Thomas Read a Book

So, Thomas read his first whole book! Tuesday night actually. 9/7/10. It was one of the little BOB phonics books. It was called, "Sam". They've been working on site words in school, so it was fun for him to see words he knew, and be able to sound out the rest. He had been reading little parts of other books I was reading to him, but this was the first one he read all himself.

He's pretty proud of himself!!!

I tried to upload a video of it, but it was too long! :-) It takes a while to read a book when you are 5!

:-)

MJ

Thomas Rockin at Reading

Well Thomas read the first book in the Biscuit Phonics Fun Box Set tonight!

I loved it! It was so fun! He would finish a sentence and I would say, "give me 5!" And he would and we'd giggle!

The funny thing is, the set was a Santa gift for Grace! But, he had done so well last night with a Star Wars, Step Into Reading- Level 1 book, that I knew if he worked on one that was focused on Phonics (the Step Into Reading aren't really), that he would do great.

He read "This is Biscuit" and "Biscuit and the Cat." The second with quite a bit more help. :-)

His hardest words were: "Little, lots, of." He kept trying to say "love" or "likes" with "lots." And he keeps sounding "of" out as "t-something-or-another."

The smart thing is, and I've seen this on several sets of the Phonics Books, there is a page in the beginning that shows each set of words in the book. The first set is the phonics words they are working on (short a), so: "ran can hat sat." Then the second set is sight words: "this a on is." Finally, they have a set of "Fun Biscuit Words" (Scooby Doo has "silly words" I think) that they will see here: "Woof! Biscuit Yellow." This last set include daily words, but not usually ones they would see every day. (Thomas was proud to point at Yellow before I could and read that one. They work on colors and numbers at school. :-) )

One cool element about this layout, is that you've had a chance to read aloud to them all of the main words (sometimes all of the words) they are about to see, in no order at all, but still, they do get to hear the word and see it together. Then, a few minutes later when they are trying to sound out the word, they will think back and put the pieces together in their mind. Or, like with the word Biscuit, they are ready to holler out "Biscuit!" as soon as they see it written on every page. Thomas did this with "Woof!" and "friend".

It seems to me that the major stumbling block he is having is sight-recognition of letters. I know that sounds odd, that he is sitting there reading all but about 6 words out of a (30-25 words total maybe) book, and I'm worried he doesn't recognize letters. But, if you saw what he struggles with, you'd see what I mean.

He will stare at "girl" and fidget, and look all around the room, and look at the picture trying to guess a word that fits in the sentence he has just read....etc. Then I'll say, "G-I-R-L," and he blurts out "Girl!" Now, I'm not talking about sounding it out, I just spell it, and he pauses, and says the word. He does that a lot actually. I wonder if where they practice saying the spellings of words at school.... Ex: (Tune of Frere Jacques) "P-I-N-K, P-I-N-K, That spells Pink! That Spells Pink!" .... if he is memorizing some word spellings. Then when I spell it out, he thinks of it. Not sure really. I do know that it's become noticeable to me.

Anyway, another little issue, which I'm assuming will clear up on its own, is mixing "b" and "d" up. But, before we call in the dyslexia people, they do look a lot alike.... so we'll watch and wait.

We've been reading one book a night that he reads, and then one (or two maybe) that I read. Not including the one or two I read to Grace in her room, which he sometimes listens in on.

He noticed recently that several kids in his room already know how to read. He told me, "I don't know how to read." He said it with such certainty and finality, that I talked to Mom and we agreed that even if it was just one little book a day, it was worth trying.

Here we are 4 books later, and he read one almost totally by himself. Even if he just gets a tiny boost of confidence when he hears his classmates blurting out sentences that are written on the wall, it will be worth it!

I wish you could have seen him proudly reading that little book to his Dad! :-)

Sam and I kept shooting each other looks back and forth while he was reading it like, "Can you believe this!" :-)

Thomas Can Read!

Thomas Read his first sentence today.

He was finishing his worksheet on the letter 'W' and I was across the room working on his responsibility chart, when he got to the bottom, where it asks him to write out an entire sentence. He had completed this, and he and I usually work on sounding out the sentence.

I said, "Go ahead and start trying to sound it out, I'll be there in just a second." So, he started trying to sound out the letters.

He said, "Wa-Ea-Sss" "Wes" That was the first word in the sentence, a boy's name, "Wes."

"Yes! That's right" I said, "Wes. You read that just now! All by yourself!"

"Wes?" He asked looking skeptical.

"Wes. It's his name." I explained

"Wes is a strange name," he said.

"I knew a guy named Wes. Go on," I said. At this point I was done with what I had been working on but I knew better than to hurry over to him.

"Wes Sss-A-Wa No...Wes Sss-Aa-W. Wes Saw Wes Saw!" He looked up and grinned at me. I was standing next to him at this point. I had helped him in sounding out the hard A in saw over to a soft a sound.

"What did Wes See?" I asked him. He looked back at the paper.

"Wes Saw 'a' " he paused and glanced at me to see if that was really all you had to say with that letter.

"That's right..." I prompted

"Wes saw a Wa-E..." He tried a hard E sound a few times, then figured it out... "Wa-E-B"

"Wes Saw A Web!" He looked astonished as he realized he had really said something, and began repeating it, "Wes saw a web!" I pointed to the drawing of a spider in it's web. "Wes saw a web!"

"You really read that whole sentence all by yourself!" I exclaimed I grabbed him in a big hug and he was beside himself. It was sooo cute. He just knew what he'd done and it was great! He gave me five and then took the paper off to show his Dad in the other room.

When he got in there, he hands the worksheet to Sam and just stands there. Sam of course looks at it and reads the well written sentence across the bottom, and says very good, but from the look on my face knew something must be up. Thomas yells, "I read that whole sentence by myself! It says, "Wes Saw a Web!"

One interesting thing is that just like he tries to invert the lower case d and b he also is saying some of the words kind of inside out. When he's told the story a few times, he has said, "Sin saw a web." And I'll correct him and say, "Wes" there are other words he does it with too, but not as often. I think part of it, is that that it is such an odd name to him.

Anyway, we called Gannie and he told her his news. He pointed out that he was holding his Spider-Man toy when it happened (it's the horrible red monster one, not Venom, the other one...) and he told Gannie, "My Spider-Man toy must have some Magic in him!" She told him, "No Thomas, it's you. You have the Magic in you." He liked that.

Then we drove over to my Mom's driveway, and she came out to the car. As soon as she opened the door, he tells her, "I read a whole sentence today." She said, "You wrote a whole sentence today?" and he smiled real big and said, "No! I READ a whole sentence today!" She said, "Oh My Gosh!"

Now he's pretty shy about the whole thing! He's afraid someone will ask him to read something else I think!

MJ