Learning to read

I had a couple of brief conversations today which made me think about the way in which my children have learnt and are learning to read. Often the question comes up about either phonics or look say methods. I can't say my children have been keen on phonics, they usually find it quite dull, and they don't like the silly, often meaningless stories that come in phonic readers. I continue to use the extra old Peter and Jane books, the same edition which can be viewed in a museum case. It works for us!
However this doesn't mean no phonics at all. I do the initial sounds and basic blends, through workbooks generally. But, maybe the main way I involve the phonic aspect is through the way I hear the child read the old Peter and Jane. I don't expect them just to memorise the word, I do expect them to have a go at sounding out the new words as they come up. When a word does not conform to the phonic rules, I just tell them that and they learn it as an exception. If the new word was "shop" and the child hesitated I would not just say shop to them, but rather I would make a "sh" sound and wait a moment, then I'd say "sh" "o", and so on. Often the child then gets it and finishes the word off. This is how I prompt them on words which they forget, so while we use the look say book, I try to show them the methods of working out new words, but I do this as the words occur, rather than teaching the sounds separately.
For us this works because it means that the children get to read books with actual characters and some kind of story, while learning how to use the various tactics needed to get round all the inconsistencies of English!
I also like the fact that the Peter and Jane books quickly have a full page of words to read, rather than just a brief sentence or two per page. I think this gets the child used to having plenty to read, so they don't get put off by lots of text on a page later on. Lots of text, but its easy to read, so nothing to be afraid of there then! Alhamdulillah.

Maps

As part of geography this year with Ia I'm using the book Mapstart 1. Mapstart 1 begins with the different ways we can look at objects and then a room. There are questions on every page and I'm just working through these with Ia orally, as the point is to learn about maps and plans, not to write comprehension answers! Most of the questions at the beginning of the book are very easy anyway, asking the child to find things in the picture and using the language of direction (next to, on the right of etc).
On Friday we reached the page showing the model Lego town and then the plan of the model. To follow from that I asked Ia to make a model of part of a town, which is shown in the picture above. After that she drew out a plan of the model, with labels.
I remember that when I did this with the boys we did a really big model, covering our table. It was a good model, maashAllah, but they tired a bit of drawing out such a big plan, so I scaled things down for Ia!
This is a fun activity, whether or not you are using Mapstart!

Reading this week

I'm trying to integrate some whole book studies into the boy's shedule. I'd like to assign them some reading through which they can learn something about history or society etc. The idea is that they will read the book one week, then do some written work on it the following week, probably in the form of several short essays.
I'm going to have to put some effort into sourcing material for them, but at least for this week I have assigned "Lost Riders" by Elizabeth Laird.
The book is about child exploitation, with poor boys from Pakistan traffiked to Dubai to work in camel racing. In the preface it is mentioned that the UAE has passed laws to prevent this now.
The story is shocking, but written in an easy style. I think the boys found it quite compelling reading as they each finished it in a day, maashAllah.
(By the way I'm not planning to only post here on Wednesdays now, it just seems to have turned out that way recently!)

Couple of links

Today we watched one of this year's Royal Institution science lectures on iplayer. (Tomorrow, Thursday, is the last day these are available). For the first time we did not watch an iplayer programme gathered around the PC screen because the boys now know how to watch the iplayer on a normal tv, via the Wii console.
As kids get older they are a real help with technological matters, maashAllah!
I thought I'd post a couple of links to other online stuff they've discovered and experimented with recently:
Sumo Paint This is free and you don't need to download it. It works in a similar way to the old Paint, found on most PCs, but with more features. The boys have been trying out designs on there.
CamStudio This one allows you to video what you are doing on your screen, like the print screen button, but in video. You might not think there is much use for that, but the boys sought this tool out for a specific task they had in mind, and it seemed to work out for them, maashAllah.

Sometimes I have tried showing them things online that I've found links to on home ed lists or on blogs, but usually they don't take those up. They need real tasks, which they devise for themselves, to get themselves searching for and using tools like these. I suppose that is more like "real life" anyway!