The Mind of a Child

Leslie Corbell: [00:00:00] Hello, I'm Leslie Dudley Corbell. And I'm Diane

Diane Matthews: Doucette

Leslie Corbell: Matthews. Welcome to the Mind of a Child.

We're so glad you joined us for today's episode. Today, Diane, we're gonna talk about something that I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. We're gonna talk about reading Uhhuh, about reading readiness and about learning to read. Mm-hmm. And how parents can help their children learn to read.

Diane Matthews: Yeah.

I mean, this will affect the rest of their lives in many, many ways. Let me read what I read and I thought these were so interesting. The Bible is the most read book in the world. Reading for just six minutes a day can reduce stress by 68%. Wow, reading can improve sleep. Quality, concentration, and mental focus, I might need to [00:01:00] read a little bit more.

Reading can increase empathy and emotional intelligence. Children who are read to at home have a higher success in school. Reading can improve vocabulary and writing skills, and for the older people that are listening out there or know older people listen to this one, reading can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

That's a lot of benefits there.

Leslie Corbell: That is a lot of benefits and you know, learning to read is such a priority. I know we hear it in the news a lot, education policy experts talking about reading, politicians talking about reading. We keep asking what is our education system doing wrong? Mm-hmm. Why can't we get this right?

I was looking at some scores on the NAEP website and it said that in 2019. 37% of 12th grade students performed at or above the proficient level. So that means 63% of 12th grade students were le were [00:02:00] reading below the proficient level. And that's, think about that. Yeah, that's not good. I mean, there are probably so many reasons why that's happening.

Could be devices, it could be. Preparation in earlier grades, elementary school, and that's what we're gonna be talking about a lot. Mm-hmm. We'll, preschool, kind of what are the things that we can do at those times? But I also think sometimes that it's, we're pushing down standards to younger and younger children.

Mm-hmm. And it might be the pressure and the push that we're putting on them. I wanna talk about that in this episode because it's just like Solomon says to everything, there is a season. That means there's a season for learning to read too.

Diane Matthews: Yeah, you have to follow it. It's a process. You can't push it, it just won't work.

It's not gonna come before it's supposed to come. You know, in theory, I mean, I love the verse, but in reality I'm a parent and I have a a 4-year-old and my neighbor is spending extra, extra time with their 4-year-old, and all of a sudden she's reading. [00:03:00] I don't want my child to be behind. I'm gonna feel the pressure to go and get the materials and start working with my child.

So what do you do in that case?

Leslie Corbell: Yeah, and I would like to encourage parents not to be competitive about your child's academics, not to let your own desire to compete with other people, because that can really detract from your child's ability and their learning to read process in the

Diane Matthews: future. Even if they're ahead at first, it can work to their disadvantage later.

Right. So trust the process.

Leslie Corbell: Mm-hmm. And understand that reading really fundamentally, and this is pretty important to me, and this is something I observed with my children, reading fundamentally is an organic process. Learning to read is organic process. It happens over time. And it is best done when it's done in the context of daily living.

Diane Matthews: Mm, that's so good. So you said trust the process, and I understand that, but I was looking at some of those reading kits online and they [00:04:00] look really good and I can see how parents could fall to the temptation of getting them and start working with your kids. I mean, they look pretty good. What do you think about them?

Leslie Corbell: I would caution against those. I really do think that one, let's go cons of reading programs that you might buy. They can discourage children. Again, it might be something that the adult is coming into with their own expectations. Okay? Expectations of the child's performance, expectations of the child's attention.

So that's one possible negative that can come out of those. Another negative that I can see with these reading kits is that they're not contextual. You're not learning letters and sounds in the context of daily living. You're learning in the, in the context of a game, something separate from daily living.

I think this is one thing I want parents to understand because it's true for adults too. When we learn something and we make a connection to why I need to [00:05:00] know this, why it's important, because it's something we go through our day when it's contextual, children learn it on a much deeper level. Hmm. And so that's why I think that learning to read.

Is better when it's an organic overtime process,

Diane Matthews: day by day, day by day. I love that. Okay, so let's back up. When do children start reading or when do most children start reading? What's the age? Yeah.

