After finishing the 5-minute lessons of Jim's Children Learning Reading program, I didn't want to stop my toddler's 5-minute learning time that had been working so well, so I came up with a couple of ways to continue advancing their reading skills.
After Little Mr. finished Jim's program, I decided to work on his ability to read larger chunks of text without being turned off. I wanted to slowly build up his ability to read more and more words so that seeing a paragraph (and later several paragraphs) wouldn't cause him to be overwhelmed and disinterested in trying to read what it said.
I tried both a 5-minute activity (Activity 1: Reading paragraphs) and a longer than 5-minute activity (Activity 2: Reading stamina) to work on Little Mr.'s ability to read more text: feel free to use either or both - whichever one works better for your child.
Activity 1: Transitioning to reading pages
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE: Able to read sentences
DURATION: 2-5 minutes
MATERIALS USED:
Book(s) your child can read defined sections of in about 5 minutes
When my first son finished Children Learning Reading, I came up with this activity that fit both his skill level and the 5-minute timeframe. I happened to have these books that could be read 1-3 pages at a time without feeling like the story was unfinished, so I chose these to continue Little Mr.'s 5-minute activities:
5-minute activity for 1st book:
1-2 sentences per page
Have the child read 3 pages for each activity (3.5 year old Little Mr. could easily do this in less than 5 minutes)
Repeat reading the same 3 pages for 3 days so the child has the opportunity to learn any new words introduced, as well as have time to understand what he was reading. After 3 days, onto the next 3 pages.
It was difficult to find books that could be read only a few pages at a time in 5 minutes without feeling like the story was unfinished, so Little Mr.'s second book for his 5-minute activity had significantly more words than his first:
Optional - 5-minute activity for 2nd book:
2-3 short paragraphs per page (each paragraph was 2-3 sentences)
I had him read 1 page (which took about 5 minutes)
We repeated reading the same 1 page for 3 days so he had the opportunity to learn any new words introduced, as well as have time to understand what he was reading. After 3 days we moved onto the next page.
Having him read a couple of small paragraphs in his 2nd book for his 5-minute activity really gave him the confidence to independently read his own books that had only a sentence or two per page.
However, I do think that I introduced too many words too fast: it was hard find appropriate books to keep progressively introducing larger and larger blocks of text to read in 5 minutes. Because of this, I only plan to do the 1st book as a 5-minute activity with Copycat before moving onto reading stamina (Activity 2 below).
Because it was hard to find books with only 1-3 page stories that could be finished in 5 minutes, we moved his reading activity to before bedtime where we started by alternating reading paragraphs for 2-3 pages. Then we moved onto alternating reading pages for a couple of pages, but in both cases we were never able to finish a story in 5 minutes. I noticed his interest in reading his own books went down while we were doing this alternating-reading-paragraphs method, so I switched to working on reading stamina (Activity 2 below) instead: but because Little Mr. was already used to reading paragraphs, we went straight to reading 3rd stage books (~1 paragraph per page).
Activity 2: Reading stamina
DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE: Able to read sentences
DURATION: 6+ minutes - varies depending on length of book
MATERIALS USED:
Several books of different reading difficulty levels
After the Copycat finishes the 1st book of Activity 1, I plan to shift the focus onto finishing whole stories or chapters in about 10-15 minutes rather than trying to be done within 5 minutes. This is one of the few activities that can take longer than 5 minutes in order to give my child practice reading for longer and longer periods of time to build up their reading stamina.
Work on reading progressively longer books.
I came up with a progression of books to read based on the number of sentences / paragraphs per page, and when I think Copycat is comfortable reading the amount of words for that stage, I'll move onto books of the next stage. For each of these stages of books, this is the plan:
Find short books of that stage (short enough that they can finish reading the whole book in about 10-15 minutes)
Move onto longer books of that stage: if they can't finish it in 10-15 minutes, read about half the book (or a chapter or two), and put a bookmark there for them to continue reading the next day.
Once they are very comfortable reading the amount of text per page in their current stage, you can move onto the next stage with more text per page.
Because this activity can take longer than 5 minutes, we found this activity ideal to do before bedtime because you can adjust how much time before bedtime they start reading so that they still go to bed at the same time. Starting bedtime reading earlier allows for the extra time reading might take, especially as the books your child is able to read get longer and longer. Also, moving reading practice to before bedtime freed up the 5-minute timeslots during the day for other activities.
1st stage book:
~1 sentence per page
2nd stage book:
~2-3 sentences per page
3rd stage book:
~1 paragraph per page
4th stage book:
~2-3 paragraphs per page
5th stage book:
Chapter books (4+ paragraphs per page)
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