Too many children struggle to learn to read. Now, in the age of digital devices, it seems likely this problem will increase. But this is completely unnecessary!
Parents, grandparents aMake nd other caregivers can easily ensure their child’s success. They need only begin by showing the child how their own “talk” looks, written down. This page tells you how to get started — while grocery shopping.
The page ends by showing you how to move them easily from there — into writing and reading.
Grocery Shopping
Here’s how the activity goes —
1.Capture a Key Word. Shortly before you leave for your next trip grocery shopping, tell your child what’s on your list, and have them choose the ONE item they want the most — something they really like. (Interest is very important here, and only do ONE Key Word a day.) Encourage them to talk about it. For example, if it’s ice cream, have them discuss what flavor they like best, when you last bought them a cone, where it is in the grocery store, etc. Make sure they are envisioning it.
2.Integrate phonics. With the felt-tip pen, print the word, you say the name and/or sound of each letter as you write it on a sturdy card. (An index or recipe card will do.) Most letter names make the most common sound that letter makes — for one that doesn’t, just casually make the sound that letter is making. (For the word Ice, you say the name of the letter I, say the letter and make the ssss sound, stay silent as you write the e. For Cream, make the sound for the C and don’t say the name, say the name for r, say eeee as you write ea, and say the name of the m.) Your child will automatically be beginning to absorb those connections. (Memorizing/testing can interfere. A young child naturally “soaks things up,” as with speech.)
3.Integrate Letter Formation. Have them trace over each letter with the index finger of their writing hand. If they’re able to trace the letters one at a time, you say the letter names or sounds again, as they trace. (A very young child will just swipe across the entire word. Accept that. Key Words are always fun and easy for them at their level, to give confidence with print.)
4. Focus Them on the Entire Word. Hold the word card about 2 or 3 ft. away and say the word. Have them to say it, too.
5. Add the Card to a Word Ring. Punch a hole on in the corner of the card and help them place it on the metal ring. (A shower curtain rod ring will do.)
1.Create a Key Word. Just before you actually leave for your next trip grocery shopping, tell the child what’s on your list, and have them choose the one item they favor the most. Encourage them to talk about it. For example, if it’s ice cream: how it tastes, what flavor they like best, when they last had some, etc. Try to be sure they are actually envisioning it.
2. Then with a wide-tip marking pen, print the word on heavy card stock. Say the name and/or sound of each letter as you go — say it casually, as if you were just thinking out loud. (You’re not “teaching,” you’re just letting them see how you’re doing it.) See charts for printing here.
3. Have the child trace over each letter with the index finger of their writing hand. You say the letter names again as they go. (Don’t expect them to say them with you.)
4.Hold the word card away from them about 2.5 feet, so they see it at a distance, and say the word again. Ask them to say it, too.
5. Punch a hole on in the corner of the word card and help them place the word on what’s now called their Word Ring. (A shower curtain ring will do, but a round metal ring usually works better.)
In the Store & Your Next Shopping Trip
Let the child keep the Word Ring with them in the store. Help them match the card to the words written on or by their item. See how many places they can find the word written close by.
As you put the item on the conveyor belt at the check stand, let them place the word on top of it momentarily. (In short, do whatever you can think of to tie the word card to the item.)
The next time you do this (hopefully in the next few days), give them their Word Ring. Don’t say what the word is — wait to see if they remember it.
If yes, then keep it on the ring and add a new one as before. If no, just take it off the ring and set it aside. Don’t give hints or remind them. For this only works if you keep only words they immediately recognize in their collection. Otherwise, if they repeatedly run into words on their Word Ring they don’t know, they’ll begin to lose confidence.
Next, consider using this same basic strategy to move them gradually into writing and reading.
- Shortly before you leave for your next trip grocery shopping, tell your child what’s on your list, and have them choose the ONE item they want the most — something they really like. (Interest is very important here, and only do ONE Key Word a day.) Encourage them to talk about it. For example, if it’s ice cream, have them discuss what flavor they like best, when you last bought them a cone, where it is in the grocery store, etc. Make sure they are envisioning it.
- With the felt-tip pen, print the word, saying the name and/or sound of each letter as you write it on a sturdy card. (An index or recipe card will do.) Most letter names make the most common sound that letter makes — for one that doesn’t, just casually make the sound that letter is making. (For the word Ice, you say the name of the letter I, say the letter and make the ssss sound, stay silent as you write the e. For Cream, make the sound for the C and don’t say the name, say the name for r, say eeee as you write ea, and say the name of the m.) Your child will automatically be beginning to absorb those connections. (Memorizing/testing can interfere. A young child naturally “soaks things up,” as with speech.)