Leslie Corbell: Most children are reading by ages six and seven. Some children may start to read earlier. Okay, so six or seven.

Yeah. I mean that's not when they start kindergarten, that isn't, that's a little dilemma there. And then think about preschool. Yeah. Now you see children, you know, programs pushing, reading, pushing worksheets, pushing phonics programs separate from daily living. Into even preschools.

Diane Matthews: Wow. We have some tried and true ways that will help your children in reading [00:06:00] readiness.

So, Leslie, start us off with the first one.

Leslie Corbell: Alright. And I wanna point out that all of these things are research-based.

Diane Matthews: Okay?

Leslie Corbell: Yes. We know that these things lead to better reading skills. I don't think there are any research statistics that back up really other methods of learning to read. So the first one is.

To your infants and toddlers. This is a pre-reading skill using a rich vocabulary.

Diane Matthews: And you know what? Later on we're gonna talk about this. When we talk about comprehension and vocabulary, this is so important. Yeah.

Leslie Corbell: And we've talked about this heart and Risley word gap study in, I think it was our serve and return episode.

Mm-hmm. We talked about this. And so basically what that was, they took 42 families, I think, over a period of time, and they, they followed the children from seven months until two and a half. I think they took audio recordings of conversations the parents had with the children. It was like over 1300 hours of conversations.

And what they found was all of the parents [00:07:00] loved their children and instinctually knew how to love their children and raise and teach their children. Mm-hmm. And they all did the same types of things, which was ask questions. Give prohibitions, like, no, don't do something or give directions. And then the third one was affirmations.

All the families did those things, but the remarkable thing they found out was that one group of children had more vocabulary, more words, more instances of those types of things. So they projected those numbers to when the children would turn four and go to possibly a preschool, and they found that one group of children heard 32 million words, fewer.

Than the other two groups of children.

Diane Matthews: Okay. So I'm like, why 32 million words left? Just because, because the parents just spoke a different, they spoke more level. Okay, more they spoke more. It was just more words.

Leslie Corbell: More words, more words of affirmation, more words of anything, anything. More question, you know, just more, more [00:08:00] language.

It was just more language going on in the home, and so, so I just kind of point that out. If you haven't heard the word. How are you gonna speak the word? Wow. And much less how are you gonna read the word and decode it later? And so I would almost even challenge parents now to start thinking about, okay, so how can I build more language into my day?

How can I talk about God's character? What are all the words I can use to describe God's character? What are all the words I can use to describe the creation that we see outdoors? What are all the words I can take from scripture? Maybe there's a new word now. How can I put that in conversation with my child?

Yeah. And so just intentionally building up your vocabulary

Diane Matthews: and they projected that that would do what in their real future?

Leslie Corbell: Yes.

Diane Matthews: And

Leslie Corbell: so then they found links with those children for future reading when they learned to read. And even to third grade, which is a big barometer of learning to reach third grade scores. That is, and they [00:09:00] projected it on throughout and they were able to find correlations.

Diane Matthews: That's amazing. Okay, so that's one tried and true method. Another one is just letting your children see, you read a printed copy of a book instead of a device instead of a phone, or. A Kindle or whatever your, your computer, let them see you reading. When you're reading a device, it doesn't give the message that you're reading a book.

Even if you really are. It gives the message maybe that you're looking at social media or you're playing a game or checking emails. It doesn't really give the message to the child. So it's, you know, they value what we value. So if they see us reading books, they're gonna be more interested in that. So the challenge would be.

Put down your devices, put down your phone and make it a habit. Make sure you pick up a real printed copy of a book [00:10:00] and read that in front of your child, especially your Bible. Let them see you read your Bible every day.

Leslie Corbell: Yep. And so here's another one. Just like we said, conversation with your child helps build their vocabulary.

Mm-hmm. Reading aloud to them does, mm-hmm. You're gonna throw in more new vocabulary. You're gonna have a wonderful sweet connecting time with your child that they're going to learn to love books and love reading. You know, take the wins as they come. If your toddler is all done. Wrap it up and move on to another activity, but just make it a fun, pleasurable

Diane Matthews: moment with them.

