Ay Ken Rid, Ken Yu?

Credits to Sam G.

Reading is a wonderful habit for most people. Though not all of us enjoy reading pocketbooks, newspapers, or even magazines, point is, most people CAN read. Did it ever cross your mind how you first learned to read?

I have a seven-year-old student who has just began learning to read. Summer of this year, a different tutor met him thrice a week teaching him the basics of reading. When the teacher asked the boy to repeat what she says, he forced himself to articulate a couple of times and then after several examples he would break into tears whining that the exercise was very difficult for him and that he was never taught anything like that before. This behavior became the tutor’s challenge. So this prompted me to ask several significant questions both to the tutor and the boy’s guardians: How was mentoring conducted? How was his learning behavior in the past? Has he ever attended formal schooling?

SQUARE ONE  I deemed that answers to my queries are vital for mainly two reasons. First, I would discover how to build a conducive learning environment for the kid. And second, it would redirect efforts into reaching the goal of making the kid learn to read. Sounds simple? I thought so too. But not when you deal with another person’s -and not just any person, but a kid’s- mood.

I thank God [swt] for my loving Mom for because of her I earned this bragging right: I learned how to read at two years old. And up to this very day I have not yet met anyone who has beaten my record. So I’ve been reading this long. Big deal? My point is that anyone can be taught to read at any point of their lives. Besides, even the Prophet Mohammed [SAWS] learned to read by the Grace of Allah [SWT] when he -peace be upon him- was bestowed his prophet-hood at age 40.

DRIVE AT IT  I perfectly understand that reading isn’t a piece of cake. By virtue of the age when I first learned to read, I wouldn’t remember exactly how I did. But believe me, when I conduct a single thirty-minute session with this boy, I could just imagine what patience and optimism my Mom must have had on me when I was learning to read. And so, I go down to the basics. I sought for the book that enhanced my reading skills in preschool “READING WITH PHONICS”. And as with any other skill, I started teaching the kid from square one: PHONETICS.

Most people think that learning the alphabet will help you read. N-O. No. Try singing the alphabet song. You must realize that you are just identifying the letters. You don’t read the word “WORD” by naming its letters the way you read them in the alphabet song. You don’t go “double u, oh, are, dee.” to mean WORD. But you read the word by its letters’ sounds. That’s what phonetics is all about: the sound created by the letter.

BUILD INTEREST  So I toiled.  Starting with vowels. I had to teach him how to create the sound of each.  I taught him how to open the mouth, the shape of the lips, and the sound it creates.  For starters with every session, we start with the different sounds of all vowels: /ah/, /eh/, /ee/, /oh/, /uh/.  That’s for English.  For Filipino it was /ah/, /eh/, /ee/, /oh/, /oo/.  This is the main exercise before we focus on a certain vowel sound.  To help formalize education, I prepared exercises that  asked him to identify from among pictures I drew which of those began with the particular vowel sound.

Identify pictures that begins with the /k/ sound.

INSTILL DISCIPLINE  Aside from the methodology, I have to keep in mind the kid’s background.  According to his caretakers in the province, he was sent to grade 1 when he was turning 6.  According to the school where he had moved to in the city, he has not reached that level yet. Hence, he had more exposure to play school than actual academics.  Knowing that, I am looking at an attention span for formal education sessions to be shorter than usual.  Ask him to do household chores and he would be able to carry them out with ample explanation of the instructions.  Apparently, accuracy on carrying out directions needed some push.   So I had to be firm and strict with directives. The authoritative aura left him the impression of swift compliance and obedience that I want nothing left to chance.  That part was pretty effective because I drove a sense of urgency to listen and follow after what was taught.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT  With my mandate plus new and more colorful exercises I crafted that he can work on anytime, I was up for a nice surprise.  A day during his recent confinement at the hospital, he suddenly read to me the words embossed on the foot board of the other patients’ hospital beds.  He read it spontaneously and confidently.  For the first time he read syllables correctly without hesitation. The confidence he exuded signalled a great improvement.

WORK IN PROGRESS  The challenges he showed in Summer has overtaken the bar after 3 months of periodic checking.  He has mastered vowel sounds and some consonant sounds like /b/, /k/, /d/, /m/, /n/ to name a few.  What we aimed to master first was the Filipino alphabet phonetics since this is the language he was raised in and that this is the medium used predominantly in school. Continuous homemade drills provide him comfortable evaluation about his reading skills.  Did I mention that I also read to him stories in Filipino and in English pointing at words as I read through them?  This drill exemplifies the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  This becomes his motivation that if he will be able to read then he can enjoy reading stories about his favorite cartoon and anime characters. Another driving motivation is that if he will be able to read better and faster, his comprehension skills will greatly improve and he will understand instructions on quizzes and tests at school and that will give him the edge over his classmates.  More knowledge, more power, less bully-prone you are because everyone else will respect you.

Reading is not just a student’s homework.  Even us grownups, we must practice reading everyday be it newspapers, paperbacks, magazines, e-books, what have you.  Reading broadens vocabulary, improves communication skills, and keeps us in the loop especially with this techie-generation. #stayingyoung  [Read as hashtag staying young].  See what I mean?