The Starting Gate

Where do you start if you want to teach your child to read? Or if you want to make sure all the reading bases are covered in the classroom? What if you’ve already tried to teach your child to read, and it didn’t happen? Why didn’t it happen, and what do you do now?

Your Reading M&Ms

Make Sure You Have Your
Reading M&Ms In Place!

When I travel and speak to parent/educator groups, I always talk about getting the job done with M&Ms. My M&Ms are: Motivation, Methods, and Materials. If you’re missing any one of them, your reading boat’s gonna sink. And did you notice which one I listed first? Motivation. Ever dealt with a strong-willed child? Aha. I rest my case. So today I’ll talk about the first M, Motivation.

Motivation

No!

It’s absolutely pointless to try to teach your child with Down syndrome to learn something that he resolutely does not want to learn. You’re, like, totally toast, Dude. But we’re all like that, aren’t we? It’s just that our kids are honest about it; polite pretense is not in their makeup. When they don’t want to do something, they make their decision very, very clear, verbal skills or no. So we need to bypass any and all difficulty in that area when it comes to something as critically important in their lives as reading. We do that by first identifying their top interests, their heartbeat; that’s the front door.

Front Door, Side Door…

Get Your Foot In The Front Door

If we can’t get in that way, we try the side door, the back door, the windows…we keep at it until we find a way in. There is a way in. As I said, we all feel that way. Give us something that floats our boat, and we’re totally on board. When my daughter was 9 and I wanted her to practice the piano, she absolutely abhorred the classical repertoire her teacher assigned.  I couldn’t get her to practice even 15 minutes a day. That was about the time “Les Miserables” hit the world stage, and she adored it. The Mom Lightbulb went off in my brain, and I made fast tracks to the local music store. I practically begged, “Do you have piano music for Les Mis in the simple big-note version?” Wahoo! They did. My daughter swooned. “I could play Les Mis all day.” And she just about did. From then on she spent a great deal of time at the piano, even eventually composing her own pieces. I had gone in through her front door.

Personal Books Again

Personal Books = The Front Door

The same thing happens for our kids. Their heartbeat interests are the door, and the very first thing we do in teaching them to read is to open that door. Personal Books are the first stage in revving up that motivation; remember my blog on Personal Books? (See https://specialreads.com/?p=358 for a refresher on “how to”) There’s a powerful reason why I devoted a blog to that topic: it can move mountains. Our children’s interest comes alive when the very first thing they learn to read is about what they love. Not only that, the books are so simple that success comes very quickly, and that is beyond priceless because it gives them the essential reading gift of confidence. 

Anything Goes

Jon at age 5, reading his first Personal Book to Grandma.

Don’t judge the topic of those personal books; what they love works, and that’s all you care about. So make your “Hot Topic” list and follow the directions in my previous blog. I like this quote from Maya Angelou, which I used in my Down Syndrome Parenting 101 book to head up the chapter on literacy: “Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” Amen to that. So if the hot topic is “The Avengers,” “SpongeBob,” or whatnot,  you embrace it with enthusiasm and create book after book. When he was 5 and I was teaching him to read, my son Jonathan (28, DS) never tired of my homemade books–and more books–about his trains, his drums, his family…and of course, each one was more advanced than the last. He accepted that unquestioningly because he loved the books. Of course he did!

REAL Books

The other super-super important component in successfully firing your child’s motivation jet is Trade Book Modification. You’re going to want to do this for several reasons, the most important being that your child will love reading a real book; reading a modified trade book is simply a transition to reading a straight-off-the-shelf trade book. You’ve been reading aloud to your child from infancy; snuggling with read-aloud time is probably high on both of your lists. So now it’s time for your child to have real reading books of his own; but in the beginning, you’re going to want to modify those books so he can actually read them. Talk about a light bulb going off! There’s really nothing like it. I have modified an enormous stock of trade books for my students: all topics (frequently Disney/Pixar movies, etc.) and all levels. Pulling out a modified Sesame Street book for a 5-year old that she can quickly learn to read herself is the bomb, trust me. As with Personal Books, you’ll make flash cards to go with the trade book, and teach the cards both before and after reading the book (see the directions in the Personal Book blog.)

Modifying Trade Books

What does a modified Trade Book look like? This.

How to? In a future blog, I’ll go into this in detail; but for right now, if you want to get started, go to an office store and buy a pack of either full-sheet labels or 6-up labels. You’ll print out new, larger, simpler text on those labels and cover the book’s original text with them. As I said, more details on that later. But you’ve got enough information now to go for it. Print out all the levels of Dolch Word Lists (get them at www.mrsperkins.com for free) and use those lists to help guide you in creating new text at your child’s current reading level. Important tip: double space between each word and don’t use bold type! Instead of making it easier to read like you think it will, boldface type is harder for a beginner to read. Just use a sans serif font like Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, etc.

Leaving the Starting Gate

And You’re Off!

So now you know how to get out of the starting gate with this reading process. And of course you’re also working daily on letters and letter sounds, if those aren’t learned yet. (I love the Starfall ABC app for that; it’s even better than the Starfall website. Clearer.)

The Next Laps

I’ll talk later about the M&Ms you’ll need to get through the next laps, after you’ve busted out of the starting gate. Meanwhile, your motivational work is cut out for you.

On your mark, get set, bang!