That's right. Because you never wanna push it. You never wanna, you know, just make them even sense that this is not fun. Mm-hmm. You know, because reading is such an enjoyment

Leslie Corbell: and I've even known people to read to their child during meal times. Yeah. So find the times when they are, when they are ready. I giggled because

Diane Matthews: I

Leslie Corbell: thought

Diane Matthews: even when they're going to the bathroom, you know?

Absolutely.

Leslie Corbell: Anytime. Anytime in the tub. Yeah, anytime. Anytime. Yeah. That's

Diane Matthews: what's great. Whatever works [00:11:00] for you and your family. So those are some things we started when they were an infant. You know what? I think you can even do that when they're in the womb. Huh?

Leslie Corbell: I saw a really fun study that took a group of moms and they read to their.

Infant in the womb during the third trimester. Okay? And then after the children were born, within 52 hours, they took these children again and played those same passages. They, it wasn't even their mom reading at the second time. So they had another female voice read those passages to some children. And another group of children, they read a different passage.

They found responses from the infants to the passages they had heard in the womb.

Diane Matthews: Is that amazing? Yeah. I mean, I love that, you know, you hear of parents and we did too. You know, talk to your baby while they're in the belly. Yeah. But even they have proof that they responded. Do you know how they responded?

Just looked over know. I think it was

Leslie Corbell: that they nursed more, they changed, they had different patterns in their nursing that would happen when they heard familiar things.

Diane Matthews: Oh, that's so cool. Mm-hmm. Okay, so now we're gonna move on. We're gonna shift [00:12:00] gears. So now we're gonna move more on like when they're reading.

Leslie Corbell: Reading is more than just decoding words. It's phonemic awareness, which is understanding that sounds have meaning and are related to words. It's phonics, which is understanding that these symbols, these letters actually have meaning and have and are connected to the sounds and it's fluency, which is reading.

With expression, with understanding comprehension

Diane Matthews: and building vocabulary, vocabulary, breaking them apart individually, one on top of the other. 'cause it is so important to even think through each one. Are we touching on each one of those areas? Yeah. So, because

Leslie Corbell: once again, we're gonna kind of reiterate, it's not a drill and skill.

Mm-hmm. It's not. Taking these things outta context and drilling your child on them. And that's gonna teach 'em to read. It's putting these through your daily living.

Diane Matthews: Yeah. So like the first one, pheno awareness. How fun is this? We do it, we don't even know what that we're doing it. [00:13:00] Yeah. So it's

Leslie Corbell: playing word games.

Mm-hmm. Literative phrases. It might be, have sounded like with my daughter. Madeline Ma, Madeline and Mommy are making Yeah,

Diane Matthews: those ams, yeah. Yeah.

Leslie Corbell: Cookies for, you know, Memaw, Uhhuh, and just really going through the sounds and letting that be part of the conversation and they start hearing those. Mm-hmm. Then adding rhythm rhyme to it.

That's a big key for children. I think I read where when if children start kindergarten and aren't able to rhyme, you know that they're not ready to read yet because rhyme is gonna take place Before that, again, it's the phonemic awareness. Hans rhymed everything and I know your children. Yes. Reading nursery rhymes to our children is so important.

Children start being able to guess the end of the word. They help you read that and I know you all read some rhymes. Yeah,

Diane Matthews: we did. We read a lot of, um, nursery rhymes and we even have a Christian, uh, mother Goose. [00:14:00] We did Dr. Seuss, but just the rhyming and the rhythm, it's just so fun. And to think through just the process of learning to read that that's essential.

And yet you think of it as just a fun game that you're playing with your children, but it's an essential part. Yes. I love that.

Leslie Corbell: Yes, it is. And so what's the next one? Phonics. We've all done the phonics. Phonics are important. Children do will grow to understand that these letters have these sounds. One way you can help your child start realizing that is to place text around the room.

