Teaching Eli

Teaching Eli, Day 1

It’s summertime and Eli is a good solid four years old. Since he’s a December birthday, he’s got more than a year to wait for kindergarten, which is fine with me. And, since his mom’s a reading teacher I have more than a few tricks up my sleeve to get him “ready”.

In about 15-20 minutes a day a few days a week, with occasional reminders and revisits, he’ll have a good knowledge of letters and words by the end of the summer, and how they work to relay ideas. But most importantly, he’ll continue to have a love of reading that has been instilled since birth!

My “Lesson Plan”

I’m in my pajamas sipping coffee, Eli’s in his PJ’s too with a dried milk mustache from his cereal. We’re sitting on my bed with a big box of “new stuff” (items I brought home from school that were leftover from the year). We have some discarded library books with beautiful pictures. Tiny odd stacks of almost-gone sticky notes in all different colors. A variety of index cards. Partially cut-up magazines. An extra ABC book that never got used. And loads of crayons and markers that Eli got from Santa. To some in looks like trash, but to Eli and me: TREASURE.

Eli is excited and raring to go. I want to use that as a resource, so I know I have to make the lesson quick. And I’m Mommy, not teacher. So the main element is F U N. I will carefully watch for signs of boredom and fatigue and change activities or end the lesson before it sets in.

We start with the new books. I have Eli pick one for us to read aloud. He chooses the wordless picture book, Of Colors and Things,  by Tana Hoban so I grab the little sticky notes. We look through the amazing photographs and as he begins to name the items, I say, “Oh! We could write our own words for this book. Let’s use the little sticky notes!” He begins to point to the pictures he wants me to label, “Balloon…Duck…Jellybeans (we pretends to eat the jellybeans)…” As I write the words I say them slowly. Eli started to guess initial letter sounds of words about a month ago, so I ask him what he hears in the words. He amazes me with what he already knows:

E: Duck…D…K
M: Yes! It starts with ‘d’ and ends with ‘k’! Look at it! (Eli examines the word and smiles.)
E: Sunflower…C…no, S. (The confusing names of letters and sounds has been an ongoing conversation at our dinner table recently. His statement shows an amazing understanding of the multi-functionality of letters in the English language.)
M: Yes! It’s ‘s’!
E: And that’s a duckling not a duck, so write ‘duckling’ there.
M: OK, I’ll put an ‘ing’ here, now it says ‘duckling’.

As I write the words, Eli sticks them on the pictures. We only do this for a few pictures, and then we just enjoy the rest of the book, talking about what we see. I don’t overemphasize the letters and words, I keep the focus on the beautiful photographs and the enjoyment of reading.

After we finish the story, I suggest that we use the sticky notes to label things around the house. He giggles at the idea and is eager to participate. I write “door” and ask him to go stick it on the bedroom door. As he suggests other things (wall, cat, fridge) I ask him what he hears and write the words down. He falls apart into laughter as he tries to stick the word ‘cat’ on poor Gus. But Gus being the ever-obliging pet allows Eli to place a tiny blue sticky note on his head. All for the sake of literacy, I’m sure Gus is thinking.

I keep this activity light and write quickly, again I’m not drilling and killing. I’m just asking him out of curiosity to help him see the relationships between letters, sounds, and words. I want him to have a solid understanding of letter-sound relationships so when he’s ready to learn to read he’ll have all the tools he’ll need.

Once we’ve placed 4 or 5 sticky notes around the house, we move on to the ABC book. I have a magazine, scissors and a glue stick ready. Eli flips through the magazine excitedly naming objects he sees, so I identify the starting letters and show him the pages in the ABC book on which they get pasted. We spend a few minutes cutting and pasting into the book. Then without prompting, he picks up a crayon and writes some of the letters he sees on each page. I coach him a tiny bit, but for the most part I am not concerned with the correct formation of the letters. I am just happy he shows an interest and I want to encourage this behavior, so I follow his lead.

We’ve been “working” for about 10 minutes now, and he has already accomplished a great deal. I know he’ll be losing interest soon and I want to end the lesson before he does. I pull out the index cards and tell him that I will write any words he wants. Any words- TV characters, toys, family members…anything. He blurts out, “BATMAN!” And of course I repeat the word, and ask what he hears. He tells me ‘b’ and ‘n’. I am delighted that he is attending to the initial and final sounds, but I don’t let on. I just write them and show the word to him, confirming what he already knows. He follows up with ‘Batgirl’, ‘Superman’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Sammy’, and ‘Auntie Denise’. These last two words are especially important today because he is going to Auntie’s house later to play with his cousin Sammy.

I set the six cards out face up and we look at the similarities. ‘Batman’ and ‘Batgirl’ look a lot alike, which one’s which? We look at the endings so we can find out. We do the same with Superman and Sammy. After examining the words for a couple minutes, I stack them up and show him one at a time. He reads them to me, with a few errors, but the mistakes mostly based on the initial letters so I know he is looking at the words and thinking. I lay them out again and we re-examine them. I have him hand me words he knows, and he does so starting with Batman. He hands me the cards one at time, and reads each one correctly.

The lesson goes about 25 minutes today, longer than I expected, but he was eager and in tune so I kept going. Later I might pull the index cards out and see if he can recall the six words. I may take some away if he isn’t able to recall them accurately. This isn’t a punishment, I just want to use meaningful words. If they don’t stick, I’ll weed them out and replace them with words that will.