When Should My Child Become Interested in Books?

I love reading, and can't recall a time when I wasn't interested in reading! How did this happen? How can I make it happen for Child(ren)? Can this be generalized to children of less-nerdy parents? Come along with me as I explore these questions in this week's post.

My Reading Journey

As readers of The Renaissance Biologist know, I was homeschooled from kindergarten through high school, and sent to a private pre-kindergarten for one year. From what my parents tell me, I showed awareness of and interest in books from around 2 years old, having a stack in a strategic location for a particular 3-year-old milestone.

I don't have specific memories of using a phonics or other program, but given that my mother previously worked in the school system as a reading specialist, my guess is that she combined lap-based reading aloud with phonics training. My earliest memories of independent reading are in a corner of my parents' living room, by a wall full of bookshelves, with up to one solid fiction book or biography per day.

Specific to skills acquisition, one focus area in my elementary-age years was reading comprehension, specifically of extracting central ideas from larger passages. Narration was very helpful in getting this process started, combined with some focused time on single paragraphs in a less enjoyable (but still necessary) setting.

Pre-Reading Skills

Before one can read a book for oneself, some foundational skills are necessary. This section doesn't mention the motor skills required because not every child has those and they are technically not required for reading (i.e., ability to hold a book in one's hands).

What Are the Skills?

Depending on where you look, you may find different numbers of "the" skills that set a child up for later reading. I chose this blog post as my source for this subsection because it seems comprehensive based on my experience as a reader, and as the daughter of a trained reading specialist. Let's walk through the skills, in roughly chronological order.

1. Print motivation. Is the child motivated to look at the printed word, as opposed to just the pictures in picture books?
2. Print awareness. Is the child aware that printed words exist, that (in one's native language) the print goes in a certain direction, and that it means books have a right side up?
3. Letter recognition. Does the child recognize letters as distinct from each other, and does the child identify various letters by name?
4. Phonemic awareness. Does the child recognize certain sounds produced by letters or combinations thereof? In the English language, 26 letters can be combined into 44 phonemes (e..g, wh, th, d)
5. Vocabulary. Does the child recognize written words that s/he speaks or hears, or perhaps recognizes that a word is a word even if it hasn't been heard before?
6. Narrative. Does the child recognize that stories have a beginning, middle, and end? In a pre-reading context, does the child recognize that skipping pages in a book or taking them out of order doesn't make sense?

What's Our Plan?

With Child being pre-verbal/semi-verbal at the moment, I would say that skills 1 and 2 are in place and skill 6 is developing, at least with familiar picture or board books. I know that the eyesight for reading typically sized print at arm's length does not necessarily emerge until ages 7-10. Therefore, the other skills will depend on Child's verbal development rate. 

In the meantime, we're focusing on language acquisition and continued respect for printed books. This means that some things we're doing this year and next (ages 2-3) include:

• Reading aloud as much as possible--including audiobooks to expose Child to different voices
• Modeling reading with regular (non-board, non-picture) books with print of various sizes, including how to turn pages without wrinkling them, how long to typically stay on a single page, and how to hold the covers so the spines and covers don't get damaged
• Speaking slowly to Child face-to-face, showing how to shape one's mouth, lips, and tongue to make various phonemic sounds, and modeling standard pronunciation of words that Child is attempting
• Naming and describing everything in sight and sound range, especially if Child shows interest in it by pointing or looking
• Providing opportunities for scribbling and drawing, so Child becomes aware of how to produce written words and letters

Husband and I were both fairly early readers, so we'll see what the year(s) after that bring for Child!

Reading Skills

Once someone starts reading, it's (hopefully) onward and upward from there! While there is a place for natural talent and inclination, almost anything can be learned or improved by targeted effort to develop and hone skills.

Role of Motivation

To do something, one usually needs to want to do it, even if for "wrong" reasons. In reading, which is difficult to start to do and to improve one's skill in, stronger motivation may be needed. Two concepts I'd like to mention here are the stages of change model and Bloom's taxonomy.

