Light Bulb Moment in Literacy

Good At Guessing!

Bruce, one of our many great literacy tutors, has been working with Michelle for 2 seasons now. Michelle is very bright and has learned that when reading she can look around for context clues. She made guesses on what the words said based on the pictures she saw; and since the sentences below them were short and simple she knew she didn’t have to say many words. If she saw a picture of a boy with his foot on a ball she would read, “The boy kicked the ball”. The correct sentence would say “The boy stopped the ball”. However, she “read” 4 out of the 5 words correctly. So tutors in the past would review the word kicked instead of stopped, Michelle would repeat then move on not really learning anything.

When working on blending sounds to make words, Michelle used her deductive reasoning skills to guess what the word was based on a few sounds she knew. If she was blending the word “say” she would jump to the conclusion that the word is “says”.  She knew that says is the more common version of that word. It was really tough for Bruce to figure out what Michelle really knew and what she was guessing. She was so good at it!

Build a Good Foundation

Bruce knew that she was capable of learning and doing more in Literacy. He was always thinking of different strategies to get Michelle to learn but she would always come through with her skill of guessing. After studying the Raising Robust Readers program and the training videos provided for our tutors, he was able to develop a way to build a better foundation for Michelle. He learned that in order to prevent Michelle from guessing what the answers are, he had to start with her at the very beginning. Teach her that letters and groups of letters make sounds. The sounds are then put together to make words; and you cannot add sounds to words when the letters aren’t there to represent the sounds. Bruce and Michelle made a great team learning this new way to blend and decode words.

I Covered the Pictures and She Read!

Bruce and Michelle have been working very hard and her progress speaks for itself! Bruce said in an email,

I used a sheet of paper and COVERED the pictures and had her read!  She read 95% of the words and sentences!  Again, it’s very basic level book, but she could NOT read when we started, she knew the words and read!  Progress!!!

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