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You will teach the ten words in this order:
- I, jump, run, can, and, you, we, up, down, fast
This is how you will teach the words:
The directions given are at the most basic level for a very young child or a child with developmental delays or serious learning disabilities of one sort or another. Feel free to speed them up, shorten some steps, or even skip some if you find your child is a "natural" for this method and learns them very quickly. Some parents will find the entire exercise easily mastered in one session, while others will be happy to achieve success in several sessions. (Hint: "Special needs" students of primary age, 6 - 8 years, can generally master about one word per day, or five per week. At that rate, one would expect about two weeks time to be necessary to master these words, providing practice each day.)
1. First (very important!), tell the child the word you will teach him. Do NOT show the child the pictograph first! (If he guesses what the word is and he is wrong, he must first unlearn his incorrect impression before he can go on to learn the word correctly, and this often is time consuming.)
Say something like this: "This word says 'I' and when I say something about myself, I usually use the word 'I' instead of my name, 'I.'" (If the child is very young, or developmentally delayed, you may wish to paste a tiny picture of his face at the top of the capital letter, making a pictograph person out of it to help him recall that it stands for him when he is talking.)
2. Give him several examples for each word, to give him a "mental set." Personalize them so he can relate. For example: "I am going to teach you the word 'jump.' I know you like to jump. You can jump over a castle made of blocks. You can jump over a puddle.
Let him give some examples, too.) Best of all, I think you like to jump into the water when it is hot outside! (Show the pictograph.) See, in this word, 'p' jumps into the water on a hot summer day!"
3. Immediately show the child the usefulness of learning the words. "Now we can make a sentence that tells a little story: I jump. Find the word that says 'I.' Put it here. Now put the word that says 'jump' right after it. Now we can read the little story: I jump!" (Encourage him to read it, too, pointing to the words as he says them.)
4. Two words may be all the child can master at one time. If you think your child can do more, repeat the teaching process with "run," "can," and "and."
By adding these three words, several sentence "stories" are possible:
- I run.
I jump.
I can run.
I can jump.
I can run and jump.
I can jump and run.
5. You want the child to be able to recognize the words without the picture clues as soon as he is able. When he reliably recognizes the words with the pictures, show him the plain side of the card and tell him that it is the same word, without the picture, which is the way the word will look in books and newspapers. Ask him if he can remember what the picture looked like -- the one that helps him remember the word. If he cannot tell you (in his own words), show him the picture side again, as a prompt, AND repeat the sentence cue to set the memory more firmly. (Always show the pictograph quickly as a prompt, when your child cannot recall a word! Don’t let him guess wrongly or he may internalize the wrong response.)
6. Spread the words you have taught out on the table. Have him point to the words as you say each of them: "Find 'jump.' Now find 'run.'" etc. (Recognition is the first level of learning.) When he can do that without error, mix them up and you point to the words as he reads each. (Now you are asking for recall, which is more difficult.) When he seems confident, tell him you will turn the cards over so he can read the words without the pictures, just as he will when he reads real books. Ask him to choose which one to turn each time, so he can let you know which words he is most confident of having learned. Incorporate little games you invent together, to make it more fun, if you wish.
7. When he can read the words without the pictures, you can ask him to make sentences: "Now, let's use the words to make some little story sentences. See if you can find the words that make the sentence, 'I can run.'" Have him arrange the cards in left to right order and then read the sentence he has assembled. Vary the sentences to give plenty of practice. You may then wish to write the sentences on a paper for him and have him draw illustrations for them. He will enjoy reading them to relatives and friends, to show how he is learning to read, and they will provide good review opportunities, to keep the words firmly set in his memory.
8. When you next have a teaching session, first review the words learned earlier. Go through the flashcards with the picture sides first, then without. Do some practice with any words he may have forgotten.
9. Next, teach "you" and "we," using the methods already described. At this point, your sentences also include the following and the number of sentences possible is already 24:
- You run.
We run.
You and I run.
You jump.
We jump.
You and I jump.
You can run.
We can run.
You and I can run.
You can jump.
We can jump.
You and I can jump.
You can run and jump.
We can run and jump.
You can jump and run.
We can jump and run.
You and I can jump and run.
You and I can run and jump.
[note: print out two copies of “and”]
When you also have added "up" and "down" and "fast," you can see that the number of possibilities explodes into literally dozens of possible permutations. Having learned just TEN of these important words (4.5 percent of the Dolch Sight Words), and already able to read many sentences that each tell a short story, the child begins to feel that he can become a competent reader, and he really CAN, for these important words make up a large portion of the reading vocabulary he must master on the way to full literacy, the matrix of all the stories and other reading material that any of us reads!
10. Most importantly, you will be teaching reading for meaning ("reading comprehension") right from the very beginning!! There will be no struggling with sound-by-sound, letter-by-letter decoding of every word in every sentence! A child who must decode every single word by that laborious means often loses sight of what he is reading about by the third or fourth word, and can only hope to make it to the period at the end of the sentence. Usually, by that time, he has little or no concept of what he has read, and just as little interest! Worst of all, it is impossible to "sound out" many of the words encountered, which further demoralizes the beginning reader! He feels betrayed when he has been told repeatedly to "sound out" the words, and he encounters words such as one, once, the, could, was, two, were, and where, etc., in every sentence he reads!
(Note: Children who have been taught to attack unknown words using sound-by-sound decoding strategies often persist for a time in trying to phonetically decode when they first are introduced to "Picture Me Reading!" flash cards. Do not judge the effectiveness of the method as lacking, if this occurs! A child who has been struggling unsuccessfully with phonics often requires several exposures to this technique before he really believes that it is "okay" to not sound the words out, and that he has "permission" to simply commit them to memory in this fun and developmentally natural way for young children to learn!)
So...teach your child to recognize the most important words for reading fluency, which make up as much as 80 percent of the words in his stories, and he will happily and willingly work diligently to phonetically decode the remaining 20 percent! Phonics generalizations usually are much more easily mastered when the important high frequency words have been committed to memory. Parents and teachers often reveal their astonishment at how readily children make the transition, sometimes even without much direct instruction! Best of all, your child will understand what he has read and will recall it when he is finished!
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If you tried this exercise with your child...
Did your child learn these sample Dolch Words with relative ease?
Were you pleased and excited to watch your youngster actually reading whole sentences and understanding them within a very short time?
Was it an enjoyable and fun experience as it is for most beginning readers?
If you answered "yes" to these questions, you can expect to use "Picture Me Reading!" for a few minutes each day and watch your child become a competent reader, able to successfully read and understand what he reads at the second grade level or beyond, often in a matter of just weeks!
Even if he learns just one word per day, he will have mastered the entire Dolch Sight Word list in well under a year's time. Assuming that you also teach beginning phonics generalizations ("Picture Me Reading My Favorite Storybooks!" tells you how to pair that instruction with use of the "Picture Me Reading!" flash cards), your child will likely be able to read second grade material with relative ease. George D. Spache, writing in his book, Diagnosing and Correcting Reading Disabilities, Second Edition, (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1981, p.159) gives a table of reading level equivalences based on Dolch Word knowledge. The child knowing 211-220 Dolch Words is estimated to be able to read at the beginning third grade level! To see the Spache table, Click Here.
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