1) Don’t use word cards with words the student has never encountered. Word cards are for practicing words used in instruction, not for long lists of words never encountered before.
Thirty-four years ago with a one-year-old toddler in tow, my husband and I
began homeschooling my younger sister (Lisa) who was in eighth grade at the time.
It was definitely homeschooling out of necessity due to some problems that
she was having at school with bullying and meanness because of her
moderately mentally handicapped condition.
I did not know much about homeschooling. I had read Dr. Raymond Moore’s books, and I knew that they
coincided perfectly with the teaching in my elementary education degree and
my master’s work in reading education (in terms of how children learn).
However, to say that I knew what I was getting myself into would be a great
overstatement!
“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” ~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves”
During my graduate studies (in Reading Specialist) at Ball State University, I did a master’s thesis about children who learn to read without any reading instruction. That is, the kids just suddenly started reading books without ever having phonics lessons, basal readers, or other “formal instruction.” It was a challenging thesis simply because there is so little data about it because of our “early school attendance age.” Seldom does a child learn to read “naturally” before age six or seven, and with kids going to school at age five (and often beginning reading instruction in kindergarten), the research was sparse concerning these “instruction-less” readers.
School is well underway for most homeschoolers—and there are lots of kinks to work out here and there. That is fine. Just solve one problem and then move on to another. Tackle the thing that is the most bothersome, then the next most bothersome.
Don’t do everything at once. And don’t expect perfection!
There are a lot of things that you can do to solve reading problems…here are my top several tips, but most of these tips are spread out in the blog posts, products, audios, and videos that I have listed below for a sort of “reading round up” for you. Hope this helps your reading struggles!
Be sure to contact me with questions—I can answer you via a blog post, a freebie product (!), video, or audio! I love to help homeschoolers!!
We are expanding our private tutoring and small summer classes at Character Ink! We have more availability now–and in five subject areas:
1) Writing–sentence, paragraph, report, essay, story writing; all levels; Directed Writing Approach to get non-writers writing immediately! Taught by a writing curriculum author of over 100 books totaling over 50,000 pages!
2) Math–from elementary through twelfth grade….your curriculum or one of our choice; remedial, brush up, SAT prep, and more. Taught by a math professional (former CPA and CMA).
3) Reading–from first grade and up; phonics, reading comprehension, reaching reading fluency, and more. Taught by curriculum author, elementary education degree and master’s work in Reading Specialist.
4) Grammar/Usage–taught in conjunction with writing or alone; parts of speech; punctuation; editing; spelling/structural analysis; and more. Taught by curriculum author and experienced teacher of over 100 students each year in grammar and writing for over 20 years.
5) Science–elementary through high school–basic science, earth science, physics, biology, advanced biology, chemistry; taught by experienced science teacher who has taught all of these subjects to many small groups for over 15 years and is a math professional.
