by Sarah Major, M.Ed
A decade ago when I was in graduate school, I could hardly contain my excitement when the time came for taking remedial reading courses. I just couldn’t wait to find the answers to questions that had plagued me about why seemingly bright children struggled to learn to read. Imagine my chagrin when I found that the classes were preparing me to test, to detect learning differences, to track reading rates, to classify text as to reading level… in short, to do everything but successfully teach reading to a non-reader.
Over the past ten years working with children in a variety of educational settings, I have learned about a whole array of classifications for disabilities. There are so many! The impression one could get is that children are getting more and more broken, and we are developing more and more detailed labels for describing them. What I have NOT seen, however, is more and more evolved solutions to accompany all this highly classified collection of labels. The SOLUTIONS are what have always interested me!
As homeschooling parents, you have the freedom to choose what and how you teach your children. And if your child continues to struggle with reading and other skills, it only makes sense to try something new, right? Following are some rules of thumb for teaching all children, but especially children with learning challenges.
1. Get rid of the unnecessary clutter. For instance, in teaching reading, you DON’T have to learn all the names of the letters first, nor do you have to memorize their related sounds, nor be able to put the letters in ABC order, etc. Those traditional steps, including sounding out, memorizing blends, etc., are SO familiar that we feel if we don’t teach them, we will fail our children. The best way to teach a child to read is to get to the point immediately! I can attest to the amount of clutter that exists in our teaching day. One really foreign concept to many adults is the fact that some children learn whole words more readily than they do the little pieces and parts of words.
2. Learn to distinguish between effective lessons and busy work. Much of what filled our day in the classroom (yes, when I was teaching) was busy work with minimal gains made by the child. You can tell which activities fall into this category because the child is simply not enjoying it and is not engaged. For instance, copying anything without engaging your brain is absolutely a waste of time. It will make the child’s hand tired and will put the brain to sleep. Try it yourself. Put on a TV program that interests you a whole lot, and then sit down and copy a whole page out of the dictionary while you watch the program. Did you get much out of the copying? Any activity that is effective and useful and that will engage the child is going to be one in which he has to figure something out, has to invent something, has to think! If he is engaged, he is learning!
3. Use images everywhere you can. Images are magical for many, many children who don’t memorize well. Try it for yourself. Ask someone to do you a favor. Have them drive to a street not too far from you and snap a picture of something distinctive such as an interesting house, or a weird building, or anything that is out of the ordinary. Then have them come back to you and first describe verbally, orally, what they saw. When they have finished, have them show you the picture they took of that very interesting object. Which is most effective at getting across the reality of the object? The oral description or the photo?
4. Use a body motion to help remember. When I have trouble remembering a phone number (which is always), I know to “dial it” on a key pad. While I am doing that, I notice the shape of what I dialed and I also am storing up that visual pattern in the muscles of my body. Every child who is good with some physical activity is going to benefit from a physical movement to accompany learning. And I don’t just mean bouncing; I mean a movement that reflects what they are learning. When counting by two’s, for instance, have them march in a line but lean over heavily on each even number. Their bodies will remember the even numbers as they hear their mouths say the even numbers at the same time.
5. Relate the learning to a real-life experience. When learning to tell time or count money, do it throughout the day, not at a desk with pencil and paper. Measurement is best learned when the child is creating something very interesting to him.
6. Have the child figure out some things for himself. With any science lesson, the more hands-on and real the lessons, the better. Anything a child can just cut out and paste is marginal at best. It might just be time fillers. Anything a child investigates and then makes or writes or puts into action (that he has to figure out) is going to be valuable.
7. Find patterns and likenesses in all you teach because that is what the brain loves. There is beauty in patterns, and nature is full of them. Music is made of patterns; math is as well. I have seen a child come to life when he or she saw the patterns in learning. Unrelated details are hard to do anything with.
8. Don’t just tell; SHOW. I would love to have a nickel for every time I’ve heard a teacher complain, “I already told you that more than once.” Hmmm. Could it be that telling is not effective? Show them. Show them examples; show them how you do it (modeling); show them what a good outcome is. Remember, “Don’t tell me… show me!”
9. Keep lessons as short as you can. Stop the minute the child is tired or restless. Of course I don’t mean ten minutes into the school day! I mean, however, that when your child begins to wiggle or be restless, check the activity or lesson you are doing for interest level. If you can inject some mystery into it, some novelty, by all means do it! But if you follow step one and get rid of the clutter and stick to the meat and potatoes of school work, you might just find that your daily work, the meaningful part, can be accomplished in a couple of hours in the day or three.
10. Don’t, please don’t, keep on doing what you see doesn’t work. What the child needs is not more drill, but a radically different approach. Remember, we are going to abandon the notion that the child is broken! We need to change up what we are doing when the child at first doesn’t respond.