Making a Change

The stages-of-change model, also called the transtheoretical model, describes a generally linear process by which someone adopts a new or changed behavior. Motivation, outside or inside the person, is helpful along with accurate information to help the person move forward in the process. What are its stages?

1. Pre-contemplation. Here, the behavior (or lack thereof) doesn't even register as a problem for the person, or at least is outside of his/her own control.
2. Contemplation. Here, the behavior registers as a problem, but the person is unsure as of whether to make a change and how to do it. People get stuck here!
3. Preparation. Here, the person has decided to change a behavior and is actively gathering information while running mini-experiments as to whether a degree of change will be feasible.
4. Action. Here the behavior change is in full swing, and the person is keeping momentum by self-reward and social support.
5. Maintenance. Here the new or changed behavior is fairly solidified in the person's habits, and s/he periodically rewards herself/himself and deploys coping strategies to avoid backsliding.
6. Relapse (AVOID). This can happen at any stage of change, due to a variety of triggers or temptations. Thankfully, the farthest back it can set someone to is Contemplation.

How is this applicable to reading readiness? External motivators for a child to acquire a pre-reading skill or practice reading harder books every day can include modeling from significant others in his/her life (parents, older siblings, friends), being read aloud to from interesting books (Charlotte Mason's "living" books), and being shown how useful and interesting information can be gained from interacting personally with such books.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom developed a taxonomy (ordered series of words/actions) related to domains of learning. The most common one I use along with other educators is the cognitive domain. Here's a great resource containing the levels of cognitive learning, along with verbs that can be used to develop measurable objectives for a learning activity. What are the levels?

1. Knowledge. Here, the person simply memorizes or repeats information back without rephrasing.
2. Understanding/comprehension. Here, the person can rephrase information, give an example, or apply it to a familiar situation.
3. Application. Here, the person takes basic knowledge and problem-solves using a novel situation or piece of writing.
4. Analysis. Here, the person breaks down a larger piece into its component parts, potentially making a diagram to differentiate the various pieces.
5. Synthesis. Here, the person puts information together from various sources to construct something relatively new.
6. Evaluation. Here, the person can use all knowledge gained to critique the merits of a position taken by a piece of writing.

One caution in using Bloom's taxonomy is explained in this article about history instruction that I posted back in February on Facebook. Essentially, the caution is a redirection toward proper use of the taxonomy--i.e., one cannot think at higher levels with given information unless one can recall and understand information at the lowest level. Don't jump the gun, in other words.

Phonics and Beyond

With the taxonomy in mind, let's look at some phonics skills that I think are foundational for most reading. Phonics has gone in and out of favor over the decades for various reasons, but I think that in its current form it is the most valuable approach. What are some skills involved in phonics (sounding-out method)?

• Pre-phonics skills and activities--listening (requiring attention!), reproducing sounds, and sequencing sounds in spoken words
• Early phonics activities--linking sounds with specific actions to cement them in the memory. Most children have a strong kinesthetic learning preference!
• Later phonics activities--learning the correspondence between letters, phonemes, and sounds
• Segmenting--breaking down a word into its phonemes
• Blending--putting phonemes together to sound out a word reasonably correctly
• Decoding--actual reading, more fluently than sounding out words
• Encoding--translating the sum of the above skills into writing
• Learning some sight words--these are often the most commonly seen, and tend to reflect some of the irregularities of English pronunciation

After phonics yields early fluency--what Mortimer Adler calls first-grade or elementary reading. What are the stages beyond this, according to How to Read a Book?

1. Inspectional. This is appropriate for most books one is exposed to and unsure of whether s/he wants to read in full. Skills required include focused skimming.
2. Analytical. This is appropriate for books one is willing to read in depth and repeatedly, whether fiction or nonfiction. Skills required include breaking down and rephrasing an argument.
3. Syntopical. This is appropriate for passages from books wherein one is seeking an answer to one's own question (e.g., evaluating sources for a research project). Skills required include the use of reference works (Adler names the Syntopicon, which has largely been superseded by intelligent internet search strategies).

I hope you found this post inspiring and helpful for your child(ren) and yourself! Feel free to share your thoughts and questions in the comments.