Learning to read: part 2

Back in July I wrote my first post about Laila learning to read (see here). Since then she's come on in leaps and bounds. We practice the phonics cards from time to time, probably no more than once a week, if that really. But we do read lots of books everyday. We've left the Usborne Phonics Readers to one side, despite being full of repetitive words that she can read, and are in the flashcard set, they are actually quite long (when a 4yr old is reading) and therefore tiring. Laila prefers the Oxford Reading Tree, read at home books. They're split into different levels of difficulty, so of course we started with the easiest: 1a, quickly went through to 1b and 1c and she is now reading level 2 books on her own. The advice to parents with these books is to read it to your child first, then let them read it. It's not cheating if they just remember the words, as long as they are looking at them. It's hard at first as you don't feel they're learning if they've just memorised what the book says. But actually through repetition of "reading" and looking at the words, they do sink in. Sometimes Laila will just guess a word, or read a sentence she's memorised and say "but" instead of "and", so I'll just ask her to look properly at the letters then she realises her mistake and corrects herself.
Recently I've moved onto teaching her the "everyday words" flashcards, by category, so for example I grouped all the number ones together. I show her the words in order first: "one, two, three, four, five, six....", with the picture and then without the picture. Then I mix them up and show her the words, she gets them nearly all right, just "eight" is a hard one!

One thing I think has really worked though, is whenever she asks what something says, I make her try to read it herself first. So she gives it a go and then I help if she needs it. That's been the best push for her, but honestly she hasn't really needed much pushing!

I really haven't spent as much time working on this with her as I would have liked, but in the last couple of weeks I have seen my reward anyway. Laila has started reading out road signs, shop signs, cereal packets, you name it. Wherever we go she will suddenly say "Mummy that says sortie", err yes Laila it does! She read "demenagement" off one of our moving boxes, "Lannion" from the cover of the local newspaper etc. etc. One place I am now avoiding is the local DVD rental station, as it says "sex toy" on the side, and I really don't want to have to explain that word to her just yet!

Oh and another delightful advantage of Laila reading, is listening to her read stories to her little brother! It's so sweet and he loves it, he thinks it's so great he even read one to her the other day too! That peace and quiet I'm always after, could be just around the corner, if I get 2 bookworms I'll be in heaven!!!!