So you might have the word chair on a chair. Now, you're not gonna go to your child and say, what does it say? Yeah, you're, you're going to say.

Diane Matthews: Here's your chair. Oh, that says chair. So it's not just the sound when we come to phonics, it's what you see. Yes. It's the, yeah. So that's the difference. You start, make,

Leslie Corbell: yeah.

Start making a connection to that word has meaning.

Diane Matthews: Mm-hmm.

Leslie Corbell: So you could put those types of things around the house. You could also then [00:15:00] notice our food items typically have words on them, whatever. They're a box of cereal. You could read Cheerios. Mm-hmm. That says Cheerios. Those are just little things to kind of get your child interacting with print and start making sense.

Ah, this means something.

Diane Matthews: And like a grocery list. A grocery list. So we're gonna go to the store, come help me make a grocery list, you know, and just write 'em out and let 'em see the words. Any word that they can become familiar with is so helpful, you know? Yes. Not that you're pushing it, but you're just enlightening them.

The more words, the better it is for their future. Yes, definitely. The next one is comprehension and fluency.

Leslie Corbell: You know, we typically think of starting out our books with our children, those easy readers when they're starting to crack the code of phonics. And you starting out with those, with those simple books.

And then we move on to picture books, and we've been reading picture books throughout. So I'm gonna talk about two different things here. Picture books and chapter books. So picture books, I mean, I read [00:16:00] high quality picture books. So look for high quality ones. Mm-hmm. With rich vocabulary, strong story themes.

I kept reading those all the way through elementary school. I mean, there's really no end to reading picture books. I would still sit down and read Velvet Teen Rabbits.

Diane Matthews: I was gonna say yes. I still like picture books now. Yes.

Leslie Corbell: So there's really never an end right. To reading picture books. So I wanna remind parents of that.

Mm-hmm. To just keep looking for really high quality ones. 'cause your children are gonna learn more vocabulary. It's gonna help with comprehension because there's pictures on the page and then when you start adding in chapter books. You're gonna be kind of doing, working on two different levels. So you're gonna add some chapter books in to build their attention span.

Mm-hmm.

But

Leslie Corbell: don't give up the picture books. Keep the picture books there. And children's receptive language is gonna be greater than their reading, like their reading ability. So that helps build their reading ability. You can take turns reading pages mm-hmm. With one another for the longer ones. But the one big thing about that, to help with [00:17:00] comprehension when you do find chapter books for your children.

Try to keep them in their realm of experience developmentally and daily because their comprehension will increase more if they can make a connection with the book.

Diane Matthews: So what they're experiencing their world, their make it, yeah.

Leslie Corbell: Yes.

Diane Matthews: So contextual. Yes. What's what they're experiencing in their life. Yeah. So if

Leslie Corbell: I had a first grader who was wanting to read chapter books, I might start out with some of the really small ones.

Mm-hmm. The GDB Jones and all those. Fun things about young children and I might throw in something like Charlotte's Web as they're continuing to learn to read, but I would not wanna pick a chapter book that's maybe about middle schoolers. Right. Because that's not their realm of experience, and so they're not gonna comprehend it.

Mm-hmm. On that deeper level.

Diane Matthews: That's right.

Leslie Corbell: The easier books you were talking about Bob Books. Yes. The Bob Books are such good little books. To start out when your children are just starting to explore reading the all the, I can read books. Madeline had so many

Diane Matthews: favorites of those. Yeah, we had so [00:18:00] many. All my kids went to a Christian school, so it was the Abeka curriculum and they came on home with so many of those books, those little bitty read books.

Actually, I have a lot of them still, and I have them with the read or just all the little books for the grandkids 'cause they're just so cute.

So let's talk about this fourth grade slump. Mm-hmm. When I started reading about reading readiness and all the different issues, this kept popping up, did a little bit of research, and I found that. Grades first through third, you're really learning to read. But grades four through eight or even more, you're reading to learn.

But in the fourth grade, there seems to be a division I. The gap after the fourth grade gets wider and wider on comprehension, reading comprehension. And so what happened was, you know, you were talking early about teachers and [00:19:00] administration, just, you know, debating and wondering what's going on. Well, that's why they started researching like, what's going on?

