10 to 13 minutes for each book. It is very important to have children’s full attention during the reading; they’ll usually understand the sentence or paragraph anyway. Ask one of the listeners to tell you what you’ve just read. If they hesitate, ask them if they remember one thing of what you read. If they seem reluctant and I know they understood, I’ll usually make a joke like ``Oh, I see, well I guess it was about a pink rabbit who met an elephant.’’ This usually makes them laugh since this probably was not what Robin Hood or Gideon was doing in our story and they start telling you what it was about. Only let one child narrate per reading. You don’t correct them, but if another child points out an error that’s okay. Charlotte says not to interrupt a narration. Most kids narrate easily because we tend to do this as people – we relive events (or books) with others. Your child has probably told you all about some even he witnessed or every detail of a show he saw. This is the same thing. It’s casual and natural, which is why it differs from a book report. So, don’t make more of it than it is.
Narration is a very powerful learning tool. Charlotte Mason tell us (and she’s right) that perfect attention and absolute recollection is an asset to an employer, teacher and the nation. She says adults read and forget but her students
have the power of perfect recollection and just application because they have read with attention and concentration and have in every case reproduced what they read in narration’’. She also points out that many profession wish they could grasp the content on a single reading. For some children, it takes a little more practice. One child, whose test results showed he was behind one full grade level inlistening’’ on the IOWA Basic Skills test, is now narrating with a ``photographic memory’’.Children begin narration at six years old, and they do it orally. They tell, you listen. You may take dictation if you care to and file those as often as you desire. Don’t let it become a burden to you though. To prevent that I often take down the narration at the end of the book with only an occasional chapter narration. If I wrote out each oral narration they ever told me, I would not be doing much else. I know one mom who uses a tape recorder as a time saver and a way not to have to stop or slow down the child while she takes dictation. This could be useful with many children, but I would take the time to listen to them narrate in person as often as I could.
At ten years old they begin to write out their narration. This can be a long process. Give them all the time they need (I mean a year if needed) to make this transition. Henrietta Franklin wants us to be cautious not only to begin too early with written narration or nature notebooks. Accept their written work without undue concern for the punctuation, capitalisation, or the spelling. These
skills’’ will improve with practice and with the reading the child will be doing. I will, on occasion, point out in a lighthearted way one very important error such as the pronounI’’ not being capitalised. Keep in mind these narration are not done for the purpose of spotting errors.You see, the young child is being read to before he can read. He can be learning the Bible, history, and geography before he is six years old. Charlotte says a child of six has begun his education; it doesn’t matter that he learn to deal directly with books. That is why what you chose to read to them is so important. Charlotte wants them exposed to the best in literature, poetry, music, and art. She most definitely does not want them in what we called
dumbed-down’’ books. She calls literature written down to the child’s leveltwaddle’’. ‘’
Granted, Charlotte Mason recommended that narration starts at age 6, but I don’t see why it could not start earlier. For us EL parents, age recommendations are just that, they are meant to be ignored or adapted to our EL kids. Maybe if she was alive in the 21st century and knew all that we now about brain growth between ages 0-6, she would have changed her recommendations?
Anyway, I see her method of narration as a powerful way to improve expressive speech in toddlers and very young children. Further, I see it would greatly improve the habit of attention. If a child knew he/she would be asked to narrate after one reading, they might be more likely to pay rapt attention to what was being read.
BTW, you can find Charlotte Mason’s original 6 volumes FREE here http://www.amblesideonline.org/CM/toc.html website. They also have modern paraphrases of her 6 volumes still on the ambleside website here http://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/ModernEnglish.html.
Oh, Ambleside is currently preparing a topical series of her 6 volumes. Here is the page where all her quotes on narration have been compiled: http://www.amblesideonline.org/CMM/topicalnarration.html. That should give a quick preview on all she’s had to say on narration. Read that topical summary of narration (it’s in the modern English paraphrase). Let me know what you think.
Best,
Nee