Reading and Writing: Stella’s Journey (Part 4)

Stella had become progressively more skilful at digging out the sounds of and building simple words, but it took a tad longer for her to reverse that process so that she could read. I personally did wonder if this was because she was having trouble identifying some of the letters. In fact, I found out later on that she had trouble (on & off) identifying letters like ‘b’, ‘p’, ‘q’ and this was even after she knew how to read simple words. Mixing up these letters is quite common among young children.

Reading did happen eventually. It happened just as suddenly as she discovered ‘writing’. This time, we virtually heard the big ‘Ka-Chink’ from within her head when she suddenly discovered what blending was all about. Stella was in the middle of a late breakfast that very day. I had only just arrived for the day and her parents were busy getting ready to head off to work when she pointed to the cereal box and slowly said, “Kellogg’s”. Sceptics may think that Stella was just recognising a popular brand name but in the days following this first attempt, she began to read more and more words. She was hungry for words to read, looking everywhere for them. Unfortunately, this new found fun activity didn’t last long because not all English words are phonetic. The situation was also further aggravated because her parents stopped the ‘reading lessons’ temporarily due to their busy schedule. This period also coincided with two holiday trips (one to Indonesia and another one to Buller). When she no longer found it fun to just point out simple words in books and proudly read them out loud, she gave up trying and went in search of other great things to do. She had wanted to truly read a whole book by herself but words that can’t be sounded out easily and words with vowels that she had yet been taught were popping up everywhere, ruining the fun for her.

After a long break, the ‘reading lessons’ commenced again. In the days after Stella’s involvement in a fight at Kindergarten, she became quite clingy. Her mother saw that her playful self was returning when she was learning to play the UNO her father bought that she decided to play a game of revising the letters and sounds Stella already knew. Surprisingly, Stella enjoyed that and took up the invite to learn more but the process was slower at the start because all she wanted to do at that time was to play UNO. LOL. She loved that game to bits and still does.

Stella’s mum began by introducing the rest of the sounds that weren’t taught yet. It was a slow process involving plenty of revision to make sure that she didn’t forget the ones she had learned earlier. Armed with a book of mine containing a list of suitable words, Stella’s mum made lists of words for Stella to read. Each list focused on one sound and was then made up of other words sharing that same sound but spelled differently. It is from such lists that a child learns that sounds for spelling patterns like ‘f’ and ‘ph’ are the same and only the more common spelling patterns are introduced. All of the lists were filed neatly into a binder. Stella would take it out to read every now and then on her own. Her confidence to try sounding out a word increased tremendously after this. Another thing that had also helped Stella in reading picture books was a basic list of useful sight words.

By the end of last year (approaching the beginning of this year), Stella began to read better than before. She even dug out and read aloud books that she deemed too babyish earlier. She continued to enjoy being read to but she also preferred to co-read a picture book with another person. You could tell that she was really reading and not reciting like she used to. Today, Stella is beginning to read short chapter books at home. She also enjoys reading books (especially non-fiction) she borrows from the school library. The readers from school are a different story altogether. She kept coming home with readers that were way too easy but she reads them dutifully through. LOL. The content of some of these readers were so dull that sometimes Stella’s dad encourages her to pick something else to read when it is his turn to listen to her reading in the evenings.