Why is the, they're a fourth grade slump. Why is this division happening? And I'm gonna oversimplify the research, but bottom line, it's lack of vocabulary. They have this norm means test that kids are supposed to arrive at in fourth grade, and there's a big group that doesn't. What happens is at first reading comprehension is okay because it's in the context.

So they, even if they don't recognize the word, they can figure out what it means based on just reading the whole sentence or two or the paragraph. They can figure out what the word means, but later on the words become more difficult and they get discouraged or. It gets worse and the gap gets bigger. And so the slump starts in the fourth grade.

But what [00:20:00] happens is in fifth, sixth, seventh grade, it moves into other subjects besides reading. There's a big dilemma there, but the bottom line is vocabulary. And so when you talked about that study, it's so important for us as parents, grandparents, to do anything to enrich their vocabulary. That

Leslie Corbell: is so interesting because you think about vocabulary and comprehension and get those two together.

I remember thinking I could get a chemistry textbook. Mm-hmm. And I could probably read that chemistry textbook to you and pronounce things correctly, decode the words. Right. But without that vocabulary and the understanding of what those words really mean. It would

Diane Matthews: make no sense to me at all. That's right.

Like you said before, reading is not decoding.

Mm-hmm.

Diane Matthews: I mean, think of a little fourth grader, a fifth grader, and they don't know that word. They've never seen that word. They've never heard that word. And so they're trying to decode what it means, but it's gonna catch up with them later. Mm-hmm. If [00:21:00] someone, a teacher or a parent doesn't realize, okay, there's a problem here, there's a discrepancy here, and they take the right means to correct it for 'em,

Leslie Corbell: and I think that's why I wanted to do this episode for so long, is to encourage parents to focus on.

Vocabulary and comprehension just as much as they focus on phonics.

Diane Matthews: Yes. And it's not flashcards and making a to-do thing every day. It's just as you go during the day just making an enrich Deuteronomy enrichment fun thing. Yeah, that's right. So let's go into vocabulary, Leslie. What are some things we can do to enrich their vocabulary?

Well, we've kind of

Leslie Corbell: touched on that a little bit with the picture books, continuing to read picture books, continuing to add in more language with that, having a word of the day, just all those types of things. A word of the day. That's good to have. Mm-hmm. One thing I did that I didn't touch on, which I think kind of went with.

Comprehension and with vocabulary is folk tales and fairytales. Mm. And that was so important to me [00:22:00] with Madeline and Hans. We read folk tales and fairytales from every culture. And so what you find out is all these different cultures are telling the same stories to make meaning of the human experience.

Mm.

Leslie Corbell: And so one thing I loved about it. By the time they got into high school, this understanding of story archetypes and story structure really helped them understand literature

Diane Matthews: on a deeper level. You know, I, I love that. That's great. Just to think through that. I. My kids going to a Christian school. I was looking through the curriculum last night and I was amazed at the stuff that they went through, but they would cover different countries and different cultures and they covered so much like in the world what was going on, and I thought, that's beautiful.

Mm-hmm. That's kind of the same thing, but they would. Cover it more scripturally based, which I appreciated too. But that is so great in poetry. Yes. Oh, all that is so helpful if you can bring it [00:23:00] into your reading exercises with your kids.

Leslie Corbell: I'm glad you said poetry, because I hadn't thought to put that in there.

And that was a big part of their learning to read on a deeper level experience. And I would encourage parents to. Get those poetry books and do poetry read alouds. I would even write poems on their brown paper sack lunches.

Diane Matthews: Oh, I remember you saying this. For them to take to

Leslie Corbell: school with them and read at lunchtime.

Huge. Is that, so writing, whether it's a poem or something, writing something for them to read at lunchtime?

Diane Matthews: Boy, if I got the lunch packed. A heart put on it or a smiley face. I was doing great.

Leslie Corbell: I can tell you my pen was

Diane Matthews: pretty cramped. Or you riding some of those long ones. Good for you. Good for you. Well, here, the Longfellow poem was a little long.

