Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Reading instruction?

Ok, now that I am homeschooling (which I am completely new to), I am finding myself unsure how to proceed/what I need to be doing. My son just turned 5 last month, so I guess technically we don't need to work on a lot of academics, but he tends to enjoy academics and it helps the days pass faster if we have a schedule and stuff to concentrate on. I love teaching him and he enjoys learning.

My main question is about reading instruction. My son reads quite well and on many days reads independently for up to 3 hours. He usually does this before we start school time to pass his early morning hours. If he wants to continue reading past 10 when we begin school I allow him to read at the table with me for up to an hour of the 4 hour school day. So, he is getting lots of reading practice.

My question is, should I be doing some sort of reading instruction? Should we work of phonics or spelling or anything? Maybe reading comprehension? I can't imagine he would want to spend so much time reading if he wasn't comprehending the text and he usually uses his toys to reenact the scenes from his books after he is done reading, so he must be getting something out of it.

He has been reading for a long time, cvc words before 2 and early readers starting sometime after 3. He really stopped reading much when he was in preschool for the past 1.5 years and now that he has picked it up again he is reading way past where I thought he was at. So I guess I'm just curious if it's OK to allow him to learn reading through reading or if there are any specific things I should be doing to ensure proper mastery?

And here is a fun story about our new adventures in homeschooling:

I tried working on writing last week. He can write pretty well when the mood strikes him, but to start I gave him a subject and I did the writing for him so that he could focus on his composition. He came up with a few lines about the subject and I gave him some pointers about how to bring it all together. He had a fun time, but when I read it back he was upset I forgot to write "in the morning" after 5:30. So I added it in with a carrot and explained to him how to read the sentence with a little editing carrot. This pleased him.

The following day he asked me to write a story so that he could illustrate it. He worked on that for a while. When he handed it back to me I looked it over. I noticed he added a carrot. I had written "Jake's mom called him." He changed it to "Jake's mom called TO him." I thought that was pretty cute

Love the writing story.

Hmmm about the reading. If I were you this year I wouldn't worry too much about it. You could informally mention/see if he knows how to use the following things in nonfiction books...table of contents, glossary, index, bolded words or headings, maps/charts/tables, etc.I wouldn't go out of my way to teach it...just as it occurs.

In phonics you could play with compound words, prefixes, suffixes, root words, word families. Make it fun. Peggy Kaye has a reading games book. I tutor/mentor a little at risk girl at my son's elementary school and we worked on compound words (used a picture book from the non-fiction section that was really cute about compound words) and right after that were reading from her materials and her reading improved so much just from a few minutes of focused work in a problem area. So I guess my point is watch for errors and target those skills.

My children have always loved analogies as fun a way to work on vocabulary. They really didn't need much vocabulary work because they just absorb it.

In elementary school comprehension contains questions about details, sequence of events, settings, predicting, explaining motive of character's action, author's intent or purpose. You want to know if the kids can make connections to the text. Text to self, text to world, text to text are some of the connections you want to see. The other day my tutee was reading about the deep ocean and submersibles and she said "oh I know what those are! just like in the movie Titanic!!!" Yup just like that.


All of this stuff you can just do informally as the two of you read or as games with the word play.

Thanks everyone. I'll continue with what's working for us and try to remember to ask more questions and to point out more stuff that I haven't explained yet. I'll add a little bit of fun phonics work here and there. Hopefully he too will just pick up on spelling as his familiarity with words increases. It never worked for me, but that is why they make spell check

Any suggestions on what to do when he asks questions? On a new text he tends to stop after each sentence and ask a question about it. It actually drives me nuts! I generally say to keep reading and maybe we will find out. A lot of his questions I can't even answer, like why was her shirt green or why did she just say hop instead of jump or why does this book have string instead of glue or staples?

I hate to tell him to stop asking questions, but should I put a limit on the number of questions per book or perhaps refuse to answer until we get to the end? There is a general consensus he probably has ADHD, could the constant questions be a symptom of lack of impulse control?

I think it's probably more a symptom of curiosity! I think your strategy of saying to keep reading with those questions in mind is fine. It actually provides him with a mental framework to guide comprehension, and may even be a strategy of his own to support attention and engagement while reading.

This is probably not going to be terribly helpful, but fwiw, as the parent of teens, I remember those days when my kids were full of the non-stop questions... and I miss them! Enjoy them while they are still sharing their curiosity with you... as opposed to sharing their teenage moods!

Best wishes,

polarbear

I speculate wildly with these questions prefaced with a "maybe x...what do you think?"
- Green shirt= mixing blue and yellow dyes, swimming in a pond full of algae, etc.
- hop = trying to use behavioral mimicry?

OK, just keep taking deep breaths and answering incessant questions. It's good for him and I'll miss it someday

I sometimes wonder if I have the patience for this. It can be so frustrating when my son seems so smart and just gets things as the norm and then suddenly something comes along that I just can't seem to get across to him. I try saying it different ways and I know he should be able to get it, but it's not happening. Eventually, and often after a very annoyed tone creeps into my voice, I say it in a way that he gets and then we are good. And I feel bad because my son is only 5 and I'm annoyed he isn't getting something that's not age appropriate at all!

It's so hard to remember he's just little because I don't really treat him like a little kid. Today when I was putting his shoes on he asked me how do we know this isn't all a dream? I'm like, cause we aren't asleep right now, lol. That wasn't really the answer he was looking for, but we were in a hurry and I told him we'd talk about it later. We never did. Last I checked there is no proof this isn't all just a dream?

Yesterday he had me write a story down for him where all of the characters had these odd dreams and then there was this strange section where he had me write:

Hey, we're not done with this page yet!
The weird movie turned the page.

I just wonder what he was thinking when he inserted that into his story. His story is 5 pages, double spaced in a word doc. He read it to everybody he saw today. I thought the story was really weird and somewhat disjointed, but everyone was amazed he wrote it and that it had characters (he had different voices for each of them) and a narrative. I guess the standards are low for 5 year olds, lol.

What it comes down to is I don't think any of this is going to be easy. I'll be happy if I just don't mess up anything major.

*I was just informed by his dad that DS wants to learn more about dimensions and I should work it into the school day tomorrow. Yay? I have no idea how to teach that beyond what his dad already told him about planes and time and such. I expect DS to be up late tonight with thoughts and questions about dimensions. He's calling us back already :P

Idea: You'll need yarn, scissors, duct tape, and bed sheets/towels/blankets. String the yarn as supports all over the house to experiment with large planes, manifolds, etc.

Idea 2: A heady glass of Barolo.

We don't know that life isn't a dream.

I don't know about dimensions per say, but there seems to be a lot of fun cosmological theory in the Stephen Hawking kids' novels - could be a starting place, at least!