First Grade: Don’t rush “writing” when a child is learning to read.
I haven’t taught first grade in ten years. I have missed teaching a child to read—so much that I have actually considered trying to get some hours at a tutoring center just to be able to teach beginning reading again. (I know; I’m a hopeless romantic when it comes to teaching!)
Notice this tip is in the first grade paragraph—not the kindergarten one. My children learned to read in first or second grade (okay, um, two in third).
If I were writing about reading (check out my dozens of blog posts about teaching a child to read here at the blog!), I would tell you first of all to wait for readiness. But since this is about teaching writing, I will tell you that learning to read is hard work. While some children (older girls!) do well writing a lot while they learn to read, oftentimes it is overload to have a child doing language arts (i.e. learning parts of speech, writing sentences, etc.) while he is learning to read.
I’ve often wondered why curriculum programs have a “learning to read” program (phonics, readers, phonics workbooks) at the same time as a grammar book. It just didn’t make sense to me. If a child is learning to read, and he doesn’t know that many words, why would he need to learn that travel is a verb and giraffe is a noun? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.
Do everything in your power to help your student become a strong reader (and to love reading and school!)—wait for readiness, dig into the phonics lessons, have him read aloud once or twice every single day, build his listening comprehension (through reading aloud, audios, and discussion) so that once he is reading fluently, the reading comprehension will be there. But don’t tax the sweet little guy by doing phonics lessons followed by writing/English lessons as well.
Note: If you have a new reader who enjoys writing as SHE (smile) learns to read, consider my book, The Spelling Notebook. It is a word/phonics sounds classification book in which new readers can record words they are learning to read as they learn each sound/commonality. (Don’t get it if your student does not have the small motor skills to write or if he is too overwhelmed writing the words he is learning to read.)
