Eva is reading almost as well as Ana was at the same point in her school career.

[conuly]

Better than Ana was at her actual age, but not quite as well as during the same part in her school career, if that makes sense.

Both of them had, at this point, a problem with guessing. But they guessed totally differently!

Ana, at this stage, would look at the first few letters and make a guess based on how they should all sound... even if it didn't make sense. So if she had a sentence that ran something like "We all live on the Earth" and she was tired by the end of it, she might read "Earth" as "earring" or "eats" or some nonsense word that sorta sounds right.

Evangeline, looking at that same sentence and being just as tired at the end of it, is much more likely to make a guess based upon the sense of the sentence. So HER guess might come out as "planet" or "world".

This has the result of making Evangeline sound like a much better reader, and the fact that she pays attention to what the words mean is very good... but in the end, I don't really want either one of them guessing at all. When they do (and they don't guess right), deep down I feel like shouting "STOP GUESSING! JUST READ IT! R E A D!"

But I try not to do that. I doubt it's helpful. I know, being able to figure things out from context is an important skill, and Ana, at least, is reading well above grade level, so why worry?

But it really annoys me. I mean, really.

Here's something else about reading, and I'm allowed to post this on the condition that none of you ever mentions it to anybody who might ever meet Evangeline, ever. You're swearing an oath by reading onwards!

When they read, they like to pretend they're characters in the books they're reading. (And to an extent they do this when watching TV too.) So if I read about how Omakayas felt bad because her sister Angeline teased her (we're reading The Birchbark House now. Good book, but it's about to get REALLY depressing), Evangeline will go "That's me, I feel bad!" or start to "cry" at the same time I'm reading because "My sister was mean to me". Evangeline especially listens very closely for any mention of HER chosen character in whatever book we're reading. (She was Diana when we read Anne of Green Gables. She still IS Diana sometimes.)

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

In one of my teacher-prep classes, we learned that proficient adult readers don't actually look at the whole word, just a couple of letters. We're all basically guessing, but we're using a combination of what Ana did and what Evangeline did to mostly always guess right. None of us are actually sounding out the words as we read them, at least until we get to a word we've never seen before. So guessing is a very good strategy for them to be using at that age — the kids who aren't guessing are the ones the teachers should be worrying about.

[siderea]

In one of my teacher-prep classes, we learned that proficient adult readers don't actually look at the whole word, just a couple of letters.

Er, proficient adult readers don't actually look at the whole word when they're reading something firmly within their reading level.

Take an adult with a comfortable and fluent 10th grade reading ability and give them an academic research paper. Suddenly, they really do have to read every word. And that, of course, is exactly what happens to a lot of young adults when they get to college. It's not because they're bad readers, it's because they're challenging themselves with further difficulty. And that's a good thing.

At any grade level, if you're reading something that stretches your ability to comprehend, you need to be reading every word, and to be able to read every word, because you won't have sufficient familiarity with the vocabulary or topic matter to guess.

Effortlessness is great, and part of what we train, in anything, for. But if what we're doing comes effortlessly to us, it's not furthering our training.

[crystalpyramid]

I don't mean that we skip over individual words. I mean that we don't look at every single letter. It's why yuo can understand snetences where wrods are randomly misspelled pretty easily. Even reading an academic paper, you can still understand the connecting words without having to sound them out. You only have to sound out words you really don't know (and then probably look them up).

[siderea]

Ana, at least, is reading well above grade level, so why worry?

A kid too focused on the extracting meaning level of reading will hit the wall when she encounters poetry. Reading poetry is "hard" because you really can't interpolate. You really do have to read every word. So for someone used to fluency in reading, on extracting meaning as efficiently as possible, encountering a situation in which you have to slow down and read. every. word. is frustrating and tedious and entirely too much like work.

[conuly]

I'm not worried. It's just that if she happens to be reading aloud and she does it it annoys me. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

[conuly]

(Also, am slow today and didn't realize you were quoting me instead of just using italics for emphasis. Now am all embarrassed.)