I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mind! Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are – the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!
After reading that – and you could read it, couldn’t you? – you will start to understand how truly amazing the human mind and the visual system really are. The brain takes in the whole picture first. If it cannot make sense of something, it starts taking it apart for clues – decoding it.
Although South African children are only officially taught how to read at the age of seven years, your child learns to ‘read’, incidentally, from an extremely young age. This is because he or she picks up sight words. Most words always have the same shape. You will discover on your travels to and from the shops with a pre-schooler that she can ‘read’ the signs indicating which shop is which, e.g. Pick ‘n Pay, Woolworths or Steers. This just proves the point.
Sight words enable children to learn how to read incidentally, without any pressure. This handy technique is one that the brain continues to use on an ongoing basis.& If you took a pen and drew an outline around the word ‘look’, one of the first words children learn in the reading syllabus, you will notice that ‘look’ always has the same outline/shape. The first book brought home often has only one word repeated on every page. There you sit, watching your child proudly turn each page, and listening to him read the word ‘look’ from pages 1 – 8. Your child now believes that he can read! What he is actually doing is photographing the word with his eyes and storing the image in his brain so that when he next sees the word ‘look’ he will recognise it.
While some words can be spelt out phonetically, e.g. ‘cat’ – ‘c-a-t’, other words, such as ‘the’, can’t be decoded in the same way. These words have to be learnt as sight words (instant recognition) and it is the first letter and the shape of the word that alerts your child to the actual word. The famous Dolch list consists of the 220 most commonly used words such as he, she, it, the, and, when etc. The better your child recognises them the faster and more fluently he/she should read – a very necessary skill to sharpen in the face of the information deluge that our children face every time they research a topic for a worksheet or project using the internet.
Happy reading!
NIKKI BUSH
Creative parenting expert, inspirational speaker and co-author of Future-proof Your Child (Penguin, 2008), and Easy Answers to Awkward Questions (Metz Press, 2009)
nikki@brightideasoutfit.co.za
www.brightideasoutfit.com
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