- Have them trace over each letter with the index finger of their writing hand. If they’re able to trace the letters one at a time, you say the letter names or sounds again, as they trace. (A very young child will just swipe across the entire word. Accept that. Key Words are always fun and easy for them at their level, to give confidence with print.)
- Hold the word card about 2 or 3 ft. away and say the word. Have them to say it, too.
- Punch a hole on in the corner of the card and help them place it on the metal ring. (A shower curtain rod ring will do.)
Then while shopping, help them match the card to the words written on different cartons of ice cream. See how many places they can find the word on labels under the shelf or written close by.
At the check stand, let them put the item on the conveyor belt, with the word on top. Let them explain to the checker what they’re doing. In short, do whatever you can think of to tie the word card to the item.
After you return home, see if they want to draw about the experience. make If so, make a duplicate of the word to glue under the drawing — or have them copy the word, if they’re easily able to do that.
Move Into Writing/Reading
This Grocery Shopping activity is a modified version of an approach I developed, called Key Words & The Steps.* If your child is enjoying it and remembering some of the words from one time to the next, you can easily use the basic version to gently help them learn to write and read — as shown in Write/Read Naturally!
It takes about 20 minutes of your time a day to work with the basic version of Key Words with a child. With it, your child first begins to write. Then their writing skills transfer to reading.
I have done this with children as young and 2.5 years old, and studies suggest age 3 or 4 is optimal. I’ve also used it successfully with children as old as 11, who had not yet learned to read or write. I just gave them a smaller writing book, so it looked more sophisticated.
For why this activity is so valuable and works so well, continue to read on here.
How Does a Child Naturally Learn?
To carry out this activity effectively with your child, it helps to see how and why it works. This takes considering how a child learns — naturally. And the best way to see that clearly is by looking at how you helped them learn to speak.
First, you didn’t “teach” them to speak. You didn’t sit your child in their high chair and demonstrate how to say a word you had decided they should learn that day.
You didn’t tell them the meaning of the word. You didn’t then describe how to place their tongue just so and demonstrate how to use their breath in certain ways to make the sounds needed.
Instead, while you were carrying out some activity with special meaning for your child, you used the words associated with it. For instance, you handed them their cup of milk and saw them smile with delight. So you said something like, “Here’s your milk. You love your milk!” and so on.
Then before long, as soon as they saw you pouring their milk, they began excitedly calling out something like, “Mu, Mu, Mu.” And you smiled and said something like, “Yes, that’s right! Milk, milk milk!”
What’s the Basic Process At Work Here?
If the process just described sounds familiar to you, it’s because Studies in various countries show that adults just naturally help children learn to speak by emphasizing words that have special meaning for the child. We appear to have a natural impulse to use a different intonation and volume with words that represent something we know the child is very interested in.
That emphasis works because — as we can see for ourselves — a child is born with both the desire and the ability to copy what they see/hear us doing.
And as Montessori points out, they are able to spontaneously absorb information. Then, again as we can see for ourselves, they develop the skills needed to copy what we’ve modeled for them. We can’t see how they do it, but we can see that they can do it. Another example is the seemingly miraculous way a young child just “picks up” a second language with virtually no effort.
So why would we decide to ignore this and not to use this same process with reading/writing? It’s easily done by modeling how to write words a child is very interested in. Doing this, a child can learn to read and write in much the same way they learned to speak It just takes a little more intention and planning on our part than with speech. And for this, we have Key Words & The Steps.
The Child Learns to Both Read and Write — At the Same Time
Not only is this a natural way to learn to read, but the child learns to read and write — with fluency, pleasure, and ease! And they accomplish both in about the same amount of time it takes a child to learn to just read, using an approach that skips writing.
To share these ideas with others, click here to print out a slightly different version of what’s on this page.
For why this approach is so effective and easy to do, see The Child’s Natural Path.
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*Sylvia Ashton-Warner developed the concept of Key Vocabulary and described it in her world famous book, Teacher, in 1963. I call them Key Words and developed The Steps to go with them for the children in my K-2 classroom several years later. Since then, I have taught the approach to many teachers — at Claremont Graduate University and far beyond. See About the Author and How the Approach Was Developed for more.