How to help your child learn to read:
Reading is a process of various parts of the brain.
The frontal area of the brain is our “sounding center.” This is why you might find that you actually leaning forward and touching your forehead while trying to learn to sound out a new word. The front of the brain is where phoneme awareness takes place. We drill to this area with rhythm and sound exercises.
The rear area of the brain is a receptive learning area. This is why when we are reflecting on an idea, or reminiscing, we often lean back in our chair and even nod while we think. We are working our proprioceptive area. This means that we are working nerves and muscles in the neck and back of the head. This is an important area for reading as well. It is in this area of the brain that we put information into action. We drill this area through comprehension and application activities.
The left side of our brain is our “filing cabinet” center. This is where we file information in sequence. We alphabetize in this area as well. This is a logical organized storage center. Here is where we learn our alphabet and rules of language.
The right side of our brain is our “art gallery.” We locate various images here in the long-term memory. Color, size, story, and rhythmic music patterns settle information in here. We can often remember the words of song better than the words on a page. We drill to this side of our brain through rhythm, rhyme and pictures. This is where we can remember things for a very long time. Do you still remember your ABC song?
Reading with Randy
Randy is our helper beaver. He thinks that words are "tasty" and wants you to "eat up" words like he does. Randy asks the children in each lesson to find the sounds they just learned in a story. For example:
Then, the student can read the words they just learned, with the sounds they just learned marked for mastery. We have specially designed each of our stories to be read aloud rhythmically to the metronome. We want children to read in a "sing-song" style to understand that a sentence has structure and a beat. Later, as their reading matures, we will encourage them to read without the sing-song.
For more instruction, see: How to Learn using a Metronome.