You wrote the whole thing? Yes. Wow. I'm impressed. Um, okay, so here a couple of little practicals I thought were good to help your kids with vocabulary when you're reading to them. Follow along with your finger. Let them look at the words as you go and [00:24:00] identify the words. And if they don't understand a word, you know, just pronounce it to 'em.

But also point out pictures and scenarios that develops their vocabulary there too. Observation skills and curiosity, imagination. Just follow along with them in the book. Let 'em ask questions. And you know, I thought this was interesting and I dunno that I did this very often, but now I've done this with the grandkids, like point out the author's name and point out the table of contents.

Absolutely.

Leslie Corbell: Those are big things. I mean, they're little things that are big things that are big things. And so that's what's so fun about it. And so this next one's really good too. So if you have reluctant readers mm-hmm. You know, here's some things you can do. Observe their interests.

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Corbell: Some children prefer nonfiction books, so if they're interested in something, try to find nonfiction books about that topic that have pictures.

Another thing I did, especially boys in the first grade, I spy books, where's Waldo? I. There's not words on the page, obviously not many, but at least they're [00:25:00] interacting with the book and they start to see themselves as readers. And that's what we're really trying to build up this love of reading and to see themselves as I'm a capable reader.

Diane Matthews: And even just the love of books, just that they're opening books. Mm-hmm. We had lots of Star Wars books and even Lego books and Absolutely. Sports books. Yeah.

Leslie Corbell: Just any kind of book. And I'd encourage you to continue reading to your child even when they're older.

Diane Matthews: And continue looking at picture books too.

Mm-hmm.

Diane Matthews: Just a word of caution about books when you're choosing books to read.

Leslie Corbell: Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a push. I'll say a little bit maybe. Maybe. It's a big push and I think it's harmful to young children to push adult agendas and themes of sexuality into young children's picture books.

You really do have to be careful and I would wanna give you permission to. Be observant of what's available to your child and it's okay to draw the line. 'cause I really don't think those books [00:26:00] belong in a

Diane Matthews: children's library.

Mm-hmm.

Diane Matthews: No. I gave a book to someone who's bringing home a new baby and I didn't read it all the way through.

I flipped through the first few pages and it was so cute. Thankfully it was somebody close enough that they called me and said, um, in the later part of the book, it was two men. With the baby, two males instead of a husband and wife. So yes, be careful.

Leslie Corbell: I always prefer to let children be little.

Diane Matthews: Mm-hmm.

Leslie Corbell: Not bring in worldly concerns, not bring in adult concerns to them, but let them be little.

We're gonna link some books in our show notes that we recommend. Yes. If you're having trouble finding some.

Diane Matthews: In conclusion, I'm gonna read a secondary teacher's perspective. 'cause I thought this was encouraging. You know, we've talked about all this and all the things you can do, all the things you may feel after listening to this that you should do.

You know, just pressure. Don't feel pressure. This is what the teacher said. I have never been able to tell [00:27:00] which child learn to read first. Which child could recite their ABCs before they were three years old. I could however, tell which students felt confident in his or her abilities. Likewise, I could tell which students struggled to believe in themselves, in which students expected to fail.

As a teacher, I worry that we are putting skills like reading above social skills and confidence building. It is a reminder for us to not focus on what our kids do, but on who they are and who they are in Christ.

Leslie Corbell: We just encourage you all to, you know, look at reading as a process. It's something that happens over time. Some of the best stories that I hear about children learning to read are just that one day they were reading and you don't even know how it happened.

Diane Matthews: Let's pray. [00:28:00] Lord, thank you for the alphabet, for words, for books, and for the written word, and most importantly, your written word.

You gave us your words for us to read and to teach our children. May that always be our priority. Help them enjoy reading. Help them enjoy reading your word and quality literature that challenges them to be more like your son, and that's whose name we pray in Jesus. Amen.

Leslie Corbell: Thanks for listening. Check out our Instagram at the Mind of a Child Pod, or you can email us at the Mind of a Child podcast@gmail.com.