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
A decade ago when I was in graduate school, I could hardly contain my excitement when the time came for taking remedial reading courses. I just couldn’t wait to find the answers to questions that had plagued me about why seemingly bright children struggled to learn to read. Imagine my chagrin when I found that the classes were preparing me to test, to detect learning differences, to track reading rates, to classify text as to reading level… in short, to do everything but successfully teach reading to a non-reader.
Over the past ten years working with children in a variety of educational settings, I have learned about a whole array of classifications for disabilities. There are so many! The impression one could get is that children are getting more and more broken, and we are developing more and more detailed labels for describing them. What I have NOT seen, however, is more and more evolved solutions to accompany all this highly classified collection of labels. The SOLUTIONS are what have always interested me!
As homeschooling parents, you have the freedom to choose what and how you teach your children. And if your child continues to struggle with reading and other skills, it only makes sense to try something new, right? Following are some rules of thumb for teaching all children, but especially children with learning challenges.
1. Get rid of the unnecessary clutter. For instance, in teaching reading, you DON’T have to learn all the names of the letters first, nor do you have to memorize their related sounds, nor be able to put the letters in ABC order, etc. Those traditional steps, including sounding out, memorizing blends, etc., are SO familiar that we feel if we don’t teach them, we will fail our children. The best way to teach a child to read is to get to the point immediately! I can attest to the amount of clutter that exists in our teaching day. One really foreign concept to many adults is the fact that some children learn whole words more readily than they do the little pieces and parts of words.
2. Learn to distinguish between effective lessons and busy work. Much of what filled our day in the classroom (yes, when I was teaching) was busy work with minimal gains made by the child. You can tell which activities fall into this category because the child is simply not enjoying it and is not engaged. For instance, copying anything without engaging your brain is absolutely a waste of time. It will make the child’s hand tired and will put the brain to sleep. Try it yourself. Put on a TV program that interests you a whole lot, and then sit down and copy a whole page out of the dictionary while you watch the program. Did you get much out of the copying? Any activity that is effective and useful and that will engage the child is going to be one in which he has to figure something out, has to invent something, has to think! If he is engaged, he is learning!
3. Use images everywhere you can. Images are magical for many, many children who don’t memorize well. Try it for yourself. Ask someone to do you a favor. Have them drive to a street not too far from you and snap a picture of something distinctive such as an interesting house, or a weird building, or anything that is out of the ordinary. Then have them come back to you and first describe verbally, orally, what they saw. When they have finished, have them show you the picture they took of that very interesting object. Which is most effective at getting across the reality of the object? The oral description or the photo?
4. Use a body motion to help remember. When I have trouble remembering a phone number (which is always), I know to “dial it” on a key pad. While I am doing that, I notice the shape of what I dialed and I also am storing up that visual pattern in the muscles of my body. Every child who is good with some physical activity is going to benefit from a physical movement to accompany learning. And I don’t just mean bouncing; I mean a movement that reflects what they are learning. When counting by two’s, for instance, have them march in a line but lean over heavily on each even number. Their bodies will remember the even numbers as they hear their mouths say the even numbers at the same time.
5. Relate the learning to a real-life experience. When learning to tell time or count money, do it throughout the day, not at a desk with pencil and paper. Measurement is best learned when the child is creating something very interesting to him.
6. Have the child figure out some things for himself. With any science lesson, the more hands-on and real the lessons, the better. Anything a child can just cut out and paste is marginal at best. It might just be time fillers. Anything a child investigates and then makes or writes or puts into action (that he has to figure out) is going to be valuable.
7. Find patterns and likenesses in all you teach because that is what the brain loves. There is beauty in patterns, and nature is full of them. Music is made of patterns; math is as well. I have seen a child come to life when he or she saw the patterns in learning. Unrelated details are hard to do anything with.
8. Don’t just tell; SHOW. I would love to have a nickel for every time I’ve heard a teacher complain, “I already told you that more than once.” Hmmm. Could it be that telling is not effective? Show them. Show them examples; show them how you do it (modeling); show them what a good outcome is. Remember, “Don’t tell me… show me!”
9. Keep lessons as short as you can. Stop the minute the child is tired or restless. Of course I don’t mean ten minutes into the school day! I mean, however, that when your child begins to wiggle or be restless, check the activity or lesson you are doing for interest level. If you can inject some mystery into it, some novelty, by all means do it! But if you follow step one and get rid of the clutter and stick to the meat and potatoes of school work, you might just find that your daily work, the meaningful part, can be accomplished in a couple of hours in the day or three.
10. Don’t, please don’t, keep on doing what you see doesn’t work. What the child needs is not more drill, but a radically different approach. Remember, we are going to abandon the notion that the child is broken! We need to change up what we are doing when the child at first doesn’t respond.
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
