Recently Miriam has been learning to read. It has been such a fun thing for me to be involved in. Teaching her has been so different than when I taught CJ. Reading doesn't come as easily for her but she is more patient with the process than he was at this age.
I wish I had a video of the first day that she sounded out her first words. It was such a laborious task- almost painful in the beginning stages of sounding out each letter. "mmmmmm" "aaaaaaa" "dddddd" - "mmm" "aaa" "ddd"- "mm" "aa" "dd"- "mad". It reminded me of the phonic lessons that they had on Sesame Street when I was a kid. The words were at the bottom of the screen. The syllables were separated and sounded out. They were gradually brought closer and closer together till they formed a word. At the end of the exercise Miriam was saying the word but still had no idea the meaning of the word she was saying. Then, she tried once more and finally she recognized the word. Her eyes lit up, she raised her eyebrows and blurted out "mad", "mad", "mad". I giggled to see the excitement. She continued to do this process for each word- about 20 in all. In the next few days I decided to try and video tape the process. Here is the process. I was disappointed that I couldn't capture the first day's labor and rejoicing, but you can still see some of that process in this video. (I can't believe that she didn't see me holding up the phone to video tape her :)
Love this! She has such a fun, lively personality! You are a great reader Miriam!
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention that Miriam's "lively" personality increases with every minute that she works really hard at reading. It takes so much effort for her to do something new (like reading) and after awhile she is plain ol' exhausted. The more effort she puts forth the more rambunctious she gets. I'm not sure why she responds that way but I'm starting to see the pattern.
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