Reading! (30 April 2010)

bob-booksBentley was officially the first student in his class to meet his Reading Challenge Goal or 200 books (whew!)  In fact, before the end of the reading challenge his final tally was 280 books.  The most exciting thing in the reading challenge, however, was not that I read him 280 books but that as the Challenge went along, he began reading!  In the second half of the Reading Challenge I think he read about 20% of the books.  We found that school books had challenging words (like "balloon") which are hard to sound out, but the same books had a LOT of repetition so "balloon" would appear at least once on every page, training "sight" reading.  To complement that, and to teach Bentley to sound out his words, we got him started reading "Bob Books" (see above).  Bob books are introductory readers with short vowel words (like "Mat" and "cat" and "sat") that permit children to predictably sound out the word.  Both styles turned out to teach sight reading and phonetic-sounding out.  The conclusion:  Bentley can read now!  He reads Bob books and reads his "teaching books" which are sent home (at least 2 different books each night).  God has made this little boy very smart!


 copyright, 2012 Jay Reimer