Question Of The Day, Wednesday, May 1,2019

[sivyaleah]

Get naked, run around the house and jump on all the beds

 

[Norachan]

I'd be out in the back yard, gathering bits of sticks together to make the cats a tepee, playing with bugs, digging in the dirt, climbing up the trees with the cats. Pretty much what I've been doing today anyway, except now digging in the dirt is known as turning the compost.

 

[Jem]

Probably put my prettiest princess dress on, then go outside and make mud pies or play with chalk in the driveway.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

(My mother, knowing what an incredible first grade teacher I'd have, actively thwarted my efforts to teach myself how to read.)

By five, it would have been far too late for Mom to thwart me. I entered first grade reading at a sixth grade level. Just as well, my first-grade teacher left MUCH to be desired. It is my considered opinion that the woman did not like children.

 

[Kat0121]

By five, it would have been far too late for Mom to thwart me. I entered first grade reading at a sixth grade level. Just as well, my first-grade teacher left MUCH to be desired. It is my considered opinion that the woman did not like children.

So did I. I taught myself how to read at 3 and was reading to the class in kindergarten. I handled story time while the teacher took a smoke break. Ah the 70's. Let's see that happen now.

 

[Margret]

By five, it would have been far too late for Mom to thwart me. I entered first grade reading at a sixth grade level. Just as well, my first-grade teacher left MUCH to be desired. It is my considered opinion that the woman did not like children.

Oh, my mother was having to thwart me long before the age of five!

My first grade teacher had spent some time teaching remedial reading, and had noticed that the first thing they did to help kids who were having trouble reading was to teach them how to sound words out. She thought it might not be a good idea to wait until the kids were in trouble, so, at a time when most first grade teachers had jumped onto the "see and say" bandwagon, she was teaching phonics, and once you've mastered phonics you can pretty much proceed at your own pace; you aren't limited by whether you've seen a word before. I was reading at a 5th or 6th grade level by 2nd grade and getting in trouble in reading classes in 4th through 6th grade because I'd always speed through the new reading book in the first 2 weeks of the school year (and it only took me that long because I was trying really hard to be good and wait for the class).

My kindergarten teacher told my mother I was "slow" (by which she meant "stupid") because I couldn't spell my name.

Margret

 

[Margret]

There are, of course, a few problems with phonics (because there are always problems, duh). Knowing how to sound words out means that I tend to learn new words through reading, and some words can be sounded out in different ways. For instance, I was a teenager before I realized (because a teacher told me) that "misled" is the past tense of "mislead." I thought it was the past tense of a verb I had made up out of whole cloth: "to misle." I kind of miss misling; mere misleading seems prosaic somehow - it's just a fancy synonym for lying. Misling, however, is more underhanded, more sinister (if you'll pardon the blatant libel of left-handed people, for which I am not responsible - I didn't make up the word).

Margret

 

[Willowy]

How does one thwart a kid learning to read? I'm pretty sure nothing could have stopped me, lol. I was 3 1/2 I think. "Mommy, what's that say?" and I extrapolated from there.

My youngest brother was 4 and didn't show any interest in reading even though he liked books. Then one weekend he said "write down the alphabet in big and small letters for me" and by the end of that weekend he was reading and writing pretty fluently. Strange kid.

My other brother was 8 before he could read properly. Everybody is different!

 

[Margret]

How does one thwart a kid learning to read? I'm pretty sure nothing could have stopped me, lol. I was 3 1/2 I think. "Mommy, what's that say?" and I extrapolated from there.

Oh, I asked. Mommy refused to answer. I had managed to derive that words were separated by spaces, which she kind of verified, but that's pretty much it.

I was never allowed to sit on her lap when she was reading us stories, which would have given me a lot of clues, and she basically refused to answer any questions about letters, words, or sentences. She'd been warned that if I learned to read on my own it could introduce bad habits which might interfere with me learning properly in first grade. Was this warning correct? I don't know. Did my eventual reading ability suffer from it? No. By the time I finally got to first grade I was very enthusiastic about school, because I was finally going to learn to read!

One day in second grade I missed the bus and the teacher had to call my mother to come pick me up. While I was waiting for her I picked up a book that was sitting there that I hadn't read yet (second grade level - very easy to read) and read it to pass the time. When my mom arrived the teacher asked whether I wanted to check the book out so I could finish it at home and I said no thank you, that I'd already finished it. I couldn't figure out why all the grown-ups seemed to think there was something remarkable about this - I repeat, it was an easy book! I think that's when it dawned on my second grade teacher that I was already reading at a fifth or sixth grade level, and she started picking a few library books intended for older kids during her weekly raid on the school library.

My mother followed a path that was intended to make her children into good readers, and it was extremely effective:

1. We were all breast fed (in an era when that just wasn't done ), and in order to avoid sibling rivalry based on jealousy of the new baby my mom always told us stories or read to us while she was feeding the baby.
2. Once we learned to read there were strict rules - we weren't allowed to read in bed. Oddly enough, however, we all had our own flashlights and Mom made sure we knew where to get fresh batteries whenever we needed them. And every once in a while she'd make a point of "catching" us reading under the covers and punishing us, which of course just made reading in bed more desirable, as the forbidden always is. When I read the autobiography of Helen Keller I was much taken with Braille, thinking how great it would be to be able to read under the covers with my fingers so that I couldn't be found out by a stray bit of light seeping out.

As soon as we were old enough there were frequent trips to the public library (much bigger than the school library), and we weren't limited to the children's department. At the same time as I was devouring the Freddy the Pig books, by Walter R. Brooks (Freddy the Pig - Wikipedia), I was also reading The Mouse that Roared and its sequels (The Mouse That Roared - Wikipedia). I think that's also about the time I discovered Agatha Christie and Robert Heinlein (and not just his juveniles). And my dad subscribed to the Reader's Digest Condensed Books, including the Condensed Classics for Young Readers (not certain what that series was called, but I read the condensed version of The Prisoner of Zenda, and of The Three Musketeers, and of The Scarlet Pimpernel, along with other books that had some very adult themes). And, having since read the originals of these classics, I have to say that the Reader's Digest version was better.

Margret