Re: CHAT: learning to read

At 06:49 PM 6/16/99 -0500, you wrote:
>"J.Barefoot" wrote:
>> >From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
>> >Barry Garcia wrote:
[lots snipped]
>
>Although I am childfree, I've had a chance to observe the
>learning-to-read stage with my friend and her son. The boy is now 11
>years old. My friend is like me, an avid and skilled reader from her
>pre-school days. Her boy has always shown great native intelligence and
>she read to him a *lot*. But it didn't seem to do any good. The boy
>didn't eschew those reading sessions as he enjoyed the companionship
>with Mom. And he did learn some from her. But he showed little interest
>in reading well into second grade, to the degree that my friend was
>starting to get worried. The trick was finding something he *cared* to
>read. With this boy, it was puzzles and games and toys which required
>assembly. My friend realized that he needed motivation and so stopped
>reading the instructions to such toys for him. Once his interest was
>engaged, his natural ability took over and he has progressed rapidly. He
>even enjoys fiction reading now, although he'll probably never be the
>complete bookworm that his mom is.
>
It's probably not entirely true, but we (his Mom & I) always claimed we
taught David (her now 16yr old son) to read by refusing to read Calvin &
Hobbes to you. He wanted to know what was funny, so he eventually figured
it out. Actually, I remember reading to him a lot.

As for me, one of my earliest memory is of sitting in Kindergarten with a
pile of books that I had already read and being disappointed there weren't
more.

Sylvia

Principal Snyder to Buffy & friends:
Why can't you be dealing drugs like normal people!